Myths about “cold showers at 4am = success” exist because people want to sell you something. They want to promise the secrets of success, or claim that their success is based 100% on effort rather than any luck at all. However, it’d be very inconvenient if you could test this for yourself – so they […]

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn and received 39k views before it was removed for, apparently, violating LinkedIn’s policies on “spam and scams”. I find this very interesting. Because many people said it was a valuable reference for them, I decided to repost it here. 1. Understand that games are hard to make and carry […]

I recently got asked about my thoughts on how to create a great tutorial. This is something I’ve talked a lot about but never written a post on. That time has come. Summary Make them Curious: Curiosity is the motivation to learn something. Lots of people talk about the need to provide an obvious value […]

“You want to be someone that people are excited to share their ideas with.” Whenever a new designer asks me for mentorship, this is the first thing I tell them. Many people instinctively point out problems with ideas, and problems often don’t have easy solutions that can be invented in the moment. If you do […]

“How do you win a creative debate?” I got asked this once during an interview and my brain just froze. I didn’t know how to answer. I finally said, “By asking questions.” My proudest moments in development are when we make something that’s better than any of our individual visions. On Faeria, I pitched an […]

I’ve seen some people in QA, Community Management, Project Management, IT, and other vital roles at game studios be reluctant to take credit for being “game developers”. The test is simple: If we can’t develop or support the game without you, you’re a game developer. It’s that simple.

A lot of people ask about how to make travelling fun in TTRPGs. Sometimes I end up writing my thoughts on this question twice in the same day. I thought I’d repost one of my recent answers here for reference. The journey must be as fun as the rest of the adventure. A problem arises when […]

I love practicing game design in TTRPGs (tabletop roleplaying games). I’ve run D&D summer camps for kids, games for friends, games at work, games in most major systems, and systems of my own design. I’ve also run hundreds of sessions in random-encounter-heavy sandboxes. Many of my players have loved the open-ended experience and wanted to […]

The $185,000 Toy In November 2019, Hake Auctions in York sold an ancient artifact for $185,850. That artifact? A plastic action figure of Boba Fett, standing just 3.75 inches tall. The prototype Boba Fett is one of the rarest and most desired toys in any star wars collection. When its missile launching rocket pack was […]

Running and working on tabletop RPGs is one of the best ways to practice game design. It’s how I started learning how to do videogames. Now that I’ve been a videogame designer for years, I’ve been going the other direction – pulling ideas from videogames and using them to level up my tabletop RPGs. I […]