Daniel Solis

Join the Leftovers as they journey deep into the heart of darkness. Well, actually, it's a skull. A skull of darkness. Right. This map is based on suggestions by Richard DiTullio. Thanks, Rich!

Rob Donoghue mentioned that his favorite RPG design technology of 2010 was Success-with-Complication." He and Fred Hicks draw an analogy to video games: " Missing is very rare in video games. Question is not 'do you hit' but 'What happens when you hit'" This doesn't only refer to a combat scenario. It applies to any scenario where there is a question where it's more important to see the consequences of the answer than the answer itself. "Hitting" is just more impactful, if you pardon the pun. Let's assume for the benefit of the doubt that you have a game where the question really is "Do I hit?" What are the real possible answers? If "no," then often the only recourse is to try to hit again until you get a "yes." Alternatively, you keep getting a "no," until some endgame scenario, at which point you're not playing anymore. So, really, any functional answer is going to be "yes....

Utara is a dice game that makes a game board from any surface on earth. The game's theme calls to mind constellations and stellar navigation. I imagine it being played by wanderers and sailors with uncanny senses of direction. » Development Status: Open Beta. » Inspired by Jorinapeka by Tony Pa. » Developed from this prototype . » Special thanks to Joe Mucchiello for suggesting use of cardinal directions. » Image: " Fishing Boat " CC-BY-NC-SA by Austin King » Utara (उत्तर) is Malay for "North." » Russian Translation: Утара — настольная игра Stuff You Need Two or more players. This is a great game for a group of friends sitting on the living room floor. Special dice. Each face says either North, East, South, or West. The fifth face has a Sun and the sixth face is Moon. You can use any number of dice to play, but you should use at least ten dice per player. More dice will allow higher scores, possibly longer games and require more space to pl...

Cam Banks said , ""Step on Up," "Story Now," and "Right to Dream" sound less like game theories than they do tween-friendly movies on Nick or Disney." So I made these posters. And I admit, I cheated on the "tween-friendly" parameters after this point because I couldn't resist the "dream" pun for Inception. Hope you lol'd. :)

A while back, Gerald Cameron created a great list of games that use the traditional board and stones to play the ancient game Go. It's hard to beat the alluring minimalism of a traditional go set. Go's components are the proverbial blank slate for a game designer, so it's no wonder there are quite a few Go variants and original games available. Go is a great example of a thousand-year game. This list is how it shows a long-lasting classic game often inspires derivations. Those offshoots help keep the parent game alive by using the same components. They also often introduce individual elements of the parent game, thus becoming a teaching tool for strategy and tactics. What could you design within the constraints of a 19x19 grid, 181 black stones, 180 white stones, and a couple bowls? » BoardGameGeek: The Go-Ban as Game System » Image: go CC BY 2.0 Luis de Bethencourt

I've been playing a lot of Tony Pa's elegant flash game Jorinapeka. It's a clever, emergently complex game that tickles my brain in pleasant ways. As a game design experiment, I tried to adapt that experience into an analog, tabletop board game. You can watch the video above for a demonstration of the prototype or read on. Jorinapeka » Status: Alpha. Solid mechanics, but requires more prototyping. » These experiments led to Utara , the compass dice game. Check it out! :) First, I created a clamshell box for storage and play space. (Click here for blueprints.) Then I put a sticker on one side of a blank die and drew an arrow on it. Repeat for sixteen dice total. These dice are the game pawns. For the sake of easy prototyping, I made this box smaller and used fewer pawns than would be in a full-sized game. To prepare for play, place the pawns arrow-down in the smaller compartment of the box. Close it, flip it over, then open it up again. Now you have a randomize...

Here's a new timelapse video (and quasi-tutorial) of how I laid out the first part of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple . It includes plenty of notes on my decision-making process and rules of thumb I follow when I start a project. This video is condensed from a four-hour session, so things move fast and the changes can sometimes be hard to detect. Watch in HD to see every text style setting and dialog window. I hope you find this information useful as you lay out your own games. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, just enjoy watching the layout process. » Original illustrations by Liz Radtke » More about Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple » Music Playlist: "Troublemakers" by Matt S Wilson "Departures" "Over the Northern Mountains" "Legends of the North" "Reunion" "Traveling Minstrels" by Mattias Westlund , distributed under a CC-BY license.