The List - April 2026

It's been a few months since I checked in with The List, and I think I have some updates since then. Let's take a look at how things are going...

Published Games:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG) [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Isle of Trains (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) [New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [now available from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [now available from Renegade!]

- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)

- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Nothing new just yet... I moved The Sixth Realm down to Finished But Unpublished. 

Development Projects - Games I've done freelance development on

- Amun-Re expansion [Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition] - Heavy Development

- Harvest (BGG) [by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games] - Heavy Development

- Holiday In Rome (add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - Heavy Development

- Expeditions (BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation

- Fled (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

- Forelords (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

Still no new development projects, at least not paid ones. I haven't been doing any consulting or development lately, but I have been helping a couple of my friends/playtesters with their games...

Unofficial Development Projects - Games I've done unofficial development on

- Henge [by Rick Holzgrafe]

- Forbidden Art [by Steven Carleson]

I've known both Rick and Steve for many, many years, and they are my most consistent and frequent playtesters. As a matter of fact, I've got a co-design with each of them currently signed by a publisher! Rick and Steve are each currently working on a rondel game, and I'm pretty fond of both of them.

Henge is a shared-pawn rondel game about building a henge and attracting druids to check it out. We've been testing it at my playtest sessions, and I really like the game it's come to be! I hope he finds a publisher that likes the game as much as I do.

Forbidden Art is a necromancy themed rondel game where you command undead minions to power up your actions -- in a way it's like Crusaders, but the minions don't automatically move around your personal rondel. In the game you pillage artifacts, and use them to bind demons, and I think it's pretty cool how it all comes together. This one's a little less finished than Henge, but in both cases I feel like I've been able to offer helpful ideas to improve the games.

Signed Games - in line to be published:
- Usurpers (FKA Apotheosis) (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

Not much news about Steam Kingdom (FKA Taiko Kiri) (co-design with Steve), but the publisher has started getting some art done -- I've only seen the cover image and some tile art so far, but it looks cool! 

It's been several years since Usurpers was signed, and I've been skeptical it'll ever actually come out, but I recently saw some potential movement on the publisher's Basecamp thingy, so that made me a little hopeful again. I guess we'll see if any further progress is made on it.

Currently Pitching Games - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't actively been doing much of anything lately!):

- Sails & Sorcery (Co-Design with Michael Mindes) [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

- Alter Ego (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Dice Works (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Suburban Sprawl [pitching to publishers]

- Balloonatics [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam") [pitching to publishers]

- Division of Labor (FKA "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement") [pitching to publishers]

Not much progress, but I have had some pitch meetings recently that may be promising. In a few cases I met with a publisher and ran down my Pitch List, and in some of those cases it seemed to generate at least a little interest. I had a playtest of Sails and Sorcery scheduled last month with one publisher, but had to reschedule at the very last minute due to a conflict with a work meeting (should be able to have that meeting soon). And I have a different publisher wanting to try Division of Labor.

I'll note that my wife came up with a much better title for Let's Go Balloon Racing, and you can see it above: Balloonatics. In other Balloonatics news, I got Claude AI to create a web-playable version, and it works! I've tried to get it to do Keeping Up with the Joneses and Dynasty as well, with some success (still working out the kinks on those)

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022)

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

[- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan) [Final Frontier Games]]

It still hurts to have Crusaders expansions and EmDo games in this category, but I'm still hopeful they'll find new homes some day. I have a lead for Crusaders, but unfortunately all my leads for EmDo have dried up.

Current Active Designs - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:

- Dynasty [Risen from the dead!]

The only game of my own I've really been working on lately is simultaneously a new one and one of my oldest... Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China is a design that's legitimately 20 years old, and I've finally gotten around to making a fully playable prototype... and I'm happy to report that it works! In fact, I rather enjoy it. I mentioned it in a recent post, but I probably ought to do an in-depth post about that  game. 

Backburnered Designs - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [solo mode]

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Joan of Arc

- Kingdom Realms (KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022)

- 18-card Point Salad (KBGames 18-card game jam entry, July 2024)

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Truck, Boat, Plane

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

I have moved Truck, Boat, Plane (the game I made with Corbin) and Peanuts & Crackerjacks to this category because they're not games I've really been working on, and I don't really see getting back to them anytime soon.

Promising Recent Ideas:
- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

- Hanabi Wonders [Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]

- Stable Genius ["Wingspan of Horses"]

- Eminent Domain: Legacy [campaign mode]

- Which Witch is Which

I've added a new title to this category, which at this point is merely a glimmer of an idea... Which Witch is Which is a simple, maybe kid's level deduction game about a coven of witches, where players will be dealt cards showing different unique witches (some have pointy hats, some don't, some have cats, some have ravens, some have cauldrons, some have jack-o-lanterns, etc), and will have to deduce stuff, like in In the Name of the Rose, or Clue. I'm not sure how they'll go about doing that, but probably some mix of asking questions and passing cards around.

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [Abandoned]

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge [Abandoned]

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere] [Abandoned]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown] [Abandoned]

Notable that Dynasty moved up to Current Active Designs!

Misc and Really Old Stuff - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

- Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

What I've been working on... Dynasty (finally!), PYL: Rondel, PU/D design with Corbin, and some rondel games by my friends

It's been far too long... an update is long overdue at this point! So here are some recent games we've been testing in my playtest sessions, mine, as well as a couple of my playtesters':

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China (finally)

My latest design is also one of my oldest... Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China started as an idea for a game... *checks notes*... almost 20 years ago(!) I have revisited the idea many times over the years, I even have 1/2 of a physical prototype around here somewhere, but I never got around to finishing the prototype or getting it to the table.

Originally, I figured there'd be a few different actions in the game, and you'd just choose one to do each turn. The last time I started thinking of this game, I considered that just picking an action each turn might be a bit boring, or old fashioned. Nowadays, in a game of the type or scope that I expected this game to be, there's generally a logistical or personal puzzle involved in the action selection (in addition to interactive play on the board). So, I gave it some thought and came up with an action selection mechanism that sounded good to me, and then I -- finally -- got a prototype together and tried the game!

The mechanism is this: there are 4 actions in the game (Leader, Village Conquer, Invent), each color coded. During setup, you draw some random colored cubes out of a bag to put on each action space. On your turn, you choose one of the actions to do, resolve it based on your "action level" in that color, and then claim one of the cubes from that space and put it on your player board, powering up the action associated with that cube. So it's kind of like EmDo's deck learning, only you don't get better at the action you do, you get better at some other action. This mechanism adds a little bit of engine building, and a simple entangled decision -- balancing the actions you want to do with the actions you want to power up. When you get a 5th cube of a color, you get a bonus action of that type and then you discard some of those cubes, reducing your level in that action. And finally, when the last cube is taken from one of the actions, a "mini-scoring" occurs, rewarding whatever that action does, and then all of the actions reset like during setup. 

At the beginning of that first play, it was immediately obvious that I'd messed up the costs of some things, there was very little we could afford to do at first. But after a few early turns and an audible on certain costs, the game actually started to feel pretty good! It's hard to describe the feeling of relief I felt when finally playing this 20 year old design, and having it actually work out alright!

Peanuts and Crackerjacks

Over in the Decision Space Discord, the host (Jake) mentioned something about boardgames evoking the decision space of sports, and it led me to think of the similarities between Baseball and the rondel mechanism. This pretty quickly led me to a design based on a "push-your-luck rondel," where your personal rondel is a little baseball diamond.

After some sketchy attempts, I figured out that I was approaching it all wrong, and pivoted a bit -- while the game could still be described as PYL Rondel, it's more of a Yahtzee mechanism now. You roll, lock, and re-roll some dice, then move your meeples around your rondel doing actions. Sometimes they get out, sometimes they get home -- scoring a run. The player with the most runs at each scoring phase gains *fans*, and at game end, the player with the most *fans* wins the game.

The theme of the game is managing a team in the golden age of Baseball. A lot of the actual baseball game stuff is abstracted away, but I tried to keep things making as much sense as possible without trying to simulate a baseball game.

I think this one is OK, not great... maybe it has potential to be better, but I've been unhappy with the occasional bad rolls. I had some ideas to modify what bad rolls mean exactly to try to mitigate that, but the game got set aside when I started playing other things.

Truck/Boat/Plane

One day when my 7-year-old was home from school for the day, I turned to him out of the blue and said "do you want to design a game together?" To my surprise, he was on board! So I got some pieces out, and started asking him what he wanted the game to be about. I tried to prompt him as much as possible rather than direct the design myself, but I did add some mechanical details here and there. In the end we came up with a dice drafting pickup/deliver game that's kind of like a really light Logistico or something. There's a game board depicting 4 islands in the water, connected by bridges, and each player has a truck, a boat, and a plane. Each island has a warehouse an airport and a dock, and all other land spaces have 2 colored cubes stacked on them. Each round you roll 3 dice per player and then draft them, picking a die and assigning it to one of your unused vehicles. So every round, each of your vehicles moves once, according to the die assigned to it -- trucks move on land, boats move on water and planes move wherever. When you stop on a space with cubes, you may load the top cube into the inventory for that vehicle on your player board. When you stop on the appropriate building, you deliver all of the cubes of that color (the islands are color coded) from that vehicle -- sliding them down to a scoring zone on your board.

When you make a delivery, you get a little upgrade card for that vehicle, making it move better, or giving it some ability. Then at game end, you get 1 point per cube delivered, 1/2 point for undelivered cube in your vehicles, and a bonus for each set of all 2 colors you have delivered.

I won't say it's the deepest game ever, but it could be a lot worse -- I actually think it's kinda fun, and I love that it was co-designed by my kid!

Henge

One of my regular playtesters is Rick Holzgrafe, designer of Villages of Valeria, as well as a couple of Railways of the World expansions: Railways of the Western US, and Railways of North America. I have known Rick for, I don't know, probably half of my lifetime by now! We met online at BGDF.com, and in person every year at KublaCon and BGG.con for a long time -- I like to tell people that if you look at the board for Railways of the Western US, you'll see Tucson, AZ on the map where most games would use Phoenix. Rick used Tucson because that's where I live :)

Rick has been playtesting with me ever since I started playing online (so about Pandemic-time), and even before that he came on board as a co-designer on Apotheosis, a game which was signed some time ago, and may eventually yet come out under the title Usurpers (so watch for that!)

Rick has had a number of designs over the years, and we've tested them at my playtest sessions now and again. Some of them I think are pretty good, and a few I think are publish-worthy... but none so much as his latest design, Henge. I *really* like Henge.

Henge is a shared rondel game -- there's a big rondel with a single pawn, and on your turn you advance it up to 3 spaces for free, or pay to advance farther ($1/space). The actions you take are to obtain stones, carve them, install them in a henge, and attract druids to check them out. One thing I like about the game (and it's something I lobbied for in development) is that the stones must be transported to the henge before they can be installed. There are a few spaces on the board or a few effects that can make your stones arrive at the henge immediately, but mostly they advance down little transport tracks automatically whenever you advance the pawn past certain lines on the rondel. I love the idea of things going on in the background while you play -- you get a stone, then while you wait for it to transport to the henge, you stop off and get income, maybe you attract some druids, spend some time ornately carving the stone so you can install it in a premium location, whatever.

Henge also includes a little engine building, and you can concentrate more on building or more on druids (though of course you'll probably do a little of each). Once the henge is mostly complete, the game ends, and the player who did the best job wins!

Forbidden Art

Another regular playtester / old friend is Steve Carleson, and he's had some games ideas a number of times over the years, but until recently never really pursued them. Not too long ago he had an idea I thought was promising, and I offered to come on board as a co-designer, and now that game has been signed by a publisher! Don't worry, I'll be sure to post when there's information to share about that!

Steve's current game is another one I like a lot, and I think it has great potential... this one's called Forbidden Art, and in it you play as a necromancer, commanding undead minions to help you pillage powerful artifacts, distort them, and use them to bind demons. It's another rondel game (rondels all around!), this time with a personal rondel, not unlike Crusaders. Also like Crusaders, you have minions in each rondel wedge which power up your actions, and one of the actions in the game lets you move them around your board to make certain actions stronger (while making the actions they leave behind weaker)

2024-2025: A playtesting retrospective

 It's about time I posted another 2 years worth of playtesting retrospective! Let's dig right in...

2024

January

While the year started out with 1 more game of The Sixth Relam, January was dominated by 5 games of Taiko Kiri and 8 games of Goballoon racing. For TK we were doing a lot of tweaking and balancing, as well as adding a new network bonus. For Goballoon Racing I added alone effects, which were a pretty big deal.

February

Taiko Kiri and Goballoon Racing continued to get played here and there throughout February, interspersed between 4 games of Eminent Domain: Coalition, and a couple of plays of a new game Rick whipped up called Cwen 

March

March started out with another play of Taiko Kiri and Coalition (added scoring), then followed up with a chat with Rick and Steve about a new idea I had for a mono-match game -- a game with cards where any 2 cards match exactly one symbol. Then we played 4 iterations of that mono-match game, which used 7 cards and a 7-area board to drive a 2p area control game where you race to a certain score (with a little bit of engine building). We also played a couple of games of Keeping Up With The Joneses because a publisher had shown some interest in it (spoilers: that didn't go anywhere in the end) 

April

Had to cancel test sessions a few times in the first week or so of April, but got a couple chances to just chat about stuff with Rick and Steve. Then we played 2 games of Goballoon Racing, a new game of Steve's called Ship of Fools, Another of Rick's called Portsmouth, something called Love Triangle from another designer who joined us for a couple of playtest nights (though I don't think I have seen him back since then). I played my 2-player Press Your Luck microgame with the designer of Love Triangle as well, but the highlight of the month (for me) was the three games of a new and much improved version of Division of Labor!

May

A few more cancelled sessions in May due to work or the baby, but managed 4 plays of Division of Labor that month. Also played one game of Taiko Kiri with Steve, just to play it. 

June

June saw some more canceled sessions, but was pretty fruitful otherwise. We played Division of Labor with 4 and 5 players (most of the time we had been getting 3 players), I had a pitch meeting for Taiko Kiri, and had a design discussion with Rick and Steve about a new idea (False Prophet) as well as Steve's new necromancy-themed rondel game (which, spoilers, you will see again later in this post!). We also played yet another of Rick's games: Ultimus Libre, and one more game of Goballoon Racing.

July

Two of the Discord servers I'm in (KBGames and Decision Space) both did 18-card game jams at the same time, and I hadn't planned to enter anything in either one because I had plenty of games to work on. But in thinking about the jams, I came up with not one, but two new designs! One of them (Tic Tac DOH) was pretty bad, and was soon abandoned. The other (18-card Point Salad) I think was OK for a 2p, 18-card game!

I tried a simplified version of Keeping Up With The Joneses, which turned out to feel very chain-y, but TBH, I just like the regular version better so I never came back to that simpler version. 

We rounded out July with 2 more games of Division of Labor, trying some tweaks here and there, a game of Goballoon Racing one day when we didn't have a lot of time and just wanted to play something quick, and a couple of plays of a new game of Rick's about gardening.

August

August was plagued with a few more cancelled sessions -- a disturbing trend for 2024 :/

I concentrated on Division of Labor this month -- 5 plays, including an in-person game with a friend who was in town with his teenage son... They really wanted to play Crusaders with me, but I talked them into a prototype instead, a choice I regretted since Division of Labor really wasn't working all that well yet, despite all the testing it had gotten thus far.

We also played new versions of Ship of Fools from Steve, and Ultimus Libre from Rick. And for fun I had made a custom tile set for Captain Flip, a game I'd been playing a lot at the time (the custom tile set worked, but was not nearly as good as the standard one)

September

3 cancelled sessions due to me not being available in time and/or not having players, and 2 more when I was sick with COVID :( 

All I really got to play was one game of Taiko Kiri (in prep for another pitch meeting, which my notes say "went fine"), and one 5p game of Division of Labor, with a new "Candyland track" idea, which grew into the island map that's in the game now.

October

Five cancelled sessions and 4 games of Division of Labor. This month the boat map was born, which I think is a big help to that game. We tried a number of other variations as well.

November

Between me being late and Thanksgiving, I had six more cancelled sessions in November. One night, Ben, Daniel and I just chatted about Division of Labor, Press Your Luck games, and maybe some other stuff. Only games played this month were Division of Labor x2 (more variations on things), and Ultimus Libre.

December

Finishing off the year strong (/sarcasm), I had 5 more cancelled sessions in December, including a pitch meeting with a publisher because I was late! Oops! I did meet with them, and they were understanding about it, but it had to wait until after the holidays.

We did get 2 games in of Division of Labor, as well as 2 plays of a game about log driving that I was gearing up to do some freelance development on (sadly, that gig never really materialized). Steve also gave the EmDo Solo mode a try, designed by David Turczi for Rio Grande's re-release. Sadly, Rio Grande never got anywhere with the game, and ended up canceling the project, but the solo mode exists (even if unfinished) and may yet see light of day if I can find a new publisher for EmDo!

With all those canceled sessions, and no real freelance development, 2024 was a pretty poor year for me, although it did result in a cooperative mode for EmDo which I think is pretty good, Division of Labor which I think is on the right track, and some solid development on Goballoon Racing and Taiko Kiri -- the latter of which (spoilers...) has gotten signed! And I did have a few pitch meetings, which is good.

Now let's take a look at 2025:

2025

January

Unfortunately, the canceled sessions continued well into 2025, but by the end of the year they stopped happening with such frequency. Also unfortunately, it seems like I've lost a couple of my players, potentially due to the erratic schedule, or the generally late hour of my sessions.

We started out the year with a test of a proposal I had for that log driving game, as well as a chat about another consultation I was doing -- a cooperative game about civic duty.

Then we had a couple more plays of Division of Labor, one play of a new game by Rick called Tektri (more or less about building a tech tree), and even tried a first draft attempt I made at a very old game idea a friend of mine had called Velociracers... sadly, that friend passed away years ago due to cancer, which is too bad for a number of reasons -- not least of all that he had a lot of good game designs!

(My Velociracers idea ended up sucking, btw)

At the tail end of January, I tested a new version of Revampsterdam... by that time the publisher had found another designer to revamp Merchants of Amsterdam, because my attempt was so far out of scope. In retrospect I see what I was doing wrong, and I would have loved some more explicit feedback and another chance to provide what they were looking for, but alas, I don't blame them for finding another designer. So now, with their blessing, I was making some changes to the game to further disconnect it from a Merchants of Amsterdam, and will be pitching it as a separate game I'm calling Politica Galactica

In January I had that pitch meeting I'd rescheduled from last month. the publisher game the game a chance, and even met with me a 2nd time after I addressed some of their comments from the 1st play. Ultimately though they decided to pass on the game.

February

February is always a short month, which limits playtest opportunities, especially with all the cancelations I've been having. We started out the month with a play of Keeping Up With The Joneses to refamiliarize myself with the game ahead of a pitch meeting, then another play of Politica Galactica - was teaching a publisher's rep so they could play it and see if they wanted to publish it. Sady, that publisher is no more, so no luck there.

Rick and I also played his new Tektri game a couple of times (once with Bernease as well).

March

I actually got a good number of playtests in March, 3 of which were playing Keeping Up With The Joneses in person with Corbin! He likes the game, and at this point has beaten me at it a couple of times as well :) Playing with him was funny, because he focused solely on the cars... so much so that I decided to add a couple to the game for him, one of which rewards getting lots of cars :)

Looks like the only other game we played was Division of Labor with a few more changes based on the reaction of the publisher above.

April

April was dedicated to Taiko Kiri, mostly testing a sort of expansion module wed come up with. I also had 3 canceled sessions, and one night I just chatted with Rick.

We played one more game of Rick's Scarab of Ra to cap off the month.

May

Unfortunately, May had more cancellations than playtests. The only game we played was Usurpers (4 plays and a design chat with Rick), after some promising-sounding news from the publisher (the game was signed a few years ago at this point, and probably won't actually ever get published at this rate). We took the opportunity to show Steve the game, and to tweak some things that were bothering us about it.

June

June was a lot like May, only more so... 2 more games of Usurpers, and the rest of the sessions were cancelled for lack of players (and/or starting too late). I think things finally started to pick up after this month.

July

Three more game of Usurpers and 4 games of Taiko Kiri -- in both cases making changes with an eye toward publication. Taiko Kiri had been signed by this time, and they publisher is planning a theme change to "underwater steampunk." Steve and I were testing some tweaks to the tiles and setup to make sure late turn order players didn't feel screwed in the early game.

August

August was interesting because both Rick and I had new designs to try, both of which have gone through some iteration since then. After one game each of Taiko Kiri and Goballoon Racing, we played 3 successive drafts of Rick's shared rondel game Henge (which at this point, Jan 2026, I think is basically done and I love playing it), as well as a first draft of my Press-Your-Luck Rondel game about baseball, where your rondel is a little baseball diamond(!), which I'm calling Peanuts & Crackerjacks.

September

Only 1 cancelled session in September, 2 games f Peanuts & Crackerjacks, 3 of Henge, and the first couple drafts of Steve's new necromancy-themed rondel game Forbidden Art! Rondels all around lately :)

I already mentioned that I love Henge, and I've been enjoying Forbidden Art as well so far.

October

October featured one more play of Forbidden Art, 2 more of Peanuts & Crackerjacks, and 3 of Henge. I also introduced my players to a game that I designed with Corbin (!), which doesn't have a great title (I refer to it as "Truck/Boat/Plane"). It's not terribly deep, but it's not the worst game in the world, and it's co-designed by a 7 year old! 

November

November started out with one more game of Henge to try a newly scaled board for 3 players, then it was all Peanuts & Crackerjacks, all the time (5 plays). 

December

To round out the year, December started off with yet another two canceled sessions, followed by 2 plays of Goballoon Racing (testing tweaks offered by Ralph Bruhn of Hall Games, who seems to enjoy the game), Keeping Up With The joneses (just to play it), 2 plays of Henge (testing tweaks to the Henge-Bot, an AI player you can use to fill out a 4-player game), and 1 play of Peanuts & Crackerjacks (trying another version of a lineup rather than a bag of meeples to draw from).

Finally, I closed out the year with an evening spent chatting with Steve about Forbidden Arts, and a post-apocalyptic themed game idea he's mulling over.

Fewer canceled sessions than the previous year, I still felt like I missed a bunch of playtest opportunities in 2025 for one reason or another. And as for regular players, I seem to be down to just Rick and Steve for the most part, though I did have some other testers play occasionally.

As we go into 2026, I'm going to have to figure out a way to get some of my players back, or recruit some new ones. Not that I don't like hanging out with and appreciate Rick and Steve! But I'd like a more diverse (and larger) player pool for my games! Another thing I'd like to do is get more third party development gigs, that's been conspicuously missing these last two years!

One nice thing about my players designing their own games once in a while is that it gives me a chance to stretch my Developer muscles, which feels different than designing, even though there's some overlap.

The List - November 2025

Once again I find myself having neglected The List!  I think it's been about a year since I've checked in, and I probably have some updates to make!

Published Games:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG) [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Isle of Trains (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) [New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [now available from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [now available from Renegade!]

- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)

[- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan) [Final Frontier Games]]
- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Not much change here, with one notable exception... Sadly, though it raised $400k on Kickstarter, The Sixth Realm has still not seen the light of day. It turns out that Final Frontier games had to close up shop before they got the game printed -- apparently the money it raised on KS went toward finishing fulfillment of a previous project, and evidently their outstanding debts caught up with them or something. Fortunately, I did get a portion (I think it was about half, but I'm not sure) of the royatlies from kickstarter funding, as opposed to zero, but I don't have high hopes of ever seeing the rest. I hope that someday, somehow, an angel investor or somebody will come along and breath new life into the project, but until then I should probably just assume this game is dead on the vine :/

Development projects - Games I've done freelance development on

- Amun-Re expansion [Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition] - Heavy Development

- Harvest (BGG) [by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games] - Heavy Development

- Holiday In Rome (add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - Heavy Development

- Expeditions (BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation

- Fled (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

- Forelords (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

Again, nothing to see here. I haven't been doing any consulting or development lately, the last few leads I had all dried up at the beginning of the year -- possibly related to tariffs and other political nonsense, which started really causing problems in the industry (and the world) in early 2025.

Finished But Unpublished Games - in line to be published:
- Apotheosis (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

Some good news and some bad news in this category... The good news is that Taiko Kiri, a co-design with my friend Steve, has been signed by a publisher! Not sure if it's OK to say which one, but I will note that they are going to go with an underwater steampunk setting, and I think the title will be Steam Kingdom. So that's cool. On the down-side, I moved several games from this category to "Finished" But Unpublished because (a) Renegade said that Crusaders hasn't been performing well enough to justify printing the 5/6p expansion, and (b) while I had signed Eminent Domain with Rio Grande a few years ago, and they were planning on doing the ancillary products (Eminent Domain Origins, Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory) as well, but all that fell through. I'm looking for another publisher interested in picking up the EmDo line, or at least reprinting the base game and expansions (maybe in a Big Box product)

Currently Pitching Games - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't actively been doing much of anything lately!):

- Sails & Sorcery (Co-Design with Michael Mindes) [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

- Alter Ego (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Dice Works (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Suburban Sprawl [pitching to publishers]

- Let's Go Balloon Racing [pitching to publishers]

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam")

- Division of Labor (FKA I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement)

 So, the good news here is that I promoted Taiko Kiri, since it was signed by a publisher! Other than that, while I've had a few pitch meetings here and there, and gotten a little publisher interest in a few of these games, so far nothing more has come of it. I have added Division of Labor and Politica Galactica to this category -- I had a couple promising meetings about Division of Labor, but ultimately they led nowhere (though they did inspire some improvements to the game). I really messed up with "Revampsterdam" -- did not provide what the publisher was looking for at all. I felt a little bad that they didn't sort of just say that and give me a chance to fix it, but I don't really blame them for finding someone else to get them what they were really after. But now I have this design that's very much not Merchants of Amsterdam, which I can pitch to my heart's content. 

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022) [pitching to publishers]

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

It hurt a little bit to demote the Crusaders expansions and EmDo games to this category. I also moved the Worker Placement Microgame here as well, I just don't think it's very good -- it's nice to have done it, but I don't really think it's worth pitching as it's not very publishable.

Current Active Designs - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

- Truck, Boat, Plane

The only games I've been testing or working on lately have been Henge and Forbidden Arts, each by one of my two biggest playtesters, and two new game of my own. Peanuts & Crackerjacks was meant to be a sort of Press-Your-Luck rondel game about managing a baseball team where your personal rondel is a baseball diamond. I'm not sure it really counts as a rondel though, now it's got Yahtzee as it's driving mechanism. It's coming along I guess, though I'm not super thrilled with it. Truck, Boat, Plane is a cute little project - a game I designed with my 7yo son! And it seems not-terrible! It's got dome roll and move / dice drafting, and pick-up/deliver dynamics.

Everything else in this category either got bumped up to Currently Pitching, or demoted to the back burner. 

Backburnered Designs - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [solo mode]

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Joan of Arc

- Kingdom Realms (KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022)

- 18-card Point Salad (KBGames 18-card game jam entry, July 2024)

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

Promising Recent ideas:
- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

- Hanabi Wonders [Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]

- Stable Genius ["Wingspan of Horses"]

- Eminent Domain: Legacy [campaign mode]

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [Abandoned]

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge [Abandoned]

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere] [Abandoned]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown] [Abandoned]

- Dynasty [I still think this one has potential] [Abandoned]

Misc and Really Old Stuff - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

- Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

Truck, Boat, Plane... a pickup-deliver game?

Recently Corbin was home from school due to parent-teacher conferences, so we spent some time together, and I suggested the possibility of making a game together. To my surprise, he seemed excited to try that, so I prompted him with some questions to see what kind of game we should try to make. He came up with an idea to "roll dice to move around and get stuff" with a truck, a boat, and a plane. I made some suggestions, and we talked about it, and before you know it, we were scrounging up pieces for a prototype!

Game design with the kiddo

I suggested a board with islands connected by bridges, where the trucks would drive around on the islands, the boats would go in the water, and the planes would fly wherever. Corbin wanted to sell the stuff, so I suggested there be a warehouse, a dock, and an airport on each island, as well as a bunch of cubes (color coded with the islands). If you land your vehicle on a cube, you pick it up, and if you land your vehicle on the right type of building, then you deliver cubes of that color to it. In order to make use of the dice, I started off with the suggestion that on your tun, you roll 3 dice and assign one to each of your vehicles, moving that vehicle that number of spaces. But just as we were about to playtest the game for the first time, I had an epiphany -- why not roll 6 dice and then take turns drafting them one at a time! So, you draft a die and place it on, say, your plane. Move your plane that number of spaces, maybe you pick up a cube, maybe you land at an airport and drop some cubes off. Either way, the plane has a die on it now and can't move again this round.

In the end, we ended up with player boards showing our trucks, boats, and planes. Each can hold a certain number of cubes, and there are 4 colors of cubes scattered around the board:

(I think maybe the cargo holds should go down to 4/3/2)

The top row of course indicates which vehicle is which. The next row is the vehicles' carrying capacity. If full, you can't pick up more cubes. When landing at the appropriate building, you slide all cubes of that color down into the bottom row, where they count as having been delivered and are worth points.

The game ends when either the cubes on the board run out, or any single player delivers "enough" with each of their vehicles. Once any player has delivered 3 (4?) or more cubes with each vehicle, finish the round and count your points:

1 point for each delivered cube
2 points for each set of 1-of-each-cube delivered
1 point for each 2 cubes remaining in your vehicles 

Part way through the playtest I noted that there are times when you might really want to modify your die roll, so it would be neat to have a way to do that. We decided to say that you could discard a delivered cube from a column to +/-1 a die assigned to that vehicle. That's a pretty steep cost, but based on the bonus scoring for sets, there are times when it would be worth it to pay that price.

So, how did it go?

To my surprise, the game worked pretty well, was even kinda fun! Certainly at least feels like it's got some potential. We need a title for it -- we can't think of anything yet. Feel free to leave suggestions in he comments :)

The game reminds me of an old game from 2003 called Logistico. In Logistico, you have a truck, a boat, and a plane, and you need to coordinate their movements to deliver items across the board. I like pickup/deliver games (more than most apparently), and I like logistical puzzles in general, so I thought I'd really dig that game. I don't recall all the details, but I remember it being frustrating and kind of tedious to get things done, and in the end, I was pretty disappointed.

This game on the other hand is very simple, you count some spaces, pick up some cubes, drop them off where they go... and if you put a little planning into it, you can pick up matching cubes with a single vehicle and drop them off more efficiently. It bugs me a little bit that a 4 and a 2 can get you to the same space, but maybe that's fine - just means nearby cubes are more accessible than more distant ones.

Playtests, blocking, and upgrades

In addition to having played a few games of this with Corbin, I made a TTS mod of it and played it with 2 of my regular playtesters. One thing that came up which I hadn't really seen before was blocking. We had a rule that vehicles couldn't share a space, mostly because the physical prototype board is small, and the grid spaces are small, so the pieces wouldn't really fit. With only 2 players, the idea of blocking didn't come up much, but with 3 players it was more common incidentally, and an emergent bit of gameplay was that someone intentionally blocked another player from delivering by sitting on an airport or whatever, and it was kind of interesting! I had warned the players that this was not going to be an Earth-shattering game, but they both said they kinda liked it!  

One thing I was jonesing for after a couple of plays was something to sort of power up the vehicles, like tech upgrades ("your plane can move diagonally") or one-time (or permanent?) boosts ("discard this card to +/-1 to the die"). So I tried making a little set of cards for each vehicle... when you make a delivery with a vehicle, you draw a card for that vehicle, and it gives you some permanent or 1-time benefit for later:

Your plane can move diagonally
Your truck can move over a bridge for 1 movement
Your boat can -1 its die
Discard this card to transfer a cube to another vehicle (thematically weird, but whatever)
Discard this card to move another vehicle this turn instead of this one
Discard this card to +/-1 the die this turn (maybe this should be permanent)

So far I like the idea of the cards, but some of them probably need editing.

It was fun to make a game with Corbin, and I love that it's not that bad! If you'd like to try it, post a comment down below and I'll make some PnP files or something - you just need like 56 cubes (14 in each of 4 colors), an 8x8 grid, the player boards (and cards) I can provide, and 3 unique movers for each player (a truck, a boat, and a plane).

Peanuts and Crackerjacks

"Take me out to the ball game,

Take me out with the crowd.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,

I don't care if I never get back,

Let me root, root, root for the home team,

If they don't win it's a shame.

For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,

At the old ball game."

Let me begin by saying that I am NOT a baseball fan. I think it's a boring game to watch and even more boring sport to play. I really have no investment in it, no nostalgia... I didn't grow up with my old man dragging me to home games, of choking down stadium hot dogs, or anything like that. [Edit: actually, when I was a kid, they were filming an episode of a TV show at a local stadium, and my family went help fill it up with extras. My sister and I went down and sat on top of the dugout, and were just barely visible on TV!] But I recognize that, like it or not, as America's Pastime many people know baseball -- it's kind of ubiquitous in American culture. Phrases like "Three strikes and you're out," "bottom of the 9th," and "swing and a miss!" are used all the time, in many contexts. There's no question that Baseball is recognizable, and as such it might make a nicely recognizable theme for a game.

I recently noticed that a baseball diamond (with runners rounding the bases) looks an awful lot like one of my favorite boardgame mechanisms: a rondel. So of course, I started thinking about how a baseball inspired rondel could drive a game.... I came up with some ideas, but of course they all involved having various actions that you'd perform as you get runners on base, and the obvious question became "what a these actions? What is it you're trying to do?" 

As a side note, I would like to refer to a baseball diamond-inspired rondel as a "Home Rundel."  I'd also like to say I thought of that myself, but alas I did not, someone on the Internet said it. But I digress... 

Using a Home Rundel for action selection to play a game of baseball doesn't make a lot of sense, so it would have to be something else. It could be some Civ-style game, or something similarly generic, but that's so distinct from the baseball inspired mechanism, it didn't make sense to me either. What I landed on I think makes a lot of sense: managing a baseball team. 

So  that's what I've been thinking about for the last month or so... A game about managing a baseball team over the course of a season (like Envelopes of Cash, Blood Bowl Team Manager, or Baseball Highlights 2045 perhaps), driven by a main mechanism that should evoke baseball pretty well, a rondel variant that is a baseball diamond! 

Back In Time -- The First Draft

Here's what I had for a first draft (this was written about a month ago):

First off, your "Home Rundel" has actions at the 4 bases:

1st base: player management (hire runners, cut runners, etc)

2nd base: income management (get money, fans, and money/fan income)

3rd base: personnel management (hire coaches, All-stars, etc)

Home: score runs

In addition to your personal rondel/baseball diamond, you have a bag of meeples in various colors representing the players on your team. Each turn you draw one and add it to your rondel at home plate. Then you decide whether you want to go for a single, double, triple, or home run (move 1, 2, 3, or 4 spaces on the rondel), where the farther you move, the more strikes/outs you risk incurring. Finally, you move all your runners 1/2/3/4 spaces (whatever you chose), and then resolve the actions at bases where you have runners. Actions are color coded, and if the runner matches the action's color, you get a stronger version of it. You also get the stronger version of the action for the player who's "at bat" this turn, whether it matches color or not, which I hope might encourage the riskier plays. 

You take turns until you collect 9 strikes (3 outs), then your round is over, and you record your runs for the round. I'm debating the idea that in a multiplayer game, the first player to get 3 outs triggers round end, and everyone else gets 1 last turn to bring their runners home - that might put a time pressure on players similar to Pirates of Maricaibo (I've been playing that a bit lately). I think each round you'll play in a different city, and record your runs in that city. There could be a bonus of some kind for the player with the most runs in each city. 

I think it'd be cool if the winner of the game is simply the player who gets the most runs in the final round (I've seen a similar dynamic in Colosseum for example). Prior rounds would be about building up an engine, or winning bonuses towards that final round.

I have assembled a digital prototype on TTS, and hope to try a proof of concept of this game tonight!

Fast Forward -- The Latest Version

... I DID get a chance to playtest a proof of concept for this game. We played 1 round, it took about hour I think, and it had some issues. For one thing, choosing which base you want to get to and then rolling dice to see how many outs you get does *not* feel like baseball at all. I had thought that since it was the action selection mechanism, you needed to be able to choose your action, even if some actions took on more risk than others. But ultimately I think that idea was misguided, if for no other reason than it just doesn't feel right.

Side note: In an effort to get AI to create an image I could use for the player board, I described the game (and the baseball diamond rondel), and it came up with an incorrect vision (surprise surprise), but one that might be interesting... it put a rondel pawn on the baseball diamond, as if you would move around the diamond like a rondel rather than like a runner playing baseball. Now that's not at all what I had in mind, if using a baseball diamond, why not have the runners be the rondel pawns? However, it might not be the worst idea in the world -- the baseball diamond could act as both a rondel (in the usual sense), as well as a base path for runners, whose position (and color) could still matter for the actions in the game (like, maybe an action is stronger if there's a runner there, and stronger still if they match color, for example)

But I digress... that's not the way I decided to go. No, my next format was a Yahtzee-style mechanism, where you roll and re-roll dice, trying to maximize bases run while minimizing strikes or outs. This just sounds right to me, and the idea of a press-your-luck rondel is an interesting twist.

Really it's less of a rondel, and more of just a PYL/Yahtzee mechanic, but we'll call it "rondel adjacent"

So a few days later we tried again, with a Yahtzee mechanism and right away it felt better. We played 1 round again, and it still took about an hour I think, which is too long if the game is to last 3 or 4 rounds. I still had each runner doing an action at their base, and there were still some problems with the distribution of bases and strikes on the dice. But the Yahtzee format was promising!

The next thing I plan to try is this... Yahtzee again, but rather than all of your runners doing actions, only the batter will do actions, and they'll do 1 action per base they get to. So the more you press your luck to run bases, the more actions you stand to do, but of course the more strikes/outs you may suffer.

It occurred to me that I wanted players to be sitting on 2 strikes or whatever and still be able to potentially get a home run (4 bases), so I thought 6 dice might be a good number. When I tried a few rolls with dice bearing 1 bad face (OUT) and 1 good face (BASE), it did not seem like I was getting enough outs, but with 2 OUT faces it seems like too many. My latest idea (haven't tried it yet) is to make a sort of "1/2 out" face -- I saw something like this in the Fox Experiment: it's basically a face where if 2 of them come up, you lock one of them as an OUT, but if only 1 does, then it's nothing. In the meantime, I've added Coins and Balls to the die faces, and decided that you gain those immediately upon rolling them, you don't have to lock them in. This way, the more you roll, the more "income" you stand to get, and getting coins and balls won't stop you from rolling outs or bases. If you collect 4 balls, then you turn them in for a WALK token, which you can spend any time to lock an unlocked die as a BASE.

The Rest of the Game

The first draft, described above, didn't seem to have potent or interesting enough actions, or enough options for a player. So I went back to the drawing board and decided to take some inspiration from a game that I know does work. I've said before that all I can do is design Eminent Domain over and over again, so I considered the actions from that game (Survey, Warfare, Colonize, Produce, Trade, and Research), and thought "what if I put 2 of those on each base?" In Eminent Domain, there are multiple strategic paths, from planet flipping, to trading resources, to doing lots of research, and they cross pollinate as well (you need to do some planet flipping no matter what, and at least a little Research can help any strategy, but do you go whole hog into flipping planets? Or do you pivot to trade once you have about 4 resource slots? Do you just get a level 2 tech card that supports your strategy? Or do you pile on the tech for lots of stronger actions and some bigger late game points? Those are interesting decisions, and I figured if I use those actions, then this game could have similar paths to victory. 

Then I tried to translate the meaning of each action to this game. Here's what I am currently looking at, though I'm not sure if it'll work well yet:

1st base:
"Produce": Gain $1 per MVP on your team (AKA gray meeples in your team bag) -- this could be called Income
"Survey": Gain one meeple from the display, or draw one at random from the bag, or cut a player (remove them from your team). Meeples are color coded so they're "good at" one of the actions in the game, giving you a better version of that action -- this could be called Roster

2nd base:
"Warfare": Pay $5 to gain an MVP (gray meeple) -- this could be called Recruit?
"Colonize": Advance a Training track on your player board. When you get to the end, gain an MVP (gray meeple) or an MVP card (giving all your MVPs an ability) -- this could be called Training

3rd base:
"Trade": Pay Money to gain a card that helps you score runs or fans - this could be called Practice maybe?
"Research": Gain a card that gives you some ability, maybe specific to one particular color/action -- this could be called Staffing (hiring coaches and stuff) perhaps

The idea is that you'd manage your roster in order to have meeples that are good at the actions you want to specialize in, then you'd either try to make lots of money and try to turn that into runs and fans, or you'd get synergistic abilities that will allow you to avoid outs and score more runs, etc. For example, you might get some abilities that help you get 4 bases in a turn and mitigate your Outs, load up the bases, then hit a grand slam home run for a big chunk of runs and fans... something like that

So far I've only been doing proof of concept testing on this game, if and when I can get the Yahtzee mechanism working right, I'll start to worry more about the rest of the game.