You’re using platforms of different kinds. I mean, you are reading this and this block is a platform of sorts. So, what are they?
Platform Thinking in Games
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Category Archives: Game Design
Orcs Must Die! Unchained – The Problems with F2P
I have tried to stay away from Free-to-Play games for quite a long time, but I’ve also been interested in how they work. So, for science (meaning there was nothing scientific about this), I decided to just try out such a game.
Notes on M19
The full spoiler isn’t out as of this writing (will probably be later today, as I’m writing this in Finland), so I can’t be sure all the remarks I’m making are going to hold until the end, but I’ll go ahead anyhow.
Let’s Do the GDS Design Challenge #1
You can find the instructions here.
I wasn’t a part of the Great Designer Search in any way. I just decided this felt interesting enough for me to try out. I guess I’ll do all of the challenges eventually.
I decided to go with a tribe that doesn’t have pretty much any support: Horrors.
Is Magic: the Gathering Scaled Properly?
When [scryfall]Stone Rain[/scryfall] cost 2R it was too strong. It hasn’t been reprinted in quite a while. On the other hand, [scryfall]Demolish[/scryfall] costs 3R and despite being reprinted quite a few times, it has never really seen much play (although I do regard it as a pretty good sideboard card in certain formats). That one mana extra mana just seems to be too much. The sweet spot for this effect would probably be somewhere in between.
New Fiasco Playset – Heart of Dreams
Heart of Dreams is the fourth Fiasco playset created on our Guild’s forum. It started out as a small idea for a oneshot but quickly evolved to a playset for Fiasco. This time only Aki and I participated in this but I still think it tops our previous playsets.
You can download the playset HERE or from the Resources page where you can also find the previous playsets.
Heart of Dreams – With a rising, award-winning director with a vision, an excellent script and plenty of funding, from both various public institutions and wealthy investors, the movie was going to be the biggest, most talked about since Star Wars.
Things didn’t go quite as planned.
The director insisted on a remote location for the shoot based on some half-spoken dream. He always seems to get mad when anyone brings it up. The conditions are horrible. Weather is a problem on most days and the shoot is over a year behind. Tensions are high, because there seems to be no end to this. The director and the star have been on each others throats for months, but most of the crew just wants to get by day to day.
As always we hope that you have good time playing something we have created!
If you find yourself wondering about something or just want to give us feedback, please feel free to drop as a comment or contact us on Twitter.
Card Design by Dreaming
The problem with many white-collar jobs is that you never really let go of your work. Your brain is always working on something. I have realized in my dreams that there’s a bug in my code, woken up, went to read the code and seen that I was right. I have solved mathematical problems in while sleeping. Yesterday, I came up with a very interesting card design in a dream.
My Commander Book
I’ve been silent here for a while (okay, about two weeks, but that’s quite a bit for me). The reason is that I decided to use my summer holiday (as a teacher, an extended one) to write a book on Commander.
Roll Initiative!
Possibly the most often heard words in all roleplaying tables around the globe. One of the most houseruled and diverse rule between different roleplaying games. From roll d6 each side to different narrative rules, the rules and rulings are never enough to satisfy every roleplayer, or even the majority of roleplayers.
Let us start from the beginning, OD&D. Roll d6 for each side, high roll goes first. Then the tweaking begun. Bonus from dexterity, bonus from being whatever and the seemingly endless exceptions to the rule. Someone claimed that when all the rules and exceptions for AD&D were put together, the text would take at least one full page, if not two. Some, if not most roleplayers take this taking turns thing for granted and have succumbed to it, going through the motions without even thinking about it.
Designing Eldritch Sigils
Last Sunday I published the beta version of rules for Eldritch Sigils. This is a game I have been working on for about five years. I have actually published earlier drafts over the years but this was the first time it actually has consistency and it is actually playable.
This has been a long process and one that is still in the works. But now that the rules are “out there” I thought it would be a good chance to talk about them. Since game design is quite an interesting topic I hope that sharing my process might produce new ideas or at least be curious.