The A to Z of Board Games – D
In this series of articles we are taking a look at the ABCs… Of board games! An opportunity to explore random corners of the board game hobby, to highlight influential games, designers, concepts, and maybe to dig up the odd surprise here and there. This time we are diving into the Ds! You can find previous entries here.
Daily Magic Games – Publisher
A relatively new publisher, Daily Magic Games have made a name for themselves on Kickstarter with a collection of well regarded card based games, especially those based in their Valeria setting. Expect their Kickstarters to feature very nice art and, at least so far, relatively accessible gameplay.
Rob Daviau – Designer
Rob Daviau was an in-house designer for none other than toy giant Hasbro when he invented a whole new game genre with Risk Legacy. Since then he has gone solo to further explore the Legacy system with Pandemic: Legacy and Seafall, as well as to found his own publishing house, Restoration Games, to bring classic board games into the 21st Century with all the benefits of modern design principles.
Deck of Cards – Component
The humble deck of cards is an essential element in so very many games. From the classic 52 card deck, to sprawling collectible card games, to euro game puzzles driven by a small hand of action cards, the versatility of a deck of cards and the plethora of things that can be printed on them has seen a hand of cards and a shuffled deck come to dominate board gaming. I for one am happy with our thin cardboard overlords. At least until we discard them!
Deck Building/Dominion – Mechanism/Game
Deck building is a mechanic taken from collectible card games in which you choose a set of cards from the game to put together into a deck, before you meet up and actually play the game. In 2008 Dominion was released and made a game solely about building a deck from a shared selection of cards, where it’s less about the end result, as it is about how your deck evolves over time. This deck building mechanism was then used in a huge range of games, from Legendary to Star Realms to Great Western Trail. It remains one of my favourite mechanisms.
Julian Delval – Artist
Julian Delval is a prolific artist in board gaming responsible for some of the hobby’s most well known games from yesteryear. Castles of Burgundy, Memoir 44, Ticket to Ride, the original Citadels, Shadows Over Camelot, all bear his artwork. In many ways his artwork defined a generation of Days of Wonder titles that brought a good number of us into the hobby.
Design – Concept
What, did you think board games just grew on trees? All games were at some point designed and the field of board game design is a rich and fascinating one. It is also, of all the fields of design, one of the easiest to try out at home for yourself and you’ll find a lot of people who immerse themselves in this hobby will try out designing at one point or another. Interestingly, in Germany board game designers are referred to as ‘authors’ reflecting the more artistic elements of board game creation.
Developer – Concept
The unsung heroes of board game design are the developers. Typically, a game design will be sold to a publisher who will, with the help of their developers, improve and refine the design to create the final product that comes to market. A skilled developer is widely acknowledged as key to producing really polished game.
Dice – Component
One of the universal symbols of board gaming, dice are the great randomisers, and a component that has been with humans for as long as civilisation. Some people don’t like dice in games, associating them with unpredictable games (and more than a few bad memories of childhood games of Monopoly and Risk). But for the risk averse Euro games like Castles of Burgundy have shown how the randomness of dice can be used to create decisions rather than ruin them.
The Dice Tower – Media
You can’t through a Meeple on board game youtube without hitting a Dice Tower video. They may not have been the first but they are undoubtedly the biggest board game review network, covering almost every major release. If there’s not a dice tower video for it, it’s probably not that big a game.
Mihajlo Dimitrievski – Artist
An artist with a truly distinctive style, Mihajlo Dimitrievski is relatively new to the board game industry but has rapidly become well known. His art adorns the Valeria games, the North Sea series and most recently Architects of the West Kingdom. His brand of rugged, gritty cartoons is really rather eye catching and, in my opinion at least, a big selling point for games featuring it!
Dixit – Game
Dixit is one of those legendary releases that changes gamers’ understanding of the medium. It took cards and simply turned them into pieces of art. No text, no icons. The game is then all about interpretation and how players communicate. In each round one player says a phrase and all players select a card whose image they most feel represents that phrase. Everyone then tries to guess which was the original player’s card, but that player will lose points if everyone guesses right. A really fun and family friendly game!
Dominant Species – Game
A rather different kind of game! Dominant Species is a big, long, complex Euro with bite! Take on the role of an entire species as you try to grow in population across the board but, more importantly, just try not to go extinct! This is one of those classics that I’ve not had chance to play, which feels like quite the oversight when it’s the highest rated ‘D’ game on Board Game Geek! Is that… a weird way to think about games?
Rüdiger Dorn – Designer
Rüdiger Dorn is a German designer strongly focused on mechanics, and as such is known for some very clever Euro games, and not ones with particularly strong themes. His latest and greatest games include Karuba, Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Istanbul, and Goa. I also found this hilarious thread asserting Dorn is in fact just Reiner Knizia in disguise.
Dungeons and Dragons – Game
The game that changed the world. Dungeons and Dragons is the original role playing game, a game lead by a storyteller (game/dungeon master) and aside from some dice and character sheets, played in the players’ heads, although miniatures have been a popular addition for many. A group will play as a band fantasy heroes fighting monsters, meeting characters and generally going on an adventure together, with the direction of the dungeon master.
Dungeon Crawler/Descent – Concept/Game
The dungeon crawler feels like one of the oldest and most archetypal board game types. Most likely because of the influence of Dungeons and Dragons, dungeon crawlers are in many ways the board game implementation of role playing games for those who don’t like role playing. Enter a dungeon, often formed from room tiles filled with plastic monster miniatures, and fight your way to the end. Descent is perhaps the most successful modern dungeon crawler, if you don’t want to go all the way back to Hero Quest, but even the number 1 game on board game geek is a dungeon crawler too: Gloomhaven.
Vincent Dutrait – Artist
Vincent Dutrait is perhaps an even more influential artist in this day of Kickstarters than the others highlighted in this article and I was shocked to discover just how few games he had worked on before a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, you’ll now find his georgeous, colourful, pencil-stylised, work adorning a tremendous number of games, games like Lewis & Clarke, New York 1901 and Raptor.
So there we go! All the important Ds! I hope… let me know if you feel I have missed any important parts of the hobby in the comments below!
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