Reddit reviews The Art of Game Design: A Deck of Lenses, Second Edition

For design, get the combo of Jesse Schell's Book of Lenses and Deck of Lenses.

For dev get Nystrom's Game Programming Patterns

Whelp, I think this discussion is why context matters. As some people have pointed out, this blog post was never meant to be about Shadowrun. The only reason Shadowrun came up is because it inspired me to create my own game. Was pretty shocked to see it on the Shadowrun reddit, actually.

It's interesting to read the discussion it's generated. I will say:

a) my experience with Shadowrun was 1E to 5E, and the shift in direction the game took wasn't to my taste. I think people who started with later versions have a very different experience/viewpoint. I don't see anything wrong with either side.

b) I worked on video game design before tabletop design. As a result, when I think about design I think about how mechanics and player experience interact and reinforce each other.

You can absolutely play a TTRPG to create an experience apart from the mechanics. I think any non-combat only D&D game shows that. I've also played very narrative driven Shadowrun 5e games. It's just not how I design. [Jesse Schell's book on game design influenced me a lot when I first started, for those who are interested in the design perspective.] (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/0692288872/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519592300&sr=8-1&keywords=deck+of+lenses)

You can buy a deck of lenses or get the app

To be clear: are you interested in game programming, or game design? (I say this because the other post said you were interested in engineering, and I'm not sure that guy knew what he was talking about) While the two do go hand-in-hand, what discipline you will be practicing is very important to be aware of. If you are interested in game design (theory behind making games, regardless of whether or not they're electronic) then some books you'd be interested in would be Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design, reinforced by exercises from Challenges for Game Designers.

If you are interested in game programming, that would require some introductory programming knowledge before diving into it, and there are others who would know where to find books for that, like on the sidebar of /r/learnprogramming. I would not recommend diving into a game engine without some basic programming knowledge unless you use an engine like GameMaker (but even that is just putting it off to a degree).

I believe Arin once recommended The Art of Game Design.

Here (~6:35) he talks about something I believe he got from that book.