Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Blood Bowl... That games work shop classic. That: Rage inducing, Dice throwing, Mini smashing, Curse word inviting, mind numbing, table flipping, Classic. I've Played it..... Here's a variant rule: When a coach suffers a turnover on their turn rather than end their turn completely, the defending coach gets to take one of the following actions with any one figure on their team. (move, pick up a ball, foul, or block)  This is called an "off turn action." Each opposing figure my only have one such "off turn Action" during their opponents turn. A coach may not spend Re-rolls on off turn actions.  Once the "Off turn action" is resolved the the original coach may resume activating and taking actions with their team. A coach's turn ends only when that player has taken action with or skipped every figure on their team. Also here's  A skill for leveled up players: Opportunist:  Great at seizing opportunities as they present them selves. This player ...

"Phase Ball as told by by Sid Hoofnaggler, former Phase ball conference commissioner:  First ye need to know yer field. It's grass, usually  low cut and tightly gown, so the ball can move about.  Tis called the field, or the  sand box, depending on how rural you are. Some dwarves play on  gravel or stone, but  they are as a rule, crazy.  To start each team takes a ball and  bowls it from the bonus ring. Whichever team bowls closest, starts with the ball. Players can run whit the  ball. but they can also get tackled. when a player with the ball is brought down play stops, all players stand where they are. A tackled player may pass the ball but only to a player behind the  bonus ring and the ball my not cross the restricted zone. In effect once a tackled player stands up he may  only throw the ball behind or to his left or right, not forward. If the tackled player can not pass the  ball he must had it over to his tackler who may ...

Lately I have been thinking allot about table top miniatures games, such as my "Block game" (the game that consumes all.) So I got to thinking  about  writing a table top game based on the  run-> gun-> loot ->repeat paradigm that exists in many of my favorite video games. (Borderlands and Diablo 3 being the most well known current examples.) I know there are others working on similar (read, better) things that are emulating the shoot and loot genre of video-games. Here are some links. Check out The Preview of "Shoot N Loot" being written by game designer John Harper . This game is a great example of  genre emulation within the exact genre I'm talking about. (In particular I think his Agro system for combat hits a home run. A decidedly elegant and deeply strategic mechanic.) Related  This is a great idea form a man of many great ideas ,   Dyson Logos I love this idea from Dyson it's got a high cool factor, and is what started me thinking...

DEAD ZONE kick-starter unboxing Video BLOG (Drum roll please) Something special for everyone who follows the blog today. The unboxing of my DeadZone kick starter package from Mantic games. http://www.manticgames.com/ Some details: Last spring DeadZone went ape shit on kick starter raising $1,216,482 on a $50,000 dollar goal.. or ...2433% funded, that sir is “magic bananas funding” level http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game?ref=live  . I was an early adopter of “Dread-Ball” and then vacillated over whether or not to back the DeadZone kick starter when it came around. Dread-Ball was super fun so I was sure Deadzone would be  as much fun. So why the vacillation abut deadzone? Good question. I knew they would make their goal, Mantic had just killed it with Dredball and had that kick starter momentum that any company would die for. Dead Zone was by the same designer + Jake Thornton (Whose Design Blogs I really enjoyed and were an...

Home-Brew for the Holidays Monday, Here comes another work week, a full week of fun and excitement. With this week comes planning, planning for another play test for “Shards of Thimbral” incorporating the rules changes I out lined in my last system blog. On top of that planning there will be some thought given to our next “Game Day” which is pretty much the next time we get the whole gaming group together to play. This time of year getting every one's schedules to mesh for a “game day” can be a sketchy proposition. Our next big table day is going t consist of a game we lovingly refer to has “The block game.” The block game get's it's name rightfully because it involves a large tub of 500 inch square wooden blocks. The blocks are used to produce a random dungeon with random enemies. Each enemy has it's own AI procedure and special details. The players control characters represented by miniatures that bash their way through the dungeon, blowing holes in walls, killing mon...

Found it on my thumb drive. The table top basketball game is one of those ideas I have written and deleted several time over the years. I have a board drawn up, I have pieces built, but it's the die mechanic and the game play that has killed the idea more than once. a game that looks to simulate a sport is tough. Sports are visual, visceral, exciting. A player has to be a certain type of sports fan to want to boil that down to purely tactical x and o’s. I have to face it any table top game of basketball I create is not going to have the thrill of watching a player swoop down the lane and dunk. The reward for the players has to be getting the most out of each procession, being efficient, basically not playing form the stance of being a fan or player but, playing from the stance of being a coach. With that said the rules have to be detailed enough to be realistic (offer realistic tactical tradeoffs and risk vs. reward), and fluid enough that the game still feels like basketball and n...

I’m not sure about the one page game of this week. Busy at work and intellectually lazy at home, I am drawing blanks for games I can fit on one page. I went three weeks though, and it's only Wendsday! What I am thinking of doing is running a test solo game of “down On Old Mill Road” and then publish it here. That game idea drew some atention, so it might be worth fleshing out a bit. Dread Ball talk:  Aound the end of this week or the end of next week. Once that happens I will post an unboxing over on my youtube. Everyone can get a look at what teams we have to play with and start thinking about which team suits them. For the record Dreadball is not Blood Bowl and the comparisons I see on line are not really all that valid. Some of the terms are the same but the game plays much differently. The way I see it Blood bowl is very strategic in that how you are going to reach your goals is often largly predetermined by your team choice. You can choose to play how you want to pay before th...

Robotech tactical: Paladium books and Ninja Division which brings together the design talents of Soda Pop Miniatures and Cipher Studios. This excites me. I might even back the kick starter, even though Paladium's release record scares the bejeebuz out of me. I wonder how combat will be resolved, how will they keep the table top game moving fast, how will they maintain that cinematic feel in large scale battles? These questions will likely get me to buy the game when and if if comes out. Part of me wishes Dream pod 9 was doing it. http://robotechbattles.blogspot.com/2013/02/start-spreading-news-kickstarter-inbound.html http://palladiumbooks.com/ http://www.dp9.com/

Reinventing   the wheels. I was thinking about Car wars the other day. When I was younger I had Steve Jackson Game’s car wars deluxe set, and I have to say it was pretty awesome, for the time. I recently dug it out of the attic because I want to play it again, for old times’ sake and because I think a couple of the guys I game with would dig the theme. Then I started to look at the components, and I remembered how fiddly the whole game is. I understand that the good folks at Steve Jackson Games fixed some of these issues with the scaled up 5 th edition.   I never bought that edition simply because I hated the packaging, and by the time it came out I was on to the next thing, car wars was simply not on the menu. All of that has me thinking about Car Wars and car based combat in general. What would I do first off? I think I would focus a bit on the driver. Traditionally it has been about the cars, and rightfully so, but I think the driver was given perhaps too little attention ...