(Part 2) Top products from r/tabletopgamedesign

Love the idea of an economically based space 4x game. Been a huge fan of TI3 myself over the years, but the mechanics sometimes just get in the way of telling the stories of these space empires interacting. Always love the Hacan and their focus on trading and making money instead of conquering the galaxy and wished there was a game that would let me explore that sort of gameplay.

Interestingly enough FFG announced a supplement book for their Star Wars RPG detailing the Hutts and their homeworld of Nal Hutta which got me thinking about how a galaxy where the peaceful but ruthless Hacan would compete against an organization like the Hutts who willingly break all the rules to get ahead.

Complete side note too, but curious if you ever heard of the novel called Lock Step byKarl Schroeder. The book itself isn't that good (sorta young adult stuff) but the universe he outlines is fascinating. Basically he explores the idea of what a galaxy spanning empire would function without the old sci fi trope of 'going faster than the speed of light'. In Lock Step, every member planet of the empire voluntarily goes into hibernation for 30 year periods. During these hibernation steps, robots and other automation gather resources for trade/consumption and ships travel the great spans between stars. When everyone wakes up, its business as usual for a month, then they go into hibernation again.

Always thought a 4x game where the foundations like that are already setup, and you had to lead your company/clan/trade prince/etc to profit would be fascinating. Player turns would be essentially 'programming' their moves in advance then allowing the passage of time dictate if they were successful or not. Did those robot miners hit paydirt where you sent them out? Did your convoy successfully make it to that distant star or did non-hibernating pirates get it?

Bit off topic, but not sure where else to gush sometimes :P Quite interested in your game for sure and will be paying attention.

I'm also a scholar working with board games, except I'm coming at it from a Professional/Technical writing background. My approach would be to include a chapter or section in your written treatment of the game that talks about what games have influenced your design. Give a short description of its mechanics and goals, and what specifically you drew upon when making your own game. Basically, build a map of published games and situate your game within that map. How do these games connect to your own creation? It might even be useful to create an actual visual map that shows how different elements of other games have come together in your own creation. Remember: all great art is theft of some kind; own your influences and be secure in the knowledge that whatever you've created necessarily differs from your influences, even if you're wholesale copying mechanics from them.

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In my prospectus for my dissertation, I have a short section that goes over the modern history of board games to help give my project some context (here is the book I used as my core text for that). My committee found that extremely useful for understanding games outside of family games like Sorry! and classic modern games like Catan. I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your committee, but I've actually sat down and played games over a few pints with my dissertation chair. This helped me bridge the gap between my extensive board game knowledge and their extensive theoretical/production knowledge. We not only talked about how the game functioned in terms of mechanics but also had a lot to discuss in terms of how the game signposts important information or uses visual language to communicate complex ideas. It sounds like you could benefit a lot from such a connection with your advisors.

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If you ever want to talk shop, I'd be thrilled to discuss approaching board games from an academic perspective with you. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to talk through your design. I actually teach a class on board game design and love giving feedback. Good luck on the grind, friend.

The big publishers are not known to take submissions from new designers. There are smaller publishers that do though, like Victory Point Games (full disclosure: they published one of my games).

A good way to get started is to make a few free print'n'play games first to get experience and feedback from other hobby designers. The regular design competitions on www.bgdf.com and www.boardgamegeek.com are great for this.

Currently reading a new book that I think is very good at describing all the things a new designer has to know about designing a game in practice:
Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish
Wish I had that years ago before I started experimenting with making my own games.

I played with Fantasy Flight Wood Tokens for my first several iterations. Later, I designed custom pieces using Wings3D and 3D printed them through Sculpteo and Shapeways. Altogether it cost me ~$200 to get pieces about equal in volume to the buildings that come with Settlers of Catan. [Here's what those look like] (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RnZCIf3kfHGxxK6_4Mn3hzS1HAj8eP6Bwg/view)

I know the 3D stuff can be daunting if you're a newcomer, but it may be fun to try. Wings3D is especially intuitive if you want to take a crack at designing this stuff yourself. One warning- it'll get expensive if you end up making tweaks later that require printing new (or different quantities) of your pieces. I'd suggest you wait on the custom stuff until you've playtested with cheaper models.

Good luck!

The Design of Everyday Things is incredibly helpful. It's not about game design at all, but I find some of the best advice comes from other design disciplines.

Amazon link:

http://a.co/7SdAD5o

This is the yellow version. It has 4 meeples, a few different sized discs, a few cubes, houses, and sticks. There is black, yellow, red, blue, white, and green.

Edit:
The amazon link provided by amazon looks super shady. Here is the full link

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Flight-Supply-Tokens-Yellow/dp/1616610352

Since you're not creating this to mass produce, I say buy a board and play around. Maybe having the board and current form of the game will let you see its usefulness, maybe it'll just reaffirm that you don't need one... but doesn't hurt to have one.

Here's a dry-erase reversible board that could work well while you find potential design/function. And if it doesn't work just use it for something else. But really, if you're not concerned with future production costs of justifying a board, it's worth exploring the possibilities. Give in to the "want" because you want to incorporate it, it's not like some game reviewer is gonna judge you on the "need."

Chris Crawford's book has a great chapter on the math behind game systems and how to use it to prevent snowballing.

He basically talks about how multipliers and exponentials make your system accelerate faster and how to use roots and logarithms to slow it down. But the way he explains it really helped me to understand the connection between the math of the game and the feel of the game.

It's written towards digital games, but I think it's useful knowledge for any game designer.

I just wanted to recommend using Inkscape instead of AI, and mention that Ted might have some bias towards Illustrator. I think I could make all that imagery faster with Inkscape than with AI (I use AI at work, Inkscape at home), but he's 100% right that you want vector imaging software.

Inkscape's multi-page support is pretty terrible, but that's what PDF merging sites are for (for me at least).

https://www.amazon.com/Dragonlance-Fifth-Age-SAGA-System/dp/0786905352

Dragonlance: Fifth Age did this. Players held cards in their hand and played them out in combat. I only ever saw copies of it in flea markets and on deep discount, so it was obviously not popular. The problem, I would suspect, is having one hand for everything.

Draw an ace of spades? Great! Save it for combat for a critical hit!

Draw a 2 of diamonds? Well, that's terrible, so I will attempt a useless challenge and fail it to discard the card and draw something else.

I think you would have to design the system to work off of pairs/runs/flushes/etc. to alleviate the problem. The people CAN save for big hits if they want, or they can burn pairs occasionally for smaller successes.

I had a thread about this not too long ago

From there, I suggest Tynan Sylvester's Engineering Experiences

And I still think Ian Schrieber's [Game Design Concepts series] (https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/level-1-overview-what-is-a-game/) is a masterclass

There is a lot of great information out there, and there is also so much chaff to sift through. Of course, Richard Garfield would remind us that we also need to play every game.

>"Game designers should train themselves to think out of the mold, but it's naive to think that you profit by not even knowing what the mold is."
-- Richard Garfield

Boardgames That Tell Stories from Ignacy Trzewiczek won't give you any theoretical knowledge, but it's full of insider stories, very useful to get in the right mindset and understand the industry.

Can it be larger? This one's pretty big: https://www.amazon.com/KongNai-Silicone-Collapsible-Foldable-Transferring/dp/B07STBWMB7/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_79_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=WT1AQYPH0ZFNP46K0381

I really like.

Challenges for Game Designers by Brathwaite and Schreiber: https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Games-Designers-Non-Digital-Exercises/dp/1542453313/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493469101&sr=8-1&keywords=challenges+for+game+designers

Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Playcentric-Innovative/dp/1482217163/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1482217163&pd_rd_r=C4KTX74FX6FRDX63HCJQ&pd_rd_w=EuUkE&pd_rd_wg=y877F&psc=1&refRID=C4KTX74FX6FRDX63HCJQ

*Kobold Guide to Board Game Design: https://www.amazon.com/Kobold-Guide-Board-Game-Design/dp/1936781042/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493469414&sr=1-1&keywords=kobold+guide+to+board+game+design

6th grade, not 6 years old. We made this game for our english class where we'd read the book Dragon Wings. The story had opium dens in them, and we thought they were hilarious.

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.

As far as designing orienting around people and making systems people respond to, there's a lot of grist in The Design Of Everyday Things

You should check out Ralph Koster's A Theory of Fun, and Keith Burgun's Clockwork Game Design.

Those were the "eye openers" for me.

Pick up this book if you can. Dice Games Properly Explained - Knizia

No Thanks has the numbers 3-35 on cards.

You could probably find some kids' flash cards that have 1-100:
https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-1-100-Flash-Cards/dp/0938256904
or similar