Troy Press

I’m thinking again about armor hacks for RPG rules. Fantasy TTRPGs over-obsess about armor, to my mind. Thinking about all the swords & sorcery and fantasy that I read, the only narratively interesting scenes about armor that spring to mind come from The Lord of the Rings: Frodo’s mithril coat saving him from a spear thrust in Moria, to the subsequent surprise and delight of his companions. (In the book, he’s attacked by an orc-chieftain; in the movie, by a cave-troll.) Pippin getting armor at Minas Tirith and the resulting […]

If I’ve blocked you on Twitter, it’s not about you, but about Twitter’s UI. Maybe you’re a huge fan of Funko Pops and the people I follow like your tweets about those, so I keep seeing them. And keep seeing them. And keep seeing them. If I mute you, then you can talk to me and the people I follow without my being able to see those conversations. So I have to block you instead if I want to control my feed. And I believe I should be able to […]

In trying to research improvements to Dungeon World’s Volley move, I came across a 2014 post from Rob Donoghue, one of the inventors of Fate and a co-founder of Evil Hat. This led me into his blog posts of his initial plays of Dungeon World. Here’s the first two: D20 and the D&D Off Ramp D&D Off Ramp – Why These Three? Here are his DW-centric posts, when he started tagging them DW. They are a bit of a pain to read chronologically (involves scrolling back up). I really like […]

A popular feature of hacks of Dungeon World is replacing alignment (Lawful, Good, Neutral, Evil, Chaotic) with drives. Worlds of Adventure, Unlimited Dungeons, and Homebrew World all use drives. Some examples: Above the Law (for Paladins in Worlds of Adventure, by Cameron Burns) – “Punish unbelievers for your own gain or to further your goals.” Accord (for Elves in Unlimited Dungeons, by Peter Johansen) – “Find virtue in others not of your own kind.” Ambition (for Clerics in Homebrew World, by Jeremy Strandberg) – “Gain recognition from or hold leverage […]

Diamonds is a plain trick-taking game where ♦ Diamonds are trump, with prediction-based scoring. Players score 10 points for each bid trick that they took and potentially either 1 point for each excess trick (overtrick) or -10 points for each trick that they fell short of their bid (undertrick). Players compete against each other, without partnerships. The Cards and Deal Use a standard deck of 52 cards. For each hand, shuffle and deal the entire deck out, making sure that all players have an equal number of cards. Discard any […]

If you are interested in designing a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) tabletop roleplaying game: First, buy a copy of Apocalypse World. After all, that’s where this all started. Second, buy and read a few systems from different branches of the PbtA family tree, to get a glimpse of the range of possibilities. Sam Sorensen has a great taxonomy of PbtA games (shown above). Third, download @lackingceremony‘s Simple World. As she wrote, “I created Simple World in order to showcase that an Apocalypse World hack didn’t need to be a […]

I’ve created a Dungeon World Patch Kit. Each Basic and Special Move starts with its Dungeon World wording first, then shows the wording from popular hacks. Select the wording that works best for your table! Why did I make this? I just finished my first Dungeon World campaign last week, played Rules as Written except for tweaking the End of Session move as we went along. We’re about to start a new campaign this weekend. We want to continue to play Dungeon World, but recognize that the language of some […]

Stars & Wishes is a tested method to get positive feedback and constructive criticism, helping you understand what your players thought of your TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) session. Here is my adaptation of the method. I use these as my last two prompts at the end of every session (integrated into my custom End of Session move), encouraging each player to contribute: “Award a star to someone for a great moment of gameplay.” “Make a wish for what you’d like to see in a future session.” I love these prompts […]

When preparing to run a PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) TTRPG, keep in mind how experience is gained. Many PbtA games have an End of Session move that awards experience points. Make sure you’re giving players chances during the session that align with this move! Here is the End of Session move in Dungeon World: When you reach the end of a session, choose one of your bonds that you feel is resolved (completely explored, no longer relevant, or otherwise). Ask the player of the character you have the bond […]

My normal prep uses the Lazy Dungeon Master Adventure Prep, though sometimes I turn to the 7-3-1 technique or what I call Monty Hall Prep. When my players in a Dungeon World campaign told me (in Stars & Wishes) that they planned for their PCs to return for a third time to a tunnel to search for the McGuffin, I decided to mix it up. I needed to think differently about this setting, which they’d already visited multiple times. And I’d been wanting to get better at thinking through and […]