Game Design
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I really enjoyed Joey Schutz’s article from last month To Kill a Dragon: Video Games and Addiction. Joey is a colleague of mine I’ve known for a few years and I really admire his work- He’s a thoughtful designer and I appreciate reading his thoughts on games and game design. This piece touched on some…
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I got interested in the “Rolling With Advantage” mechanic in D&D, which has an interesting distinction versus a straight +modifier, and I looked at that in Part 1. That got me wondering if changing the dice would change the mechanic at all, which I looked at in Part 2. Lastly, I wanted to show analytical…
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What’s better, rolling with a positive modifier or ‘with advantage’? That’s what I was wondering about last time. I already explored the question in enough detail to answer the question about what gloves to wear. But what about other combinations of dice? I’m a game designer, I don’t really care all that much about how…
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I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 lately, a game you’ve probably heard a lot about already. I’ve been surprised at how fiddly and fussy a game it is, and I cannot believe what a massive success it’s been ‘despite’ that. It feels like a thought experiment made real, one positing that players don’t need everything…
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So like I was saying last time, I’ve been playing a lot of the old DS game Pokémon Conquest (2012), and appreciating some unique aspects of its design. Before I was talking about how Pokémon’s shaggy type system lends some interesting complexity to grid-based tactics gameplay. But even so, while I think it’s interesting, I…