my GAME design story
Hello, my name is James and I love playing and designing tabletop games!
I created my first game in 1984 when I was just 12 years old. It was a simple professional wrestling roleplaying game that used a d20 for wrestling moves, a d6 for pin attempts, and graph paper to keep track of time limits. I still have the original pages of rules that I produced on my type writer!
Over the years, I have dabbled quite a bit in game design, mostly focusing my efforts on creating supplemental rules for existing roleplaying games. I did this particularly for The One Ring Roleplaying Game designed by Francesco Nepitello, which led to the great honor of creating an expanded index for the core rules and eventually writing the opening adventure, Nightmares of Angmar, published in a game book called Ruins of the North by Cubicle7 Games.
Sometime around 2015, my wife was at a yard sale and came across an intriguing roleplaying game in a thick red box called DragonRaid. The box said it was an “Adventure Learning System” and its purpose was “Building Warriors for Spiritual Battle.” It looked outdated by modern standards, so I stuck it on my shelf without really taking a look. Years later, when I finally gave it a read, I discovered that it was published in 1984. I had never heard of it before, but I thought it was pretty innovative, not just another version of Dungeons & Dragons, like so many others.
I tracked down the new owner, award winning Christian author, James R. Hannibal, who was given the task of reviving it. To make a long story short, he invited me into the process and we began redesigning DragonRaid into a game called Lightraiders. We did this for several years, and I was grateful for the experience, but eventually the work became too much for me considering all my other duties in life, so I bowed out. However, he pressed on and published the work in 2024. You can find it for sale at lightraiders.com (WARNING: High security settings. You may have to clear caches before the site will let you in). My part of the work was done out of love, so I make no royalties, but if you’re interested in how Christian discipleship and roleplaying games can come together in a cool way, please check it out, along with the novels James R. Hannibal has written to build out the world of the Lightraiders.
In October, 2024, I took a team to Barcelona, Spain to support the International Church of Barcelona and help them with demolition work. In my room one day, I was inspired to revisit a board game idea that had been swimming in my head for a long time. I wanted to create something where players could race around the game board to reach various locations, inspired by the children’s Disney Magic Kingdom Game, but with more complexity. And, I wanted the theme to be sci-fi with a game board that had rotating planets. I began drawing a game board and writing concepts. Everything seemed to flow out of me quickly, and this is what led to the creation of Solar Hunters.
After many playtests, blind playtesting, and developments (involving way too many cards being printed and cut, over-and-over again), I finally decided to prepare all the game files for publishing using The Game Crafter, a Wisconsin-based company that provides an on-demand platform for designing, printing, and selling custom board games and tabletop components in small or single-batch runs, but I am still deciding whether this is the wisest strategy or not, so stay tuned!
TOP 3 Future Games
After Solar Hunters, here are my top 3 projects and their stages of development:
1 — CLOAK & DRAGON
This is a two-player, hidden movement game involving a Hero wearing a cloak of invisibility and a Dragon guarding his stolen treasures. The game was birthed in December of 2020, when I was sick with Covid and re-reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Although originally designed to be a licensed product, that dream fell-through and I was resigned to keep it as my own personal home game, until one day I realized, I love this game too much not to share it!
I went back to designing and came up with an original story and reworked some major elements of the game while keeping the object of the game alive, which is what makes the game so much fun. I feel that the game works even better now with its own story, so I am very happy about that.
Cloak & Dragon uses an action card deck for each player. The cards they draw represent the actions avaiable to them. Players simultaneously choose a card and the player with the highest revealed initiative completes their action first.
The hero enters the dragon’s chamber invisible, keeping track of their movements on a secret log. Their job is to search the chamber, which is filled with 60 treasure tiles, for the treasures that have been requested by the King’s Court. These are determined before the game begins, by randomly drawing request cards from the request deck.
The object of the game is for the hero player to search and find their specific requests and escape with them before the Dragon player can destroy them by flame, smoke, claw, or bite. Or, by moving the Dragon’s Fury marker to its highest level.
Victory in Cloak & Dragon requires a combination of wits and luck. Each card includes a piece of the backstory for the game. When put together, all 60 cards tell the complete backstory.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT: After many playtests, I have decided to redesign the game board to shrink it down. I am also working on the rulebook and components.
2 — DINO EXTINCTION
Out of the box, this is a two-player game, but I am working on solo rules and expansion rules for up to 5 players by using additional player decks. My inspiration for this game came from the Span series of games by Stonemaier Games, which my wife and I absolutely love. I seriously dreamt about pitching this game to them. However, after watching videos from the owner, Jamie, I realized they already made a choice between dinosaurs and dragons, and they decided to go with dragons. He has also mentioned several times that he thinks the trilogy of Spans is complete.
Considering this, I decided to think about how I could make my ideas even more distinct from a Span game, similar to the way Prospero Hall did for Managerie, a game published by Moose Games, which focuses on collecting insects.
Here are some major differences when compared to the Span games:
First, each player has their own deck of dino cards that only they can use, rather than drawing cards from a common deck.
Second, dino cards are played onto a shared set of jumbo habitat cards (land and sea) in the center of the table rather than onto habitat spaces on individual player mats. This allows for player interactions that do not exist in a Span game.
Third, cards do not have a cost to play. Every turn you will play one dino card from your hand, but you must play it strategically to ensure that your dinos dominate the most and largest stacks by the end of the game and that you also create herds and packs. A card that cannot be played onto a habitat card must be played onto your fossil pile and is worth only 1 point.
Fourth, even though there are dinosaur eggs in the game, they are gained and used differently than eggs in a Span game. Eggs aren’t placed on dino cards, but in front of you. An egg may be discarded using a Hatch action to draw and play an additional card on your turn. Eggs can also be kept for 2 points each at the end of the game.
Fifth, at the end of every round, meteors randomly hit three habitat cards by rolling a die. All dinos on those cards go extinct and are frozen in place, The habitat cards are flipped over onto top of any dino cards that were on them, and no more cards can be played there. This narrows your choices for future card plays and increases strategic thinking.
Sixth, carnivores and herbivores may be able to stack on top of each other by following specific rules for consuming, trampling, and forming packs and herds.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT: I am still playtesting and creating all the files for The Game Crafter, including the rulebook. It’s getting very close though!
3 — GUARDIAN ANGEL GAME BOOK
This is a unique, faith-based, solo game similar to a choose your own adventure book, and even more like a Lone Wolf style gamebook. Before playing, you first create a character named Nasarel, a guardian angel assigned to protect the life of Jamie Black. As the story unfolds, you make choices and roll dice to determine the outcomes. Between chapters, you may upgrade your character’s stats, gifts, and wargear.
If you’ve ever wanted to battle and defeat demons, you might want to check this out when it’s complete. Even though the game is faith-based, I am really hoping that anyone can enjoy playing through.
My plan is for the game to come in a box that includes a perfect bound gamebook, some 6-sided dice, and character sheets. I might add some cards too that serve as player aids. Not sure yet. We will see!
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT: I expect the game book to land somewhere around 120-140 pages and I have written about 50% so far.
