Troikafeld! is a Seinfeld RPG zine that you now have another chance to grab
Worlds are colliding!
In a cruel yet thematically appropriate manoeuvre of fate, Dicebreaker learned about the existence of a Seinfeld-themed zine for RPG Troika! and that it was sold out in the same moment.
Update 15/12/20: Troikafeld! creator Jared Sinclair has told Dicebreaker that additional copies of the RPG will soon be available to purchase via the Spear Witch website. "Spear Witch is the only place they will ever be available, there is no PDF, and we'll never print it again," Sinclair confirmed.
Sinclair also confirmed he is "currently writing the Frasier X Eva zine" referenced in the original Twitter thread that inspired Troikafeld!, but the timeline for a possible release is currently unclear.
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Troikafeld! is the sardonic creation of designer and editor Jared Sinclair, co-writer Jarrett Crader and graphic designer David Wilkie. The zine combines the ‘90s sitcom’s premise about nothing with Daniel Sell’s bizarre and all-encompassing science-fantasy RPG system. The idea might have sprung from a Twitter thread where Sinclair riffed on a meme of Niles Crane lying in a hospital bed while his brother, Frasier, speaks with a doctor.
“Pilot the EVA, Frasier,” the doctor says, evoking the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime about mechs and depression, among other things. “Or Niles will have to do it again.”
Sinclair included descriptions of Frasier and Niles Crane as if they were player character backgrounds in Troika! - including their possessions, skills, and titles: Freudian Radio Host Pilot and Nervous Jungian Pilot, respectively. He provided a description for Martin Crane further down the thread, along with a call to play Troika!, before ending with a proposal - or perhaps a threat.
“Look if you like these so much then get me to 2k followers and ill make a zine. ill even hire am artist or smth [sic].”
Despite only boasting a few more than 1,400 followers on Twitter at time of publication, Troikafeld! apparently entered reality via the Exalted Funeral webstore. Exalted Funeral co-published the supplement with Spear Witch. The “zine about nothing” was listed for free and completely gone by the time Dicebreaker found out, thanks to this post from Twitter user Natetreme. It’s unclear how many physical copies were produced or how long it took to sell out. In fact, information about the zine is almost non-existent.
Three images in Natetreme’s post show what could have been, had we only set up a Google alert for “seinfeld zine” - images of the physical copy’s cover and three player character backgrounds for David Puddy, George Costanza and Elaine Benes. The names are misspelled - either for comedic effect or to ward off lawyers - and the description melds the inane mundanity of the sitcom with a surreal poeticism.
“Every day this city passes you by,” reads the entry for Jordge. “Poor, pitiful jordge hidden under a desk, hoarding your money for an uncertain future. In time, you become lord of the idiots, and proud. Rest assured: it’s not them. It’s you.”
By all accounts, the zine is very much compatible with Troika! and could be used to introduce Patrick Warburton’s attractive and useful character to any of the various settings in the RPG system.
Hoping to snag a digital copy of Troikafeld? We have some bad news. The purchase page reads, “NO PDF FOR YOU!” Check out Sinclair’s other work, which is real and can actually be purchased, on his Itch.io page.