Daniel Solis

It's been a challenging year for everyone. But you know what they say, a challenge is just an achievement yet to be overcome. Wait, is that a thing people say? Well, they should. In 2011, I've had the great pleasure of working with some of the brightest female talent around. Tara Street was my chief and mentor for the past seven years. Kathleen Shannon is my friend and professional inspiration. (Together, Tara and Kathleen are Braid Creative .) Liz Radtke 's art pretty much defines Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . Lillian Cohen-Moore edited both Do s. Tracy Hurley wrote the foreword for Do: The Book of Letters . Kristin Rakochy generously licensed sketches to Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . Mori McLamb drew perfect portraits for Belle of the Ball . Rin Aiello , whose art for Happy Birthday, Robot! got lots of praise this year. Amy Houser illustrated most of Do: The Book of Letters . J.R. Blackwell published her first game (and hired me to design...

These are some thumbnail previews of the game boards in the rough draft of Pop and Locke's Last Heist . If you backed the Writer's Dice Kickstarter for four dice or more, you should have gotten a PDF link on Tuesday. Check your email!

Yesterday, a Redditor asked " Has anyone played Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple ? Is it any good? " And boy, did we get some nice responses! rkalajian "The game, along with the physical book itself, are amazing. The mechanics are simple enough to get up and running quickly, and help spur creativity with your stories." e4mafia "I have played Do with my daughters, ages 8 and 6. They both love it and so do I. Its a great, fun way to spend time together, telling a fun, irreverent story. Its also a great chance to encourage them to write." stupidgremlin "This is easily one of my top-ten favorite games, and number-one favorite for sharing with people new to gaming, and especially children. I have, since its release, purchased about 12 copies of the physical book and given them away to friends and family as gifts, and they have been well-received." ios329 "It's amazing. It's a great family game, it's a great non-family ga...

So I had an idea for a parade game before I realized "Wait, this was Fred's Rafters idea." I was imagining a marching band in a parade, who must keep a very deliberate Left, Right, Left, Right rhythm. If they must turn corners, then they do LRRR or RLLL. That theme works well as rowers working in unison, too. This got me thinking about a push-your-luck dice game with card-based random parade routes. It's a little like Formula D and Death Angel. The game comes with... A pawn for each player 7d6 in three colors and custom faces. Three dice with [Left] [Left] [Left] [Right] [Right] [Right]; Two dice with [Left] [Left] [Right] [Right] [+] [+], one with [Double Left] [Double Right] [Left/Right] [+] [+] [o]. The whole group has a deck of cards. Each card depicts a segment of a parade route showing a combination of steps and the size of the audience at that segment. (I imagine a very soft, nintendo-friendly art style.) MAPLE STREET [IMAGE: WIDE STRAIGHT ROAD]  ...

For all teachers, parents, librarians who want to incorporate Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple into kids' learning: Teacher and education consultant Cassie Krause returns to offer tips and learning opportunities while guiding a whole class through the pilgrims' adventure. Best of all, it's totally free, licensed under Creative Commons from Smart Play Games . » Download Classroom Activity Guide for Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple » Also see the Classroom Activity Guide for Happy Birthday, Robot!

Take care and have fun with your friends, family and fellow gamers! (Many thanks to Kari Fry for the karicature!)

These are some loose notes expanding the initial pitch I posted a while back. The premise is that little cherubs are flying around the sky collecting smoke puffs from chimneys. The higher up you catch a puff, the more valuable it is, but the less likely you are to catch it. The game is set up as shown above. Little house cards are placed on the board along the bottom. Each house will produce one or two smoke puffs in their own color. Your cherubs start at the top of the board, in a space of your choice. On your turn, you may move your cherub one space up, down, left or right. Then, roll 3d6. Choose one result as the wind. All three result determine which houses will produce puffs this turn. Wind: Any smoke puffs on the board move up one space. The wind dice determine which direction the puffs will rise. For example, if a puff was on the left space of row 2 and you rolled a 6, then the puff would rise to the 6 space. Houses: For each die result, add a new smoke puff of that cor...

Almost a year ago, I announced this challenge in the hopes that new classic games would be created and promoted by designers young and old. You all exceeded expectations. We've spent the past four months reviewing, playing and judging over fifty entrants to the challenge. In the process, we've discovered a few paradoxes in our judging criteria. The Elegance Paradox Elegance is a nebulous concept to judge, but we generally kept a mental ratio in mind. [How long it took to learn and understand the basic rules] : [How much we'd want to replay and explore the game further]. For example, you can use "flipping a coin" as a game with a 1:1 ratio. One bit of complexity : One bit of replay value. Hypothetically, if you had a game with 1:100 ratio, that is a game a easy to learn as flipping a coin with a hundred-times the replay value. If a game had a 100:1 ratio, it would be a hundred times more difficult to learn than flipping a coin but have very little replay val...

This is a party game inspired by the classic game "I never..." or "Never have I ever..." The title comes from my ongoing Pitch Tag thread with Fred Hicks. While the original "I never..." is typically a drinking game, I'll leave it to you to add your own drinking rules. ;) Stuff You Need 2 or more players. Best in large groups. A pencil and paper to keep score. A pencil and paper for each player. A deck of What's Your Excuse?! cards. Prototypes shown below. How to Play The youngest player takes the first turn. On your turn, draw a card. The card lists three "I never..." sentences such as "I never sky-dived from a zeppelin with a rabid wolverine because..." or "I never drove a monster truck in the circus because..." The easy sentence is usually shorter with more basic words. The medium sentence gets a little more specific. The hard sentence is longest, with more specific obscure terms. Pick one se...

A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...

This is the third installment of the ongoing Pitch Tag game between Fred and me. Fred inadvertently takes me way out of my comfort zone, into the world of improv rap battles. It is a scary place. I kinda felt like I was phoning in for a while there. Thankfully I recovered with Two Fast , which eventually became Bombs, Away! There is also some strong potential in Scooter Rebooter and What's Your Excuse?! I'd also love to test out Monkey Gonna Getcha! Fred: Spice Trade Euro boardgame with a Ticket to Ride/Puerto Rico hybrid feel. You're building up a successful mercantile business back at your home country, while building routes around the world for your ships to ply their trade. Occasional misfortune can befall you -- ships lost at sea, cargo that rots in transit, etc. Much of the "resource management" aspect of the game comes from using your limited number of actions each turn to split your attention between developing your business at home and keeping y...

You remember Lyndsay Peters of Dragon Chow Dice Bags , right? She's hosting a session of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple for her family, so she wanted to write a letter just for the holiday season. Inspired by the Island of Misfit Toys, she penned this cute mission for the pilgrims: Dear Pilgrims of the Flying Temple: We simply cannot stand one more year of heartbreak. Every year we watch the eight reindeer fly overhead, left here in the snow. Every year we have to tell toys why they're here, and not on the sleigh! It's all because we have square wheels or fly in water. If we have to go one more year without seeing a happy child on Christmas Morning, we might give up on the magic of Christmas… FOREVER! Please, Pilgrims! Get us on Santa's Sleigh! - The Island of Misfit Toys Goal Words Reindeer Reindeer Santa Santa Santa Presents Presents Island "Happy Child" "Christmas Morning" Thanks for a great letter, Lyndsay!

Comedian Louis CK recently released a statement on his latest venture: 1) Pay a video crew out of pocket to record two shows at the Beacon Theater. 2) Direct and edit the thing himself. 3) Put the thing up for a $5 download with no restrictions. The result? Over a 100,000 downloads on the first day, more than paying off any expenses incurred during production. By day 4, he's profited over $200,000 "(after taxes $75.58)" Dan Frommer puts that number into some perspective : He’s converted about 20% of Twitter followers, 10% of the “Louie” Season 2 premiere audience, and it’s modest compared to some forms of media. Even Louie CK admits he could've made more from a big media company if he let them do all the work, but that really doesn't compare apples to apples. As Peter Kafka aptly explains , because Louis CK now owns this whole damn thing, he can use it however he wants. It just so happens, he's selling it direct to fans at a price and value that is in t...

It's the holiday season, a time when families get together around the hearth to feast, laugh, and save the world from giant whales. Yup, it's time for another batch of actual play of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . The first AP report comes from new blogger Lizz Schulz at Dice & Daydreams: Ramblings of a Girl Gamer . She's one of the few I've heard of who played A Matter of Roses, so I was very curious to see how it turned out. Well, it did not turn out well for the Queen's eyeballs, that's for sure . Here's more AP from Harlequin at the Story-Games forum. He also took the liberty of writing up the story in a more narrative format, though all the puking and ear canal travel remains intact . Pardon me while I get some antacid. Another story comes from Shane Mclean and is all formatted into a fancy PDF! Alas, this poor whale doesn't get such a dignified treatment. After all, when Pilgrims Vibrant Hound, Frank Weasel, and Hairy Bubble come t...

This is a quick "hot potato" game for 1-6 players. There is a bomb with a lit fuse on the table. The longer you hold it, the more points you get. Just don't hold it too long or kablooey! Stuff You Need One six-sided die A pencil A sheet of paper with the score tracker drawn as shown below. 6     [   ]     5     [   ]     [   ]     4     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     3     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     2     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     1     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     [   ]     How to Play The youngest player takes the first tu...

During the Pitch Tag between Fed Hicks and I, i tossed out this idea for a trick-taking card game with a dungeon/tough man/Legolas vs. Gimli theme. The mehanics are mostly inspired by Reiner Knizia's Too Many Cooks. Actually, that's the problem. It just feels like Too Many Cooks with a bunch of other mechanics bolted on. Here are the loose notes, if you'd like to help out with streamlining a bit. Sorry for the wonky formatting, this was typed on the road. Legolas vs. Gimli You are all skilled adventurers out to prove your mettle to each other. You'll dive into a subterranean dungeon and mow down hordes of monsters of all kinds. Defeat the best hordes and earn the most points. SETUP Give each player a character card. Give each player a set of five mission cards (one each of Stealth, Brute, Magic, Psychic, Escapist, Gambler and Untouchable) Shuffle the monster cards and 13 to each player (for 4 or 5 players, deal the entire deck; it will not come out even). The...

This is the promotional art and kind of the cover design for Pop and Locke's Last Heist. You can see how the masthead has been fleshed out with all my usual retail foofarah. The background is a collage of various stock elements, too. But the real hero is James Stowe's illustrations of Pop and Locke. I added some cel-style shadows, gradients and teal backlights to really make them feel like part of the scene. Hope I did his illustrations justice!

These are the initial sketches for Pop and Locke's character designs by James Stowe (of D&D for Dads fame). He offered up many different heads and bodies for each character and was very patient with my photoshoppery fiddling. These are James' final designs in color. Funny thing, I initially directed James to draw Locke with a fork, but it looked a bit more menacing than I expected. That's why she now carries a spoon. I don't know what the spoon does, though. Meanwhile, Pop has a pencil whose point lights up like a flashlight. To see how this all started, check out my post on the Pop and Locke Artist Style Guide . That outlines the visual references I first gave to James at the beginning of the art process.

I wanted to use a nice cartoony font for the masthead of Pop and Locke's Last Heist. Blambot is always a great source for very well-done fonts in a variety of comic book styles. Nate Piekos has been in the business a long time and it's hard to beat the price for his fonts. I used 12 Ton Goldfish . It looks great, but there is a common problem with hand-drawn fonts. When you have repeating letters, like the Ps and Os, you can tell they're identical to each other. It's an immediate tip-off that you just used a font without any additional revising to make it work for your purposes. So, I customized the font in a few ways and I thought I'd share these tips. Follow these in order as you customize a font for your logo, title or masthead. But first, before you even try doing any of this I have one tip. Write the letters yourself! Grab a marker, try a few different tips, write them big, small, on paper, cardboard, etc. See if you can't draw the letters and get the...

This latest installment of the ongoing Pitch Tag game between Fred Hicks and myself. This time we get psychic spies, sexy male models, ecologically concerned cherubs and a peek inside the thrilling world of competitive canning. As you read through this lengthy list, is there a concept here or in the previous installment that you'd actually want to play? Fred: In Her Majesty's Psychic Service A tight, focused-scenario, plays in a couple hours story-game a la Fiasco. Her Majesty has only one psychic spy in her service. Triple Naught. It's 000's job to ferret out the thought crime, the conspiratorial intent, the absence of respect, and exert a modicum of corrective pressure to the situation. But to do this, 000 has to get close to the problem. Go deep. Go dark. Triple Naught is so secret, even 000 doesn't know who he -- or she -- is. And there we have our scenario: a conspiracy, infiltrated by 000. And our question: who's the crown's inside man? It won...