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First, to editor Matt Keefe and/or ABC Design: never, ever use small, skinny font, white text on a color background again! I was sorely tempted to give this book one star instead of five for the nearly unreadable sidebars. The white on yellow was particularly egregious. How did you possibly approve these proofs!

Fortunately, this history of the Spiel des Jahres winners is entertaining enough to persevere past the nearly unreadable sidebars. The author provides a short history of the origin of the award followed by a review of each year's winner, complete with whether or not the author felt it was a worthy choice.

I didn't always agree with the author's view 100%, but it was always interesting.

This book is well worth the read for anyone with an interest in the history of board games.

This “encyclopedia of mechanisms” is an excellent way to help people develop a common language in discussing tabletop board game design and play.

I don’t always agree with every distinction made, but using these definitions makes for a great starting point!

Being a textbook, I found it difficult to read straight through, and thus it took me long enough to finish that a second edition has since come out. This book is important enough that I will probably seek to acquire that edition as well.

This book serves to further flesh out the lands of Eriador described as the default setting in the new 2nd edition core book. The best thing about this book are the three “dark designs” sections, each one offering a timeline of events that will unfold if a sinister faction isn’t stopped by the player characters. Those factions being the Black Numenoreans, the Dunlendings, and Saruman.

These give the GM an ongoing threat that the players have to deal with, and that gives the game a sense of urgency that can otherwise be missing in a game like The One Ring that is structured more around sandbox exploration and seasonal events.

Excellent book about Felix Sparks, an officer in the 45th Infantry Division in WWII who served with the unit from training at Fort Sill Oklahoma through to the end of the war.

Almost the entire book is a discussion of more or less free-form gaming that consist of umpired games including varying levels of role-playing. The exception is the first chapter that is a rather dry, but not wrong, section on "Designing Wargaming Rules."

Highly interesting to anyone wanting to learn more about "committee" style games, with multiple scenarios ready to go if you want to actually try to run one.

Literally a "kids on bikes" story that starts in the 80s and goes.. other places. Enjoyable read, interesting characters and situations.

A good middle section to the overall story. Some pieces starting to fall into place. Interested to see how this all resolves.

Satisfying ending to an entertaining series. Well worth the read.

Tesladyne is dead, long live Tesladyne! As the era of Tesladyne Industries gives way to the Tesladyne Institute, Robo's adventures continue.

It is interesting that just five years ago, when given the choice between portraying Richard Branson or Elon Musk as the bad guy, the creators of Atomic Robo chose Branson. I guess it goes to show just how easy it is to destroy your own reputation when you are bound and determined to do it...

Not a lot to say about this one, more Robo is good Robo. Looking forward to see where the story goes from here, but since I'm waiting to read them until they come out in print, I'll have to wait a few more months for the next volume.

More or less wraps up the story arc began in Book 8 with kaiju and nazi space weapons. For Science!

A relatively small volume on the psychological concept of loss aversion. The idea that people dislike loss more than they like gain.

The author is able to thoroughly cover the topic of loss aversion, and its related concepts, in a clear manner. He then goes on to give examples of how they can be used in game design.

Highly recommended to both game designers, and people who just want to know more about the psychology behind why some games are more enjoyable than others.