Daniel Solis

Good news! I've submitted the final draft of my book "Graphic Design for Board Games" to the publisher! Of course that now leaves a void in my schedule for some other long-term project. I'm not yet certain what that would be, so for now I'll continue sharing early drafts and previews of what I've written for the book. The following section comes from the chapter on designing language-neutral diagrams. In this sub-section, I discuss the practical process of diagramming each part of a game action into glyphs and icons.

Here are all the books I've read and reviewed over the past year. As is typical of my lifestyle, I take in more audiobooks than physical books. I'm not a purist about that sort of thing. The one hitch is that I've already burned through a LOT of the audiobooks from the library that had my interest. It's forced me to branch out to other genres, so you'll see some more non-fiction and a couple of mysteries here. Plus one or two books I'm categorizing as Fantasy, though there are no swords and sorcery in the mix. There is one very specific element that kept popping up in the sci-fi I read this year: A distant-future community of humans has their Earthly origins kept secret by a manufactured religious authority. The Interdependency Trilogy features a theocratic government put in place to manage an interplanetary alliance of traders and producers. The Safehold series backstory, human survivors of an alien purge get their minds erased and rewritten to avoid any new in...

Here are the two basic methods we've used for laying out diagrams in Components and Setup sections of our board game rulebooks. There are slight variations between these two extremes depending on the game, but generally they start with either of these two options. Combined This is one diagram showing a complete game setup. I use numbered tags to that correspond to each step of setup and lettered tags that indicate each game component. Components and Setup from Atlantic Robot League Pros: Saves space. Great for small games or small books. Cons: Can be crowded. Difficult to see the smallest components. Doesn't easily account for optional modules or variable setups. Separate This is a more traditional option you'll see in most rulebooks. There's one "contents" or "components" section, usually a full page or a spread. The components will be neatly organized into a clean grid and individually labelled for ease of reference. The components are not at accur...

My new jigsaw puzzle just dropped! » THESE BOOKS DO NOT EXIST 20 covers from (nonexistent) author Clubworth Croak, all in one dizzying image. This includes all your favorite novel cover tropes: Cloak Guy! Silhouette of Lady with Hair Bun! Inexplicable still photo of one object on a neutral background! And more! Phew! This took a long while to put together! Hope you have fun with it! 

Case Study At a Glance » Project: Lay out a John Wick's new role-playing game. » Released in limited edition hardcover with dustjacket. » Later released as an unlimited softcover. » Worked with artist Storn A. Cook. » Also produced a set of icons for FATE aspects. History I met John Wick through Jared Sorensen back when that dynamic duo were founding the Wicked Dead Brewing Company. John has a long and storied connection to the gaming industry, starting as the big brain behind the Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea game settings. Thereafter, he independently produced a string of smaller books that experimented with mature themes and new game mechanics. John hired me to lay out Play Dirty , an anthology of game advice articles; No Loyal Knight , a supernatural noir detective novel; and Wilderness of Mirrors , a spy-themed role-playing game. Based on those good experiences, he tapped me for his next major project Houses of the Blooded would be John's first "big...

by Peter Aronson This is a letter for use in playing Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . Guys, you got to help us! We got elves everywhere, and I tell you, they're driving us all around the bend! And I don't mean two-foot-tall little cute Christmas elves, either, but the six-foot-tall variety, complete with wise gray eyes, pointed ears, silver hair, billowing cloaks -- the whole nine yards. They showed up on a Monday (which kind of figures, somehow). It was a pretty ordinary Monday with too much traffic, too much work, and not enough coffee or sleep. You know, Monday. Then, they came walking out of every wood on the world at the same time. Except, you know, these guys don't exactly walk anywhere; they stride or they glide or appear silently, but Heaven forbid they should do anything so ordinary as just walk like normal people. At first, they just stood around in little clumps, looking calm and all-knowing. Then they started frowning in disapproval at normal stuff, ...