Troy Press

“All we need now is an expert in gibberish.” – Preston Whitmore “…and what’s really amazing is that if you deconstructed Latin, overlaid it with a little Sumerian, throw in a dash of Thessalanoian, you’d be getting close to their basic grammatical structure. Or at least in the same ballpark. Which is almost exactly like certain obscure offshoots of Chocktaw! Well, obviously using Creek pronunciation, but you get the point, proving once and for all, that Atlantean trade routes accessed the new world centuries before the Bronze Age!” – Milo […]

Because Stonetop wants you to zoom out and see the passage of time, and because players are encouraged to co-create the village and its traditions, I’d often prep questions for my players to think about prior to the session. Initially, I’d send these out with a reminder for our biweekly game. My warmup questions were always to encourage my players to do some world building. Not all players are comfortable improvising in play. So then my players asked to get the questions the day before, so they would have some […]

A New Life in Auspele is a Twine choose-your-way game that you can play in your web browser: A humble goatherder, you are leaving home for the town of Auspele to make a new life for yourself. But Auspele is in turmoil—a young queen has just ascended to the throne, and strange forces are at work. And you’re not quite what you seem either, if you can find the right allies to help you realize your talent. This is a 43,000-word interactive book, where your choices will guide you through a […]

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 list. These are from the first three seasons, arranged in chronological order. Two of the top 10 are from Season 1, three from Season 2, and five from Season 3, so the consensus is that the series is getting better. And the last two episodes of each season are in the Top 10. Episode IMDB Rating Rank Season Episode Crisis Point […]

In 1985 or so, I logged on to my first online community, dialing into a local BBS (Bulletin Board System) using a 300-baud modem. Eventually I got on Compuserve, USENET, Brown University mailing lists, and AOL. Leaving dial-up behind, I joined LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. I have accounts for the last five, though I rarely ever use them. I still have a friend who I first met on the Compuserve marketing SIG. Online communities are often ephemeral, though for me Twitter had the longest heyday, as I used […]

I’ve recently been reading Norse-inspired Powered by the Apocalypse role-playing games: Sagas of the Icelanders, Bodil’s Gap, and The Wyrd of Stromgard. As background, I even read Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, which I adored; it was like a Bulfinch’s Mythology of the Norse cosmos. I played a “traditional” one-shot (two sessions!) of Bodil’s Gap a few years ago. I’d read the first 60 pages of the PDF but wanted to own the book. It’s chonky! (The worst part about DriveThru is that their business model doesn’t support printing any books […]

Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games are known for their narrative-first mechanics and flexible, fiction-driven rules. Most fantasy PbtA games like Dungeon World don’t have a traditional skill system, instead relying on players describing their actions in the game world. While this works great for most groups, some players—especially those coming from D&D 5e—enjoy having a more concrete skill system to leverage during play. A skill system may also be appreciated by players who haven’t adjusted to how failures can compound in a PbtA game, believing their characters should be […]

Deck hunting is an unsung mechanic that injects anticipation and unpredictability into card games like Go Fish, Fluxx, and Magic: The Gathering. Deck hunting isn’t listed in BoardGameGeek’s index of mechanics; it involves trying to look through a deck to find specific cards. Go Fish is the easiest example. You’re trying to form pairs of cards, and if you can’t, you ask a player if they have a match or draw a card from the deck. In the Fluxx family of card games, you typically win by having two cards […]

Alien Frontiers is a dice-based worker placement game that blasts players to a fictional alien planet to gather resources and establish colonies. With its blend of Euro mechanics (worker placement, area control) and Ameritrash elements (direct conflict, “take that” abilities, high-quality plastic components), it boldly goes where few games have gone before. Gameplay Overview In classic Euro game style, you’re trying to score the most victory points, from placing colonies on the planet (1 VP each), controlling territories (1 VP for each where you have the most colonies), and by collecting […]

Vincent Baker in his blog series on drafting PbtA games says— A crucial feature of Apocalypse World’s design is that [its concentric] layers are designed to collapse gracefully inward:• Forget the peripheral harm moves? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but the rules for harm have got you covered.• Forget the rules for harm? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but the basic moves have got you covered. Just describe the splattering blood and let the moves handle the rest.• Forget the basic moves? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but just remember […]