Token
A downloadable game
TOKEN is a game about a hero and monster circling each other in a haunted forest, offering gifts and signs of their intent—the story ends when they meet and face one another at last.
This one-shot, GM-less duet game is inspired by dark fairytales and folklore. “Token” refers to symbolic objects or gestures that express what words cannot—offerings, gifts, or promises of something more. Play as the Seeker, a failed hero with a haunted past, or the Dweller, once a human, now stalking the forest in their monstrous form.
"Token perfectly encapsulates what I love to see in fairy tales of a hero facing a monster: the initial mystery and fear of otherness slowly being replaced by understanding, familiarity, and empathy."
—Jesse Ross, creator of the Trophy RPG
Game design and writing: Gabriel Robinson
Layout: Cathode Youth
Cover and interior art: Ezra Rose
Additional art: Madeleine Ember
Featuring additional contributions by:
Michael Van Vleet, Linda Codega, Noora Rose, Mags Maenad, Pam Punzalan and Rae Nedjadi.
Soundtrack by Skye Zentz: COMING SOON
Watch an Actual Play of Token, with Tony at Plus One Exp:
Listen to an Actual Play of Token on the You Are Not Alone podcast:
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $12 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Updated filesOct 27, 2022
Comments
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Got to play this one today for the first time and really enjoyed it! We don't have too much experience with Trophy, so we were mostly going by the pdf contents of this one to figure it out - we used The Ball playset and an awesome online character keeper sheet, and we'd definitely play again now we have the hang of the cycle. We had a great time with our weird creepy fae ball and trying to find each other, and seeing the instincts change through play made for some interesting narrative flow.
We had a couple of rules questions specifically around Enticements, that we were hoping you could clarify:
1) If you offer/request a token to clear a scar/change the instinct, does it go into the recipient's token tracker, or is it 'spent' and disappears into the ether?
2) Can you offer a token to heal the other person's Scar, or is it just to heal your own?
And our final query: what do you do if a player AND the forest hit 3 tokens in the same move? We treated it as player success trumps forest success based on the order of the phrasing in the 4-5 outcome text, but hoped there might be creator input that could give a more specific answer since it feels like there's good odds of that being an outcome in play.
Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed the game! A weird creepy fae story is always a good time in my book. As far as Enticements go:
1. Offering a token clears a Scar of yours. If its accepted by the other player, it gets added to their tokens and they must change their instinct. If they don't accept it, its still gone from your tokens and you still clear a Scar, they're just choosing not to be affected by your Enticement.
2. As written, you can only heal your own scar - but that's a really interesting situation and if it makes sense in your game you should absolutely go for it! The mechanics are there to support the story, but if the story takes a more interesting direction that both players are into, you've already discovered something worth pursuing yourselves and should follow your instincts!
3. If you're talking about gaining a Token a 4-5 of a Reflection roll, I'd agree that the character gains the Token before the Forest so succeeds just before the forest also overwhelms everything. But I'm also a big fan of Play to Lose as Trophy encourages, so it could be equally tragic and beautiful to have that character achieve their final drive, but the Forest overcomes them in the end anyway. I've often had that sort of ending for my characters in Trophy Dark, where my treasure hunter got what they'd hoped for, but not in the way they thought it would happen. In this kind of super-collaborative game, I'd encourage players to talk it out and decide what the most interesting and dramatic outcome would be.
Thanks for the questions and let me know how your next game goes!
-Gabriel
Intriguing game.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!