Troy Press

Filk music is the folk music of science-fiction and fantasy fandom, often sung together at conventions. Like folk songs, filk songs often are new lyrics set to old tunes. Also like folk songs, they morph and change over time. The first two commercial albums of filk music were by Leslie Fish and the DeHorn Crew: Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain’t Even Been Yet (1976) and Solar Sailors (1977). Both are worth seeking out, if you’d like a taste of early filk; “Banned from Argo” (BFA)—from Solar Sailors—is the most famous filk song of […]

In my Impulse Drive campaign, before facing the BBEG, the PCs needed to run a last gig to earn some lucre to repair their spaceship, buy some gear, and pay down their debt. I typically offered two or three gigs for the PCs to pick from, having them choose at the end of a session so I could prep the right gig. In this case, I really wanted to play the Mothership adventure The Cleaning of Prison Station Echo (by Haig Morrison and Dave Kenny), so I offered two gigs inspired […]

On the Dungeon World+ Discord, Gojson asked how he could roll up a DW character, rather than just allocating the preset stats. I suggested he do it old school, rolling 3d6 down the line for each attribute. That may work for you as well, and—if you’re playing a hack that drops ability scores (3-18), as most DW hacks do—then just use the modifiers: 3d6 Modifier 3 -3 4-5 -2 6-8 -1 9-12 0 13-15 +1 16-17 +2 18 +3 The table I listed is from Dungeon World, but you could […]

One of my custom GM moves is “Bring in backstories and world-building.” This isn’t always easy, but I try to make history come alive as more than just signs on a wall.

Here is a curated list of the Top 15ish episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in roughly chronological order. I’ve flipped the order of “Q Who” and “The Measure of a Man” because the entire series starts with a Q episode (“Encounter at Farpoint”) and ends with a Q episode, so it seems fitting to bookend this best-of list the same way. And “Q Who” has two of the essential antagonists of the TNG series. I also think it is good to encounter Data in another way before “The Measure […]

June 20 marks my third anniversary of studying Esperanto. To celebrate my anniversary, I thought I’d share some resources I have found valuable. Photo by Stefan on Unsplash.

Stonetop consists of two books, the second of which is unique in RPGs, to my knowledge. As I wrote in my review of Stonetop: Book I, Stonetop, has the rules, including probably the best fantasy PbtA GMing advice out there…. Book II, The Wider World and Other Wonders, is an almanac of locales and creatures, full of unique beasts and places, but presented in a way so as to be immediately useful to the GM. I just recently read an RPG that spent pages discussing a race, their culture and outlook, reading like an […]

In Emily Short’s classic blog post “Small Scale Structures in CYOA,” she wrote about local structures (as opposed to narrative structures that describe the entire work). She was interested in structures that could use stats, as in Choice of Games or Twine games. I instead want to concentrate on the traditional finite-state machines that are CYOA stories. The only variable is the page you are on or the number of the block you are in. I’ll use lightly-edited screenshots from Twine from my game, A New Life in Auspele, to […]

Back in 2018, I was working on the design of card games intended to be distributed digitally. Players would need to first print out the cards, then cut or otherwise prepare them. As I wanted to understand the largest size deck that PnPers (Print-and-Players) had ever actually printed, I posted a poll on BoardGameGeek. Ironically, I now have responses from 54 PnPers (54 being the size of a standard four-suited deck of cards with two jokers!). I provided choices in increments of 9, since 9-card sheets are very common. The vast majority of PnPers […]

The Battle of Five Armies. The Battle of the Hornburg (Helm’s Deep). The Battle of Pelennor Fields (the Raising of the Siege of Minas Tirith). These were epic, even before they were ever animated or filmed. Such battles bring a new element of drama to a fantasy PbtA campaign, but the challenge is how to handle them cinematically and at a high level, without getting bogged down in mechanics. You’re not going to manage every individual soldier as you might in a wargame. Here are three frameworks for accomplishing this: […]

This is an unauthorized fan variant of Axis & Allies 1941 solely intended for those who find that the game played Rules As Written is too long or too complex for players at their table. If you’re happy with the current rules, or have house rules that increase complexity, this is not for you. In 1941 ABC, turn order has been simplified to ABC: Advance your units (whether into combat or not), Battle, then Create and place new units. Since new players, even old hands, of Axis & Allies often try to do non-combat moves at the same time as combat […]

Writing new games in BASIC is definitely a lost art. But I was drawn back to this forgotten medium. Back in 2017, I had put together plans to implement Tiny BASIC on an Arduino with a 4-row x 20-character LED display. I’d then adapt classic BASIC games to it. This was intended as an homage to the fun I had with BASIC machines in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I’d converted a few of the games into Tiny BASIC when I got distracted by Michael Rieneck’s board game, Around the World in 80 Days. […]

April is National Poetry Month, but few Americans name any contemporary poets when asked what poets they can think of and who their favorite poet is. In fact, it’s a Dead Poets Society for the Top 35 poets, all of whom are deceased. Four out of ten Americans name Edgar Allan Poe, making him the most famous poet by far. In fact, 29% of respondents named him first, and 18% said he was their favorite poet. A distant second is the Bard. William Shakespeare was named by two out of […]