In brainstorming ideas for the Design Patterns series, I sometimes come up with topics that don’t really fit there. This new series, Playful Thoughts will be the home for design topics that aren’t examples of a pattern in game design, but also for posts about the tabletop industry as a business, and for thoughts about »more
Monthly Archives: July, 2019
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Design Patterns: This Is Bigger Than All Of Us
In their terrific new book, Meeples Together, Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline discuss”challenge systems” in cooperative games. Though they don’t explicitly offer a concise definition of a challenge system, we might distill one out of their extensive coverage of the topic and say that a Challenge System is a mechanism or set of mechanisms that »more
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Design Pattern: Winning and Goals
As the Women’s World Cup rolls forward, I though we’d talk a bit about goaaaaaaals! Or just goals, as English-speaking commentators call them. Reiner Knizia once said “When playing a game the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.” At first impression, Knizia appears to be saying »more
