Veni, Vidi, Viticulture

Grant Rodiek | September 17, 2012
I'm a huge fan of wine. It's my alcoholic beverage of choice and I've spent many many weekends driving around the vineyards of Napa Valley. I also own a home in Napa, so, yeah, I like wine. This immediately put Viticulture on the radar for me.
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Balance Testing

Grant Rodiek | September 14, 2012
I wrote a post earlier on Faction Design. This new post is similar, but not quite the same. I've also written about Testing your game. The development of Empire has been such a fruitful experience, both in that I feel I've made my second good game (Farmageddon being the first) and that I've learned an absurd amount, especially about designing more complicated games.
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Summoning Favoritism

Grant Rodiek | September 10, 2012
It is only fair to note I stole this image off of Games & Grub's review of this game.  Post by: Grant Rodiek I'm keen to remind folks that I'm not a reviewer and this isn't a review site. However, from time to time, articles like this that are eerily close to reviews appear.
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Disorderly Conduct Part 2

Grant Rodiek | September 06, 2012
In case you missed part 1, you can read it here. A friend and design peer suggested I write a part 2 that covers the impact on simultaneous turn taking and private versus public information. Here it is! Simultaneous turn taking is not to be taken lightly.
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Disorderly Conduct

Grant Rodiek | September 06, 2012
A fundamental question you must answer for your design is "what will a player do on his or her turn?" In most cases, players will have individual turns. Yes, there's simultaneous play, like in 7 Wonders, or there's real time play, like in Paper Route, but generally most games have player turns.
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Mars Needs Mechanics: An Interview with Ben Rosset

Grant Rodiek | September 04, 2012
There's a been a slight hum about Mars Needs Mechanics for a while now. It tested very well at UnPub and it was picked up by Nevermore Games. I had the pleasure of meeting the game's designer, Ben Rosset, at GenCon AND playing the game with him and two other great guys.
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Imperial Iteration

Grant Rodiek | September 03, 2012
I haven't received my updated prototype of Empire Reborn from The Game Crafter yet, but that hasn't stopped me from working on it. I've had many helpful people provide feedback, as well as a gamer named Adam Goodmurphy who has been testing the game in the woods of Canada.
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Story Realms: An Interview with Escapade Games

Grant Rodiek | August 31, 2012
I encountered Angie, like many folks, via the growing board game community on Twitter. For a long time, she's been talking about this wondrous storytelling game called Story Realms. I offered to help, and over the past several months I've read over a few revisions of the rules to provide feedback.
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Poorly Boxed

Grant Rodiek | August 30, 2012
Before I begin, I want to clearly state that I chose the box art for The Settlers of Catan because it's so well known. I am making no specific commentary on their box or this game. I was thinking about Empire Reborn the other day and how I would potentially market it to others.
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Salmon Run: An Interview with Jesse Catron

Grant Rodiek | August 29, 2012
Almost a year ago, Jesse Catron mailed me a prototype for a game then called Pond Farr. It was a very clever, well-designed, and highly entertaining game about Salmon Racing. He told me in confidence then that the game had been picked up by Gryphon Games and it'd be on Kickstarter.
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