Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany

My design process is often largely intuitive rather than analytical. So, for example, while I will certainly take a look at casualty returns when designing a game on an ACW battle, I'm not going to plug those returns into some kind of algorithm, or determine the average losses per battle per brigade over the course of a campaign in order to determine the fighting value of the unit, or the leadership ability of its general.  Rather, I make these decisions with my gut, with what "feels" right. Then I try it out and see if it works. If it doesn't,...

When I had delusions of being a eurogame designer, the worst part of the whole thing, besides finding out that Uwe Rosenberg had already come up with an idea two years before I did, was pitching games to publishers. I invested a lot of time and energy carefully drafting emails that would, I hope, convey the essence of the game without getting into too much detail but also without making the game sound too simple and also without saying anything that would turn them off. It was an exhausting process, and what made it more exhausting was the fact that...

Most of our games are for two players, and like a lot of two-player wargames, there's relatively little to prevent a gamer from playing both sides when he lacks an opponent. One of the weirdest quirks of wargaming is that there's a long and storied tradition of solitaire play, a tradition that looks positively bizarre when viewed from the outside. Heck, when I first got into this side of the hobby, I thought it sounded absolutely bonkers and solipsistic. I soon learned better, and there are times when I even prefer solitaire play, particularly when I'm first learning a game....

As I've said many times before, I have the best job in the world. I get up in the morning, and I get to play board games. On top of that, I get to spend pretty much every minute of every day hanging out with my best friend. There might not be enough hours in the day, but those hours are mine; I'm not spending eight to twelve hours of my day doing what someone else is paying me to do.  So, I am living a very charmed life indeed, and I count my blessings on a regular basis. I...