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design

Notes on board game design decisions, trade-offs, and iteration.

You Don't Need Permission to Hold a Sword

Designing Keep the Fire: Part II In most LRP systems, weapons come with permissions attached. You can hold this. You can't hold that. You can use a sword, not a polearm. You can use a bow (more on those later), not a shield. You can wield a dagger,

Why I'm Scrapping Armour

Designing Keep the Fire: Part I I've been playing LRP for a few decades now. That doesn't mean I have all the answers, but it's given me plenty of insights into friction points, cargo cult aspects, and "why do we do it that

Thinking in the Box

I often try to work inside very tight constraints. That's not because there's something virtuous about restriction but because a small box amplifies decision-making. When space and components are limited, a design is forced to show its workings early. Fluff and theming can't obscure

Building Tread Lightly

I've spent some time recently building microgames - not as an exercise in minimalistic aestheticism, but as a way of putting my work under tight constraints. With very little space and almost no components, there's nowhere for a design to hide and no room for bloat.