Skip to Content
 

lewpuls's blog

Video screencast: 10 "Need to Knows" about Game Design

Note: I saw someone refer to this as 10 need to knows about tabletop game design. No, this applies to ALL game design.

http://youtu.be/rxBUr9KdsIg

Really Small Games (Card Version)

I attended a meeting of a NC game designers’ guild for the first time last week. The organizer, Matt Wolfe, asked about my design Sea Kings, which is currently on Kickstarter run by Worthington Publications (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456271622/sea-kings ). At some point I said it was, at about 45 minutes, inevitably a filler game; and he responded, that’s not a filler game any more, fillers are 20 minutes!

Ways to get out of the “Wargames Ghetto”

With the opening of the Kickstarter for Sea Kings (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456271622/sea-kings), and the prospect of publication of two other crossover games I’ve designed, Seas of Gold and Germania, I’ve been trying to define what these alternatives (or escapes) from wargames are about.

Writing a book derived from an online audiovisual course

The surprisingly large attendance at my talk about “How to Write Clear Rules” at GenCon made me focus on the fact that there is nothing in print about writing game rules, other than the occasional blog post, and a chapter in the “Kobold Guide to Boardgame Design” by Mike Selinker that is primarily an exhortation to use simple, clear language in your rules.

July 2014 Miscellany

Thoughts about some game-related topics that are not long enough for separate blog posts.

How do we make players feel fear in games?

How do we make players feel fear in games?

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” - Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)

One of the major lessons for any aspiring game designer is that not every gamer thinks like you and likes the same things you like. Games are “fun”, or at least interesting and enjoyable, activities. On the face of it you might think that fun doesn’t involve fear, but for some people it certainly does.

Triptych III

Three separate topics: "Enslaved by technology", Game Design: Understanding Why, and:

Must tabletop wargames only be just as the
grognards want them to be?

Can we define "Game mechanic?" Not Really.

Gary at iceboxdoor.blogspot.com/2014/06/game-mechanics-search-for-definition.html is looking for a hard-and-fast, absolutely precise definition of "game mechanic".

April 2014 Miscellany

Thoughts about some game-related topics that are not long enough for separate blog posts.

**
A "new" Britannia-like game:
Wallace Nicoll has prepared a PDF edition of Roger Heyworth's game Conquest Europa.  Roger was the uncredited editor of Britannia for its original publication by H. P. Gibsons in Britain in 1986.  He passed away in 2000, unfortunately.  Wallace was involved in the testing.  http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/99400/conquest-europa-2014

Syndicate content


by Dr. Radut