I have been thinking about a new design for Houses of Orion. It will inevitably bare some resemblance to the existing ones, insofar as many of the components of draw and play games are similar. And, at this point, I’m pretty convinced that it will NOT be a deck building game. As you said, the [...]

Thoughts that I’ve had recently: Alternative game ending mechanic: The special action of a 9 card is to provide votes, 1 each time it is played. Instead of ending the game when one of the piles has been exhausted, the game is over when one player reaches 20 votes. Or, instead of positive votes, council [...]

In hobby gaming, the distinction between European (Euro) and American style games relates as much to the players as to the games themselves. But, insofar as different types of personalities are drawn to different types of experiences, the difference between Euro and American gaming revolves primarily around the role of chance. American games require you [...]

To answer your question: I find that I constantly struggle with the law of unintended consequences when I design games. Unless the skeleton of the design is extremely well structured, the more rules that there are, the more likely it will be that a perverse incentive structure will emerge in permutations of play that I [...]

As I see it, what to do if you encounter this scenario hinges upon how you interpret rules infractions of two rules in the rulebook: (1) “Whenever either player cannot play a card, the game ends immediately.” (2) “When you play the Jester, you must choose a value for him between 1 and 10.” For [...]

Use of resources is auctioned off Proceeds accrue to a treasury Treasury can be dispersed (to losers of the auction)

Since Suitcases is Pat’s baby, I run everything by him before I make any changes to the design or artwork. The decision to take it back from Playroom, take it off the shelf and relegate it to a prototype again is entirely mine to make, but when it comes to creative control, I have allowed [...]

Here’s what I think about Suitcases: It takes place at the airport, the train station or some other place with the chaos that ensues with heavy traffic, travelers and tourists. Is this my bag? I hope so! I just packed it earlier today. But, in this environment, you don’t know what’s going to happen to [...]

Suitcases is a game designed by my friend Pat Mannion. Just recently, I decided that I would withdraw it from consideration by Playroom Entertainment and remove it from active sales on my website. It seems rather silly, considering how much we’ve worked on it already, how someone is actually considering licensing it and the risk [...]

As some of you know, Suitcases is a Pat game. He invented it a year ago and we’ve been working together on it since then. I’ve helped solve the design problems with the game and we both worked on the photographs and layout for the prototype. Suitcases now officially belongs to Evertide Games by assignment [...]