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.

You and your fellow villagers know that you can keep the iron-age village of Stonetop safe from the strange creatures of the wider world and even help it prosper. And you’re willing to adventure away from Stonetop to get the resources you need to do so. The GM is given three key resources: Book I, Book II, and Arcana cards. Each expands the state-of-the-art for fantasy PbtA games.

Durdekors was a conlang I started for a role-playing board game I mocked up in the 1990s or early 2000s.

I invented my first language in 1982, and I called it Karklak, the Gnome Tongue. It was the language of the gnomes of the land of Wundrian.

I’ve been logging my plays of card games on BoardGameGeek.com pretty regularly for 20 years now. Here are my top ~50 most-played card games.

Reviews of the Hugo Award novel nominees.

Consider writing 1, 5, 15, 25, even 31 blog posts this Blaugust.

A version of Race for the Galaxy suitable for 5 or 6 casual players, simplified from the first two expansions.

The following map and location template are for you to use to develop your own cavern-exploration adventures. They’re derived from William Crowther’s descriptions of the Bedquilt section of Mammoth Cave.

Here are ten Star Trek podcasts I enjoy.

Three random tables for instincts: for use with NPCs, monsters, or either.

The first drafts of—“Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The logical follow-up to my lists of top filk and found-filk songs is a set of songs with Star Trek references. Some of these are just in passing (“Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement,” from “Californication”) while others are integral: the Leonard Nimoy sample from “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)”—can you even read “Pure Energy” without hearing it in Nimoy’s voice?!

For my TTRPG Planet of the Week, I’ve created adventures on 11 different planets so far. Which has required me to create at least one miniature constructed language (conlang) for each planet. For unlike Star Trek, with its magical, invisible, instantaneous translator, in Planet of the Week the Universal Translator (UT) is a device that has to be trained over time. So characters always hear a bit of the new language before translation kicks in.

I’ve only played Ticket to Ride twice in the past few years, finding it to be rather long for the type of gameplay it offers. I bought Ticket to Ride: San Francisco for a gaming buddy in 2023, and it’s become a staple at our table ever since—it captures the essence of Ticket to Ride in a game that can be played in 20 minutes.