Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany

One of the things that drives me the most consistently bonkers about rulebooks - and wargame rulebooks can be particularly bad about this - is when the same gosh darn thing is explained again and again verbatim. Let's say for example that every time a formation moves into a certain type of terrain, there's a chance it might become disordered or lose cohesion or some-such. That chance might be adjudicated by a die roll made against the unit's Morale Factor or Cohesion Value or what-not. So you might get a rule that goes something like this: When the unit enters...

Today, a few brief words of advice about playtesting. Playtesting is of course the scalding hot viscera that brings these little Frankenstein monsters to life, and as might be expected by my choice of metaphor, it can be a messy, dangerous, and exhausting process. There are oodles and oodles of advice out there about how to choose testers, how to conduct tests, what to ask, with much of the advice often being contradictory. Really, you just have to find the method, or combination of methods, that will work best for you. But whichever method you choose - however you go...

For most projects, I have a square canvas that measures five-eighths of an inch. That's already small, but it gets smaller: even when you cut counters with a laser, there is still some slight variation. To protect against that, I have to keep the functional text and illustrations roughly 1.2 millimeters away from the margins. What I'm left with, then, is a fraction over half an inch - about 0.53" to be more precise. The first thing that tiny little square needs to do is communicate. It'd be nice if it was also pretty - I want it to be...

At some point in the very early nineties, a new McDonald's restaurant opened up within walking distance of my house. This was a welcome addition for my siblings especially, as the only fast-food restaurants within walking distance were Arby's (which was much too expensive) and White Castle (which they abhorred). Both of those establishments were several blocks farther down the road, and in the opposite direction, from the McDonald's, and so it made sense that my brothers and sister would gravitate toward it; one of my brothers even got his first job there, and met the mother of his first...

I had a problem: my chaotic little freebie game that I designed to end suddenly was ending suddenly. That probably requires some explanation. As you probably know, every year I do a small promotional game that we give away during our end-of-year Hollandays Sale. This year's game is Reign of Witches, which views the Quasi War (1798-1800) through the lens of factional politics within the Federalist Party, cast as a struggle between President John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Neither side is really "controlling" events, but rather reacting to events that are outside their control, and seeking to capitalize on them....