Picture a table of 《Brass: Birmingham》. You've just placed an industry on the map, and you thought all you had to do next was wait for your plan to blossom—but the player next to you seizes on this constantly shifting landscape first.
You stare at those routes and resources and suddenly realize: almost no one here can run their business with the doors closed. Other people's actions open up opportunities for you, and also force you to recalculate.
Now picture another table. No one waits for turns; a boxing card drops from the left hand, and the right hand is already preparing the next strike. You want to seize the chance for a combo, yet worry the opponent will knock you out first.
On one side is a soot-shrouded industrial network; on the other, a real-time ring with barely time to breathe. Put them together, and it's hard to say this is a preference for some fixed theme.
But for Gavan Brown, they touch on the same question: how can a set of rules produce concrete tension, hesitation, and anticipation in players' minds?
Today's subject is one of the creators behind Roxley. We'll start from his early choices and see how a person who moved back and forth between graphics, computers, and games gradually arrived at rules and publishing.
1. Between art and computers, he never really put either aside
In a 2011 interview with Dice Hate Me, Brown recalled that he loved drawing as a child, drew many comic characters as a teenager, and also got into animation software.
When it came time for higher education, he faced the choice between art and computers, and ultimately went to a technical college to study computer technology, with courses mainly involving programming. But he didn't stop doing graphic design, and later worked as a designer and website developer.
This experience has a very everyday kind of fork: you choose a path that can be clearly written into a course schedule, yet the other interest doesn't disappear because of it. It stays in after-class practice, in the next freelance job, and eventually becomes your way of understanding work.
For a board game creator, the place where these two abilities meet is especially interesting.
Rules must arrange how information flows; visuals must arrange how information is seen. Even if an action option exists logically, if players consistently fail to notice it, it may as well not exist in the actual experience; conversely, if the most eye-catching pattern has nothing to do with what most needs judging, attention will be pulled away.
This is a design question we can read from his cross-disciplinary experience—not treating a career résumé directly as a formula for success. Knowing how to program doesn't automatically mean knowing how to design games, and knowing how to make beautiful pages doesn't automatically mean knowing how to publish.
But Brown's later works and work let these originally separate skills find the same table.
2. 《JAB》: First ask where boxing makes people tense
His 《JAB: Realtime Boxing》 is a real-time boxing card game. In a 2011 interview with him, he put it clearly: what he wanted to pursue was the psychological feeling brought by video games, not merely translating on-screen actions item by item into cards.
《Fight Night: Round 2》 gave him inspiration. The early prototype didn't go smoothly, and he later turned the question toward player experience: how can two people simultaneously handle attacking, responding, and choosing?
The punches in the game don't have the usual turn-based waiting. The left and right hands correspond to their own punch cards, and the pressure of combos and knockouts means players can't just focus on playing cards fast. At the end of the official rulebook, he also wrote down the goal of hoping a real-time game could still accommodate strategic judgment.
This gives the busyness in the ring meaning. Suppose you have two paths before you: chase the combo that can bring a judging advantage, or keep threatening the opponent's life. When attention tilts to one side, the other side may expose an opening.
It's easy to understand "real-time" as fast and "strategy" as slow; this game tries to layer the two feelings together. You need to judge, but the situation won't politely stop and wait for you to finish thinking.
Reading this creative history also shows the importance of prototypes. The first theme you think of only provides direction; the truly playable form has to be found through later attempts. What players feel after sitting down will in turn test the designer's initial idea.
Years later, in an introduction on the Your Turn program, Brown looked back on his shift from wanting to make video games to being drawn in by 《Carcassonne》. He values the complete space for personal expression that board game creation can leave for an individual. But the chance for complete expression also means having to face personally the question of whether the work holds up.
3. Martian mine: deck growth must also land in public space
In 《Super Motherload》, Brown is credited as co-designer with Matt Tolman.
Roxley's official introduction presents a very concrete loop: players use cards to mine beneath the surface of Mars, gain minerals, and then use those gains to buy stronger cards. The deck gradually grows, and the digging constantly changes the map; during the game the board can also expand and shrink, creating the feeling of pushing underground.
The growth here doesn't only happen in the hand.
Imagine that you've just prepared a set of cards suited to a certain way of digging, and the next time you look down at the map, the available space before you has already changed. Your abilities really have improved, but ability must find a place to land before it can become a truly valuable action.
From the player's perspective, this meeting is very appealing: the private deck gives you the satisfaction of gradually forming an expertise, while the public space reminds you that expertise doesn't equal a route that is always clear.
This is another way of bringing the video game feeling to the tabletop. There's no need to replicate a computer on paper; flipping the board, leaving tunnels, and upgrading the deck can themselves make people feel they are gradually entering a place.
Compared with 《JAB》, the rhythm has changed and the theme has changed, yet players still need to make decisions in an environment that responds to their actions.
And the co-credit of the two authors is also worth remembering. Today we read these works along Brown's life line, but the works themselves still belong to collaborative results. The more easily a creator's story is told as a solo adventure, the more we need to put back into the picture the people who solved problems together.
4. Arriving at 《Birmingham》: one's own expression placed inside someone else's classic
In Brown's early interviews, 《Brass》 was already a work he particularly loved. He appreciated that kind of design which can be explored repeatedly and reveals new space the more you play.
Later, he really did participate in a new chapter of this system.
Roxley's current 《Brass: Birmingham》 product page lists three game designers: Matt Tolman, Martin Wallace, and Gavan Brown. The early rulebook listed Wallace as game design and Brown and Tolman as development; a 2017 interview with Roxley community manager Paul Saxberg again explicitly called it a co-design by the three. Different materials use somewhat different role labels, but the collaboration is clear.
Wallace's original work forms the foundation, and Brown and Tolman's participation is not just putting a new cover on an old box.
The publisher's introduction emphasizes that the sequel retains a large number of core rules while adding new industries and mechanisms. Players arrive at a place that is familiar but where old experience cannot simply be copied; they must re-understand how opportunities flow across the map.
This kind of creation has a special difficulty. Starting completely from zero, you can first define your own boundaries; facing a work others are already familiar with, the players' memories are also standing inside those boundaries.
Change too little, and the new place may be left with only a name; change too much, and it may lose the relationships that make people willing to come back and play. For us readers, what is most worth observing is precisely: how does the work leave space between continuation and discovery.
Its visuals also come from collaboration. David Forest and Lina Cossette of Mr. Cuddington recalled in an interview with them that before starting work they discussed the overall direction with Brown: it needed a rough, darker yet still refined quality, and they also studied manufacturing from the Industrial Revolution period.
Smoke, factories, and lights are therefore not just background decoration. They put the abstract relationships players must handle back into a perceptible world: the things you are calculating seem to have weight, temperature, and distance.
This doesn't mean beauty can replace good rules. What's more interesting is that when the visuals invite people closer and the system allows people to explore repeatedly, the two kinds of work connect within one box of a game.
5. When he stands in the publisher's position, he still has to hear players' feelings
If we only look at designs credited to Brown himself, we can't see his work in full.
Roxley's 2022 interview about 《Radlands》 lets us see another side of him as a publishing and development participant. The designer of this game is Daniel Piechnick, and the early prototype was called Delta-Six. Brown was drawn in by the connections between cards and the concise system, and during team development they also paid attention to how newcomers feel when facing skilled players, match length, and how camps bring variation.
He also took part in discussions of the visual direction shifting from a sci-fi prototype to a post-apocalyptic style, mentioning inspirations such as 《Mad Max: Fury Road》. Here we should distinguish clearly: proposing a direction, driving development, and designing the original system are mutually supporting kinds of work, each with its own contribution.
But this experience fills in an important piece for the whole main line. The designer asks "what do I want players to experience," and the publisher must also keep asking: "When a stranger first gets the box, can they also reach that experience?"
A confrontation that veteran players find brilliant may leave new players losing confidence before they even understand it; a deck relationship familiar to the designer still takes time for someone opening the game for the first time to build. To let a work reach more people's tables, one cannot judge only by the author's own level of familiarity.
Looking back at Brown from here, we see several changes of identity: an art-loving enthusiast who studied computers, an author who tried real-time boxing, a designer who made a mining game with a partner, a developer who took part in a classic sequel, and a publisher who helps other people's works take shape.
None of these identities can accomplish everything alone.
I prefer to understand his story as a continuous question: when you hand your ideas to rules, hand the rules to cards, and then hand the cards to someone who has never met you, can that feeling that first attracted you still be passed across?
Imagine we return to the industrial landscape from the beginning. You finally discover another route you can use; the original plan is interrupted, but because of that you also see new possibilities. In such a moment, there is no need for the author to stand by the table explaining his ideals.
When players are willing to look up and discuss, then look down and think one step further, the work has already begun to speak.
【chengcheng's interactive topic】
Which kind of game experience attracts you most easily: the tension of real-time confrontation, the satisfaction of a deck gradually growing, or the mutual calculation on a shared board? Is there a game that made you feel the rules and the art together brought you into that world?
I'm chengcheng, see you next time in Creator Story!
#CreatorStory #GavanBrown #Roxley #BrassBirmingham #BoardGameDesign
Sources and further reading: 2011 interview with Gavan Brown: art, computers, and JAB JAB official rulebook and author's afterword (archive) Super Motherload official product description and credits Brass: Birmingham official description and co-authors Brass: Birmingham early rulebook: design and development credits Roxley team 2017 interview Mr. Cuddington on the Brass art collaboration Roxley: Brown on the development of Radlands Your Turn 2026 interview program introduction