iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

3) Your mental model of this game is not just its current iteration; it’s all the iterations it’s ever been. Rules changed, actions got different names, components got added or removed. It's easy to miss relics of old versions in your rules, because to you those things don’t seem out of place.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

2) At the same time, you have deeper knowledge of your game’s inner workings than anyone playing it will ever need. A lot of what is important to you as the designer, the players don’t need to know. Keeping your explanations simple is a major challenge when every little detail feels important.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I realised that as designers, we are at a unique disadvantage when writing rules for our own games. For three reasons: 1) You’re the only person in the world who can't experience what it’s like to learn your game. You can’t experience which rules are confusing, or which sections need examples.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 16h

there was this really good video game that was Scrabble meets Fortnite and I guess it never got fully released and that’s sad.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 18h

You being a double head?

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

I wonder if it’ll dwindle…

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

There is all kinds of weird entanglement in a good way. Will need four players who know both trick taking and cribbage, fortunately I’m acquainted with folks like that.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

I just tried this against myself and I think it’s something. Obvious answer is to score on a cribbage board. Need to figure out if may follow, must follow, or may trump — and contingent on that, whether flushes are allowed. Then I think probably can try it with some humans.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

I don’t know what the appropriate number of decks of playing cards on your desk is, but 7 is probably 6 more than I really need.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

I think if not may follow then hand sizes much smaller than full deck so chance of off suiting high from early on

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

Might work, might not, might have to try it!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 19h

Silly idea I had yesterday that won’t leave my head: Partnership may follow trick taker where the trick winner scores the trick as though it was a cribbage hand

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City Hare Studio 🔜 Essen SPIEL 2026 @cityhare.studio · 20h

The Fivedeck is a 55 card five suited deck of disjoint ranks: Five numbers and five letters, similar to how a standard deck has nine numbers and four letters. Added on top of this is a special O card which doubles as a zero and can be used to link the two halves together.

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City Hare Studio 🔜 Essen SPIEL 2026 @cityhare.studio · 20h

The Tricolor deck is a triangle graph turned into a deck of cards. Each card adds up to 7, but bears different ratios of the three suits printed on it. This one doesn't yet have any games designed for it. But that's only a matter of time.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 20h

”I’m bad at games.” We all are. That’s why games work at all.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 21h

I wonder if you could make a plastic bag of water thin enough to work as a playing card? I ask because I think it would be funny to have playing cards where the pips were free floating and would fall down to the bottom edge when held up

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 21h

Keep scrolling, I hear the really good posts are juuuust down there 👇

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 21h

People use analog in weird ways and have for a long time. A lot of people use it to mean non-electrical, which isn’t remotely it, since most things that I would consider analog are electrical. it is a nothing word used now to mean “not that but the other”

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 23h

Is this the one everyone says is extremely good?

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 23h

I am in the private alpha of this because I know a guy and I am *obsessed*. I am gonna play so much of this on BGA when it opens up.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

I hate to break it to you, but it certainly will get cheaper. Already new models are hitting with comparable performance and 100x to 1000x cheaper. This stuff is only going to get easier to do.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

I did write these rules already, so I’m guessing I am not “writing” in layout so much as editing in layout, but it’s all new to me regardless

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Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

YOU NEED MORE POTATOES THIS WEATHER — Claude Atkinson (for the British Potato Marketing Board), 1930s

A poster featuring an image of a plate of baked potatoes radiating a Heavenly light. underneath, a couple of line drawings of chefs in tuques respond with delight

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

I don’t want to read a story an LLM generated because an LLM has nothing to say. It’s just noise, no signal. Like watching static on a screen; sometimes it might kind of look like something, but it’s a transient illusion. there’s human connection embedded in so many things I had taken for granted.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

in 2016, I was excited by the prospect of [what we now call] generative AI: infinite music to my tastes, a new book exactly like the books I loved whenever I wanted, a video game world that was infinite and infinitely detailed. I was so wrong. It turns out authorship, intent really matters to me.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

I've written game rules before. I wouldn't say I'm great at it, but I've done it. For the first time, I'm having to *lay out* rules instead, and it is a surprisingly different process.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

wow! I just read up on Northern Pacific and this looks like a fascinating little distilled thing and not at ALL what my impression was from the presentation of it. I have skipped past learning more about this game at least a dozen times based on that impression.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

preschooler, innocently as we're all scooping black beans onto our dinner plates: "these beans look like guinea pig poop!"

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

Perseverance. I want to spell it perserverance and the only way I can get it right is to say per-severance to myself

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Marc G 🪩🐌 @marcgwiz.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

From the same people who brought you Yahtzee: the dice game!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Shocked to learn they are churning out new seasons of Futurama. Who is this for? They had a good run, got brought back and somehow managed to end with a perfect finale, ”Meanwhile”. Who is watching new new Futurama? I didn’t even know they existed before last night. I watched one, it was bad.

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Zach Hoekstra @zhoekstra.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Jokes on you, my rules are so poorly written that no one could possibly make a vibe coded online app out of it. Take that future!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Introducing… Chess: Duel (tm) All the excitement of Chess, but with only two players!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh that is good to know!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

free kids meals at grocery store?? is this qf? Looks a bit like a qf. i have kids and must know more!

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

for folks who have taken Voting 301 class

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

I know what it means but “Advanced Voting” always sounds like it’s for next level voters, to me

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Marceline is Racing Dinos @marcelineleiman.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I fear we’re ignoring the reality that there are people who think it’s a fine idea to throw our rulebooks into an LLM and have it spit out a vibe-coded version of our games Players will take advantage of opportunities to “try the game” and form their opinions based on these… things

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Codenames except with a grid of 25 random objects taken from around the house

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Is this a show or an app version? Sounds like the latter?

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Blue Lagoon is kind of a light weight version of Brass, from a certain perspective.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Interesting to see what the top games with weight <2.0 are. Crokinole is #1 boardgamegeek.com/search/board...

boardgamegeek.com

BoardGameGeek | Gaming Unplugged Since 2000

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh wait I just checked and it looks like while you can get a weight column you can’t get a player range column in collection view. That’s nuts. “Which of my games can I play with 3 players?” Seems like a hugely normal request that is unsupported without 3rd party tools

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Huh! I had no idea that functionality wasn’t in the rankings. You can do all that in the advanced search — well, you can filter by weight or player count. I think it’s probably only in the Collection view that you can add them as columns

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

true story for many, but at the same time: new players can like heavy games. There’s no path you have to take. Sometimes this works out.

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

listening to the decision space episode about an infamous traffic and economic games, and one thing is clear: Cole Wehrle is a real head, knows his stuff for sure and loves games

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Z @dxdydz.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

CD-RWs were a pretty cool technology

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