Daniel Solis

I've been playing No Thanks a lot lately. Also played Amun Re earlier last week. Empyrean, Inc. has been stuck in my brain for a while, too. Then I woke up at 2am and somehow synthesized them into a bizarro "vulture capitalist" auction card game loosely themed around private equity firms like Bain Capital. Also, birds in business suits. Just like No Thanks , the gameplay on a single deck of cards in the middle of the table. Each player begins with a certain number of chips, let's say 10. The goal of the game is to create a diverse portfolio of companies representing a variety of industries. On your turn, reveal the top card. This newly revealed card represents a company that you own. The card card lists which industries the company represents, sort of like the resources from planets Empyrean, Inc . The card also shows a track of incrementally increasing costs that you must pay to buy this company, just like Amun Re 's region auction cards. Most start with ...

For many months, I've promised the story of Happy Birthday, Robot! and its license to Sandstorm, but each time I think it's over, it takes another strange turn. So, here's an overview of the story so far: I licensed HBR to Sandstorm. I got an advance on royalties. Sandstorm fell silent for many months. I heard third-hand that they ceased business operations. Now, we're going through formal steps to get my license back. If you want more detail, read on! Origin of Happy Birthday, Robot! I made a fun, family-friendly little storytelling game that seemed to have broad appeal. Folks on the internet liked it and I ran a couple successful playtests at Dreamation 2010. I ran a Kickstarter in 2010 to publish it as my first commercial product. It was one of the very early Kickstarter successes out of the indie RPG community. Evil Hat's Partnership Before launching the Kickstarter, I consulted with more experienced people about self-publishing and the costs therein...

Here's a loose idea for a dice-driven resource management and bartering game. It's very, very early but I want to record it for future reference. Basically, it's a civilization game that uses Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as an upgrade structure. Players roll 4d6 at the same time. You're trying to make pairs, three-of-a-kind or four-of-a-kind. The chart below what resources each set produces. RESULTS = RESOURCES 11=AA   111=AAA   1111=AAAA 22=AA   222=AAA   2222=BBBB 33=AA   333=BBB   3333=BBBB 44=BB   444=BBB   4444=CCCC 55=BB   555=CCC   5555=CCCC 66=CC   666=CCC   6666=CCCC You may sum two results to "fake" a set. If you fake a set, it earns one fewer resource than it would normally produce. So, if you rolled 3 3 1 2, you could sum the 1 and 2 to fake a triple 3. (3 3 [2+1]) This produces two Resource B. Straights can also be very useful, but difficult to achieve. There are three possible straights from 4d6. 1,2...

Ernest Pazera just made this great little Java implementation of Minoqaur. You can see an example of it up at the top of this post and download it from his blog here . Here is how to run a .jar file on most OSes. Are you on a mac? You can run .jar files with the Jar Launcher under /System/Library/CoreServices and select it as the default app for .jar files. Ernest also shared two interesting findings: "The sword is so immensely powerful that not picking a nearby starting point seems foolish." The sword is very powerful, but also farthest from the treasure. It takes twice as many steps to get to the treasure from the sword's entry than from the cloak's or key's entries. "I learned looking into QR codes, not all QR codes have the "treasure chamber" until they are a minimum size. Additionally, larger QR codes exist with multiple such chambers." Now that is surprising! If a QR code does not have a treasure chamber, then place it as far...

While planning the Utara Kickstarter, I commissioned a prototype cloth playmat from Lyndsay Peters/Dragon Chow Dice Bags. This thing is huge, double-sided with heavy cotton fabric and sewn together with brown braided cord. We wanted this thing to be really premium for that authentic treasure map feel. Though Utara's Kickstarter is indefinitely postponed , it's nice having this really nice one-of-a-kind artifact. As always, you can find great handmade dice bags at Dragon Chow .

Next time you're on a plane and the magazine's crossword puzzle is all filled in, just look for a QR code. With it, you can play this solo puzzle game! It's not like you were going to actually scan the code, right? Your quest is to enter the maze, escape with the treasure, all while avoiding the minoqaur! Stuff You Need One player (That's you!) A QR code A pen Setup Every QR code has three squares along the corners of the code and a fourth, smaller square embedded in the lower-right. In this game, they represent chambers for special items that you can equip as you explore the maze. Draw a sword, cloak, key and treasure as shown above. Finally, draw a little dot in the center of the code, or as close to the center as you can. This is the minoqaur. Begin You can enter the maze at any of the blue dot noted above. Rules You and the minoqaur will take turns. In each turn, you will move or tunnel, then the minoqaur will move or tunnel. Keep track of all moveme...

Like many, I've been a enjoying Triple Town for iOS. And, like many, it's got me thinking about a multiplayer board game adaptation for the mobile game. If you recall, my obsession with Jorinapeka led to Utara , so you could say I have a history. :p Stuff You Need 2-4 players. 3 Meeple pawns for each player. A 6x6 grid board. An Utara die (or a d6. 1,2,3,4:N,E,S,W; 5:Sun; 6:Moon) Put 36 grass tiles, three bush tiles, two tree tiles and one house tile in a bag. A separate tile supply of bush, tree, house, mansion, castle, and bear tiles. Setup One house, tree, rock, bush and two grass tiles randomly placed on a 6x6 grid. On your turn Step 1: Draw a tile from the bag and place it on the board. You may put a meeple on that tile. If that tile makes a match of three or more, they consolidate to create an upgraded unit, per standard Triple Town rules. Any player with a meeple on a tile that gets consolidated keeps their meeple on the new upgraded unit. Thus, after s...

All week I've been posting charts n' stuff. Figured I'd treat you all to a little something more lush to carry you into the weekend. This is what will be on the back of the passport boards in Race to Adventure . It was just released on the Evil Hat facebook page. They're unveiling more stuff from upcoming projects as they gain more likes. Hint hint.

You saw my previous posts on organic distribution of information across card decks, right? Well, I took a slightly lazier route for Belle of the Ball, using a variety of online text and list tools. I knew there would be 96 basic guest cards, so I generated a list of numbers 1 through 96. I copied-pasted that list into separate text blocks for each variable of information: Family, Gender, Social Activity, Physical Activity, Popularity Points, and optional power. In each block, I divided the list into a number of columns equal to the sub-categories within each variable. For example, because Family has six sub-categories, that text block is divided into six columns. Then I randomized the list within each text block. For ease of reference, I sequentially re-ordered the numbers within each column, too. The next step is actually formatting the cards according to the information listed in the chart. Start with card 1, and check off 1 from each chart as I add that relevant inform...

Hey look! The funding for Velociraptor! Cannibalism! went dino-crazy last week. School Daze continues its strong funding growth, too. As you may know, I'm attached to do some layout and graphics for both these projects. This brings up a subject that I've been meaning to talk about for sometime: Meta-kickstarter. That is, the freelance job market and economy around Kickstarter campaigns. The most direct example is when you need to hire someone to make customized rewards for high-level pledges. For example, Evil Hat and I hired Dan Cetorelli to make hand-bound editions of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple for a $1000-level backer. We also hired Lyndsay Peters to create custom dice bags for some of the other high-level backers. That market is fairly straightforward, usually drawing from pre-existing budgets before a Kickstarter is completed. The end result are value-adds and other peripherals. There's a new economy growing, at least in my tiny sphere. It's an eco...

After a couple weeks of playtests, this is the most recent draft of Belle of the Ball card game. Above, you see some images that show how the game works in play. See the rules below. It's not quite ready for public beta, but this gives you a sense of how much the game has evolved since the last post. THE CARDS Each card represents either a guest at a party or the Belles hosting the party. Guests are members of one of six noble families. Each guest may be flirting, snubbing, or neither; and eating, drinking, dancing, or neither. Each guest may also attract or repel other guests who are doing one of those activities. Each guest is worth a certain number of popularity points. Lastly, a few guests have special powers that trigger when they're invited, others have powers that trigger at the end of a round. The Belles host lavish parties for their own amusement. Each Belle changes the popularity of cliques they join, so an unpopular group of guests may suddenly be much mor...

As a part of the upcoming Race to Adventure board game, Evil Hat wanted an official seal for the protagonists in the game. The Century Club is an international organization of daring and uniquely talented heroes in the mid-1920s. We took inspiration from lots of the art deco forms of the era , especially the "wings" motif commonly seen in everything from hood ornaments to angel sculptures. It's fortunate that I work in the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, NC. We're surrounded by renovated tobacco factory architecture, including plenty of exposed steel infrastructure. Plenty of inspirational material there. So we went thought a few iterations, some focused on Metropolis-style faces, surrounded by gear halos. Some focused on the idea of a Roman shield, tying back to a legacy of ancient heroism. After a few rounds, we settled on the seal you see above. It combines the optimism of the pulp era and a faith in technology. We thought this could be something easily f...

I just wanted to give some real practical tips on how to use the wabi-sabi technique when designing game effects. Say you're making a deck of event cards or special powers that apply to different points in the game. There are two things happening here. Power : This is how much of an impact the instance has on a subject. In your case, the "instance" might be an Event Card, or a Faction Power, or a Magic Item. If your instance nudges the game, that's Weak. If your instance smashes the game, that's Strong. Rarity : This is the subject affected by the instance. The "subject" might be the players, a resource pool, or some other in-game construct. We already covered this in the last post , specifically in regards to card games. If the subject is present in the game very often, you can say it is Common. If it come sup rarely, you can say it is Rare. Card games are an easy format to control rarity, since you can divide up the deck into suits, ranks, or w...

And then there was that time I stumbled into a radio show. Let's back up... I ran into my buddy Michael Harrison near my office. We got a pint at the bar (cappuccino stout!) and chatted about all sorts of stuff. Smart guy, that Michael. And it turns out he was about to go into a radio interview with a live audience. Sounded interesting, so I came to watch. Then they gave us both mics. I reacted with my usual poise. On Runtime Expectations , the normal topic is programming and stuff. Michael came on to talk about web analytics and its variety of uses in the real world. He goes from the basics of data aggregation to how to interpret that data for actual action. If you need any kind of in-depth analysis, you want to talk to Michael . On the Little Metal Dog Show , I recap the Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge and how we selected a winner. But really, you should listen to the episode to hear Rob Daviau talk about RISK: Legacy. A local group has been playing it for a while here a...

Cameron asked a good question here , and the answer led into a subject I wanted to talk about anyway. Let's call it "wabi-sabi for card game design." Wabi-sabi is the aesthetic ideal of natural imperfection and asymmetry. It stands in contrast to the perfect symmetry of industry or classic Western aesthetics. Here's where that's relevant in designing a deck of cards for the Belle of the Ball card game. Now, my natural impulse is to make as perfect a distribution of all variables as possible. I want to create these obsessive mandalas across 96 data points. That's what you see above, but that's not going to be any fun to actually play. (This was one of the problems of the first iteration of Belle, actually.) Say you wanted to make a deck of 96 cards with four levels of information, based on four independent variables. The first variable splits the deck in half (Male/Female). The second variable splits them it into thirds (Courage/Power/Wisdom). The t...

It's a busy time for my work schedule , but I still scrounged up some spare hours to playtest a totally new iteration of Belle of the Ball this weekend. After numerous playtests this weekend (it's a fast game), I think it's getting close to public beta. Initially, the game played as described here . Since that first draft, I went through a bunch of different changes. Trimmed down the number of Belles to 12. Enough to come out pretty often, but they don't dominate the game as much. I took some of the extra Belle's effects and pasted them onto the normal guests. Now those end-round effects only occur if you possess that guest in your clique. Each player has their own Belle. Instead of one Belle in the center of the table, each player may invite a Belle to their own clique. The Belle's powers only apply to that player. Furthermore, inviting a Belle allows that player to attract a couple, which is quite useful since couples are otherwise safe. Revised Coupl...