Read about games and game design. The 100 BEST books I was talking about earlier are nice, easy reads that have some fantastic tidbits hidden in them (like the secret history of how games came to use hex-shaped maps.) Another trio of books I'd recommend are Raph Koster's A THEORY OF FUN, the terrific ART OF GAME DESIGN by Jesse Schell, and the hefty but incredibly smart RULES OF PLAY by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen.
Seth Johnson, HeroClix World Interview (2009)