Isaac Shalev

Yeah the names are regrettable. I didn't much care for input and output randomness either - I like pre- and post-decision randomness. Though as @gengelstein.bsky.social pointed out to me, those don't abbreviate well. I'm just bad at naming stuff!

I agree that output randomness can be awesome.

Yeah, that's a good one. Circles work pretty well too, though they can also be annoying to make.

Hexagon tiles. These days I buy pre-cut birch at Michael's

So they're taxing you on 500 gallons of gas, or maybe 15k miles per year. That sounds like parity w the average gas driver, no?

I agree, but the biggest difference I see is guns. RW vigilantes were all about gun ownership and use as a policy prescription, but beat-em-ups rarely gave the good guys guns.

I think these are better understood as fantasies about personal safety and control rather than as policy proposals for ending crime. Big cities were legit terrifying to walk through at night in the 80s.

There was no conflict when the tender was issued or responded to. I agree we have to be concerned for graft. But this isn't a good example as best I can tell.

Only one company responded to the Biden-issued tender

Watch better vids? There are plenty of good ones. And many of them don't start with a rulebook, that start with a teach from the designer.

Fortunately, videos and tutorials have gotten better and are more popular than ever. Maybe we should be making "good teaching and reference modalities" instead of getting hung up on the dead end of "good rulebooks"

This was a deeply moving episode. Chad Jensen, your memory is a blessing. Thank you, Kai, for your courage and generosity of spirit in sharing about his loss.

It's not strictly more options, it's just deferring the same decision to later. But it also incentivizes going for Planner, which is definitely a bad idea for beginners to chase.

I'm actually deeply uncertain of how effective it is. Yes, players can skip the initial decision of which cards to buy, but it's a deferral - they'll still have to choose whether to play them. It hasn't reduced the number of options they have to think about.

Terraforming Mars has the starting corporations that give players ten cards for free.

Single-use flossers

The f/t designers I know the to be either salaried with a big publisher, freelancers doing lots of dev and commission work, designers who had a massive evergreen hit, or designers who self-publish.

Dispirited owl

Oh, are we back to work?

It's not intended for your convenience, it's intended to generate more views.

Tiletum inspired this exact conversation in my group. But then, did we optimize well? Or did we all play mediocre+?

If you're brave enough...

Shortening the optimization window is a possible solution, though. People will optimize if it's the dominant strategy and within their cognitive capabilities. So offering a shorter window for optimizing is effective. Wingspan does this by removing an action each round

Excited to announce *Animal Rescue Team* co-designed with friend and real-life animal rescuer, Lisa Towell, coming next year from Play to Z. This will also be the first game in the SU&SD Presents line.

Fun to work with Zev again; we first teamed up on a game called Pandemic back in 2007.

It was wait on line for this, or the LotR trick taking game.

I chose wisely

Fabio Lopiano playtested one of my games at PAXU yesterday, in the @unpub.bsky.social room!!

ASCEND, ASCEND TO THE TERRACE!

My variant rules are available in the BGG variants forum for Wyrmspan

I liked Wspan enough to design a simultaneous play variant for it. I like the game, but the syncopated rhythm of v short 'play a dragon' or 'draw a card' turns compared to the long 'explore' turns canb least to really long downtime for players, esp at higher counts

Organizing, eg via @ttgda.bsky.social is a means of establishing clear and fair industry norms and meditating disputes in private instead of litigating them in social media

TBC I wasn't suggesting that the existing protections are sufficient or formal, just trying to offer insight into the status quo. Too much of this conversation is dominated by players with little experience in publishing evaluating claims of designers and publishers. It's more heat than light.

It's also bc publishers value their reputation and the assets they're about to sink into a new game, and don't want to jeopardize them by having a disgruntled designer airing dirty laundry about them and the game