The simple fact is, once the setting has been laid and the characters created, 90% of an RPG session is spent resolving conflict in one form or another. Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, and its various hacks/remixes have an interesting take on this. Yes, it’s a dice-based game (you roll 2 6-sided die), but the resolution […]
Author Archives: Daniel
Conflict Resolution in RPGs, Part 1
Imagine, for a moment, you’re an adventurer, creeping down a hallway towards a treasure just out of reach. Or, imagine you’re defending the last remnants of humanity from an alien onslaught. The only thing in the way is you and your BFG-401K. Perhaps you’re a hacker, preparing to reveal the misdeeds of a corporation who […]
Redesign + 2
Almost exactly 2 months after launching the new and improved danielboyle.net, I wanted to talk about how I feel about what I’ve done. First, I still feel good about the structure and design direction. My primary goal of better representing my eBay work has been mostly met. I need to continue iterating on my content, […]
Inspired by a terrible commute
For a decade, I took NJ Transit trains into NYC, and I grew to loathe the nearly 4 hours I spent on a train every day. To celebrate 1 year of freedom (though I now drive to work in the Seattle area) I am revisiting a pet peeve: the terrible doors on those terrible trains. […]
2 Years Later
On the evening of Tuesday, June 12, 2018, I released the first update to my website since sometime in 2012. This has been in progress, according to this blog, since February 2015. Let’s talk about what has changed since then. First, my last update happened shortly after joining eBay, after being laid off from Critical […]
Innovation by the numbers
I think the hardest thing for many people to understand about device upgrade cycles is that, at a certain point, the devices we use constantly are pretty well optimized for their form factors. We get minor updates to cameras, or screens, or processors, but very few true changes to what we consider the core device […]
Thoughts on interviewing
While I take a break from redoing my website, I was thinking. Once upon a time… For a while at eBay, I was one of the regular interviewers for product manager and developer candidates. As a PM, my workflow was essentially, “Don’t do dumb things.” I certainly wasn’t qualified to ask about their theories on […]
I’m not alone in this
The most frustrating projects I’ve ever been involved with have been the internal projects. That website for Tender? Oh, the arguments. Working on a personal site is just as irritating, but the arguments are just with myself. Besides the usual ennui and self-diversion around actually designing anything, I’ve been focusing my time on finding a […]
Why are we here?
It’s one of life’s great mysteries, isn’t it? (Red Vs Blue, S1 E01) Every time I sit down to redesign my website, I think “I don’t really need to mess with this,” and go back to playing FIFA. I don’t claim to be disciplined with my free time. If I’m not working, working, working on my […]
Is prototyping important?
Don’t be an idiot. Of course it is, and there’s nothing wrong with someone asking you to build prototypes as a designer. It’s just another way to express your vision, and frankly, way better for it than static mockups. Asking if prototypes are important is like asking if wireframes or user research are important. As […]