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Attending Origins in Columbus

I'll be at Origins in Columbus OH next week. I'm fairly easy to spot if you'd like to talk, at 6'6", 305 pounds (I was impressed with the size of NFL offensive tackles until I became that size), bald on top (not male pattern baldness, just a general lack of hair), mustache, glasses. I may be wearing a hat at times so the baldness may not be evident.

I am giving four different (free) talks about game design, Friday at 7 PM, Saturday at 11AM and 7, and Sunday at 10AM. One hour to talk, then up to an hour for questions. See the program for topic details.

The Day After....

Okay, not necessarily the day after, about a week and a half after.

As a novice designer I have had my first brush with the harsh realities of the board game design world...

Great minds do indeed think alike...

The game I've been developing for the past seven months, about Super Villains wreaking havoc on a City from their secret lairs, sending out their helpers to get ill gotten goods to perform heinous acts including building a device to take over the world has just seen the light of day...

Except somebody else designed it first.

new Labyrintheus layout

Labyrintheus Layout 2.0

After some old fashioned trial and error I have a new layout design for Labyrintheus. Now instead of the 80+ tiles needed to build the space station during setup there are 7 hex clusters. All six sides of the clusters fit with the other clusters (not just the shape but the wall pattern) so there are many layout possibilities. The teleporter and terminal rooms (which I've inked in black already) are currently marked with T and during game setup a teleporter or terminal tile would go on those spaces (one of each per cluster).

Do Games have Dramatic “Acts”or “Stages”

Do Games have Dramatic “Acts”or “Stages”
Do games “naturally” fall into three parts as dramas supposedly do?

The classic idea of film and stage play plots is that there are naturally three parts (often called simply Act I, Act II, and Act III rather than use descriptive names). These Acts involve first introducing the protagonist, then introducing the problem or antagonist(s), and finally resolving the conflict and sorting out the aftermath. Wikipedia (accessed 20 May 10) describes it this way:

My new battle los angels game

This is my new battle los angels game. This is my first time doing this so if you see any spelling mistakes. Ignore them. Any way here are the rules for the battle los angles game. It has some mixture of rules so here they. Pirates cove [by days of wonder, Memoir'44 [also by days of wonder], and a role-playing game.
The simple mechanic

NON-TRIVIAL QUEST board game Kickstarter Project

Kickstart your thinking and learning while making it fun with the NON-TRIVIAL QUEST board game! Visit our Kickstarter video apps project between May 15 and June 12 and become part of the development team, helping us develop video game apps for your Iphone, Facebook and the rest of the Web. We'll send you great rewards based on your participation. Thank you for your support and following, and please pass the word to your friends and associates.

Phases in Games

[My thanks to “Sagrilarus” of Fortress:AT for the question that stimulated this attempt at classification.]

Phases (sometimes called stages) in a game design are important. These are distinctly different periods of play through the course of a game. They provide at least a perception, if not an actuality, of change, growth, and learning. Phases help the feeling that there's more variety in the game, as well. They help avoid a perception of "sameness" in the gameplay. A game that is "too long" may feel too long because there are not enough phases, not because any specific amount of time has passed. In contrast, many short games have only one phase.

Tahiti Kickstarter

Seems like it took forever to get it ready but the Tahiti Kickstarter campaign has started!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/miniongames/tahiti-board-game

And it's off to a great start!

Thank you for supporting this project.

Kickstarter proposal for software to make online play of tabletop games simple for non-programmers

Several years ago I tried to find out as much as I could about the effect on sales of tabletop games when an online version was available for play. My conclusion was that not many people were likely to pay for the privilege of playing a tabletop game online, so any commercial advantage would come from the publicity and the ability to “try the online version before you buy” to improve sales of the tabletop version.

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by Dr. Radut