Game Design 2/5

Is mastery of a game truly possible?

As gamers we like, by definition, to play games. Some of us then like to get good at those games, and a few really value achieving a...

The Philosophy of game design: The ontology of victory.

Okay, bear with me a minute here. My first self-released game, SSO is a semi-co-op, but in an unusual way. Generally what semi-co-op...

The Philosophy of Game Design: Phenomenology.

A little while ago (actually longer ago than I intended to leave it before doing a follow-up blog) I wrote a bit about some of the...

The Kickstarter brief: Design

I recently wrote a blog about games with roll and move mechanics on Kickstarter which seemed to garner two general schools of response,...

The Iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma

One of the more popular Game Theory ideas is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Essentially this simple game has two players representing criminals...

Song of Tales Designers Diary – Core Principles

I’ve said a few times in blogs how vital it is to have the core principles of your game set out as touchstones that you can refer back to...

The joy of a massive re-write

I recently had a playtest with Mike Hutchinson (Gaslands, A Billion Suns, Perilous Tales) of a game that he was planning to release (and...

Why Roll and Move is a Bad Idea

That might sound like a weirdly simplistic subject for a Kickstarter/game design blog, but stick with me here. Every week I see a handful...

How I write Skirmish games: Perilous Tales designer’s diary

About six to eight months ago Mike Hutchinson (designer of Gaslands) showed me an idea that he had, a solo skirmish wargame called...

Writing Tabletop AI

Recently I’ve been working on a project with a fairly prominent piece of cardboard AI in it and I was thinking about writing this blog,...