Happy Easter!

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter! It’s the perfect time to celebrate new life and the promise of better things to come.

While it has been a mild winter in this part of Pennsylvania, I’m still ready for the colors & flowers of Spring, warmer temperatures, and putting away the overcoats & sweatshirts and transitioning into tee-shirts.

It will also be nice to get outside more often. Yesterday afternoon, I mowed my lawn for the first-time this year. Thankfully, I avoided a heart-attack cutting thick green grasses that were probably hiding lilliputian marauders — I may have been daydreaming to make the task of cutting the grass more interesting!

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Spring & Summer Reading

I recently purchased two new books on game design that I’ve added to my queue of books to hopefully read sometime soon.

The first book is Your Turn: The Guide to Great Tabletop Game Design by Scott Rogers. I love learning about game design from folks who have done it before and have read several books on the subject over the years. To be fair, they’re frequently hit or miss with their content, sometimes stating the obvious and glossing over the deeper aspects of design. This book was one suggested by Geoff Engelstein, a game designer/scholar/podcaster whose insights I really respect, so I’m optimistic that it will be excellent.

From the Amazon book description:

In Your Turn! The Guide to Great Tabletop Game Design, veteran game designer Scott Rogers―creator of tabletop games including Rayguns and Rocketships, Pantone the Game and ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo―delivers a practical walkthrough to help YOU create over a half-dozen game prototypes, including dice, card, euro, miniature, and party games. The book is packed with easy-to-follow instructions, charming illustrations, and hands-on lessons based on the author’s proven knowledge and experience.

And once you’ve made your game, Your Turn! will teach you how to prepare, pitch and sell it whether through crowdfunding or a publisher. You’ll also learn how to:

• Write and create elegant and crystal-clear rules of play
• Playtest your games to improve quality, fix problems, and gather feedback
• Learn what players want and how to design for it
• Learn the secrets of the Six Zones of Play and why they are so important to your game design!

Your Turn! is the essential guide for practicing and aspiring tabletop game designers everywhere! Why wait to make the tabletop game of your dreams? Grab this book and prepare to take Your Turn!

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The second book is Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev. This is a massive reference book (over 600 pages) of game mechanics. From my perspective, it’s akin to a dictionary or synonym book for writers — something that can help game designers ideate and craft a better, more interesting tabletop game.

Until next time, Happy Easter to everyone and watch out for those sneaky lilliputians hiding in your lawn!