Troy Press

In my recent survey, I funneled respondents into one of four areas, based on the role-playing games (RPGs) they played: Dungeon World – These respondents got detailed questions about a revised edition of DW. Other PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) games – They were asked two open-ended questions about their likes and dislikes (the subject of this post). Other TTRPGs (drawn from the Top 10 list at Obsidian Portal) – Likes and dislikes about RPGs in general. No TTRPGs – They were skipped to the demographic questions. Key attractions of […]

The results in this report are from an online survey of 445 respondents from 33 different countries. This survey is not representative of all who play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) but is designed to be representative of engaged Dungeon World players; it does not do a good job of capturing the opinions of people who played Dungeon World in the past but no longer play it. Respondents were recruited from four sources: 285 responses (64%) are from the Dungeon World subreddit 91 responses (20%) are from the PbtA subreddit 68 […]

After running close to 100 5e sessions, I’m ready to move on. It was fun and got me back into the hobby in a major way. But I have grown increasingly frustrated with 5e, and its attempt to carefully simulate everything fantastic. I find battles to be tedious and boring. The 5e Player Handbook is over 210,000 words, and I have players who’ve read it all and want to integrate from the other books and various Unearthed Arcana. At this point I own the PHB, MM, DMG, as well as […]

Last updated 2020-07-05 I’m publishing a thing a week to my blog. Each is either an old project that I am publishing here for the first time or an unfinished project that I am finally returning to and completing. OSR Spell Preferences Survey – Which spells are most useful for each level cleric and magic-user? Castle Conquests – A one-page print-and-play where you race your opponent to surround and plunder castles. The Pearls and the Peril – A 9-card push-your-luck game played best with oyster crackers before dinner! Hopping Halflings […]

The goal of this survey is to provide feedback to the OSR and RPG community on what Level 1-3 spells are considered most useful. The results can then be used to create shorter spell lists and player aids – or to inspire custom spell lists for other designs. Spell descriptions take the form of “Name [120′, 2] Effect” showing “[range in feet, duration in turns]” before the magical effect. Spell descriptions © Zenopus Archives, http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com. Used by permission. The survey was fielded from November 10, 2019, through June 1, 2020. […]

Last week I wrote about micro-RPGs. This week we take a look at one of my own such systems, for the gamebook Hero’s Arc: Under the Blood-Red Mountain, winner of Best Dungeon Crawl in the 2018 Solitaire Print-and-Play Contest. You are the hero of this story, making decisions that will shape your fortunes. Unlike a conventional book, you don’t read this sequentially – most numbered sections will provide you with a choice to make: depending on your choice, you will continue reading a different section. Creating Your Character To begin, […]

The very first role-playing game was the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set, with its three 36- to 40-page booklets (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures) presenting the idea that RPGs should go big. Of course, the second RPG was Tunnels & Trolls, which fit everything into one 42-page booklet. Still the belief has been that RPGs need to go big, with the average length of main books about 250,000 words. So it may surprise you to learn that RPGs can be less than 0.1% that size. […]

DM: You can’t see any towers. The redwoods here are hundreds of feet tall.Cleric: As we fly above the trees, I use Locate Object to try to find the same type of stone used in the other towers.DM: The cleric follows his senses till it brings you to a pond among the redwoods. The pond is about six hundred feet in diameter. The wind whispers softly through the trees.Artificer: Let’s land about 120 feet away from the pond, just in case.DM: OK.Artificer: Can someone give me Water Walk?Wizard: I will.Artificer: […]

Twenty-five years and one week ago, I started an ASCII-email newsletter that I began posting on Compuserve. Its masthead and introduction: MODEL LANGUAGES The newsletter discussing newly imagined words for newly imagined worlds ————————————————————————– Volume I, Issue 1 — May 1, 1995 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HOBBY OF MODEL LANGUAGES Some people build model airplanes, some craft model trains and some… well, they invent model languages. Model languages can be everything from a few words of made-up slang to a rigorously developed system of interrelated imaginary tongues. It is not […]

Back in November, one of my players asked me to run a one-shot campaign for her son and his wife, as one of them always DMs, and they’ve never both played in the same game. I asked them what they wanted and they said that they would like “to have a one-shot with high-level characters, like level 15 or so, and possibly mostly a dungeon crawl with puzzles and games and things.” I’d never run a session for higher than level 7, so after first thinking about writing my own […]