Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — game design
ON THE CURIOUS ORIGINS OF TABLE BATTLES (by Tom Russell)
While Table Battles is a direct descendent of my earlier game Christmas at White Mountain, its existence can be better explained in the context of two apparently unrelated games: Richard Berg's multiplayer game Dynasty, and my two-player politics game Optimates et Populares. When we were publishing Richard Berg's Dynasty, we needed to get quite a lot of wood bits. We needed large cubes for armies and little cubes to demarcate control, black cubes for warlords, and wooden discs for home provinces and the Emperor's winter palace. And on top of all that, we also needed some long gray rectangular wood...
THREE WAYS TO EVALUATE A DESIGN (by Tom Russell)
When we evaluate a design submission, the first thing we do is take a look at the rules to get a sense of the thing. If it captures our interest, we then proceed to getting the game on the table. I don't have hard numbers on this, but I'd hazard a guess that only about a third of the submissions that we turn down get to that second step. If we've taken the time to print up a copy of the game, or to ask the designer to go to the expense of sending us a playtest kit, then we...
BRIEF THOUGHTS ON TWO TRADITIONS OF WARGAME DESIGN (by Tom Russell)
I've been listening a lot lately to David Dokter's podcast Guns, Dice, Butter, in which he presents "conversations with members of the wargaming tribe". Several of his interview subjects were designers and developers for Avalon Hill and/or SPI. (Several of the SPI folks tell a story about Jim Dunnigan casually asking an underperforming employee if he was planning on coming in tomorrow? "Yes." Don't bother, quoth Dunnigan; you're fired.) One thing the illustrious Mr. Dokter mentions is a philosophical divide between the games produced by Avalon Hill and SPI. Avalon Hill designs were more about providing a balanced competitive experience...
DESIGNING THE SHOT & SHELL BATTLE SERIES (by Tom Russell)
In 2010, I began designing my first-ever wargame. It was something I did as a lark; as a sailor might say in salty language, "for ships and giggles". I was a Very Serious Eurogame Designer who was going to have a Very Serious, Prestigious, and Profitable Career designing mid-weight Euros. Just to be eclectic though I thought it'd be fun to do a wargame now and then on the side, and perhaps a nerdy train game. Of course, the way things panned out, I couldn't sell the Euros. The wargames sold, as did the nerdy train games, and so here...
THE PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS IN SOLITAIRE GAMES (by Tom Russell)
I used to be very wary of solitaire wargames. Not, mind you, of playing two-player wargames solitaire, but of honest-to-gosh solitaire designs. Partially, my reticence was somewhat aspirational: I might be playing both sides in this WW2 game, but the possibility existed that someday, someone who would dig the game would be sitting on the other side of the table. Whereas if I plunked down some of my hard-earned cash for a solo-only title, that possibility - however rarified and improbable - no longer existed. And, when you're on the sort of budget where you can only buy maybe five...