Troy Press

I’ve been looking for some high-crunch PbtA games for my players.  Crunch is derived from number crunching and, in the context of tabletop RPGs, refers to the added steps required by more extensive mechanics. Some examples specific to PbtA systems: Crunch can take many different dimensions. PeterJ, on the PbtA Discord, says: “I think a lot will depend on [what crunch means to your players]. Does it refer to tactical combat? Character customization? A lot of progression? Etc.” (By coincidence, today Murkdice looks at six types of crunch.) Crunch is a way for […]

Here are the top 10 episodes of Voyager, based on IMDB user ratings but rearranged in chronological order, as I’ve done with other series. However, you may want to start with the pilot (“Caretaker”) for its introduction of the premise and characters, even though it is ranked #73 of 172 episodes (rating 7.4).

“When Gandalf & Thorin’s Company overcame the stone trolls, they found in their lair two great elven blades: Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver & Glamdring the Foe-Hammer. I don’t know if they’re +1 or +2, but I do know I’d much rather have something called ‘The Foe-Hammer’ than a +2 longsword. On top of the names, they have a history (like everything in Tolkien). Glamdring was wielded by Turgon, the elven King of Gondolin, during the First Age.” – PTFO

A mini adventure to choose which blog post to read to learn more about interactive fiction. Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.

Lexember is a social-media challenge to add one word to your constructed language each day of December. Lexember was created by Mia DeSanzo and Pete Bleackley in 2012, so this will be its thirteenth year! Adding a word a day is certainly an easily achievable goal, something that you can do over a cup of coffee, on a commute, or when pulling out your smartphone.
If you have a conlang, check out Stephen Escher’s “12 Tips for Lexember.” If you don’t, what a great time to start one!

The Platform Wars The current streaming landscape is dominated by a few major players, but with interesting nuances in who uses them. According to a recent Researchscape survey of 1,023 U.S. adults, YouTube Music leads overall usage at 38%, followed closely by Spotify at 36%, while Amazon Music rounds out the top three at 30%. However, raw usage numbers tell only part of the story. When it comes to paid subscriptions, the picture shifts dramatically. SiriusXM, despite having lower overall usage (15%), boasts an impressive 99% paid subscription rate among […]

Stonetop was first released as a village playbook for Dungeon World 10 years ago yesterday. It’s come a long way since then, and I keep discovering new things I love about it. Stonetop has the best system of magic items I’ve used in a tabletop roleplaying game, with unique items, shared with players as cards or inserts, which require taking action to unlock custom powers. Minor and Major Arcana Here are examples of a card for a minor arcanum (front and back) and a major arcanum. Note some major arcana […]

When my 12-year old Toyota was in the shop, I drove a new loaner car for two days. I’ve driven newer model cars when renting a car while traveling but using a new car in a familiar environment—where I was not constantly worried about navigation—gave me a chance to dwell on the new features. First, I love having blind spot detectors in the mirrors. It’s a really great UI. You’re looking to see if you can switch lanes, and the warning light is where you are looking. But with cars […]

I’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte, but I love pumpkin beers more than Oktoberfestbiers or Märzenbiers, and I look forward to them every fall. I’ve tried 41 different pumpkin beers over the years, as part of flights, as singles at alcohol retailers, and at restaurants. The only six pack I bought this fall was Voodoo Ranger Atomic Pumpkin, which packs a nice bit of heat and is definitely my #1 pumpkin beer. If you don’t like heat, I recommend seeking out beers from Elysian Brewing Company: Punkuccino Coffee Pumpkin […]

Dune: Imperium is a deck-building worker placement game about political intrigue that plays best with 3 or 4 players. With great implementations on Steams, Google Play, and the Apple App Store, it is also a fun board game to play electronically. You play a character representing one of four Great Houses (e.g., the Atreides House). You start with a deck of 10 standard cards, from which you draw five to start each round. These cards have three capabilities: they decide the type of place you can send a worker to […]

We asked U.S. adults if they’d ever engaged in game design: 31% had, though this was often just adding house rules (15% of all adults). The most widely created new games were, with multiple responses permitted, board games (10%), card games (also 10%), RPGs (6%), video games (5%), mobile games (also 5%), interactive fiction (2%), and gamebooks (also 2%). Younger generations are more likely to create games than older generations: 22% of Gen Z have made their own house rules, compared to just 8% of Baby Boomers; 16% of Gen […]

While different playbooks have unique moves in Apocalypse World for PCs, the GM doesn’t have different moves depending on which playbooks are being used. Masks was one of the first PbtA games, if not the first, to give the Game Master playbook-specific moves. For instance, for the playbook The Outsider, the GM gets the moves: For The Protégé: Many of these moves are tied into the character arc and challenges faced by the corresponding playbooks. Thirsty Sword Lesbians offers three GM moves per playbook: Chasing Adventure does this as well, and I think any GM of […]

If—like some of my friends—you bounced off the first few episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, but are willing to give it another try, I offer this Top 10 11 list. These are from the first four seasons, arranged in chronological order. Two of the top 10 are from Season 1, three from Season 2, three from Season 3, and two from Season 4. And the last episode of each season is in the Top 10. I cheated and include the #11 episode, The Inner Fight, because it is my […]