Two Dice in my Pocket

[rob_donoghue]

Chris Hanrahan, being an intensely cool guy, sent me a pair of dice from the Endgame 8 mini-con out in Endgame, Oakland . They’re gorgeous six siders with a mother-of-pearl finish and the endgame logo where the 6 should be. I found them in my pocket today and have been rattling them around in my hand every now and again, thinking

Comments

[nmccoy]

Following thisdiscussion with rapt attention - I've been focusing my design attention on lightweight-but-delicious game systems for a while now, and I've indeed come to some similar conclusions regarding the simple components -> buildable "chunks" -> tasty, complex interactions.

And I totally agree with the thoughts on SotC's stunts - they fill a needed role in the system, but it feels like there must be *some* way to address that need more elegantly. I personally crave a tactical experience when gaming, and I find that SotC without Stunts suffers from the Curse of Systemic Symmetry (something that I must admit I often fall prey to in my own design prototypes if I'm careless).

[rob_donoghue]

Oh, I know that curse well. The game composed entirely of a smooth surface - it's shiny and pretty, but nothing sticks.

[ex_gobi]

Yay for minimal! I spent a whole chunk of time focusing on the various ways one could use your basic d6 in a board game. I loved exploring the physicality of the object, the various axes of information it could generate and the different states it could represent. It's a remarkably versatile object.

Back on RPGs and story games though... I just wrote a game that you might find useful in your ponderings: Happy Birthday, Robot. I tried to write it with the short, simple sentences of a child's early storybook. The games reads a lot like the stories that the game creates. Hopefully that makes it easy to learn and encourages young readers to exercise their new vocabulary and grammar skills in writing