Nick Bentley is one of the brightest minds in gaming, and I’ve often turned to his blog, or approached him personally, for his insights into game design, product marketing, and the tabletop games industry. From his perch at North Star Games, Nick sees a lot, and understands more, about how to be successful in gaming. »more
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Playful Thoughts: Meaningful Decisions
In brainstorming ideas for the Design Patterns series, I sometimes come up with topics that don’t really fit there. This new series, Playful Thoughts will be the home for design topics that aren’t examples of a pattern in game design, but also for posts about the tabletop industry as a business, and for thoughts about »more
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Design Patterns: This Is Bigger Than All Of Us
In their terrific new book, Meeples Together, Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline discuss”challenge systems” in cooperative games. Though they don’t explicitly offer a concise definition of a challenge system, we might distill one out of their extensive coverage of the topic and say that a Challenge System is a mechanism or set of mechanisms that »more
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Design Pattern: Winning and Goals
As the Women’s World Cup rolls forward, I though we’d talk a bit about goaaaaaaals! Or just goals, as English-speaking commentators call them. Reiner Knizia once said “When playing a game the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.” At first impression, Knizia appears to be saying »more
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Design Patterns: Random Loops
Game designers often talk about two types of randomness, input randomness and output randomness. In this post, I’d like to critique this polar model of randomness and introduce some new thinking about it that designers should consider. First, a quick summary for those new to the concepts: The distinction between input and output randomness in »more
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The Digital Difference
by Marlene Rivers There is an ongoing trend of classic board games being ported to digital platforms. For instance, the popular tabletop wargame Ogre by Steve Jackson was revived last year through a video game adaptation. Some studios are even pushing the envelope, like Asmodee Digital, who is bringing classic board games to virtual reality. »more
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Design Pattern: Leveraging Luck
In a recent appearance on Gabe Barret’s Boardgame Design Lab podcast, Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering, spoke about the interplay between luck and skill in a game. Garfield made the point that luck appears in many games we normally see as purely contests of skill. The argument goes like this. Chess is a »more
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Design Patterns: A Rich Victory
From Monopoly to Food Chain Magnate, and many games in between, players earn the victory by becoming the wealthiest by game end. Given that so many games are economic simulations, perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. What might surprise us is how many games, even economic games, are not won by becoming the richest player. I »more
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Design Patterns: Triangular Scoring
A quick note before we get into today’s post. I recently appeared on the fantastic Ludology podcast, hosted by Geoff Engelstein and Gil Hova, where I talked about this series of design patterns. Some of you may be reading this now because you heard that episode. Welcome! If you’re a regular and want to listen, »more
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Blind Remote Playtesting In 10 Easy Steps
Blind playtesting, where players encounter your game as a consumer might, and must learn how to play from the written rules, is a critical part of the game design process. Some designers reserve blind testing towards the end of their process, and primarily use it to refine rules. Others start much earlier, sometimes relying on »more