Category Archives: Game Design Theory
Balancing DS Campaigns
The campaign rules on page 31 of the DKQ quest book include a simple balancing mechanism to tailor things to your group. The balance of the metagame is very sensitive to the relative skills of the different players, especially how cunning the Overlord is … Continue reading
Game Design Theory: When Is A Skirmish Not A Skirmish?
When it’s too big. In my head I have a pretty clear definition of a skirmish game. It’s the same one I’ve been using ever since I started gaming, more than 30 years ago. It’s not a term that I made … Continue reading
Designer’s Notes
Here’s a question for everyone, sparked by a comment on a recent post. If I self-publish a book, I get to pick what I want to include. As I like talking about the why of a game as well as … Continue reading
Did You Miss This?
I’m a bit surprised by the sparsity of comments on my post about design theory. Did it get lost in the shuffle? There have been some great suggestions so far, I just thought there might be a few more enquiring … Continue reading
Overwatch In DZ
First principles: if all else is equal, simple is better. The discussion around Overwatch has been both interesting and frustrating to watch at the same time. After reading many comments I ended up more confused than when I’d started, and so … Continue reading
A Design Theory Question
Over the last couple of years I’ve expounded on the theme of game design theory a number of times. Several people have been kind enough to say that these posts have been helpful to them in their own design work, which … Continue reading
Hero Experience In Dungeon Sagas
As I mentioned yesterday, the experience system is linked to the rest of the Downtime process. I’ll explain how in a moment, but first a handful of points that came up in the comments from yesterday’s post and which I should probably stress … Continue reading
