Troy Press

In 2023, Joey D. Jones of the University of South Hampton interviewed me and over a dozen others about the authorial burden of interactive fiction. His paper on the topic is now available.

After a thorough review of dozens of science fiction PbtA games, and after hacking the last two TTRPG systems we played quite a bit, I decided to create my own game with exactly the vibe I wanted. Why a new system? Well, I’d just published Reflections on PbtA Design, so it seemed apropos to design a game from scratch rather than just hack up an existing system.

One of the things my wife and I love is the live music scene. Most weekends we can hear live music at our pizza shop, at neighborhood bars, at a food-truck fair, and so on. These are almost always cover artists, though they may play a song or two of their own as well. I’ve always wondered about the songs that they choose to cover.

Urban prep is different than traditional dungeon prep. For a dungeon, or a hamlet or keep, you might key every location, but you’re almost never going to do that for a town or city. These are typically run much more loosely, with handwaving around movement through the city.

When reviewing the electronic boardgame Dark Tower, I learnt it was programmed using one of the TMS1000 microcontrollers. I’ve since fallen in love with this little processor, discovering that it powered so many other electronic games from my childhood: Big Trak, Electronic Battleship, Merlin, Simon, Speak & Spell, etc.

Dungeon World 1e is the geomorph set of fantasy PbtAs, thanks to it being one of the first TTRPGs to use the Creative Commons license. You can cut it out and reassemble it, build on it as desired. Here are some of the many works that are compatible with Dungeon World 1e.

Dark Tower was one of my favorite boardgames as a kid. It was an “electronic boardgame,” a category that came to life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dark Tower really was a boardgame, complete with a board and player pawns (nicely sculpted plastic warriors, as well as a dragon miniature) with a rotating computer assistant shaped like a black tower.

You can play Solitaire Square online on Itch.io: fill a 6×6 grid with cards numbered from 1 (red) to 80 (violet) in ascending order. Playing a card immediately next to another card costs you the difference in discards (e.g., playing 53 next to 50 costs you three discards). 

I really enjoy the premise of Enterprise: the first human deep space explorers using the first warp-five starship. It’s a fun era of Star Trek, and they handle many aspects of being a prequel right, even if they went against fan expectations. I get why people think it is one of the worst Treks and don’t want to watch all of it, but I wanted to curate the best episodes.

Over on the PbtA Discord, someone shared a meme about The Iliad, which prompted me to wax poetical. No surprise given the name of this website.

Most roleplaying games take place linearly, but some embrace the tropes of fiction and lean into narrative tricks like flashbacks. For instance, in a movie, one of the main characters will say to the others that they have a plan, and then the next scene will flash forward. You won’t learn what that plan is until later, as you see it unfold or as you see a flashback. If that fits your style of play, here’s a move you can add to your game.

⭐⭐⭐⭐, 4 of 5 stars, a fun mobile boardgame if not quite as thematic or challenging as I’d like. I wanted something heavier to play on my phone while I travelled, so I picked up Steam: Rails to Riches by Martin Wallace (available, no surprise, on Steam as well as for the iPhone and Android). The game is a redesign of Age of Steam, which I’ve played a bit and always found to be a taut experience.

Planet of the Week is my PbtA homage to shows like Star Trek, Firefly, and Stargate: Atlantis. You’re the away team of the research vessel Endeavor Maru. You’re the first group to land on each new planet, making first contact with aliens, investigating strange phenomena, and giving whatever assistance is needed. Can you stay true to your values as you explore?