I always start out with the parameters for the game. How many cards? What size and format will the map take (if there will be a map)? How long should the playing time be? And then I work from there.

Not only does the narrative give extra meaning to the rules, but the rules help to perceive the narrative.

Those who do not play do not live. Those who do not playtest do not design.

Game design is hard. Designing a game, like writing a poem, looks easy from the outside. It’s just a collection of components and a few rules, but the more you get into it, the more you realize how much thought goes into it and how hard it is to be original.

Nothing is more unpleasant than the melancholy of a player who loses, except the smile of a player who wins.

Do assume that your reader has played a game before.

So, I think one way that a historical game can succeed both as a game and as an authentic account of history is by focusing on the precariousness of historical events.

Hard-core videogamers […] are accustomed to the kind of uncertainty that depends on player skill. While they will tolerate some degree of puzzle solving, they want to be swept up in the moment of play, to be, for the most part, in a flow state, and not be halted to think deeply about the next thing they must accomplish.

It is likely that the cherishing of one’s lucky dice is as old as dice themselves. There is a Gambler’s Lament in Babylonian, a kind of poem, that begins “Woe is me! Woe is me! My astragal! My astragal!”

[...] most of the time people who like this kind of experience simply love the theme so much that they will sacrifice cleanliness, elegance, and game length to privilege the simulation of reality.