Author Archives: randall

Most deck-building games rely on competition for cards and victory to keep the action moving. Stalling on your turn in a competitive deck-building game is death. Heck, there’s even a mini-cottage industry commemorating Dominion’s fail-by-1 outcome of 7 coins. As a cooperative deck-building game, Shadowrun: Crossfire has a much more direct problem with stalling. Players [...]

There is nothing that can make a fantastical setting feel more immersive than a really good setting shot. This is an incredibly effective way to help viewers instantly imagine what the world looks like, and it works very quickly. Whether it’s a simple camera shot showing the Ark of the Covenant being carted away into [...]

Brawls erupt on the streets of Seattle, blood spills into the gutters and bullets are almost as common as rain. This is the world of Sprawl Gangers. When designing the game, I wanted to add more depth to the battlefield than just relying on different weapons and terrain. To give players more interesting options during [...]

In a previous article on Teamwork in Shadowrun: Crossfire, I wrote briefly about the damage track on each obstacle. In this article I’ll expand on that topic by telling you the story of how we got there. The early versions of the game were vastly different from the final design. The main elements that survived [...]