Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design
by Geoffrey Engelstein, Isaac Shalev · first published 2019
3mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2020–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
This book compiles hundreds of tabletop gaming mechanisms, organized by category. Each mechanism includes a description of how it works, a discussion of its pros and cons, a discussion of how it can be implemented, and examples of specific games that use it. This book aims to be used as a starting point for beginning game designers, as well as a guidebook for more experienced gamers.--adapted from publisher's description.
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…a bunch of procedural indie games and formerly Funcom, is exciting in concept, and Darius Kazemi is always fun to read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Procedural-Storytelling-Design-Tanya-... Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, by Geoffrey Engelstein and Issac Shalev, looks like it ports the cookbook concept from software development to tabletop games, which feels right up my alley: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Blocks-Tabletop-Game-Design/...…
on “Game Design Curriculum” ↗…games and think about what did and didn't work. Very few developers it was their first game. The early PC developers were pumping out multiple games a year. While it won't help with real time games, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanism, will get you thinking about game mechanics. If you want to make social games, then read The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html There's…
on “Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?” ↗There was an attempt to create a taxonomy, basically, of board game mechanics. It was collected into the book "Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms". The book "Characteristics of Games" exists as well, that might have a good list in it. It's for all types of games, though, including sports. Richard Garfield (creator…
on “Notes on rarely-seen game mechanics” ↗