Tabletop: Analog Game Design
A nicely varied assortment of intelligent essays about the design and distribution of contemporary tabletop games. Greg Costikyan has a superb discussion of the ways that production, marketing and distribution shape games today; for example, it’s very important that game components by light in weight because the publisher, not the retailer, pays the freight. Chris Klug has a memorable not on the dramatics of rolling dice, and Richard Garfield contributes a number of sharply-observed design lesson from poker.