I know that it’s hardly fashionable to talk at length on a topic on the net, but I can’t help myself. Blogs are OK, but they are quite a short space to cram in a whole rant, and they are also entirely transitory. Many of my (intended) rambles are valid for years. For example, my thoughts on points systems, charge rules, resource management and so on. Yes, you’re right, I do change my opinion over time, but not often, and not everything all at once. It’s not so much that I’m an old stick-in-the-mud, more that I’ve been designing games for over 35 years, so I don’t often see things that are entirely surprising or haven’t been done somewhere before. Still exiting when I do though. But I digress, which is very likely to happen again, and partly why the blog is too short.

To cope with this I’m going to work out how to put extra pages and stuff onto this site so that I can post things that won’t just fall off the bottom of the page. Some will be generic thoughts like the ones mentioned above, others specific, such as the first couple which will be related to Dwarf King’s Hold. All will be on my chosen topic: the design philosophy of board and tabletop games.

“What a pretentious twerp”, I hear you cry through the ether. Well, I’ve been called worse. Actually, I don’t think it is pretentious – I think it is central to a deeper understanding of games and gaming in general, and may be entirely relevant to your favourite game in particular. Design philosophy is behind every decision a game designer makes when he or she writes rules, whether they realise it or not. It is why the rules are as they are; not just for my games, but for every game.

And the name of this column/editorial/ramble/irritation (delete as applicable), in case you hadn’t guessed, is In the Detail.