An unexpected side benefit of sending off Valour to a publisher for evaluation, is that I got a chance to turn my focus to a project I’ve had cooking for a while but has been stalled (much to the chagrin of my collaborators) while I worked to push my board game across the…
Category: Games
Valour’s “Divine Mandate”
Last night, I headed to Denver to see one of my favorite bands live — Eluveitie. Their “Folk Metal” brings elements from Celtic tradition into the metal genre; for real: There’s a woman in the band who can simultaneously play the hurdy-gurdy and headbang. No joke. One of their most popular albums, Helvetios, was my soundtrack when training…
After A Publisher Comes Knocking
As a first-time designer, one of the big questions I’ve always had is what the publishing process looks like once a design is picked up by a publisher. This summer, I got my first glance into that world. This year’s Protospiel event in Ann Arbor was a pretty big success…
Get Out of the Game Room!
There’s an aphorism in the ‘startup’ world, where I spend most of my non-gaming time. “Get out of the office!” The point is that if you get bogged down in what you think is cool, you won’t actually build something that’s useful to others. I think the same concept applies…
Playtesting Tips Round Two — Lessons from Protospiel 2015
Not long ago, I wrote a post with some baseline strategies for running a successful playtesting session. I just got back from Protospiel 2015 in Chelsea Michigan (full conference write-up to come soon!) and had a few new observations for this helping to tune this process.
Facebook Stole My Money
I’m taking a quick hiatus from my philosophy of positivity to share my observations around a distinctly non-positive experience I had recently. I ran a “Boosted Post” from my Flightless.co Facebook business page, as a little experiment. I had new content, I’m working to build my audience as I gear up for…
Theme-first Board Game Design is Awesome
I know some in the board game design community consider it sacrilege, but I’m definitely a theme-first designer. I make heavy use of my Catch Sheet day to day, while sitting in meetings, walking around, or wasting time reading articles online. Usually several times a week, I’ll be struck by an interesting economic…
Playtesting Feedback Tips
A few weeks ago, Valour was tabled FOUR times in one weekend, with four entirely different groups. One group, after having the game significantly stalled early on by an edge case I hadn’t yet considered, soldiered on to completion late into the night. Overall, feedback was extremely encouraging. Many of the…
Short Story RPG Launched!
Posting a little late again this week… but it’s been a pretty crazy week! I rebuild the lead-gen page for Valour, now that I’ve spent the time to put together a lot of the backstory and details, but more importantly… I just flipped the switch last night on a brand-new website for one of…
Valour: The Game
When we left off last week, I had the first physical prototype of my board game in-hand. Not knowing any better, I thought I might be near the end of the road. Now, after countless hours of play testing and revising, I know two things: a) I was WAY off the…