Troy Press

The best book I’ve read on gamemastering so far is Matt Shea’s The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. The key philosophy is to prep only those things that you find hard to improv. Session prep typically follows this template: While still following Matt Shea’s advice, instead of “Scenes”, I’ve relabeled that section in my notes “Situations”. Here’s a good example of why. Last night my PCs encountered a band of 19 orcs: I had prepped interesting terrain for a battle or a staged retreat, plus I had written a […]

Back in 1980, I created a computer game for my TRS-80 Pocket Computer, inspired by Tunnels & Trolls. Given the passing of Rick Loomis, I thought I would dig it out. As with T&T, I had attributes: ST (Strength), DX (Dexterity), and CN (Constitution, used for hit points). But I skipped LK (Luck) and CH (Charisma), and I used D&D’s WS (Wisdom) instead of T&T’s IQ (Intelligence). Like T&T, and unlike D&D, attributes could increase: in my case, quickly, after every monster, rolling three dice and if the total exceeds […]

When I learnt Rick Loomis passed away, I pulled out my copy of his Buffalo Castle, the first solitaire RPG adventure. I played a lot more solitaire RPGs than in-person, and I have Rick to thank for that. (I met Rick once, at a convention, of course.) You can play along with me: Play along! I created a character. Key thing to note when you do: “Constitution” is what you will probably think of as health or hp. “Hit points” in T&T are for each round of combat: “The hit […]

The hook: A Saltmarsh merchant says his woodcutter partner, Concisor Maplesky, hasn’t been heard from in a month. The merchant needs the party to find out what happened to the woodcutter and to ship two masts down Kingfisher River. He’ll pay 100 gp per player. He provides a boat to go upstream and a map showing which tributaries to traverse to reach the logging camp at Flicker Creek. If you’d like to read the rest of my one-page adventure, it’s available in the new DMs Guild exclusive ebook, The Lonely […]

My players’ characters are visiting a village smithy, so I decided the local bard will sing this poem as they approach (then ask them for money!). Since our homebrew campaign world is set in Stone Age Eurasia, I changed the references to Christ and Sunday worship to more neutral items. My edited words are in italics. (With apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.) The Village Blacksmith UNDER a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of […]

I ran a Session Zero on Friday for our new homebrew campaign. We had just wrapped up a 41-session, open-table campaign set in Melvaunt in Forgotten Realms, and this time we’re doing a homebrew, closed-table campaign, O5R style (OSR-inspired 5e). Every group’s Session Zero has different things to cover, but here’s what we found useful. The questions I asked to better tailor this campaign: Introduction to any house rules. For instance: Discussion of how the world differs from Forgotten Realms or other player expectations. In my case: After much discussion […]

Obsidian Portal, an online campaign management tool for RPGs, shares stats on the number of campaigns run in its system. I’ve created a Google Sheet with this data. This represents the 129,098 campaigns created over the lifetime of the software (12 years, as it was created in 2007). As a result, you’ll see Pathfinder in second place at 18% of campaigns, due to its historic strength: it is doubtful that 18% of campaigns played today are in Pathfinder, given the loss of players to D&D 5e and the release of […]

I missed The Golden Ages by Luigi Ferrini when it came out in 2014, among the thousands of games that came out that year. I stumbled across it in reviews of Sid Meier’s Civilization: New Dawn among players who said they preferred it. Ten plays later, I can see how it compares favorably. In most civilization games, any hidden elements of the board are explored rather quickly (e.g., Clash of Cultures) or the board starts out as fully visible (the first and third board games based on Sid Meier’s Civilization […]

One out of five adult Americans with online access (90% of the population) have ever read any gamebooks, such as Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, or solitaire RPG adventures such as the Tunnels & Trolls series. These books definitely reflect the 1980s, when publication peaked: those 35-44 years old (kids in the 1980s) are most likely to have ever read a gamebook (39%), compared to just 18% of those 45-54 years old and 30% of those under 25. While classic gamebook lines are being relaunched (e.g., Endless […]

I discovered an interesting numerical sequence: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, 39, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 34, 39, 44, 49, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41, 47, 53, 59, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 55, 62, 69, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 71, 79, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, […]

My nickels and dimes, for the year, were: Boardgame Plays Unpublished Prototype 45 Innovation 25 Secret Hitler 19 One Night Ultimate Werewolf 15 Battle Line 13 Civscape 13 Sid Meier’s Civilization: A New Dawn 12 Avignon: A Clash of Popes 11 The Golden Ages 10 Sushi Go Party! 9 Homeworlds 8 Brew Crafters: The Travel Card Game 5 Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger 5 Covalence: A Molecule Building Game 5 Last year, like most years, I played unpublished prototypes (my own and my friends’) more than any single […]