Department Heads

For my self-published boardgame, Two Degrees, I need players to understand the definitions of a Forest, Wind Farm and Connected Cities within the context of the game. But no one wants to hear a single person explain all those terms.

So I created the role of "Department Heads" and each player gets to be the head of their own department, like The Department of Energy or The Department of Transportation. Each Department Head gets a clipboard with the definition of their particular thing, and they become the subject matter expert.

Two Degrees won Best Gameplay and Judges Choice in the 2019 Games for Our Future Game Jam. Click here for the Department of Energy clipboard.

Magic Mushrooms

Whether you are designing a game or building a fantasy world where magic exists, it is wildly considered best practice for your magic to have a cost. If there is no price to be paid for doing magic, what is to stop someone from using magic all the time to solve all their problems?

So when I was designing my rules-light Tabletop RPG, I decided to marry high fantasy with Super Mario. Age of the Guild: Special Mushrooms Unit is set in a world of magic mushrooms, where mushrooms can be consumed to grant temporary magic powers.

It's an easy principle to understand, offers infinite design possibilities, and fit perfectly into the world I was building.

Solo Modes Without AI

A lot of board games provide a "solo mode" so that you to play the game by yourself. But most of them rely on an artifical opponent that you must control or make decisions for.

I find these solo modes to be clunky and hard to play because I must switch back and forth between being both myself and my opponent.

So when I design a solo mode, I always look for ways to pit the player against their environment. Every game has tension. A good solo mode retains that same tension, but in a way that condusive for solo gaming.

The game Hive is nicknamed "bug chess" because it's all about moving your pieces in coordination with each other, and each piece can only move in specific ways. The tension comes from you having to win before your opponent.

My solo mode for Hive, Hive in Five, is all about moving your pieces in coordination, with the tension coming from the timing. Instead of racing against your opponent, you are trying to solve the puzzle within an exact number of moves.

Hive in Five  won first place in the Board Game Geek 2023 Solomode Design Contest. Here is a video by Randy Ingersoll, a Hive world champion who wrote the book "Play Hive LIke a Champion" explaining and praising Hive in Five. Here are the rules.

Magical Elemental Fungi

Part of the fun of playing a Tabletop RPG is playing as a character with unique characteristics and abilities. But I didn't want to use the Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons depictions of elves, orcs, and other races. Instead, I created a world in Age of the Guild: Special Mushrooms Unit in which everything is powered by magic mushrooms that grow on elemental crystals.  

These elemental magic mushrooms, like a Fire Shroom, can grant temproary abilities, like being able to fart fire balls for a short period of time. But these elemental fungi grant permanent abilities too. That's because each character has a magical elemental mycelial network incorporated into their body.

For example, one of the characters has a air-based magical mycelial network. It reinforces their bones in a way that makes them light as a bird and gives them the ability to shoot air out of their skin so that they can jump higher and change directions midair. All while keeping the focus on the magical elemental fungi that powers the world.

Well Crafted Clues

I wrote a host-at-home escape room called Tarpey Time Travel Toursim in which players sat in my living room dressed as tourists to Woodstock 1969. The premise was that we needed to get back to present day, but only after we found the six missing passengers that had scattered to somewhere throughout all of time and space.

The clues were based on bits of information we have downloaded from their phones and printed out on 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper. Players could use the internet to try and figure out who each character was and then try to figure out where they would go in all of time and space.

The important thing here was to craft the clues in a way so that players always felt like they were making progress. So the first set of clues had no names, but where simply giving players the vibe of each character. The second set of clues had names, so players could enjoy matching the vibes of the first set with the names of the second. And things like that helped players progress through the six sets of clues in a way that each set felt like they were getting closer to the answer.

Before the Party Tasks

For my 1999-inspired high-school-themed murder mystery party, I want people to be excited to attend. I want them to have fun putting together their costume, picking out their karoake song list, and I want them to be confident that they will totally crush playing the role of their character.

So, for Y2Killed, I added tasks for people to do before party even begins. They are simple. It's something like, "Contact Shawn and tell them you heard Andy was cheating on them."

These tasks help people understand their character better as well as gives them an idea of what the relationship their character has to someone else. So when they show up to the party, they have a clear grasp of their assignment.