Troy Press

I’ve tried 54 different pumpkin beers over the years, as part of flights, as singles at alcohol retailers, and at restaurants. The only six pack I buy these days is Voodoo Ranger Atomic Pumpkin, which packs a nice bit of heat and is definitely my #1 pumpkin beer. Here are my top 20 pumpkin beers.

While some have traced Wordle to Lingo, a game show that started in 1987, they’ve missed an earlier implementation: WORD was published in 101 Computer Games by Digital Equipment Corp. in 1973 and later in Creative Computing’s bestseller BASIC Computer Games, which went on to sell over a million copies. Unlike the 1955 boardgame Jotto, where players are told only how many letters are in the mystery word, WORD plays like Wordle, but with a text interface, providing information about what letters are in the mystery word and, of those, […]

In my study of Tiny BASICs, one I overlooked reviewing was Sinclair 4K BASIC, which stands out for its unique keyboard, its approach to graphics, and its memory usage. A friend’s family bought their first computer, which was either a ZX80 (4K BASIC) or ZX81 (8K BASIC), but I can’t recall which it was. I do remember learning the keyboard’s unique layout when we got together to help type in BASIC programs, which was a team effort when I was a kid. Tokenized Keywords Unlike other Tiny BASICs except for Astro BASIC, […]

Lexember is a social-media challenge to add at least one word to your constructed language (conlang) each day of December. Lexember was created by Mia DeSanzo and Pete Bleackley in 2012, so this will be its fourteenth year! (2025-2012+1!) 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. This year I’ve created three sets of prompts, depending on how ambitious you are. Expanding a Conlang The easiest prompt is for when you already have […]

While most fantasy TTRPGs embrace pantheons of gods, few include demigods, the offspring of the union of a god and human. Yet demigods present the opportunity to bring the life of the gods down to earth and to connect PCs with the gods in a unique way.

If your Powered by the Apocalypse game has stats, you want the basic moves to make a balanced use of those stats. That’s not always as simple as having five basic moves for your five basic stats, for instance, because moves may get used in play at different frequencies. 

The most played board games are old; some are even ancient (#2 most played, Checkers; #3 Chess; #13 most played, Backgammon). The only game to make the list from this century—and just making the list, at #22—is Ticket to Ride. 

To my surprise, Oðblgshezi has taken a life of its own. My absolute favorite is that Goodfire Brewing not only named a Kölsch after it, they put a calculator on the can!

While the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest epic poem known, and one of the oldest works of literature, it was lost to history until the 1870s. Since then, different versions have been painstakingly reconstructed from broken cuneiform tablets scattered all over the world. Checking Amazon and Goodreads, here’s how different translations and adaptations are rated.

I had a chance to interview Jon Simantov, designer of Liberation and Vamp on the Batwalk, among other card games.

The majority of those Americans who have provided ratings have logged 1-25 ratings (58%), yet these ratings comprise only 1% of all the ratings that one sees. Nearly half (47%) the published ratings are from the 2% of reviewers who have rated more than 500 items.

The premise is simple—and absurd. Nuclear waste explodes and propels the moon out of our solar system at FTL speeds. While the 300 people living on Moonbase Alpha have no control over the moon’s trajectory, fortunately it encounters a new planet or alien every week!

Warp Your Own Way, by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio, became the first interactive fiction to ever win a Hugo Award!

While typically I run year-long TTRPG campaigns, I had an opportunity to run a summer-long campaign. Sometimes less is more, and this was a wonderful experience.

Here are some ideas for when you need a dungeon for your players to explore: Dyson’s Dodecahedron maps, Roleplaying Tips’ five-room dungeons, the One-Page Dungeon Contest, Perilous Wilds, Improv Almanac, and Hex Describe.