Breaking the Tie

Grant Rodiek | November 19, 2012
A few friends on Twitter recently began a short debate regarding tying in a game. More specifically, what should the designer do (if anything) to reduce the chances of a tie. Furthermore, they pondered whether ties are bad in the first place, and what a reasonable tie breaker is.
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Form Versus Function

Grant Rodiek | November 17, 2012
Guest Column by: Jay Treat I learned several valuable lessons at Metatopia a few weekends ago. Firstly, there is no such thing as bed-time. You will be up late. Every night. And you will love it. Secondly, making connections—the kind that lead to dream jobs—isn’t as hard as I thought.
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Adventures in Space!

Grant Rodiek | November 16, 2012
I'm designing three different games, all within a science fiction theme. Although I'm not actively pursuing this or worrying about it, it would be interesting to have 3 different stories and experiences within this one universe.
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Stuck in Thought

Grant Rodiek | November 07, 2012
I've been rather quiet lately, primarily because I don't have much to say. I find that I have many opinions on process, theory, and practical design when I'm deeply involved in a project. After all, when I'm testing and developing the game I find all sorts of topics simply as a result of what I'm doing.
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The Dominant Player Problem

Grant Rodiek | October 29, 2012
Post by: Grant Rodiek I've been designing a co-op game for a short while now. Typically when I design a game, I'm also writing about the game. As soon as I wrote that I was working on a cooperative design, I learned that people are really excited about co-op and they are obsessed with the dominant player issue.
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The Music that Moves Me

Grant Rodiek | October 25, 2012
Fresh Air is an outstanding interview program that airs daily on my NPR station. The host, Terry Gross, interviews writers, comedians, musicians, politicians, scientists -- anyone really -- and rarely lets me down.
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Benefits of the Board

Grant Rodiek | October 23, 2012
Post by: Grant Rodiek A friend Tweeted about designing a game with a board and I immediately began thinking about what it means to include a board with your game. I recently went from Farmageddon (cards only) to Empire of York (Cards, Board, Player Reference Boards) and it was a big step up as far as design challenge.
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Co-operative Headache

Grant Rodiek | October 15, 2012
This was a difficult weekend of game design. Or, what, I should say game flailing. Is that a thing? Because if it is, I did it. I've never designed a cooperative game and as a result, there are things I seemingly need to learn from scratch, re-learn, or throwaway from the experiences I've picked up the past few years.
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Personality Disorders

Grant Rodiek | October 13, 2012
If you mention cooperative game design, people come out of the woods to mention that they like co-op, but hate playing with bossy people. Fixing this is the El Dorado of games, apparently. How do you fix the dominant player problem in cooperative games? Honestly, I think the answer is, "You can't.
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Pull the Chit (Together)

Grant Rodiek | October 11, 2012
This post is going to be quite wayward, so let me plot a course for everyone. I'm going to explain what chit pulling is. I'm going to explain my obsession with chit pulling. I'm going to give you a bit of insight into the direction of my new co-op game.
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