The Critical Mass of Bits

Last night I got to be a shotgun-wielding U.S. Marshall fighting bemusedly alongside several samurai and their collective minions against ninjas, ancient ghosts and… tentacles? Much fun was had by all. I finally got a chance to play Shadows Of Brimstone, the excellent dungeon-crawler by Flying Frog Productions. I’d been a fan of theirs for

The Distraction Catch

Sorry for the missed post last week; as happens to everyone, life got in the way. Our pup unfortunately took ill and required a bit of hands-on care and monitoring for the entire week. Which brings me to the subject of today.  At what point is it ok, during the process of designing and preparing

Targeting An Audience With Design

During development, the temptation is always there. You’ll add an element, then you’ll listen to that one podcast that claims the element is currently out of favor. So you scramble to replace the element (artwork, turn order, take your pick) and you happen across ANOTHER article praising a game with that element.  You panic, and

Testing the Waters, or…

“Who the hell do I go to first with this?” One of the primary concerns for a burgeoning designer (trust me, it’s a HUGE concern) is finding where to first drop a playtest.  On top of that, when do you drop it? I’ve been working on Throne Royale for some time now, and I’m confident

Balancing the Bias, or…

“Everything is OP to someone, somewhere.” For me, one of the more frustrating aspects of balancing is turn-order balancing. I tend to run into problems (possibly from being too close to the project while designing) where I develop bias in strategy.  I expect that this is common for designers- as we are designing the game

Wanna Be A Baller, or…

“Why do I even invite this person to play?” We’ve all run into it before.  We’ve brought a new person- maybe a girlfriend or significant other, maybe a sibling who’s in town for the holiday- to a board game night.  We’ve got our typical set of friends, our core group of players that we invite

Day 3: Lady Luck Hates Me, or…

“If I can math out a statistically perfect and balanced game, does the game actually exist at that point?” It’s a weird statement, and something I’m relatively new to. In reference to wargaming, it is effectively the feeling that the game is a pre-determined situation that can only be changed by bad dice rolls, which

Day 2: The Game Is The Thing, or…

“I can’t find a title for this thing that’s clever yet. That’s fine. The title will come.” Yesterday I talked about three games I’ve tried to put together with varying degrees of failure and what I think I learned from those experiences. Today, I’m going to talk about the game that I am working on

Day 1: Reviewing The Past To Plan For The Future, or…

“Did I really try and make yet ANOTHER post-apocalyptic tabletop RPG? Aren’t there about seven million of those?” Step one for me is one that I’m sure has a lot of variance for designers and would-be designers alike. It’s like an origin story (except we don’t get to see Bruce Wayne’s parents die for the

And So It Begins…

Welcome! If you are here, great. You’re very early to the party. I’ve barely had time to clean up. I am, by nature, a creator. I have a weird job history, from live theatre (with an “re” at the end, so you know it’s fancy) working as a stage actor and playwright to working in