Daniel Solis

I'm developing a Mononoke/Nausicaa-inspired game for a debut at UnPub4. (You've seen previous posts about this here , here , and here .) For now, I'm calling the game The River Ancient . Here's where it stands at the moment. Overview of Play Players are guardian spirits guiding their adopted culture towards a balanced and virtuous existence on an ever-changing river. At the start of the game, each player rolls four dice, each pip representing a village. On your turn, you can place your die on... A NODE, where the corners of the river-squares meet. This is a long-term bid to claim the virtues or powers offered by that card: Health , Peace , Love , or Work . Placing on a HILL gives you a +1 bonus. Placing on a Mountain gives you a +2 bonus. A RIVER SPIRIT, in the center of a river-square. There are four river spirits who will each bestow a special action upon your culture: Give a Virtue to another player, Steal a Virtue from another player, Change one of ...

Hey all! I recorded this Google+ Hangout On Air earlier this weekend and I wanted to share it with you today. This is a very fast example of InDesign's DataMerge functionality for easily designing the cards for tabletop games. In this case, to make a deck of cards for my Mononoke prototype. Here's what the cards look like laid out as a river valley. All credit for this layout trick goes to Jonathan Walton , who is a very clever game designer. You should check out his stuff! I like this layout format because it makes an organic river valley, is unique from Cadwallon's and Spyrium's 3x3 grid, and breaks up the power of the central nodes in a 3x3 grid. If you want to know more about how to make a deck of cards in InDesign, or just the basics of card design, I offer a full online class with over two hours of HD video tutorials. Check it out here: Design Your Own Print-Ready Cards for Tabletop Games

Here's a quick overview of the game I'm tinkering with for UnPub4. This could technically be my first board game that could use an actual board! The game focuses on one small valley over the course of several generations, as tribal populations wax and wane, trying to keep a sustainable balance with the local ecosystem. The board is comprised of a 3x3 grid representing a misty valley. In each cell is two randomly drawn cards, one on top of the other. The bottom card is face-down and represents a conditional effect, sort of like "terrain" of the valley. The top card is the actual resource up for bids in an auction. To start the round, each player rolls 3 standard dice. This represents the population of your particular tribe this generation. The lowest total population takes the first turn. On your turn, place one die on a vertex of the grid. You cannot place a die on an occupied vertex. Certain faces have certain abilities based on the reputations you...

I had the pleasure of playing Eric Zimmerman's Quantum last night. It has some very clever abstract mechanics that make it easy to learn and adds plenty of thematic add-ons that greatly expand the tactical options in later turns. Highly recommended. At the core of Quantum's system is an elegant balance between speed and strength. The die face represents how many spaces a ship may move, so a 6 ("Scout) speeds across the board very quickly. However, combat is resolved by adding the number on your ship to a 1d6 roll. The lower total wins, with attacker winning on ties. So a 1 ("Battlestation") is very strong, but cannot move very fast. All other mechanics are built around this skeleton. It got me thinking about other dice-placement games in recent years that incorporated some clever mechanics, notably Kingsburg and Alien Frontiers. Auctions have been on my mind, too, particularly auctions that work well with two players. (Folks on Twitter had several recomm...

Here's a sort of auction, trick-taking, racing mechanic I've been mulling over the past couple days, in an attempt to make a racing game  Each player has two pawns representing their racers. They are placed in a line in a random starting order. Each player begins with a hand of five standard playing cards. The goal of play is to win the auction for leadership position. Whoever is in the leader position wins most points for the turn, but may be subject to unexpected hazards. HOW TO PLAY The leader begins by bidding an amount in the suit of her choice. She may play one or more cards as long as they're the same suit. In the example above, the yellow player bid 10 diamonds. Each player then takes turns counter-clockwise (like a racetrack) for an opportunity to bid a higher amount of the leader's chosen suit. If someone does establish a new high bid, then each player gets another opportunity to out-bid that high bid. This continues until no one wants to out-bid the...

Played Felix The Cat In The Sack last night once again and I remain just as enamored with this clever take on hidden information in an auction. In the game, each player has an identical hand of cats with point values ranging from the negatives to positives, plus some dogs. During setup, one random card is removed from each player's hand. Each turn, players offer one card face-down from their hand for auction then place bids on the lot. One card is revealed to start the round of bidding. Each time a player passes, she takes a small compensatory reward and reveals one more card. The little dog removes the lowest cat in the lot. The big dog removes the highest cat in the lot. Two or more dogs remove each other from the lot. The thing I love is how information gradually gets revealed while also raising the stakes. In time you may realize you've overbid on a real stinker of a lot. If you put down a high-value cat in the lot, you may also find yourself simply bidding more than...