Close Encounters – Encounter Table Games

The Infantry Trilemma

There’ll be another update out shortly to discuss the state of the game and progress towards the various goals I’ve set for the year. In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at one of the final tweaks I’ve made to the squad leaders expansion.

The State of the Game – January 2023

Just like last year, this post is a bit of a retrospective on what got achieved in the previous year. I’ll also engage in some goal-setting for the year to come. What has been and will be happening with Close Encounters? Funny you should ask…

Status Report – November 2022

The end of the year is approaching, so it’s time to assess progress towards the goals I set at the start. I’ll also include a general progress report on the things I’ve been working on. How’s it looking? Well… the short answer is ‘patchy’. For the longer answer, read on.

Status Report – August 2022

We’re about two thirds of the way through the year, and at my day job that’s about the stage where we would take stock and see if we were on track to achieve our goals for the meeting or project or whatever it is. So, what’s the prognosis?

Progress Report – June 2022

Normally I drop a quick update every other month to say what I’m working on. This time, however, progress has been substantial enough that I feel it’s more appropriate to talk about everything that’s been achieved. Interested? Well, here’s the situation…

Work in Progress – April 2022

Another day, another update! Gather round, and I’ll tell you how things are shaping up. Short version? Not badly, but not as well as I’d like.

Work in Progress – February 2022

Welp, we’re into the new year, and that means it’s time for a sitrep on what’s afoot. In my last post I talked about some of my goals for the coming year. The scaling up is actually pretty boring to talk about – it’s mainly a set of emails, online conversations, and so on – so unless and until I have something substantive to report about that, I won’t bore you with it. Instead, let’s talk about the two main strands of development work that are going on.

Work in Progress – December 2021

We’re getting close to the end of the year! In January I’ll do a ‘state of the game’ update, like I did this year, but for now let’s look at what I’ve been working recently.

View From the Tabletop: Equipment

I’ve taken a break from the higher-priority expansion work and switched focus to equipment. Partly this is so that I can leave the other stuff for my subconscious to go over, partly it’s so that I can see if adding equipment will break anything I’ve already done. Mostly, though, it’s so that I don’t burn out by focusing on one topic for too long. Burnout is a real thing, and I find changing the task I’m doing can help with preventing it. I also thought it might be interesting to get a sort of snapshot view of part of the playtesting process.

The Playtesting Conflict

Getting the most value out of playtests is a problem when designing a game. Here’s how the problem presents itself to me, and how I’m trying to deal with it.