Troy Press

Growing up in the 1970s and excited by the space program, I found Star Trek to be a promise of a bright future for humanity, often advocating for nonviolence and empathy in the face of conflict, while embracing diversity. I watched the episodes so frequently that I could often name the episode by the opening shot. I loved the characters but watched uncritically. Starting last July, after wrapping up Discovery seasons 1 and 2 and Strange New Worlds as part of my goal of re-watching Star Trek chronologically, I began […]

I had expected 7 Wonders: Architects to be a streamlined version of the base game designed for a wider audience, like Simply Catan vs. Catan (e.g., fewer victory points, fewer cards, nicer components). In fact, 7WA is a dramatic reinvention of the game for the mainstream market, with gorgeous components. The result is a great game to give as a gift but probably not a great game to replay. Differences from 7 Wonders— Game decisions are primarily tactical rather than strategic but there are interesting decisions to be made. With […]

Here is one possible chronological viewing order of Star Trek, arranged in roughly chronological order within the fiction. (If you don’t want to watch all 900+ episodes, you can watch the top 100 episodes in chronological order.) In September 2021, I decided to start a multi-year quest to rewatch all of Star Trek in roughly fictional chronological order. Roughly, because I’m not going to interleave TNG and DS9, and DS9 and Voyager, for instance. And roughly because new prequels like Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, which I watch as […]

If Dungeon World was the PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) homage to D&D 3.5, then Freebooters on the Frontier is the PbtA homage to the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Freebooters provides an OSR (Old School Renaissance) experience, fusing 1970s role-playing with Apocalypse Engine rules: basic character types, a high rate of PC fatalities, and funnel sessions (adapted from Dungeon Crawl Classics, itself an OSR system). The system shines for supporting improv, with hundreds of random tables to use as prompts. Freebooters on the Frontier 2e is available in […]

Which PbtA or FitD games are recommended for science-fiction settings? In part, it depends on which genre you are trying to emulate. The following are each unlicensed settings in similar genres. To boldly go where your favorite science fiction has gone before: For world building—well, galaxy building—check out The Perilous Void. And a few fantasy titles: Comments and suggestions welcome here! Originally published 2022-06. Updated 2022-08-23. Added Starforged’s own list of inspiration. Updated 2023-05. Added Atma, The Continent Adrift, Invasion of the Third Kind, Light Side, Sixth World, Thirsty Sword […]

Most RPGs require players to carefully track the items they carry. For instance, in 5e, you track how many pounds each item weighs, and the total weight you can carry is 15 pounds times your Strength score: for example, with a Strength of 10 you can carry 150 pounds (!). While 5e doesn’t require you to specify where your items are (e.g., your hands, your pack, your belt, etc.), anti-hammerspace systems require you to specify such details. Such detailed inventory and gear systems are simulationist. As a result of such […]

House of Danger is a nostalgic updating of the original Choose Your Own Adventure® book as a mainstream card game. Two decks—one with locations, one with items—are divided into five “chapters”, so that you can play the game a chapter at a time over multiple sessions. Another advantage of arranging the deck in chapters is that you don’t have to search through as many cards (ironically, since the books never used chapters). In Choose Your Own Adventure® books, unlike Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and others, all you need to track is […]

We greatly enjoyed playing two sessions of MASHED by Mark Plemmons of Brabblemark Press. MASHED is an Apocalypse Engine take on a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. (Not a license of the TV show.) The book is well produced, and you can purchase decks of Camp cards, Wound cards, and Event cards if playing a campaign. One aspect I particularly enjoyed was getting to learn the history of the Korean war better (from the book) and then seeing it unfold in play. The PCs landed in Pusan after crossing […]

Back in May, 2020, I blogged about short, rules-light RPGs, and how The Ultimate Micro-RPG book—a collection of 40 one-page games—was going to be published in November of that year. While I pre-ordered it, I didn’t end up reading it until this year. And I read it slowly. I read the book the same way I read a volume of poetry, one piece at a time, setting the book aside after each. Each game is worth contemplating alone. The collection is well thought out and well laid out. While I […]

An avid Trekkie, I had read and admired Marc Okrand’s book, The Klingon Dictionary, when it was first published in 1985. Marc, a linguist by training, designed the Klingon language to sound alien and to embrace features that rarely occurred in natural languages. That said, Klingon could still be a human language. In 1996, I was inspired to create a truly alien language, one unlike any natural language at all: Fith. My inspiration was the postfix notation used on my HP calculator and in the FORTH programming language. The name […]

Unlike many of my generation who learned to program one of the 1977 Trinity (Apple II, TRS-80, and and the PET 2001), I didn’t discover BASIC Computer Games until later (1983), in my high-school library. Of course, by then, I’d been typing in BASIC programs for years, from magazines, other books, and from dot-matrix listings shared by friends. By the time I discovered BASIC Computer Games, I’d seen many of the games in other forms, as each was effectively treated in the public domain and adapted by other programmers. But […]

Tl;dr: If you enjoy fantasy RPGs, buy Stonetop! Excellent GM advice, collaborative worldbuilding, and easy to improv. The beta materials are copious (over 200,000 words!), beautifully illustrated, and available to backers now. Over two years ago, in December, 2020, I promised Jeremy Strandberg that if he sent me the beta-test materials for Stonetop, I’d play at least three sessions of his system and give him feedback. We ended up playing 41 sessions—the system is that much fun! And while the printed books haven’t gone to press yet, that’s a testament […]