May 2024

Hot Elf Summer: The Return of Family Dungeons & Dragons

My fourteen-year-old son just finished eighth grade, which means next year I’ll have a high schooler in the house. I’m finding the prospect hard to process. He’s no longer a kid, and he’s interesting, unique, and opinionated – rapidly becoming his own person, with his own ideas (and, in typical teenage fashion, rejecting a lot …

Hot Elf Summer: The Return of Family Dungeons & Dragons Read More »

Spring Cleaning: Tidying-Up Time for the Game Industry

I spent a little time over the weekend playing Ker Nethalas. It’s a solo-focused pen-and-paper dungeon crawler, thematically dark with a heavy emphasis on dice-chucking combat.  There’s not a lot of story to the game. If you’re looking for the great narratives that systems like Ironsworn generate, you won’t find them wandering through the endless …

Spring Cleaning: Tidying-Up Time for the Game Industry Read More »

Balancing Act: Making Great Difficulty Levels in Video Games

The current monster title laid out on the table in my office is Folklore: The Affliction from Greenbriar Games. It’s typical of my solo gaming tastes – a messy cooperative fantasy adventure dripping with theme, with an often-vague ruleset and plenty of bookkeeping. As big fantasy board games go, there are better options out there …

Balancing Act: Making Great Difficulty Levels in Video Games Read More »