Having not seen each other in weeks, Tom and Bruce giggle like schoolgirls reunited after summer break before getting into their usual sparring. Troy just tries to keep people on topic – futilely. The putative topic: How do you design a game that makes the management of a government as interesting as the issues of […]
Three Moves Ahead Episode 50 – Designing Government and Debating Detail
February 1st, 2010 · 24 Comments · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
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Field of Glory AAR
January 29th, 2010 · 3 Comments · AAR, Ancients, Slitherine, Wargames
Ian Bowes and I are playing out the Battle of Cynoscephalae in Field of Glory. He’s still learning the system, but he wanted to play another MP game and kindly asked that I join him. I gave him the Romans and took the Macedonians for myself. He is blogging the game over at his blog.
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Least Surprising Cities XL Announcement Ever
January 27th, 2010 · 5 Comments · City Builder, Industry
Apparently there were not enough subscribers to the Cities XL Planet system, meaning that Monte Cristo has decided to drop it entirely. They will not accept any new subscriptions to this mulitplayer system that allowed players to visit each other’s cities and interact in a trading system. From the announcement email: Three months after the […]
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Best Boardgames of 2009
January 27th, 2010 · 7 Comments · Board Games
There are a lot of these lists every year, but I always link to Bill Abner’s for personal and professional reasons. His summaries are very brief and He also mixes his 2008 and 2009 games, which you can give him grief for over there. Our tastes generally line up, so he’s a reliable metric for […]
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Three Moves Ahead Episode 49 – Strategy Games and Story Telling
January 26th, 2010 · 17 Comments · Podcast, Three Moves Ahead
This week, Troy, Julian and Rob talk about the limitations and possibilities of story telling in strategy games. Can you have an authorial perspective in a system driven genre? Is the RTS campaign story irrevocably broken? Is there anything on the horizon that might give us hope? And stay tuned to the end where I […]
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Stockholm Syndrome
January 25th, 2010 · 5 Comments · Industry, Paradox
The Stockholm Paradox trip was very short, but the recovery from it may take a little longer. I barely slept on the flight there and arrived to learn that my room was not ready and would not be ready until about 20 minutes before I had to leave for the opening event at City Hall. […]
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