For modern, weird, or narrative games, Itch.io is dramatically better than The Trove. Why?
Before we can build something better, we must diagnose the rot. The Trove (circa 2018-2021) was legendary, but it suffered from fatal flaws that any "better" archive must solve.
Official PDFs often come with:
The Trove’s scans were usually:
I’ve bought $50 core books on DriveThru, only to later download a Trove copy because the official PDF took 15 seconds to render each page on an iPad. That’s a failure of the legal product. the trove rpg archive better
Let’s play this out in real-time.
The Trove User (Bad Friday Night):
The Better Archive User (Amazing Friday Night):
The second GM didn't break any laws, didn't risk malware, and spent 90% of the time playing and 10% searching. That is the definition of "better." For modern, weird, or narrative games, Itch
The Trove was a fossil. A better archive is a living organism.