Design Tip: Make Turns Different

Try to avoid situations in your games where players might end up making the same choices.

Design Tips: Where to Lose Balance

It’s nice for games to have balance, but you’d be surprised at how many times it’s unnecessary.

Tiebreakers exist in almost every game, so in this article I talk a bit about what different forms they take.

I talk about roll and move and discuss some of the hate it gets, and why it may be deserved or overblown.

Derived information is a bit of a monster, and in this article I attempt to wrangle it.

When players stop interacting with the market in a game, what can the designer add to help it along?

What are some different ways to include traditional bluffing in a game?

A few thoughts on alternatives to calling themes “themes,” as well as why the term needs to change.

The three pillars of rules writing: thoroughness, navigability, and clarity. Here’s a discussion of them and some suggestions for how to use them.