What are /r/tabletopgamedesign's favorite Products & Services?

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Fun above all else.

Your question also reminds me of Mark Rosewater's 20 lessons articles, which I highly recommend for anyone who hasn't read it. Link to the first of three: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/twenty-years-twenty-lessons-part-1-2016-05-30

Technically yes, but it's somewhat unsatisfying without regular polygons. There are only 3 regular shapes that tessellate: squares, equilateral triangles, and regular hexagons.

Look at this concept from a children's book. It could work with a boardgame design and would certainly be unique. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762443162/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_A7EWAFX008Z4P152GVB1

The creators of the Oxford English Dictionary and Wikipedia disagree with you.

But even if they didn't, English is a living language that has changed constantly since its inception. Using a gender-neutral singular pronoun for instances where gender is ambiguous or irrelevant is something we should be in favor of, even if we hadn't already been doing it for centuries. Grammar is a tool we use to make ourselves better understood, not a set of rules to be dogmatically adhered to.

Of course the prescriptivist/objectivist debate is kind of moot here, since as described in those articles we've been using they as a singular pronoun for centuries.

If you are looking for playtesters, post a link to the files and a description of the game here:

http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1530034/boardgamegeek/seeking-play-testers

If you are pretty sure the game is done and just want to share it with the world, then I second D20Pen. Create a page on BGG and when it is up, you could try sharing the link with the editor of PnP News. He's a cool guy and does great work spreading the news about PnP games. Read this first before contacting him, though:

https://boardgamegeek.com/blogcategory/3289

A lot of that is stuff Mark has written about in his column. The usefulness of bad cards and why they exist was the subject of an article When Cards Go Bad MaRo wrote in 2002. If you don't like mtg that's one thing but I find a lot of MaRo's writing very useful and I recommend giving him a chance.

Hey guys, now that I have finished and published my game Chicken Challengers I just wanted to share with you guys my process as this subreddit is a hidden gem and a great resource to utilize as it has helped me refine and fix up my game before release.

• Cards
  • Included Color Coded Card Association so you only have to look at the color to know what it does.
  • Added number visibility so you can see strength number no matter how you hold your cards in your hand.
  • Rebranded action to make it more simple and easier
• Instruction Sheet
  • Rephrased a lot of the text to make it easier and added visuals
  • Added video QR code with a 3 minute video so they don't have to read the instruction sheet
• Box Design
  • Made design pop out more and stand out from the rest to show off artwork
  • Changed to a magnetic box to make it look nicer in display
  • Reduced overall size to cut down on wasted space

I went the unusual route and didn't go through Kickstarter but still went through the processes of refinement and play testing. Thanks again for everyone who made recommendations and helped me out in this journey!

https://godotengine.org/ (/r/godot). Supports Android and iOS and various desktop systems. Easy to learn, low on resource waste, 100% free, nice built-in scripting language and GUI toolkit. I used it for a tool for playtesting a boardgame (it was not a game that would need an app to play, but it was useful to have one for testing) and it was great to work with.

Then just hire an artist to make it look triple A whatever that would mean in this context.

Related: The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Cardboard Edison offers blind play testing services and, if desired, professional rules copy editing through their Patreon (if you can get in when a spot opens up): https://www.patreon.com/cardboardedison?ty=h

I use it for both the blind playtests and copy editing, and I get value from it. I can't rely on free blind playtest groups for some of my games because free testers aren't reliable enough to justify the cost of sending a prototype of a game that can't be done through PnP, and I haven't had success getting blind playtesters to actually print and play a PnP.

This has been a pretty good week for design. With two days off from work in a row, I was able to hunker down and crank out the initial design docs for my new mammoth game. I've been using the icons from http://game-icons.net/, which has over 1000 icons, for the different resources - food, tools, wounds, points and mammoth strength. I'm looking forward to testing it this Thursday with the local game design group.

I found a really neat way to make a game board for prototyping too. I have these dry erase posters that I got back in college. They had adhesive backs, so I'm going to take a board from a thrift store game and stick the dry erase board to it. Bam - instant dry erase folding game board. Since the game is partially a dexterity game that has players flicking cubes onto the board, the board design is probably going to go through many iterations.

I've seen them on amazon! That being said printing is probably the fastest way to prototype. Print on plain paper and then sleeve them with a throwaway mtg or yugioh card.

The first game that came to my mind when reading your description was Neuroshima Hex!. What are some of the differences between the two?

Do you have a PNP version available for playtesting?

Edit: The link doesn't seem to be working.

The creators made a pretty popular game (It's number 54 out of 77000 boardgame products)

It has a proven track record (People still recommend it constantly, just shy of a year later)

And the project description reads:

> A complete strategy card game from the creators of Star Realms. Two to four can play sealed, draft or constructed out of one small box!

(Emphasis mine)

When designers who make an exceptionally popular game put their new game up on Kickstarter, it tends to do well.

From their kickstarter:

>While Epic gives you the full trading card game experience at a tiny fraction of the cost, Epic is NOT a trading card game.There are no random packs or hard to get cards. When you buy the game, you get everything you need to play. You know exactly what cards you're getting. There will be expansions down the road, but they are optional. You can literally play and enjoy hundreds of games with just the base set.

From your post:

>My intention is to sell the game in 3 different packages- preconstructed decks, which if you bought all of them you would have at least one copy of every card, a "complete deckbuilder set", which contains one of each card at a discount compared to buying all the preconstructed decks, or randomized boosters with alternate premium art.

With Epic Card Game, you pay 15 dollars one time and get the complete game experience, for ALL players, end of story. Your game sounds to me like an LCG structure - where there are non-random packs, you buy the packs you're interested in, and other players buy their own packs to do their own thing. ECG is positioned as a board-game-like experience. Your idea was positioned as an LCG-like experience.

Have you played Stone Age?

I'm a fan of this game, and of the paleo-/neolithic era. I think it fits its theme wonderfully.

You should try it out!

I have two games I'm actively working on that I've made progress on in the past week(s).

The first is a bluffing/social deduction game I entered into the BGG/Geekway to the West game design contest. It's not getting a lot of votes, but I'm mostly just pleased that I've gotten a design to the point where it's ready to be shown to others. I'm hoping it will get selected for the second round of the competition, so I'll be able to demo it at the convention, but even if it's not the contest has been a great opportunity that's really focused and motivated me.

My second game-in-progress is still very much in its infancy (early prototypes/solo playtesting). I'm thinking of it as a "reverse deckbuilder." It's heavily influenced by Star Realms, Valley of the Kings, and Ascension, but players start with full decks that are slowly running out, so they need to make tough choices about which cards to keep (and eventually score) and which to lose each turn. Still a lot more to do on it, but I'm very pleased with how it's coming so far.

I believe that this kind of service is being offered currently. Check out what the Game Designers Clubhouse is doing: Their Patreon.

Granted, they have the advantage that David MacKenzie was the former owner of Clever Mojo Games (and then worked at Game Salute), so people he has some credentials to go along with the service.

I'm assuming you're talking about prototypes, because the answer if you're at the point of publishing is, you hire an artist.

That said:

For actual art, I would suggest looking around for free-to-use clip art or similar sources. Google Image Search actually has filters to allow you to filter on things like the type of art you want (e.g. photos, line drawings, etc), as well as copyright terms, which can help if you're worried about distribution rights for PnPs and the like. And, if you find art you like in a search, you can then go to the site it came from and oftentimes you'll find sites that specialize in clip art for free use.

You can also look at places like The Noun Project. They specialize in icons, and you can make very functional components with them even if they're not necessarily amazing looking.

For actual component layout, I frequently suggest Scribus. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it is free. You can also just mock up components using something as simple as MS Word or Google Documents.

In that case, I think you can simplify it a bit and just use symbols for rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise. Using icons is cleaner graphic design and will save you some real estate on the cards/whatever reference sheet is used.

Edit: Here are some good rotate icons from The Noun Project.

I use Inkscape. Inkscape is entirely free.

I make cards that look like this. I have no graphic design skills, I just played and iterated until I found something I was content with.

R is a programming language developed by and for people doing statistics (ie not-really-programmers) and has some very useful packages for calculating statistics, rolling dice, simulating decks of cards etc. It's not trivial to learn though.

I usually end up using python that is a scripting/programming language that is one of the easiest to learn and very powerful for making quick scripts that simulate some part of a game and just do that a few million times to you get a feel for if some mechanics work or not. There are some tutorials for non-programmers to learn python out there, but I don't know which one is the best. Anyway writing a few lines of python is in my experience always superior to the old method I used, which was typing in lots of cells in Excel.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TLF53L5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

This book was how BGG reconstructed their mechanics. It has a fairly comprehensive list of game mechanics. Just look at the preview of the book, in the table of contents.

That is very clever, sir. I love the simplicity.

I would also consider getting an hex punchout. I haven’t tried it, size might be too big, but there is this one in Amazon for $13:

https://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-X-Large-Squeeze-Punch-Hexagon/dp/B00E3FSTN8

Cover Your Creatures is the name of the game. It's a spin-off of my family's best seller, Cover Your Assets, the top rated card game on Amazon in the US.

I should have a landing page with some additional info on the game done in a couple of weeks. If you want to stay in the loop on its development/launch you can join my mailing list.

Maybe get them to play Plague Inc. There is a free version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.plagueinc&hl=en

Two super easy options:

1. Buy blank dice. They are super cheap on Amazon or at some game stores. Draw on them with a permanent marker.

2. Use regular dice, but use self adhesive labels on them (like these https://www.amazon.com/Avery-Address-Labels-Laser-Printers/dp/B00004Z5SN/). You can cut the labels to size and draw whatever you need on them.

There's a bunch on amazon. Here's a square gridded dry-erase one that rolls up, but flattens out reasonably well.

There's also this reversible square/hex one, and that one is actually a folding game board, so there should be virtually no issue of it laying flat when opened up.

I haven't played it yet, but check out Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space.

It has a map that everyone's simultaneously secretly moving around on. The Humans are trying to get to certain points on the map (air locks) and the Aliens are trying to end their turn on the same space the Humans are on. Everyone gets to move each turn and sometimes either must reveal the space they're currently on, or must lie about the space they're on.

Edit: Heads up, you can apparently get this game (print and play) FREE right now on the Humble Bundle site (see below the games in the bundle.)

I'm not sure if a dexterity type dice mechanic would be the best fit for this design.

I would recommend starting the design with only 1 floor. You can build from there. Perhaps tiles could be drawn and placed as you explore the hotel.

Check out Dead Men Tell No Tales for some inspiration and ideas. Good luck to you!

This is a neat pencil & paper game: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19365/oil-rush It's not too complicated, but seems fun.

It takes 2d6 and a page of graph paper. It's oil themed, but you could pretty easily change it into two civilizations searching for habitable planets, or something.

It's not quite the same, but check out The Battle at Kemble's Cascade, it should give you a lot of good ideas.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/154301/battle-kembles-cascade

From your description, the one thing that catches my imagination is that, if you're stuck, you can use your design phase to free yourself. That just feels cool - if you can't overcome the world, change the world until you can. It's very Minecraft.

That makes me feel like there's room to explore mods more (or thinking way ahead, it's your first expansion). Can't jump high enough? Install a low-gravity mod. New obstacles that are only available after being modded in. That kind of stuff.

Just a few notes on these:

• All artwork used are placeholders for the time being, I am using concept pieces that I have commissioned over the last couple years
• The icons will most likely change (I grabbed them off of games-icons.net
• The plan is to get a few of these decks printed and send them to willing testers over the next few months

Let me know what you think :)

There are a few resources out there for royalty-free (sometimes for attribution) or public domain images. Game-icons.net is a good one, and there are a handful of other ones out there. If you want to be on the safe side, I'd swap over to these.

That said, I'm not a publisher so I really don't know. The copyright enforcement around Microsoft clipart appears to be vague at best. Based on that reading (and I'm definitely not a lawyer), it would appear as though your usage would fall on the 'ok' side of their terms of service (as long as they're attributed), but again, I really don't know.

It doesn't seem like it's a huge risk to use the clip-art, but if you want, you can play it super safe and just use royalty free/public domain images and be 100% sure.

Piggybacking on this comment, adobe kuler can be a nice tool for those of us with poor sensitivity to color combinations.

if you're deadest on making the art yourself there are lots of free art programs (Krita, gimp, inkscape, etc.) but it's true that if you're planning on marketing your game you're going to want to find someone. :) Oh, there are also lots of sites that have free icons like noun project and flat icon which are great for prototype art!

To grow your fanbase through physical interaction you could:

- Attend local board game Meetups (Meetup.com and through Facebook groups)

- Go to a convention or two and demo your game/prototype. A lot of conventions usually have some space where you can show your game off for free.

To grow your fanbase digitally I usually recommend:

- Starting 1 (or a few) of the following: Facebook page, Twitter account, Reddit account (like you have :-) ) , Instagram account.

- Then just post updates of the progress of your game (pictures of you demoing your games at the physical places mentioned above, writing about your game design experience, etc.)

The main thing I would suggest is to just post where you feel comfortable posting. Then as you gain confidence, post in other places about your game too. Bring your audience value. And don't worry about the growth so much as you focus on producing content. This is really important so you don't get discouraged. In my experience, it is REALLY hard to grow an audience and when my mind is focused on creating content and value (over numbers of my audience growth) then my audience naturally grows in a better way.

Hope this helps and good luck growing your audience Purpleharp!

I'd get really big ones like this if you're handwriting Amazon. I'd get "Avery" label dots from the office supply section if you need something to stick onto the dice to write on.

This is my system, but the blank dice I bought are chessex dice that I've never been able to find anywhere but at a Chessex con booth.

There's a good book on creativity called A Whack On the Side of the Head. It helped me to come up with the mechanics for my new game! Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Whack-Side-Head-More-Creative/dp/0446404667

The Game Crafter sells blank cards in bulk, same size as the ones used printed. Amazon also sells them.

Hasbro can be very belligerent. The case I most recently recall was the KS game Terrible Things being forced to change their name because Hasbro/Quinn & Sherry Inc owned Things...

Very true. Initial tooling setup for custom dice would be pretty high and I expect you would need a large first production run. But OP did mention pitching to a publisher so they would connections and funding.

Haha - I got curious and started looking for manufacturers on Alibaba and stumbled on the company who made the Quarriors dice: 5000 dice for 61 cents each. WizKids must have gotten a better deal - because at that price 130 dice/game comes out to $79 in just dice components...

Prototype it with blank dice and a sharpie.

Edit: I think it's actually 61 cents for a set of 6 dice. So $10.25 for 130 dice. That's more reasonable.

Life last week was a whirlwind of sudden changes, so I didn't get the chance to post last time.

I've been working on Bibliomancers, my light wizard-duel-word-game, and I have open-playtest materials if you're interested in trying it out. You can find the basic rules and three decks (The Magimancer, Nastymancer, and Golemancer) here, along with the nan-deck stuff I used to make the cards.

I can't guarantee the decks are balanced against each other - I have some basic powercurves I set up, and cards that situationally fluctuate from those power curves, but there's only so much I can do.

I recommend taking a look at the Buck Rogers. The center of the board tracks the movement of the inner planets, while the outside of the board provides blowups of the planets/asteroids for your units (it is a Risk-ish game). Each moves one space per turn in its orbit if I recall correctly. I think it expresses the theme of orbital mechanics well enough without getting bogged down in detail. You could convey the idea of slower moving ships by adding extra "ship-only" locations in between the planet orbit spots.

I was thinking Flowerfall + Dots & Boxes (for the "be the last to complete it" mechanism). Or maybe Gardens of the Alhambra, even. Actually, you could try scoring ties as in Gardens and see how it plays; in that one, ties disqualify players so the points go to the next highest in control.

I don't think Fluxx is really a programmable action game: it's more of a card-based variant of Nomic. For programmable action games you'll want to look into games like Roborally, which is one of the games that a few of the Dice Tower reviewers really hate.

Have you seen https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2296/bermuda-triangle? It has a plastic piece for the hurricane that pivots at the center. The plastic piece has magnets that pick up players' boats. It's actually sort of neat for such an old game.

Prepping for UnPub (thanks for pointing me at it!) and showing off my game to publishers at Pax East. It turns out that Mayfair Games and Dice Hate Me Games will be there, both of which are publishers that I like and fit well with my euro-style game. Unfortunately, Mayfair games likes to stick within their known designers for games, so they don't accept designs from someone they don't know. Dice Hate Me Games, on the other hand, will be at the UnPub event, so I'll specifically be looking for them. I think Thera would be a great game to round out their Tiger line.

At this point my design for the event is well set, so I'm just printing off sell sheets and rulesets and checking out what panels/contests I want to go to (Hey, it can't be all work and no play. Especially not at Pax!)

Omega Centauri has an entirely calculable combat system with zero randomness. It has a very 'chessy' feel to it. I highly recommend researching it.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/33759/omega-centauri

Helvetica isn't a shitty font at all. Very legible, a variety of weights in the family, and it's very neutral.

It is however used so often that is has come to representative of generic and lazy design.

This doesn't mean that helvetica doesn't have it's place, it just needs to be utilized properly on appropriate projects. For instance if someone had designed a game about managing subway stations and platforms then helvetica would be a perfect fit for the display and body copy.

But for a post apocalyptic game I would choose something that's a bit more cold. Something with low stroke contrast, similar to government or military signage.

Off the top of my head I'd probably use a Geometric Typeface or a Grotesque Typeface.

So, here's what I've been working on: Straight to VHS

What is it? An RPG inspired and informed by bad movies! I want the game to be both easy to learn and quick in play.

The rules essentially run from page 4 to page 14. If there's one thing I'd like to hear thoughts on, it would be the central mechanic which is explained on page 4, with an example on page 5. . . Some relevant ancillary mechanics include Epic Dice (pg 7) and the means of earning Script Changes (pg 9).

Recently I've received a suggestion of implementing a d6 pool system. I know this approach is fairly popular and kinda in vogue but I'm failing to see how it might improve Straight to VHS. I like the speed of my current system and worry a d6 pool would slow things down. Am I failing to think creatively here? Is there any approach you think would work better than my current one? Minor tweaks you'd like to see to the current system?

Thanks in advance! :)

Here you go. http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/wooden-letter-tiles_383512702.html

As with dealing with any Chinese manufacturer, stay safe and don't give them any payment info directly, use escrow.

Specifically, the thing that stands out to me is that you have 'Armoured' - which does something that relates to numbers (subtracting numbers from die), and 'Armoured II', which does Armoured and something else. The most intuitive grasp of that term is probably going to be people seeing 'Oh, Armoured II, that's like Armoured I but I subtract 2, right?' Similarly, it looks like Breach II is a weaker version of Breach - which sort of doesn't intuitively follow. We tend to see numbers as scaling up!

It's not a huge deal, but it might make life easier if you avoid using different kinds of numbers for things like this.

Another thing to look into is Adjective Order, which can help when you're designing things players are going to talk about aloud. If a player needs to communicate 'this tank is a Foo Bar Frunge Bloogy Tank,' you want to make it so that those words naturally have some flow to them of importance.

The tense/structure of the terms is different, too; a unit IS Defiant, but HAS Evasion. A unit COMMITS Vengeance, but it CAN Overwhelm. Trying to structure all the terms so they follow the same pattern can be useful. Like consider how in Magic: The Gathering, cards can usually be said 'it's a 7/7 beast with First Strike and Trample' - that flows all together as an easily communicated idea.

I'm glad you asked! I used http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/ to randomly generate the tiles with different weights, then tuned the "final" set of tiles manually. The source code for the tile generator is here: https://github.com/5outh/trash-kings

It looks like all the icons are from http://game-icons.net/ (which is a really fantastic site that I can't shower enough praise upon). Not sure if he made the backgrounds or got them from somewhere else.

Hey, everyone has their own niche, and it works for you and gets the job done, then it works! Someone here also recommended Affinity Publisher and I have to say, this is completely winning me over. It's super intuitive, FREE, and has an amazing dark theme. I can't actually believe it's free.

This is something I'm doing mostly for myself to keep a record of the process, but if you're interested, you can take a listen. Here's a link to the RSS feed: r/https://anchor.fm/s/6790864/podcast/rss

Cosmic Encounter is a sci-fi-themed game about colonization. Anytime one player tries to colonize another player's planet, (every turn) they call it an Encounter, so the name is dead simple and works fine.

Anything that suggests theme, such as Cosmic, Space, Universe, or possibly even Heavens would be half the game name. The other half would be one of your key mechanics, so in your case you might have something like Terraform, Engineer, Neutralize, Crash, Escape, Planet, or Explore.

Also, consider combining the words. I've got a sci-fi card game where one of the main mechanics is quick location swaps due to wormhole-like fissures swallowing up players and dropping them off elsewhere in the universe, so the game name is FissureVerse, just a simple combination of Fissure + Universe.

Worldgineers? Terraworlders? Space Explorers? Spacesploration?

Try a thesaurus and mix 'n' match to see what sounds good.

No problem. All of these topics fall under the heading of "discrete mathematics". If you enjoy learning from videos, I HIGHLY recommend this video series from The Great Courses: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/discrete-mathematics.html

It costs $35 to download, but I promise you that is a great bargain. It's extremely well-produced. It includes many concepts that are useful for board game designers.

As someone who also has high anxiety, I have found it helpful to face my fears in areas like this. Such as getting my prototype tested by people I don't know.

Meetup.com has been helpful for me finding groups of gamers willing to playtest my game. I have found it best to just go to a board game meetup or game designer meetup with the purpose of playing other peoples games. This helps me feel more comfortable. Then after I feel more comfortable with some of the people there, I will ask them to play my game.

I hope this helps and good luck! You can do it :)

If heft is an issue, you can swap out uncut white dice for wooden cubes. I imagine you could apply the same process OP did - painting and mod-podging - and get results that feel more like a regular die.

They're cheap, too. You can get 50 blank white 16mm dice on Amazon for under $8, which works out to about sixteen cents a die.

Two I've found useful:

Kobold Guide to Board Game Design

The Design of Everyday Things.

The former is very specific to game design and the latter applies to designing just about anything. Fair warning about DoET: it will make you hate doors. You're just gonna have to trust me on that until you read it.

Describe it to whom? In what context?

Informally, any of those could work. "Social" is a bit vague and I would say it doesn't have a standardized meaning. "Party" may be a bit restrictive, for instance, if the game supports fewer players. What if it also qualifies as a family game?

In a more formal context, I would avoid using such tags altogether, as they may narrow the scope of the game unnecessarily.

By the way, I dig the idea. It reminded me of this game.

My friend, this marvelous Kickstarter campaign that just ended is essentially your idea, unless I am presuming too much. Either way, you will be interested:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redkobold/blue-dungeon-tiles-wet-and-dry-erase-double-sided

Are you planning on self-publishing or looking for a publisher? No need for artwork if you plan on shopping your design around. Has the design been playtested a lot and is it in its final form? If not, no need for art yet at this stage either.

You could post here or try to find someone on deviant art or a similar site to help. A lot of artists won't work for free though. Good luck to you!

Have you considered using a grid or hex game board?

Have you typed up some rules or put together a PNP for others to check out and provide you with feedback?

Here is a good place to post a Work In Progress design. There are a lot of friendly people there and here who are happy to help.

It's somewhat hard to provide feedback and suggestions based on a narrative type post with pictures of the prototype in action.

You could use hexes and go for something similar to Tahiti.

You could base it off of existing maps like the Caribean in Merchants & Marauders.

It really boils down to your mechanics and how you would like the game to be played. Is it grid movement or point to point? Random tiles or a static map? Realistic geography or your own world? Good luck to you!

A game that comes to mind is Warmachine by Privateer Press. Here are the quick start rules, available for free.

In a nutshell, Melee Attack Roll = 2d6 + MAT (Melee Attack Skill). It's a hit if greater than or equal to the Defense of the defending unit. Damage roll = 2d6 + Power or POW (+ Strength if melee). Compare the damage roll to armor and 1 damage point for everything over the armor value.

You could have items which modify the stats given in the example. However, I'm not sure if you could take an existing combat system like this and use it as your own. You probably could design something similar or modify it to make it work in your situation. Good luck to you!

I tried Deviant Art too, but the artist I chose replied to a query I dropped in the "Board Game Art and Graphic Design" forum on Boardgamegeek.

Incidentally, he was awesome to work with, 10/10 would hire him again.

Budget: Most artists who wrote me back were looking for something like $50 for a decent sized digital image or $20-25 ish for a single card for a boardgame, but you'll need to hash that out. There are low-cost/free alternatives if you have lots of time and aren't too picky about getting exactly the right image.

Professional artists often expect a contract, but that varies too. Clear deadlines, cost, payment schedule ... don't leave anything to chance, be specific and negotiate. Be sure you're on the same page before work begins or money changes hands.

Kobold Guide to Board Game Design was full of good stuff when I read it a few years back. Lots of wisdom from the old timers like Richard Garfield, James Ernest, Steve Jackson... I reread it frequently.

After that, be open to playing literally anything. Inspiration for cool mechanics can come from anywhere. Analyzing how other games function is also beneficial to your ability to make a new one. Play games all the time.

I will reiterate the advice to make paper prototypes. Don't be like me and go way overboard making fancy playtest cards for a game you haven't even tested yet, because things WILL change and you'll have to redo all that work, and nothing will kill your motivation faster than feeling like you've wasted a bunch of time.

Work out your core mechanics first, then worry about the elements that complicate the core mechanics, like "gotcha" cards and exceptions to the rules. Try it with 2 people, then try it with 5 people. Make sure to try it with 3 people as well, because 3 players is sometimes weird.

Glad I can help :)

Another alternative if you want the banner to be just for the title is to put it in a bottom corner, like Magic, or mid-bottom and larger, like Blood Rage. Seriously loving the overall design though, looks really polished.

If you're looking for a professional artist, you can find them on r/fantasyartists , with https://airtable.com/shrKKLNkFfzTdF12f/tblWneWBy14fZCJPW being the quick preview of some of the artists along with their portfolio links and contact info.

The D&D Adventure System games use a very simple AI for monsters, and make the previous player responsible for carrying it out.

I think you'd pre-plan your moves, like lay out a set of ingredients along with "return" cards so you could balance your trips for supplies and timing and stuff. Like it'd be advantageous to do it all in one trip, but maybe the bat eyeballs spoil after 2 turns and need to be their own trip...or you could even hold off and wait for all the other players to go and play it safe, but score less because you werent the first or something. Then players take turn moving to those locations and resolving their cards in order. The board would be 1-wide winding paths with maybe some 2-wide so you'd have to maybe figure out the other players recipes so you don't cross paths or they dont block you?

Maybe even the actions of doing stuff can mess you up. Like someone opening a storage closet, whacking another player in their face, and they drop their love potion all over the floor. In game it would be like "this corredor is 'Blocked Off' while a player is at this space"

And do you mean this Portal game? This was all I could find and it looks like it's schedule for release this year. Had no clue it existed

Definitely make sure the components are printer-friendly. If the game uses a lot of color also provide low-ink versions.

Make sure the bits are easy to cut. Common mistake is to print thick borders between cards/counters/tokens you need to cut out, which makes it impossible to cut perfectly between them. Optimal way is to not have even a thin line between components, but use registration-marks along the edges that you use to align a ruler before cutting. That way if you cut slightly off it will not really be visible.

Avoid anything double-sided, but if you must do something double-sided make sure that the back is constructed to make mis-alignments as difficult to spot as possible. For instance do not make a rectangular border around things that makes it obvious if it is closer to one edge than the other.

In general think about what is easy to mess up and that players do not like to have to re-print because a tiny mistake made the game look horribly ugly.

Be tolerant with scales of components. If a board has areas that you put tokens in, make them as big as possible, because someone is going to print extra big tokens (deliberately or by accident). Also consider that A4/Letter differences will guarantee that not everyone will get the scale of everything the same as you do, especially if there is a mix of landscape/portrait oriented sheets to print.

Look for popular print'n'play games on bgg. I know I am not the only one that is a big fan of Maquis. It does pretty much everything right, although I did not bother with the standing tokens and instead just printed out parts of them and glued to cardboard more like traditional tokens.

That looks quite interesting and will be checking it out to play soon. My question isn't about your game, but rather posting on itch.io: do you consider it a worthwhile site to post games to? I've considered it, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Anyone's response is appreciated.

For this I'd be looking at a full 3d package- probably starting with Blender since it's free and powerful.

It does have a significant learning curve but fairly quickly you should create simple 3d models with the same shape as your cards, texture them with your artwork, and animate them. Add in simple lighting (Three point lighting is a simple setup which produces good results in a lot of cases) and camera animation and you have a good preview, and then if you're using minitures you should be able to import the actual printable models, and dice are fairly quick to build too.

Agreed. There's something very satisfying about Trello. It makes you feel like you're building something, and it's pleasurable to share.

We're doing this on Subnautica also: https://trello.com/b/yxoJrFgP/subnautica

Question on that.

Star Trek Attack Wing uses the same system as Star Wars X-Wing and then the Airplane game that is escaping my mind right now. I believe the system was licensed by Wizkids from FFG.

Likewise I just read this yesterday on the Geek!. It sounds like the system was licensed out.

Where is the line on mechanics? Or is it industry courtesy?

If you haven't, be sure to check his designer diary (also on BGG).

Reiner Knizia's Age of War: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155695/age-war

This uses custom dice to capture a set of castles that begin in the center of the table. You can conquer any castles, including your opponent's castles. However, once you collect an entire set (color), those castles are safe and can no longer be captured.

Check out Isle of Trains. Basically you deal the cards from a general deck, then as people use their cards, they can draw cards. You could change the rate at which players draw them to make it faster.

Another idea could come from Monopoly Deal, where you draw 2 cards all the turns and can use up to 3. It feels faster than Isle of Trains, especially if you give out cards that let players draw extra cards.

Yomi and puzzle strike (I think) for rock/scissors/paper type combat with cards. Here is a BGG link to a listing of others:

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/33711/item/715948#item715948

Here is a similar list of card based wargames:

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/11796/item/198309#item198309

I haven't played Arctic Scavengers but it features both a "junkyard" (although different than yours) and cards that need combining to produce an effect. Example.

There is a forum for artists and graphic designers, many who are looking for work. Having their portfolio in the post just gives you an idea of their skill level/previous works. Just find an artist you like from those that have posted and send them an email or a personal message.

You can also post there saying that you want to collaborate with an artist, but you may get flooded with emails/messages. Better just to scope it out on your own and see who you like, then inquire about how much they will charge to see if it's in your price range.

Also, there are sticky posts there that will give you some insight as well - make sure to read those first. They have a lot of good info on how to approach looking for an artist and communicating with them.

From Guide to Promoting Your Game:

>Feel free to rate your own game, but if you are going to rate it very highly, it's considered good practice to note in the comment that you are the designer/publisher/etc. Similarly, encouraging all of your friends to rate your game highly is likely to be looked on with suspicion.

They frown upon shilling but not rating your own game once.

Although it's not exactly what you're looking for, Chaos in the Old World is an area control type game with different paths to victory, and different play focus for different players. I'm pretty sure you'll find some useful concepts if you take a closer look.

The drawback here is if you are designing your own level based on a common deck, you'll want to make it easy for your avatar. I say, flip it to designing your opponent's level. This way, you also save the expenditure and keeping track of "design points". Make "difficulty levels" instead. Level rankings of 1-4 should suffice, and make it so you can only place a difficulty difference of 1 next to the previous stage piece and all "starting level" pieces are a 0. (Ex. 0- 1- 2- 1- 2- 3- 4. So you can't just have a level 1 jump to a level 4. It also gives your design process its C/U/R level.)

Players could then spend their time/ coins/ rings obtained upgrading their avatars.

I would take a look at <strong>Boss Monster</strong> Also- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131835/boss-monster-dungeon-building-card-game for assistance on level building. The theme is similar, but you have the addition of playing the avatar and x/y axis of level build.

I like the art style. The layout is also pretty good, though some text looks a little small.

I don't know if it is intentional, but there is a white triangle on the bottom left of the image with the mountains. Since the mountains are organic such a strong geometric shape will stand out.

The font you used for your 3 and Stag look more sci-fi than nature to me. A more organic font or even a rounder font would feel more natural.

You can check out the google fonts page to quickly see the differences much easier than using photoshop/other software. If you still like that boxy style. I think the "Pasero One" option has a similar look but much more organic. Though i think options like "Spirax", "Aladin", or "Elsie Swash Caps" from the page would be a little more interesting and still legible.

Similarly, if you spend more time choosing the one font, you will want your descriptor fonts to not clash with it. Right now you are using some relative of the courier font. Mono-spaced fonts tend to be very sterile. Currently, I think it clashes a bit with your current font because it has some similarities (the A's look the same) which make the differences more pronounced (the S's are different). Those aren't the only reasons, just some obvious ones.

I've posted a full set of rules, sellsheet, and print-and-play playtesting documents, if you're still interested. You can find the print and play here

Manhattan project card game.

Everyone is trying to build bombs by drawing cards hoping to get the right parts. You can put down any part, even if it's not the right one. Other players can try to steal parts (sneaking past the guard cards of course) as all the parts line up the right way for each player (4 in a line). So you can bluff your way into having a bunch of crap and getting other players to steal it and give away what pieces they don't have.

I guess I never finished it because I started on this bloody thing...

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/evilbrennan

https://orgmode.org/ and https://git-scm.com/.

I have one big org-mode document for tracking all projects/ideas and initial designs (usually as multiple sub-sections on the same idea-section). When an idea becomes an actual project with prototype parts etc I create it as a new git-project (or sometimes in a subdirectory in an existing larger git-project, when that makes sense, for instance all my bgg-design-contest entries are in the same project).

When I work on a project the ideas and design-notes and prototype rules all go into the same org-mode-document, and I use org-export to publish PDF and HTML versions of the rules from that document (it can be configured to only export marked sections, so the rulebook only contains the actual prototype rules and not all my confusing notes that do not belong there). It is a fantastic non-WYSIWYG way of working. (I use org-mode to track everything else I do at work and at home as well, not only game-projects.)

well, it doesn't go too deep into the design process, but this post addresses the finer points of self-publishing and deals with other production aspects.. i think you'll find a lot of answers to your questions, and a lot more insight into what you'll be facing.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/322382/game-design-self-publishing-resource-game-designer

Meuterer (English name: Mutineer) is a game of constantly changing alliances. The players are sailing a ship around islands, trading as they go, but while also trying to make sure it goes where they want. The conflict comes from the captain and the potential mutineer both deciding where the boat goes, with the captain trying to encourage someone to support them by offering some of their potential points for getting to the destination. There's a lot going on in the game, and it's hard for me to explain it all.

Have a read through this excellent post and look up anything that sounds confusing. It's a fantastic primer on what you'll need to get started making board games, some ways to think about your game while making it, and how to send a board game out into the world when it's done.

There's a lot to learn! Good luck, and play test early and often :D

I almost wish the patterns had more depth. If that makes any sense. Shades and shadows, I think.

https://www.jotform.com/blog/80-stunning-background-patterns-for-your-websites/

Like some of those look more flat and fake, whereas some have more complexity (while still fundamentally a simple pattern) which adds to their visual appeal.

I hope that makes sense. Once an actual object in hand, I think a print with more dimensions in it's design might go far.

Yes, its called Mob Town

The Game Crafter Version had different art and a slightly different set of rules, but for comparison that one is Here

If you want digital board games, make them for tablets. You can take them easily with you, you can put them in the middle of a table on the board, and give them around for each player.

Several good board games for tablets, including ticket for ride, already exists.

For a tv screen/computer screen at home why wouldnt you play something like jack box, or https://www.airconsole.com/ (which also has board games/card games).

So the thing you want to do already exists, but with more games than just board games.

I've been working on something similar, I have some research suggestions that might bring clarity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Collectible_Card_Game

http://www.darkestdungeon.com

These games both focus on exploration, random encounters, success based on random number generation.

Good idea!

You could even take a(n old) photo from Egypt (from above) for your map. (The NASA has quite a lot of photos from earth on their website, which can be used (if you mention them)).

Maybe you could even ask at your college if they have some materials (old photos etc.) which can be used. I mean there are a lot of such photos in teaching books. Also you could check on the photos on wikipedia, under what kind of license they are.

To make it look older you could apply some filters to the photos, or print them on a papyrus like background.

Additional there are some fonts which look hieroglyph like which could be used for certain things ( here an example: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/masterpiece-series-amonkhet-invocations-2017-03-29 )

I also like the idea about the "digging" in a bag, however, I think it works better for what you find at digging sites, and the digging sites themselves could be on cards which are discovered.

If in your country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise are legal you could also use the capsules from them to put "stones" and "treasures" in them (tokens not the cards). (For getting the feeling of opening a digging site). They could also be painted to get a better fitting look.

MtG also had the Hydra deck for Theros Block, they had 3 different challenge decks, one for each set in the block:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/theros-game-day-and-challenge-deck-2013-10-17