Daniel Solis

"Most significant work comes out of misunderstanding." — Milton Glaser If there is a big ancient tree at the center of the lush rainforest of graphic design, Milton Glaser is probably it. He's been at the design profession for decades, so he speaks wisdom on the subject. He describes a professional getting good at drawing Cocker Spaniels, then getting hired to draw more Cocker Spaniels, and eventually just getting burned out. Then he switches to drawing goldfish. In the transition, he'll make mistakes and have misunderstandings. In those misunderstandings, great work can happen. In my case, I've designed a lot of games that boil down to a race for points. The central victory condition is earning the most points, usually measured on an actual track. The means by which you earn points can be quite different, but it's still all about who has the most points. Then there is a conditional endgame, like a deck running out, a certain number of constructs being c...

Heyo! Remember when I posted some early previews of the Race to Adventure card designs? I'm happy to announce that the Kickstarter has launched and the game is ready to pre-order ! There are so many awesome rewards in this campaign, folks. Pins, patches, expansions... Evil Hat has really outdone itself with some of this stuff. I really want to draw attention to the awesome demo video they released. Sure, it's become something of a norm to see highly polished promotional videos for successful campaigns. It's quite another thing to see such a well executed demo video for a Kickstarter campaign. If I was a newcomer to this product, with no exposure to Evil Hat or Spirit of the Century, this video shows several things: It clearly explains the game, first and foremost. That I fully understand the game after watching the video shows that the team has taken good time to fully test and develop it. It shows that the creators have already invested the time and tr...

Phew! It's been a long couple of months during this round of playtesting, but I'm happy to release the latest prototype for Belle of the Ball . This prototypes updates include some big presentation changes and a handful of new additions to the list of powers. Download the Rules Download the Cards PROTOTYPE J [JUNE 24, 2012] Complete list of powers in Prototype J The card backgrounds have been redesigned and polished up. All Belles grant 10 bonus points. All Ribbons grant 5 bonus points. BFF and friend terminology scrubbed. "Matches" are now fully described relationships between those characters, with a subtle Victorian flair. These are tentative. "Friending" is now "grouping." It's more grammatically correct and easier to parse in game terms. You may now use powers of a single guest or group of guests. New powers added: Shove, Reject, Peek, Befriend, and Breakup. Many, many power guests have powers. The only ones who don...

We had the great pleasure of visiting Calgary last week. We spent a few days crashing with Lyndsay Peters and had lots of fun playing Lords of Waterdeep, No Thanks, Small World, and Ticket to Ride. In various measures, all of these games share a mixture of long-term secret goals and buy-pass mechanics. Somehow, Lyndsay and I merged those together into a weird hybrid card game. We first built from the primary buy-pass mechanic in No Thanks . You drop a chip onto a card if you want to buy-pass it. If you accept the card, your score is the number on that card minus how many chips built up on that card from previous turns. Your goal is to have the lowest score. Thus, you face a simple choice with lots of permutations to consider. It's a great, elegant game, so of course we just had to mess with it. We began by splitting up those chips into three categories: Weapons, Spells, Equipment. So, when you spend "spells" to buy-pass a card, what does that mean? Perhaps the card...

You may have seen my past sojourns into the world of card game publishing and how quickly those costs can add up . So it's with great interest that I follow the Kickstarter campaign for this minigame library. David B. Talton is publishing four card games at once , plus several postcard-sized microgames. Disclosure: I've licensed a handful of my own abstracts to this project: Pebble Rebel, Pip•Pip and Minoqaur. I asked David to share his thoughts on what makes publishing four games at once different than just one at a time. "You notice that many games that are just cards come in vastly oversized boxes. This is because to make profit after what the distribution model costs, you need to charge around $40 for a game. To charge $40 for a game, you have to have a big enough box to say 'this is $40 of gameplay.' "I decided to try a different approach than filling a box mostly with air, and just deliver $50 worth of games in my $50 box. As individual tuckboxes, I...

Wow, I'm so pleased to see the feedback for Belle of the Ball so far. I've got feedback from Fred Hicks and Jason Innes (designer of Empyrean, Inc. ) Here are some findings: It's Fun : Response has been really good from a mixture of gamers. The mechanics fit the theme and it's lots of fun to build clever combos of guests, then see how they stack up later in the game. There are some edits that could be made to make it a little more accessible, case in point... Edit for Clarity : There is some wording that could be a little bit more clear, such as "a single guest's powers may not be activated, it must be in a group." Whenever I run into those issues in a rules document, my impulse is to just remove that rule rather than re-write it for clarity. This will be the case in the next draft, so "You can activate the powers of any guest in one group, in any order." I'm also going to restrict the "Mingle" power to a your own clique. Adjus...

Morgan turned in some new line art for Belle of the Ball ! I'll just shut up and let you click the image above to admire her work. It's pretty dang awesome. By the way, I'm still eager to hear more feedback on the current prototype . Give it a play and send me your thoughts! We've got some good input from designers and players alike. So far, it looks like the game is something like 95% complete, but it's always those last little details that need to get hammered out by persistent playtesting. The question is: Launch the Kickstarter before those details are resolved or after? I usually advocate not starting a game project funding campaign until the game is "mostly complete" and Belle certainly qualifies at this point. Main design questions that remain: Limit the Mingle power to just your own clique? It's basically a free steal at this point, and it makes dueling less powerful. Keeping it to your own clique makes it an optimization tool and a w...

Clark Valentine kindly shared his family's play session when they played Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . Check it out below! PILGRIMS Pilgrim Loud Frog, played by T. (age 9) . Pilgrim Loud Frog gets into trouble by waking people - or things - up. He helps people by jumping high. Pilgrim Tall Thinker, played by C. (age 39). Pilgrim Tall Thinker gets into trouble by bumping his head into things. He helps people by giving wise advice. Pilgrim Creative Dancer, played by M.R. (age 11). Pilgrim Creative Dancer gets into trouble by thinking too far outside the box. She helps people by being clever, flexible, and athletic. The Pilgrims received a letter from a young girl named Agatha, who had a monster under her bed and a sister sleeping in the next room; the letter can be found on Page 9 of The Book Of Letters . Here is the story they all wrote together. THE STORY Pilgrim Loud Frog jumps into the rafters above Agatha with Pilgrim Creative Dancer, and ties ropes aro...

This is an odd little deduction game I am noodling at the moment. It's very rough, but here's the loose outline. You and the other players are trapped in a haunted house, chased by ghosts. Each of you has a unique path you must take to escape the house. Though of you is trying to be the first to escape, you are forced to stay together. Will you convince others to join you on your path? Will you compromise your path for the greater good? CARDS The deck is comprised of door cards, treasure cards, and goal cards. Door Cards: Each card has a closed door on one side bearing three signs. The reverse shows an open door showing one of those three signs. Some of those cards also show a ghost. Scary! Goal Cards: Each card shows a sequence of 7 signs. Treasure Cards: Each card shows 2 signs at the top and some game information at the bottom. Vote Cards: Three cards for each player, each showing LEFT, CENTER, or RIGHT. SETUP Deal a set of vote cards to each player. Deal...

When producing a retail board game commercially, you need to keep your unit costs very, very low. That often forces you to go to an overseas printer, where the economy of scale is friendliest. This can be very problematic if you're trying to be environmentally conscious or keep shipping logistics simple. Producing a game with chipboard , bamboo or vegetable inks can be more expensive, and ultimately make a product that doesn't look as polished as the glossy four-color boxes you see on shelves. Unless a buyer is willing to pay a premium out of the goodness of her heart, it seems the market for such a product is pretty meager. But, hey, I'm a marketing guy. Here's my wild eyed, ivory tower proposal. Branding First, we can't market these games just on the appeal of environmentally responsible production. That is too distant, abstract, inside-baseball for the casual family game-shopper to consider. Instead, let's just use environmental themes in the game itse...

Listen to this episode of The Dice Section as we discuss Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple's latest award , examine the state of crowdfunding and play the latest version of Belle of the Ball . I am so pleased with how this session turned out. Here are key highlights so far. There are several paths to victory, some of them convergent with each other, some of them divergent from each other. The first time you play, you're constantly just on the edge of fluency. There are one too many gears turning for you to keep track of in the first session, but that is fun for many people. Thought you don't achieve fluency in the first game, you get so close and the game is short enough that it calls for one more play. The theme really fits the mechanics well. So much so that it even got past Micheal's skeptical first impressions. But let's hear the guys speak for themselves! » The Dice Section: Episode 6 - Belle of the Ball

Just wanted to share these really quick. I helped redesign my agency's business cards. We only have a few people in the agency who need lots of business cards, but we had been in the habit of printing hundreds of cards for everyone. In the new system, we have kraft chipboard shells with generic information for our two offices. You check the box for your office and fill in the space for your extension. Each employee has a custom printed sticker to fit onto the card. When we get a new hire or promotion, we can just print new stickers instead of whole new cards. Apparently these cards were a big hit at a conference recently. In an environment where attendees are swarmed with free trinkets, they were coming to our booth specifically for our business cards. Neat!

Well, this was interesting news to hear last night! The Origins Award occasionally gives a special prize to innovative games that don't quite fall into an existing category. The Vanguard Award doesn't go out every year, which always makes it a surprise when it's announced. Sure enough, I was surprised to hear about it! I can't take credit for this award, obviously. True credit goes to the entire team who helped make the game possible. My uncountable thanks go out to... Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue, Lenny Balsera and Evil Hat Productions for publishing and support. The game wouldn't be what it is without your guidance. Ryan Macklin and Lillian Cohen-Moore for editing. You honed my soft words into sharp crystal. Liz Radtke, Kristin Rakochy, Josh Roby, and Dale Horstman for art. You're what compels people to turn every page. Ben Lehman, Myles Corcoran, Dev Purkayastha, Kirk Mitchell, Peter Aronson, John Wick, Richard DiTullio, Ryan Macklin, Jared Sorens...

Looks like my RISK: Legacy post got some traction on Google Plus and BGG . What's funny is that the key attributes of Legacy mechanics are something that most traditional RPGs take for granted. In-game choices having persistent effects in future sessions? Pretty standard stuff in the RPG realm.  Granted, that process usually doesn't involve destroying the actual object. I think "destruction" is a misnomer in this case. Yes, you do change the game, but whether you consider that "destruction" is a matter of perspective. When I design a new game, I prune off many paths in the process. What Rob Daviau has done in RISK: Legacy is stop juuuust shy of that point in the process. For example, in the very first game, you have a choice of two faction power stickers to put on your faction card. The one you don't choose is torn up and thrown away. Is that sticker destroyed? Yes. Is the game destroyed? No. The players are simply making the last decisions a...