Magic!  Goblins!  Trash!  Dragons!  And kicking the butt of big business!  Trash to Treasure will take you on a fun and chaotic journey of friendship as you fight against pollution and corruption using your magical trash goblin powers. 

Jump to: 

• Audience for Trash to Treasure
• Setting for Trash to Treasure
• Characters in Trash to Treasure
• Mechanics for Trash to Treasure
• Overall thoughts on Trash to Treasure
• Find a copy of Trash to Treasure

Audience for Trash to Treasure

Trash to Treasure is a lighthearted magical girl adventure that focuses on themes of friendship, countering pollution, and saving and helping others.  There’s anime-style combat sequences and epic fights with dragons (and a scuzzy CEO).  

From a content standpoint, I’d say this is pretty all-ages friendly as long as your players are OK with combat.  Some magical girls TTRPGs will have darker tones worked into the mechanics (for example, player characters getting corrupted), and that’s not really a part of Trash to Treasure.  It really does stick to an optimistic or brighter tone. 

Mechanically, there’s a bit to read in order to learn the game, but the mechanics are all pretty easily tracked on the character sheet.  There’s also a learn playing walkthrough in the starter scenario to help with getting used to the game from both the player and GM standpoint, so it does help you along the way.  Due to the reading, I would say players will need to read for content, so probably about 8+ for learning the game independently.  That said, if players have help from a GM who has read the game and can explain the basics, younger players could do great with this too. 

And, as always, I write this section with kids in mind because it is TTRPGkids, but this game would be great for older players too (teens, adults) as long as everyone is up for some glamorous trash goblin shenanigans.

Setting for Trash to Treasure

Trash to Treasure is set in Mahou City, a hub for folks of all kinds to bring their spark to the scene and work together.  However…. A group of big business high elves has started taking advantage of the city with no regards for the health and safety of its inhabitants or the environment, and now the elemental dragons have woken up because of it!  

There’s plenty of challenges to face throughout the city as your characters will be granted magical girl powers and must stop both the dragons and the nefarious Klean Corp!

Characters in Trash to Treasure

Your characters in Trash to Treasure are all goblin girls attending goblin boarding school in Mahou City!  One fateful day, they are granted the power of the elemental dragon stones and must now save the day!

There are five premade characters to choose from, each with a different magical focus (heart, fire, earth, water, and air).  Their abilities, stats, and various starting info is already filled in on their specific character sheet, so set up is very easy – you’ll pick your character, read your sheet, and start rolling!

The five characters vary in their ability sets with a character like Burnie focusing on fire coupled with self healing and defense and a character like Worm being more into ally support.  Each one gives a different style of play, that’s very clearly laid out via the moves on the progression track in their respective character sheets, and they each play a unique role on the team (so teamwork is important).

When I showed this game to kiddo, I flipped to the character section, and, immediately, kiddo honed in on Burnie, probably because she’s an awesome pyro.  My favorite was Haze, who is very focused on getting gear bonuses and doing a bit of field control (which is pretty close to one of the general play styles I really like).  I point this out because the character designs are GREAT and immediately show what that character’s specialty is and can draw you in so it’s easy to pick the character that fits your vibe.

Mechanics for Trash to Treasure

In Trash to Treasure, you’ll be using a d6 dice pool that’s generated from a combination of your base stat number, bonuses from your gear, and situational or ability bonuses.  

When you roll, you’ll count up how many successes are in the dicepool and then can spend those, and any trash you’ve been collecting from scavenging or beating baddies, to purchase moves from the track in your character sheet.  Rolling a 6 gets you a double bonus and is required for certain types of moves as well.

You can also spend successful dice on progressing the story via the objectives advancement tracker, defend yourself or allies, or search for trash to use later (these are needed for doing moves and to heal). 

 

Having everything flow from these two pools (your dice and your trash) means that it is actually really easy to track your resources throughout the game.  The way the character sheet is set up, it is also easy to quickly see at a glance how your dice and trash can be spent, so you aren’t searching through lots of different options.  The image here, for example, shows an ability that costs 1 trash, a passive ability that doesn’t have a cost, and an ability that costs a six rolled on a 1d6… and that’s the whole list to choose from when you start out.  

That said, having it be easy to understand and use doesn’t mean there isn’t complexity.  Because you need to weigh where to spend your dice (i.e. do you use a move?  Or do you advance the story?), it leads to fast paced strategy and table discussion throughout the action.  You still need to think about what you’re doing, and there’s strong collaborative elements. 

Tagging off of that mention of collaboration, another mechanic I want to talk about is momentum.  Throughout a scene, you start ticking up marks on a momentum tracker for the whole group every time someone rolls a six.  When the tracker is full, two characters can pull off an epic combo move like “Karaoke Duel” or “Summon Soup” to get lots of extra dice, do a large amount of damage, or bring in cool field effects.  Again, I just wanted to point this out because it particularly cements the teamwork element and encourages players to share the spotlight a bit.

There are also plenty of other cool mechanics involved (like how advancement works, limit breaks, and dragon familiar abilities), but I also don’t want to give the WHOLE game away.  What I will say is that all of the character mechanics do fit on the character sheet, so it’s trackable in one page using a combination of concise descriptions, symbols/numbers, and check boxes that REALLY help in games with new or young players.  This ended up being a very intuitive system to use AND everything about the mechanics also tied into the game’s themes (so it felt intentional and impactful). 

Overall thoughts on Trash to Treasure

Trash to Treasure is a whole bunch of whimsical fun, facilitated by intuitive mechanics, that gets into topics that mirror real world issues in a way that gives you power to approach and interact with them in a more lighthearted way. 

Basically, it is a well designed game that was a joy to play, and we also got to recycle trash into magic and stop a big polluting mega corp, which, as an overall concept, is very fun too. 

Kiddo and I both really liked this one, so… If you like magical girl style stories, saving the planet, and/or playing as a semi-chaotic goblin, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

Find a copy of Trash to Treasure

You can find a copy of Trash to Treasure here on the Bright Bard itchio page, the Bright Bard website, or Indie Press Revolution!

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