Daniel Solis

I'm very lucky to be a part of the Game Designers of North Carolina collective. We're all tabletop game designers organized by Matt Wolfe to playtest each other's games and help each other get published.We see each other iterating game design pretty rapidly, making small refinements or major changes between versions. In our guild's podcast, Matt Wolfe invited Graham Russell and me to talk about iterating a design. We cover quite a bit about: How to know how much to change between revisions. How to know when a game is done. When to shelve a project you know won't get finished. Recognizing a potentially fun game earlier in the process.  Good stuff! Check it out! ( Image source )

Happy October, everyone! I'm happy to announce Trickster: Monsters and Trickster: Supers are now available for playtesting! All playtesters are welcome, but I'm looking for a mix of experienced Trickster players and totally new players. Please share your feedback before October 31 2015, email gobi81 at gmail dot com or on twitter @DanielSolis . The theme for Trickster: Monsters is "Haunted Houses," which is sort of a pun. All of the effects in this set can trigger a second time if your target opponent has this character in their House already. This makes your initial choice of card during the setup particularly dangerous because you're making yourself a target. --> Download Trickster: Monsters PnP PDF here . The theme for Trickster: Supers is "Power," which is fitting! It's sort of the reverse of Monsters, because each effect in this set can trigger a second time if you have the hero in your House already. In this set, having card...

This episode covers the tools and techniques of making quick paper prototypes. I've discovered that other designers tend to use big bulky paper cutters, but I prefer this quick and efficient method of getting multiple sheets cut simultaneously. It's a little dangerous though, so be very careful with those blades! Card at Work is a web series about designing cards for tabletop games. Support the release of more episodes at my patreon ! Thank you!

Hello! I'm Daniel Solis, the designer of Kodama: the Tree Spirits , but really it's been a team effort with strong direction and development from Travis R. Chance and Nick Little at Action Phase Games . This is a brief history of how the game came to be. Early Days Kodama: the Tree Spirits began as another game I self-published called Kigi , released as a print-on-demand game in late 2014. Since then, it's licensed and translated in Japan, China, Poland, and Germany. It's a pretty big hit by any measure of POD success. Action Phase Games approached me several months later with a clear enthusiasm for the core mechanics of the game. They had just as much enthusiasm for developing and overhauling everything else about the game, too. I was cautious at first. "After all," I thought, " Kigi is such a hit everywhere else until now, why change things?" Well, a day or two later, Travis R. Chance and Nick Little came back to me having already pla...

For the past three years, my wife has been an active volunteer staffer and coordinator for the Small Press Expo , a long-running comic convention devoted to independent and alternative cartoonists and comics creators. I tag along as a general volunteer floating around the show helping wherever I can. It's a great opportunity to see a vibrant diverse creator community at its most positive and active. Naturally, I couldn't help comparing it to the tabletop community. What follows are my very loose observations and comparisons between the two groups. (Photo Sources: SPX Facebook ) Shared Challenges Comics and tabletop games creators both face the same challenge of selling premium physical goods to niche audiences scattered over long distances. Digital and easy-access alternatives are readily available for comics and games, but they're usually lower priced (or free), thus making them loss-leaders in an effort to actually make a living at the trade. Before that can ev...

Hi folks! A while back I announced that I would expand my Patreon to broader game production assets, including releasing my paywalled videos to the public. Well here we go! The first episodes of Card at Work are now on youtube. First start with Episode 0, which explains the overall premise and goal of the series. And Episode 1 which combines the first couple of video lessons that had been behind a paywall previously. Thanks so much for your support! Please subscribe to my Patreon to get episodes more frequently!

Heyo! I'm selling the Japanese and Chinese editions of Kigi and Koi Pond on my Etsy store ! I'm also adding a few other games to the inventory as they become available. These are extremely rare and hard to find in the United States. The handful that I have in stock are the most you'll find anywhere in North America. Get them while you can! Backstory: I sometimes get complimentary copies of my games from publishers when the first print run comes out. Normally these just sit around collecting dust on my shelf, but last month I had to do an emergency replacement for my work computer. Let me tell you, it's expensive and is still hitting our budget hard this month. So I'm trying to make up for the expense a little bit and offer you something interesting in the deal. Hope you enjoy them!