The Curious Engineer

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Troy Press

troypress.com

Free RPGs & Print-and-Play Card & Board Games

GamingTV / filmFun / humour

’95’00’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
352 from 1 May 1995 to 24 Oct 2026
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weekly (78 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 69

  1. TBD World
  2. Theme vs. Gameplay in Cycladic League
  3. Top 20 Alt-Rock Debut Singles That Were One-Hit Wonders
  4. Top 10 Episodes of Strange New Worlds, in Chronological Order
  5. The Best Season of Star Trek: All Seasons of Star Trek Ranked
  6. Fate of the Fellowship: A Thematic Cooperative Triumph
  7. The Odyssey Abcedarian
  8. Star Trek 60: The Other Shows That Premiered in 1966
  9. Blaugust 2026 Recap
  10. Kahuna Naming Language
  11. BASIC in Lego Batman
  12. Postponing Hard Moves in PbtA Games with Tokens and Clocks
  13. Dungeon World Shapeshifter Mishaps
  14. Sea Cave Complex for 5e
  15. My Gamebooks
  16. Playbook Currencies: Named Hold
  17. Drained-Pool Politics
  18. Magazine Covers for Pulp Science Fiction
  19. Worf, from First to Last
  20. Quick Polls: HP or Conditions; Debilities & Damage
  21. Pop Songs Inspired by The Odyssey
  22. Gramma C’s Rules for Rummy 500
  23. Board Game Plays So Far in 2026
  24. Esperanto Words with Ambiguous Segmentation
  25. The Prehistory of Cycladic League
  26. Esperanto Homographs
  27. The Caves of Ateşkazé: Two Tables for Immersive Caving
  28. Mango Man
  29. The Stages of Learning
  30. Cyclades Boardgame vs. Cycladic League
  31. Planet of the Week, Summer 2026
  32. Agon: A TTRPG Odyssey
  33. Lapine: The Rabbit Language from Watership Down
  34. Furbish
  35. Intermythic English
  36. Pidanjinu
  37. Kordron: A Naming Language for Orcs
  38. Durdekors: RPG Mini-lang
  39. Karklak: The Gnome Tongue
  40. My Most Played Card Games
  41. 2026 Hugo Novel Nominees
  42. Participating in Blaugust 2026
  43. Race for the Galaxy, Streamlined 5-6 Player Variant
  44. Colossal Cave Adventure Module Template
  45. Star Trek Podcasts
  46. Instincts vs. Drives: 3 Random Tables for Monsters & NPCs
  47. Space, the Final Frontier: 5 Rough Drafts
  48. Top 25 Songs with Star Trek References
  49. Faux Conlangs for Roleplaying
  50. Ticket to Ride: City Editions
  51. BASIC in Tron: Ares
  52. Co-creating a Pastiche: Narnia vs. Middle Earth
  53. D&D Rules, According to Past Players
  54. “Pipes on Droomen Knoll” Shadowdark One Shot
  55. A Pantheon of Goddesses
  56. Interview with Andy Looney, Designer of Fluxx
  57. The X-Files’ Top 10 Episodes in Chronological Order (with Bonus Episodes for Continuity)
  58. Prepping Factions
  59. Starfleet Academy’s Top 10 Episodes in Chronological Order
  60. Skill Mechanics for PbtA Games
  61. The Early History of Rock Music in 30 Songs
  62. Cycling in America: Who’s Riding, How Far, and How Often
  63. Pravic: The Anarchic Conlang
  64. Coding for Fun Using Lessons from Work
  65. Cycladic League: Civ Lite in a Web Browser
  66. Los Alamos Chess Variant, First Chesslike Computer Game
  67. Interview with Bryan Bornmueller, Designer of the LOTR Trick-Taking Games
  68. Life in Good Measure
  69. Best of Troy Press

2025 51

  1. Top 10 Non-Alcoholic Beers by Type
  2. Star Trek Episode Count by Years
  3. The Fellowship of Trick-Taking Games
  4. The Voyage of the Marigold thru Hyperspace and Hyperfiction
  5. Star Trek: Prodigy Top 10 Episodes in Chronological Order
  6. Planet Prep
  7. Sinclair 4K BASIC for the ZX80
  8. Lexember 2025—Prompts for Conlang Lexicons
  9. Demigods for TTRPGs
  10. Basic Moves in PbtA Games
  11. A Chronology of the Most Played Board Games
  12. Oðblgshezi Around the Web
  13. Best Translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh
  14. Interview with Jon Simantov, Designer of Liberation
  15. Who Rates and Reviews Books, Movies, Games, and Beer Anyway?
  16. Space: 1999’s Top 10 Episodes in Logical Order
  17. Star Trek: Lower Decks—Warp Your Own Way Wins a Hugo
  18. A Planet of the Week Campaign
  19. Dungeon Prep
  20. Hugo-Award Winning Novels
  21. Dark Tower & The TMS1400
  22. Coincidences in Stories
  23. IMDB Ratings Over Time
  24. An Analysis of PbtA Harm Systems
  25. Just Use Lions and Tigers and Bears as Monsters or Aliens in PbtA Games
  26. Twilight Struggle: Red Sea—The Delicious Agony of Helping Your Opponent
  27. Harm Systems in PbtA Games
  28. 10 Things That Will Surprise You About That “Artlang” You’re Overlooking
  29. Strange New Worlds Is Not a Prequel, But a Soft Reboot
  30. Authorial Burden in Interactive Fiction
  31. Designer Diary for Planet of the Week
  32. Live Music in America
  33. Town & Settlement Prep
  34. The TMS1000 Powered Electronic Boardgames
  35. The Dungeon World 1e API & Clones of Dungeon World
  36. Milton Bradley’s Dark Tower Electronic Boardgame
  37. Solitaire Square
  38. Star Trek: Enterprise Top 10 Episode Lists
  39. Horsing Around
  40. Flashback Moves
  41. Steam: Rails to Riches Review
  42. Planet of the Week
  43. The Top 100 Star Trek Episodes in Chronological Order
  44. Muna Lingi: A Polynesian Artlang
  45. Apocalypse World: Burned Over Playtest
  46. Top 20 Mainstream Science Fiction Songs (Found Filk)
  47. NPC Prep
  48. Reflections on PbtA Design
  49. The Original Sin of Kemeny & Kurtz
  50. Most Played Board Games and Card Games
  51. Dungeon World 2: What We Know So Far

2024 53

  1. Non-alcoholic Beer for Beer-and-Pretzel Games
  2. Modular GM Moves in PbtA Games
  3. Higher Crunch PbtA Games
  4. Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, in Chronological Order
  5. Named Swords
  6. Choose Your Own Blog Post
  7. 31 Days of Lexember, A Word-a-Day Conlang Challenge
  8. Music Streaming & Favorite Music Decades
  9. Stonetop Arcana Provide the Best System of Magic Items
  10. Your Car Is Spying on You
  11. Top 20 Pumpkin Beers
  12. Dune: Imperium Seamlessly Melds Worker Placement & Deck Building
  13. Game Design’s Another Form of Play
  14. GM Moves that Vary by Playbook
  15. Top 10 Episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks, in Chronological Order
  16. Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition
  17. Improv Almanac: Dangers and Discoveries for 88 Places
  18. RPG-a-Day 2024 Recap
  19. Axis & Allies and the Technology Development of World War II
  20. Tiny BASIC Interpreter in Your Browser
  21. Real-world Language Proficiency for Fantasy Games
  22. Populating The Perilous Void
  23. Suddenly an Ogre—for the Nintendo Switch
  24. Top 15 Filk & Geek Rock Songs
  25. The Cleaning of Prison Station Echo
  26. A History of Ability Score Modifiers
  27. GM Move: Bring in Backstories & World-building
  28. Top 15 ST:TNG Episodes, in Chronological Order
  29. Esperanto Resources
  30. Stonetop Book II As a Model of PbtA World-Building
  31. Design Patterns in Choose Your Own Adventures
  32. Size of PnP Card Games People Have Printed Out
  33. Frameworks for Large-Scale Battles in Fantasy PbtA
  34. Axis & Allies 1941 – ABC Variant
  35. Eighty Days: A BASIC Travel Game
  36. Top 35 Most Famous Poets
  37. BLUELITE: A Holmes Basic Hack
  38. GM Principles & Moves
  39. wwwBASIC: Google’s Browser BASIC
  40. Coriolis: The Third Horizon & The Great Dark
  41. The Best Season of Star Trek: Discovery
  42. Chasing Adventure: A Fantasy PbtA with Fewer D&Disms
  43. Oðblgshezi: Calculator Words with a Twist
  44. Advent 101: Streamlined, Randomized Colossal Cave Adventure
  45. A History of Suits in Card Games
  46. Gamifying Your Task Management
  47. Star Trek Panic: Klingons, Romulans, and Tholians, Oh, My!
  48. Customizing Stonetop
  49. U.S. Gamers Prefer the Familiar
  50. RPG Sessions with 8 or More Players
  51. The Best-Delayed Plans: The Game Master’s Guide to Adventure Prep
  52. Regaining the Book Reading Habit
  53. History of Troy Press Content

2023 49

  1. A Lexember to Remember: Birds in Denju
  2. Impulse Drive: Spaceships in the Black
  3. Starting Moves in PbtA Games
  4. Denju: Language of the Cedreg Empire
  5. Prepping with the End of the Session in Mind
  6. The Top 10 Songs from Subspace Rhapsody
  7. Wealth Systems in RPGs
  8. A History of Earthsea
  9. Battle for Moscow: A Classic Introduction to Wargames
  10. Poems & Songs in RPGs and Fantasy Fiction
  11. Comparing How Americans Play Games Now vs. 1940
  12. The Triggerspace and the Moveosphere
  13. Atlantean: A Mother Tongue for a Mother Civilization
  14. Warm-Up Questions Prior to a Session
  15. A New Life in Auspele: A Choose-Your-Way Game
  16. Tips for Using Mastodon
  17. Norse-Inspired Dungeon World Hacks
  18. Extending Playbooks with 5e Skills
  19. Atma: Card-Based Improvisational Role Playing
  20. The Deck Hunting Mechanic in Card Games
  21. Roll the Dice on Alien Frontiers, for Retro Sci-Fi Fun
  22. A Catch-All Move in PbtA Games
  23. Anti-Canon in Stonetop
  24. 2 Years of Esperanto
  25. Prequelitis in Strange New Worlds
  26. Gamebooks and Interactive Fiction Survey
  27. The Animated Series: Where Star Trek Had Gone Before
  28. Sagas of the Icelanders: Shield-maidens, Matriarchs and Huscarls
  29. 5% of Americans Have Studied a Constructed Language
  30. Star Trek: Planet, Monster, Romance of the Week
  31. 7 Wonders: Architects Makes a Great Gift
  32. Star Trek in Chronological Order
  33. Freebooters on the Frontier 2e is the OSR PbtA Homage to OD&D
  34. PbtA Science Fiction Recommendations
  35. Quantum Gear from Schrödinger’s Catalog
  36. Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger Review
  37. MASHED: A Korean War PbtA RPG
  38. The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book’s Games Listed by Player Count and Time
  39. Fith: A Stack-based Conlang
  40. BASIC Computer Games… In Modern Programming Languages
  41. Stonetop is a State-of-the-Art Fantasy Role-Playing Game
  42. Uncommon World 1.1
  43. Monster of the Week’s Mystery Countdowns
  44. The Top 10 Things to Know When Switching from 5e to Dungeon World
  45. Father, Son, and Unholy Ghost
  46. The PbtA Commons
  47. Alternatives to Dungeons & Dragons
  48. RPG as a Service
  49. Impulse Drive RPG Syllabus

2022 28

  1. Using Stonetop’s Introductions Procedure in Session Zero
  2. Using Microscope for World Building for a Campaign
  3. Suddenly an Ogre: A DW Gamebook
  4. Melee in the Mines
  5. Gamers More Excited by New Versions of Risk than Reissues of Other Games
  6. Castle Conquests
  7. Under the Blood-Red Mountain
  8. Jump-In Uno: Perfect for Large Gatherings
  9. Dialect: A Storytelling Game of Communal Language
  10. The Hornet
  11. A Naming Language for Use by Players
  12. Visualization Tools in BASIC
  13. The Dungeon World Syllabus in Book Form
  14. Review of Axis & Allies & Zombies: A Campy, Luck-driven Wargame
  15. 365 Days of Esperanto
  16. Holmes Basic Reveled in All the Polyhedral Dice
  17. 7-Card Chaos
  18. A Nation of Gamers: Two Thirds of Americans Play Games Each Week
  19. Conlanging on 15 Minutes a Day: Muna Lingi
  20. FAQ: The Right Fantasy PbtA for You
  21. Threat Maps as Campaign Prep
  22. 1973 Implementation of Wordle was Published by DEC
  23. WW2 1941 ABC
  24. Character Moves When the Player is Absent
  25. What Other Implementations of Wordle Can Teach Us
  26. Agile Development for Card Games
  27. Tactical Moves in PbtA Games
  28. FVTALK: Runes from the Roman Alphabet

2021 24

  1. Table Comparing Dungeon World to 5 Hacks
  2. Damage Rolls with the Main Roll
  3. BASIC in Your Browser, Its History, and Games
  4. Market Research for Wargames, RPGs, and Tabletop Games
  5. RPG Session Prep Techniques
  6. Signaling Gender in 5e Fantasy Names
  7. PbtA Moves for City and Village Encounters
  8. Drawing the Line: Shared Narration in TTRPGs
  9. Alternatives to Dungeon World
  10. Probabilities of 2d6 Compared to d6 Dice Pools
  11. Addictive Technology to Teach You a Language
  12. Double Draw: Rules for a 5-Card Draw Variant
  13. The Phonotactics of 5e Character Names
  14. Introducing Hard-Knock World
  15. Links for Designing PbtA TTRPGs
  16. Armor in Literature and Movies
  17. Funko Blocks
  18. Ideas for Dungeon World Moves, from Rob Donoghue
  19. List of 100+ Drives for Player Characters
  20. Rules for “Diamonds” Trick-Taking Card Game
  21. Dungeon World Patch Kit
  22. Stars & Wishes: Feedback for Agile Session Prep
  23. Prep Technique: Brainstorming Moves in Advance
  24. A History of Postal Code Notation in the Shire

2020 25

  1. Monty Hall Prep
  2. Palo Alto Tiny BASIC in Your Browser
  3. DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment)
  4. Line Numbers in Fortran, Cobol, Joss, and Basic
  5. The Dialects of Tiny BASIC
  6. The BASIC Programming Atari Cartridge was the Worst Commercial BASIC Ever
  7. Astro BASIC
  8. Low-key Loci in Narrative-Based Combat
  9. BASIC Interpreters: New Wikipedia Article
  10. List of Resources for Dungeon World One Shots
  11. Melee, Missiles & Magic: An Homage to Tunnels & Trolls 1E
  12. Survey of Players of PbtA Games
  13. Survey of Dungeon World Players
  14. Enter Dungeon World
  15. Thing a Week
  16. OSR Spell Preferences Survey
  17. Hero’s Arc Gamebook RPG
  18. Short, Rules-Light RPGs
  19. The Pond
  20. Langmaker: Celebrating Conlangs
  21. Crypt of the Death Giants
  22. Our First Virtual D&D Session
  23. Playing Solitaire Together
  24. One-Page Generator for Keeps
  25. Two Hours of D&D Play from One Sentence!

2019 20

  1. OSR Spellcasting Systems
  2. Reskinnable Pantheon for a Module
  3. One-Page–Dungeon Generator
  4. Use Text Mapper to Create Random Maps and Hex Describe to Create Random Campaigns
  5. One-Page Pantheons
  6. Using “Old School Principles for Players” to Tweak O5R
  7. RPG Rules for Minecarts – Not!
  8. Most RPG Products Sell Fewer than 50 Copies
  9. Attributes/Stats for Characters in Old School RPGs
  10. Provide Your Players with Situations Rather than Scenes
  11. Tunnels & Traps: A Tiny BASIC Game
  12. Celebrating Rick Loomis by Replaying Buffalo Castle
  13. At Loggerheads
  14. The Village Blacksmith (RPG Setting-Neutral Edition)
  15. Questions to Ask During Session Zero
  16. RPG Campaigns Played by System
  17. The Golden Ages: An Epic Civ Light
  18. The Fall of the Gamebook and the Rise of Interactive Fiction
  19. A New Sequence
  20. Most-Played Boardgames MMXVIII

2018 16

  1. Floored – Floor Plans for RPGs
  2. Popular Themes for Tabletop Games
  3. Game Development: Developing for Gameplay, Theme, and Manufacturing
  4. Guide to Prototyping Card Games
  5. Under the Blood-Red Mountain – Contest Entry
  6. Design Challenge: Standard Deck Adaptation of a Published Game (Rummy Duel)
  7. Playtesting Guide
  8. Design Challenge: Design a Card Game Using a Standard Deck
  9. Common Card Areas and Actions
  10. Design Challenge: Add House Rules to a Standard-Deck Card Game
  11. Larger Households, Wealthier & Younger Americans Play Tabletop Games More Frequently
  12. The Cult of the Old: Board Game Purchases
  13. Only a Quarter of BGG Users Track Most or All Their Collection
  14. The Rampage Movie was Inevitable
  15. The Installed Base of Board Games vs. BGG Ownership
  16. Duel of the Prestidigitators

2017 9

  1. Printouts as Games
  2. History of Game Art: Timeshare BASIC Edition
  3. Play BASIC Computer Games Online
  4. An Interactive BASIC with a Punch-Card Mentality
  5. The Tiny BASIC Interpretive Language IL—and Onions
  6. Tiniest COBOL
  7. Merch for Games No One Plays
  8. BASIC Microgames in 24 Lines
  9. Colossal Cave Adventure 101

2016 2

  1. The Cult of the New: Preferences for New Board Games
  2. Last Game Played – Board Game Survey Results

2013 1

  1. Code Monkey Got Married

1998 1

  1. First Commercial Software for TRS-80 in a Decade: Perseus SurveySolutions for TRS-80

1995 3

  1. More Gymnastics with Onomastics
  2. Inventing a Language for Naming People and Places
  3. An Introduction to the Hobby of Model Languages

Undated 1

  1. The Curse of Crna Gora