Gemini still has treasures.

an older GDC talk about 1 page design documents as opposed to design bibles, etc. – generally relevant to anyone who has to write spec./req. documentation, I think.

A talk from 1992 that posits an alternative design philosophy to copilots and agents.

Matt Leacock just posted his difficulty ideal on BGG.

Design the game such that:
if a group of people appropriately self-selects a well-defined difficulty setting,
that their odds of success will be about 50/50,

A good follow up to Ink and Switch’s Local First Software, https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

This blog post records some thoughts on how to architect a real-time collaborative app when you do have a central server.

Free PCB Design Software & Tools Online

Over the last year or two, I’ve seen an increasing numbers of these folks pop up. Most from a small set of companies like Vercel, Linear, The Browser Company and Replit, known for their attention to interface design detail and slick product interactions, who are clearly encouraging and cultivating design-engineer hybrids.

Here is another thread slagging PWL.

To me, the only alternative to PWL is to have the DM serve up a string of encounters that’s one-by-one “balanced” against the party at that level. Meaning that it’s in some way the DM’s fault if the party loses (overly easily wins). It’s a playstyle with some pros and cons.

The fun with PWL is that you can have a more exploratory type of game world where the world is what it is and the monsters in that world are what they are and you run into them or you run from them. It can be set up such that more distant = more dangerous, but monsters are only balanced relative each other, not the party“. That kind of game is my jam. It also has some pros and cons.

Main point is that PWL, or the gist behind PWL, isn’t just all bad, always bad, misguided, 5e-wannabee stuff. There is an actual point to it.

A frustrating thread about PF’s “Proficiency Without Level” variant because the upvoted commenters (who are slagging the variant) don’t address the reason for the variant, which is to enable more exploratory, less linear/​“curated”/​pathy play.

I’m grateful Paizo made the variant and put it in their book. I hear people say the math is a li’l off(…?) but this variant is almost necessary for play that stretches across larger locations. The traditional towns/overworlds/dungeons setups.

I’ve been working on Kinopio for over 4 years now. It’s felt more like building a house, piling up little bricks and wood planks, just a little bit each day. Except that, this house is never finished.

What this story tells us is that software has consequences. It’s easy to look at a missile guidance system or High Frequency Trading and say “that’s unethical!”, but far more mundane software performing far more mundane tasks can also have dangerous or even lethal failure modes.

A collection of bitmap fonts for Playdate , the tiny handheld game system from Panic

Getting a perfect accessibility score for on-screen interfaces is a difficult task that requires a separate coordinated effort from the whole product team, a responsible approach from the product’s owner, and, ideally, a dedicated professional well-versed in a11y. However, a solid foundation for accessibility can be laid by a single person at the very early stage of a product.