DR Games

Never has the concept of luck been driven home to me more than recently when I have been designing my own tabletop games. What role does it play in the…well the game play? Does a game become weaker because of a dependence on random nature? Can this cause anxiety or fatigue? Should we rely on luck less? Make more of the choices ourselves? Be in control? I wanted to lay some of this out in this latest blog post as it is becoming a particularly important part of how I design games. Making my way across a map...with only a die to guide me With the design of Dark Force Incursion, I created a game that heavily depended on the roll of a dice. Every turn you are bound by the result of your roll and this leads you in a direction, for which there are a set of consequences. Is this too much to ask of a player to be so bound by a one in six chance? Yes, because how can they influence the outcome? This is what gamers will often strive for, a controlling element. I introduced the option o...

DFI came about through an unusual set of circumstances at a strange time, that I discuss in a previous post. But it was solid and reliable with a core set of rules and maps and could be download for free from my website. Yet, as if out of control, the game began to take on a life of its own in my mind. I imagined new land features, hex tiles, expansion rules and maps. I think that, for me, any creation is never truly complete, they just keep on growing, expanding, and ultimately opening new gaming choices.   Pretty quickly I set about writing the rules and drawing the land features for the new maps and expansions. It presented as a series of updates with new landscapes that would be interesting to experience in their own hex maps. This presented as four distinct expansions that would work nicely as pledge levels…yes, I began to think Kickstarter. I had established a presence on Board Game Geek and the free core rules were out there for people to play and they had. I w...

It has been on my mind for a while now as the Corona-virus spreads across the world . What can I offer those who are at home and unable to partake in their usual gaming sessions because of isolation. How can a creative mind help alleviate the stress of boredom and worry? I have seen other roll and write games and thought that might be a great way of giving something to the community to these very ends.    Looking at what I have previously worked on under the DR Games and the hex tile has been a feature. I decide that I would try and use this format, combine it with a number mechanism and inject it with a narrative. This became a scenario that fuel the fire of the story...and Dark Force Incursion was born.   " Y o u r l a n d h a s b e e n i n v a d e d b y a p o w e r f u l D a r k F o r c e . T h e s p e e d o f t h e i n v a s i o n w a s f r i g h t e n i n g , a n d t h e y h a v e t a k e n a l l t h e d e f e n s i v e f o r ...