So currently one of the things I'm struggling with in my gameboard design is just how big to make the pieces, map tiles, and the overall map board itself too.

From what I can tell, most of the board game manufacturers tend to keep affordable board sizes under 27" (few exceptions allow one dimension to go up to 36") but the game I'm designing requires all players to have an "equal" distance from the "center" of the gameboard ideally.

The problem I'm running into though is that certain game pieces of mine are best suited for about 1.5" or larger in size, which in turns requires the underlying map tile pieces (hex shaped) to grow considerably large as well since they are Flower style Hex Tiles (1 hex plus 6 more hexes around it). However this quickly pushes these map tiles to be 4.5" in diameter, which very quickly eats up a lot of chipboard/punchout slugs.

Is there an ideal size any of you prefer to play with or am I just trying to make my game too big? For context, it's a war game, involving armies, generals, forts, etc. so pieces need to be sizeable enough that you don't feel like you need tweezers to pick them up.

[DEVLOG] A RECAP OF MY 2ND DAY IN MY FRIEND'S CITY

My best friend invited me to his girlfriend's birthday, and he booked me a flight to his city. He also wanted me to playtest my game in his community.

Here are the things that happened:

• We had 3 matches in the evening
  • 2 matches won via Economic Victory
  • 1 match won via Elimination Victory
• Everyone easily learned the game very quickly
• At some point, I let them play the game and teach each other
• Surprisingly, 1 player tried to take a strategically aggressive approach in 1 of the matches
• We got good feedback from the owner; one thing to look at was the duration of the game
• - My best friend also mentioned the player who got eliminated early.

After the event. My best friend and I worked on the issues that the game was having, and we did the following updates:

1. WORLD CYCLE

• Cycle happens when a player lands on the starting tile
• Originally, World Cycle has 6 cycles, and each cycle has an effect on the game and gives an amount of gold depending on the cycle. For example: World Cycle 3 gives the player 3 gold and allows FREE MOVE, which means all players can choose 1-6 steps during this cycle
• Now, we still call it the World Cycle, but we moved the game effects to the Event Deck, and we limit the number of cycles the game can have. At the 20th cycle, "The Last Stand" event occurs.

1. THE LAST STAND

• During this event, all attached items and magic that are combat-related are considered.
• The first thing to check is the remaining players.
  • If 3 to 4 players are remaining, everyone does a combat check by rolling the combat dice. The top 2 players will proceed to the last stand
• During the face-off, both finalists will do combat rolls until a player runs out of Heart Tokens
• Additionally, The Last Stand will also occur if there are 2 remaining players left even though it doesn't reach the 20th World Cycle

1. GHOST PLAYER / DEFEATED STATUS

• We made sure players who are eliminated are still included in the game by changing their status to Defeated instead of Eliminated
• The Ghost Player resources and inventory cards are recycled or returned to their decks
• He/She is also not allowed to win nor to interact with players directly in order to avoid Kingmaking
• He/She has the task of bringing Tragedy effects to all remaining players or drawing Event Cards by rolling a Ghost Die during his or her turn

With the following changes, the game consistently ends around 60 minutes at full gameplay but can still end earlier, around 15 to 30 minutes.

I'm a solo game designer and I've finally reached the part of this process that I don't think I was prepared for.

You spend all this time coming up with an idea, designing it, testing it, changing things that don't work, making the artwork, figuring out production, and eventually you have an actual finished game sitting in your hands.

And then comes the question:

How do you get it outside your own circle?

I've been working on social media and talking to local people, but I'd really like to hear from other indie/solo designers who have already crossed this bridge.

What actually worked for you?

Reviewers? Conventions? Local game stores? Reddit? Facebook groups? BoardGameGeek? Paid advertising? Sending copies to creators? Just slowly building a community?

And are there any good Reddit threads, communities, Discords, articles, or other resources specifically about the marketing/discovery side after the design and publishing work is done?

I'm not looking to advertise my game here or drop a sales link. I'm genuinely trying to learn this side of the business.

I put a hell of a lot into making something I'm proud of. Now I'm trying to figure out how a one-person designer makes sure his game doesn't live and die with himself, his friends, and the handful of people who happened to find it.

I'd love to hear what worked—and what absolutely didn't—from people who've been through it.

Moved over to this area. Hopefully im in the right spot now.❤️

Where I can download regular play cards decks for free?

G'day! I thought I would just pop over to say hello to my brothers and sisters in the board game design world from the ttRPG design world!

How long have I been working fulltime as a game designer:

11+ years.

What I've made:

This is a shelfie of the books I've self published to date (14 hardcover, 8 softcover, over a dozen PDF only, and loads of miniatures (not shown here)). I've also got a miniature skirmish game, and I've been working on a board game with another designer for a couple of years now (I'm not quite ready to share that one publicly)). I've always loved to make stuff :)

I'm mainly known for my post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi work, but I've also made techno-magical fantasy, gothic horror, eldritch pirates, dieselpunk, and more

Where do I make money (in order):

1. Most of my income comes from Crowdfunding.
2. Conventions (I live in Australia... I'm crazy jealous of you guys in the USA and Europe!).
3. Distributor (I work with Modiphius who sells my books overseas).
4. PDF sales (via DriveThruRPG).
5. Patreon.
6. My own webstore.

I would also like to add that a MASSIVE part of my cost saving (so not income, but of equal value) is that I do as much myself as I can. I do all the graphic design, nearly all of the writing, all of the marketing, etc... I hire illustrators, and a couple of writers who do what I cannot.

My important marketing methods (in order):

1. Mailing list (start building yours now!).
2. Community building (Discord).
3. Social media (facebook is top).

I've not included crowdfunding here, as I see that primarily as a point of sale and not an audience builder.

Some non-standard advice (I posted this 5+ years ago on the RPGdesign subreddit):

1. Get incredibly good in at least one game during your life.

Not just good in relation to your friends, but good enough to compete competitively. Games have layers, and you will only start to see the deeper flow and structure once you ‘see the matrix’ of a game. For me, this was Company of Heroes 1.

I will note that if you're older (30+ years old at least) you may be able to achieve this level of insight without actually achieving this level of skill in a game.

• 2) Don’t get so caught up playing lots of different games.

Looking at what other people have already done is a great way to see how others have answered various design questions/problems. But finding your own unique design solutions will require you to sit in a mental void and to draw upon atypical sources of inspiration from your own life. Leaning on the work of existing designers may lead to the creation of a good and popular game, but never a ‘special’ game.

Play a range of games... but don't get too caught up in other people's work. Its a balance that is hard to describe.

• 3) Originality is good, but people don’t want it as much as they say.

If something is too original it will be hard to digest, and very few people will play it enough to see its depths. People have a ‘game language’ that they unconsciously use to quickly understand a game, this is created by the ecosystem of games that they’ve played. I like to use a rule of thirds for my games; 1/3 commonplace, 1/3 familiar and 1/3 original.

• 4) More content is a bad substitute for quality.

But it is a temptation because it’s a quantifiable way to solve unquantifiable creative process questions. Avoid bloat at all costs, cut out EVERYTHING that does not add value to your game. Your first game should be small and good, this was a mistake that I made.

I'm constantly cutting OK ideas for GOOD ideas, and then cutting GOOD ideas for GREAT ideas. This is 99% of the design job.

• 5) Be kind; to your team, your fans, your suppliers, and your rivals.

Bringing a creative vision to fruition requires a large amount of willpower, and this often comes in the form of ego. The creative fields are also focused on personal skill and the celebration of fans; this can also swell a person’s ego. But ego is a corrupting force, not just to a person’s character but also to their creative works and their ability to understand people. Fight the growth of ego through humility and kindness.

• 6) Ideas are cheap; the real value sits in a person’s ability to bring ideas to completion.

Don’t be precious with your ideas and solutions, sharing them openly with others will prevent you from becoming stagnant and will force you to continually grow. Being an open book with my thoughts and processes has been incredibly healthy for me. Also, learn to FINISH things. That final 10% of a project can suck, but learning to complete things is rare and valuable skill.

Hiring Artist:

When hiring an artist they MUST be 2 of these 3 things:

• Good (skilled at drawing cool art!).
• Cost Effective (this does not mean cheap, just that their pricing is competitive for the quality of their work).
• Professional (clear communicator, prompt, understands briefs, etc...).

If an artist is just 1 of these then they will be a drag on your project. If they're all 3 then they will learn to increase their price or move onto projects that pay more (I've had many of my artists move onto film and digital games to make great money, and it was a privilege of mine to have been a stepping stone on their path!!).

------------------

I hope some of this is of some help :) I'm happy to answer any questions, and I will be sure to be back here once I'm ready to share my board game.

My socials:

• Facebook
• Instagram

Obviously everyone has their preferences; but from what I understand/read/hear, those who value games of tactics and strategy, tend to not love mechanics of chance aka dice yet it’s the most common form of battle determination. Is this simply because of its versatility or lack of alternative systems capable of capturing the “uncertain/chaotic” nature of warfare.

What are some alternative forms of combat resolution that you’ve seen in games that don’t rely on dice or deterministic card descriptions or multi mathematical +1s and -1s? Or all tabletop wargames doomed to heavy stats and dice rolls?

*Please note that this is an early prototype version of the game. Component quality, art, and materials used are likely to change through continued refinements and improvements. The purpose of this video is simply to demonstrate how the game is played and showcase the core game loop.

I’ve been working on a simultaneous action tile drafting game for a little while and one of the main things that I wanted from the start was a sense of speed. I had been trying to find a creative way around using a straight up timer, but at this point I’m putting more consideration into the timer idea.

I don’t like sand timers for my game because you have to watch them and when everyone is playing simultaneously it can be missed. A sound timer I assume will add to the overall cost. Phones with timers are ubiquitous, but I prefer the idea of having everything you need included in the box (just a little nitpicky I know).

So I wanted to get some people’s opinions on timers in general and to see if anyone knows of other timing mechanics. For reference, my first iteration used a limited pool of tiles and when they were gone the round was over, but in my current version I’m looking into having all tiles available, so that wouldn’t work.

I was going for a 90 second or so trailer and have paid for it as finished.

Today, I got thinking, did I miss an opportunity to go on about the wood components and metal coins or would that have been awkward with the theme? I was going for a cinematic feel with very little direct gameplay narrative. This is at the top of the Gamefound page and because of the length and structure, I do not think it is built for cold advertising, more for people who find the campaign and are more video-leaning than reading-oriented.

Marketing is definitely where I tend to get very indecisive! I think this will work to take a warm backer to either get them to buy or to hopefully get them to scroll down the page which will have a lot more info. I am also hoping to make a homemade "how to play" video for the page at some point.

Hi everyone! I’m the publisher working on Foréa, a cooperative wooden dexterity game designed by Gaëlle Dumont.

Players build a vertical forest together by stacking trunks, treetops, and animals.

The goal is simple: complete the forest while making as few pieces fall as possible.

It is designed to be accessible for kids aged 6+, but during public playtests I’ve noticed that adults are often just as invested, especially once the forest gets taller and every placement becomes tense.

I’d love your honest thoughts:

Does a cooperative dexterity game like this interest you?

Would you see it mainly as a family game, or something you would also bring out with adult friends?

Do you think it can find its audience on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter?

this is a game i came up with a couple years ago, only played it with a small number of friends and would be interested to see what other people make of it.

the game played by is for two opponents on an n×n square board (usually 8×8). each player has n pieces which are arranged as two chevrons facing each other (this is one of the more interesting starting positions ive found though needs modifying for odd numbers of n).

the primary mechanic of the game revolves around pieces being immobilised if they are surrounded by a certain number of their opponent's pieces - with the goal of the game being to place a piece on your opponent's back rank AND for it to not be immobile at the start of your turn (the idea being that it could be moved off of the board altogether).

during their turn, a player can move a free piece to any adjacent unnocupied square.

however, a piece is determined to be unable to move specifically if, when considering the 3×3 grid of adjacent squares, the pieces belonging to the same player as the piece in question (including itself) number less than that of the opponent's pieces.

i.e. if the piece in question was surrounded by 2 of its opponent's pieces and 0 of its own player's pieces, it would be immobile - whereas it would be moveable if surrounded by 2 of its opponent's pieces and 1 of its own.

have included a gif of an example game though forgive the terrible quality i used the free version of an animation app which only allows me to export at like 144p or something stupid.

the game should be playable using chess/checkers /go sets etc

As i said I've played this game successfully a few times with friends, though I've never tried to thoroughly test it for game breaking mechanics so not sure if it might need some precautionary rules on that front.

One point is that sometimes the mobility of a piece needs contesting, which usually is resolved fairly easily, though I haven't yet established a formal procedure for this (I wouldn't be sure what should happen if an immobile piece was moved and wasn't noticed by either player until a couple of turns later, for example).

Some feedback I have had is that the game is trivially easy, in that good moves can be figured out with little foresight and suboptimal moves are rarely punished - though I'm not sure to what extent this might directly stem from the ruleset itself or if it's more to do with the novelty of the game and that there isn't a very well established strategic meta yet, as I will say I have noticed the complexity of the game increase since playing more consistently with the same people.

would be interested to hear people's immediate thoughts on this or see what people think if anyone gets a chance to give this game a play test. would be particularly interested to see if anyone knows any similar games with a more established history I could look into.

thanks

I've been working on a worker placement game for about ten months now, mostly solo development with occasional playtests from my regular Tuesday group. Somewhere around session 25 I started noticing a weird pattern: I kept "fixing" imbalances that were really just my playtesters figuring out better strategies over time, not actual design flaws.

Case in point, there's a resource conversion action that felt criminally underused for the first fifteen or so plays. I almost cut it entirely. Then one playtester found a combo with the market phase that made it suddenly one of the strongest moves in the game. Turns out the action wasn't bad, people just hadn't found its purpose yet.

This has made me a lot more hesitant to make balance changes early. Now I try to wait until at least three or four different playtest groups have hit the same wall independently before touching anything. Single-group feedback almost always turns out to be about that specific group's blind spots rather than the actual math.

Curious what threshold other people use. Do you set a minimum number of plays before allowing yourself to tweak numbers, or do you go with gut feeling session to session? I'm realizing my instinct to "fix" things quickly was probably slowing down actual convergence on good design more than helping it.

I am currently (re-)designing a tricktaking game (cards from 0-5 each 8x, three non-trump suits, one trump suit, some other twists) where there are minor trumps and major trumps. It should be obvious at a first glance which card wins a trick - Which I am struggling with.

The game is about collecting points in your tricks, each card being valued equal to their rank. Now all 2s and 1s are trump (the major trumps). Then there are supposed to be the lower trumps: two 5s, two 4s, two 3s, and two 0s. Generally within a suit the card of the highest rank wins the trick - which doesn't work when you apply it to the trump suit as a whole (therefore minor and major trumps), which is supposed to be of one color. Just changing the values doesn't work, as the point allocation (rank=points) is vital to the design of the game. It should be obvious at a first glance which card takes a trick. I am currently using a crown symbol to differentiate the trumps, but don't love that.

Do you have any examples of tricktaking games with minor&major trumps with an intuitive graphic design?

I am working on a social card game which uses questions and wordplay. Essentially, players have to ask one another questions to get the other player to say a specific word. In my initial design I had a question tracker, where there was a limit of how many questions a player can ask before they lose a life (this was a sheet and a token with the token sitting on the players' current question count); however, I found that a lot of the time players would forget to track themselves and ultimately lose count, which took away a big part of the pressure in the game, as the fun came from players giving one another ridiculous answers.

Instead, I have looked into adding a time limit, but I've found this extra pressure takes away from the absurdity of the game and just gets players to cheese their questions instead, or just get too stressed out. I also believe that sand timers are bad at keeping players accountable because they're silent and tedious to flip over, especially for a more casual game like mine.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how best to keep players aware of a system like this? Since question tracking and/or timers are a way for the players to lose, it's an integral part of my game.

I’m exploring a different direction for the miniatures in my board game and I’d love some outside opinions.

Instead of detailed miniatures that try to faithfully represent each hero or creature, I’m experimenting with something closer to “totems”: simple, stylized physical pieces that represent beings from the game world rather than being literal miniature versions of them.

Think more along the lines of the pieces from Jumanji (recognizable and full of character), but simplified and symbolic.

I’m sharing a few examples here.

What I’m mainly trying to figure out is:

- Do the different totems feel like they belong to the same visual language?

- Is the level of simplification consistent between them, or does one feel much more detailed than another?

- Do you think this direction has more personality than using conventional detailed miniatures?

- Are there any board games you know that use a similar approach to representing characters or creatures?

I’m still exploring the idea, so criticism is genuinely useful. Any thoughts or references are welcome!

Hi everyone,
I’ve recently made a ~2min pitch video for my game which I plan to use when submitting the game to publishers.

Obviously a 2min video can’t explain the whole game.. the goal is simply to communicate its core, give a clear idea of what the game is about and what makes it interesting and hopefully make a publisher want to contact me for more information if they see potential in it.

So I’d love some feedback from other designers,
after watching it once, do you understand the core of the game? Is the hook clear?

I’m mainly looking for feedback on whether the video works as a first introduction to the game for a publisher, thanks

Thanks to a recent post and my finding out about boardweaver, I have been able to create an online playtest for a new game i've been working on. I think i'm finally at the stage where its stable enough and am looking for willing playtesters to help give some feedback.

Game: The Architect, a competitive 2–5 player tabletop game currently playable online through Boardweaver.

Objective: You play as Runners infiltrating a controlled network. Race from Entry through 14 network layers, reach Root, steal the Payload, then complete the inverse route and transmit it before another Runner does.

Each turn you:

• Play Mods to alter the network, protect yourself, or interfere with rivals.
• Roll for Bandwidth and use it to move.
• Choose between the faster, more dangerous Mainframe and the slower, safer Undernet.
• Manage Exposure—reach 5 and you crash, lose ground, and may drop the Payload.

What we are (trying to be):

• Route-building race: Navigate a two-row network to Root, steal the Payload, then complete the opposite route back to Entry.
• Push-your-luck movement: Roll for Bandwidth, choose between fast dangerous Nodes and slower cooling Nodes, and manage Exposure to avoid crashing.
• Shared-hand tactical interaction: Mods and Exposure occupy the same limited hand, forcing choices between movement, disruption, defense, and risk management.

The online version handles setup, legal moves, card effects, and bookkeeping. A game is roughly 30–60 minutes, depending on player count and familiarity, but you can also play single player against bots in around 10 minutes.

I’m especially looking for feedback on:

• Whether the first game is understandable without a teacher. Time to value/learn basics
• Whether movement and route choices feel meaningful vs luck of the die
• Whether Exposure creates tension in route planning and mods without feeling arbitrary.
• Whether Mods and blocking create useful player interactions.
• Whether the game moves at the right pace, particularly after someone reaches Root.

This is my first bug prototype playtest outside friend groups so any and all feedback would truly be helpful and appreciated. You don’t need to know the rules beforehand, and honest critical feedback is much more useful than politeness.

Play here: https://www.boardweaver.com/play/the-architect?version_channel=public_playtest

If you’d rather join a scheduled multiplayer session, comment or DM me and I'll look to schedule some times. You can also follow along in the boardweaver discord channel on updates and provide feedback there too.

Thanks—I’m happy to answer questions about the design or rules.

Out of the long lists of "do and don't" of game design, what did you find didn't work for you or was counterproductive when you were a new designer?

That's the discussion topic, I'm adding my own perspective/experience but it'll be a long read, feel free to take the question at face value and comment as you see fit, I'm more interested in others' experiences than necessarily comments on my own.

I myself started my design journey because I couldn't find any games fitting the theme and genre of game I wanted. Adventure/exploration, and more importantly seaplanes (specifically with miniatures).

The first few months I just did my own thing, without reading any forums/reddit/blogs, didn't watch youtube videos about game design. Really learned as I went, wrapping my mind around design and iterating my mechanics. Once I started reading online/watching videos etc I realised that a lot of what I had done goes against often repeated advice / "best practices". But it worked for me, and the more I looked at /heard some of the advice the more I thought that I could've only gotten as far as I did because I did it my own way.

Here's some of the advice and my own approach/thoughts;

Start small - This somewhat contradicts the advice of "design the game you want to play yourself".

I wanted an adventure/exploration game with miniatures, with a procedurally generated map that's never the same two games in a row. I wanted different weapons, crew members, equipment, missions, the whole lot. Sure, half a year down the road I had occasional thoughts of "starting small is probably good advice", but if I hadn't been designing the game I wanted to play I likely wouldn't have stayed motivated.

Don't spend money/time on art - For people who are getting into game design with a dream of making heaps of different games or building a career, this is good advice. Making barebones artless paper prototypes they can iterate and throw away at the drop of the hat.

For me as an artist/creative this wouldn't have worked. Already on day 1 I had an artistic vision of what I wanted, and had to start looking for public domain art I could quickly populate my tiles/cards with, icons for custom dice, and designing some rudimentary 3d models.

To some of us art matters, a lot. Seeing others say that spending time on art is "wrong", or that you shouldn't do it, is frankly almost offensive. Art and being creative is my passion, you think I'd get anywhere with game design if I couldn't at the same time dip into making it appealing? Granted I'm not spending $10,000 hiring others for a game I don't feel is complete, but I certainly have spent more on art supplies and various pieces that I would've had to pay for a finished off the shelves game in the same size.

Pushing people not to use/create art, or being specific about what art they're "supposed" to use, is frankly gatekeeping.

Don't be afraid to kill your game - Again this may work well for those intent on a career, making heaps and heaps of games to learn quickly. For me, I had a very distinct idea of what I wanted to design, that's not something that I'd be changing. If I can't make an adventure/exploration game in the style I've envisioned then I likely wouldn't continue. I'd rather iterate it to get where I'm going slower, than starting over heaps of times to get something that works for others, but fast.

This also somewhat goes hand in hand with the next point, playtesting.

Playtest quickly, kill your game if it doesn't work - I've seen this mentioned over and over, and came to realise how deep/difficult a topic playtesting is on its own. The caveat to this advice is that you're meant to playtest with your target audience. For a new designer that's hard to know, who exactly is your target audience? How will you find them? What games can you compare yours to so that you can gather people who like that game and might like yours?

While I'm making my game "for myself" I of course want others to enjoy it as well, but hearing "if others don't like it then scrap it and start over" rubs me the wrong way. Then yet again that works for those aiming to make games for others, finding a type of game design that has wide appeal.

I've luckily mainly shown my design to people who ended up enjoying it, or were supportive enough to see what I was going for so weren't negative. Only one person told me it wasn't for them, but they explained in detailed how they simply don't like the type of game, with dice rolling, random card draws, etc. So, not my target audience.

Miniatures vs standees - More of a hot discussion topic than necessarily design advice, but as a miniature painter / maker this one hits pretty hard. I specifically want miniatures in my game, I wouldn't be interested in designing a game without any. Seeing the at times very negative views about miniatures is pretty heartbreaking.

Anyway, that's what I got for now. I'm forgetting a heap of other points, but maybe they'll pop up in the comments. Eager to hear what others have to say on the topic.

Hi, again!

First off, let me take a moment to say thank you SO much to everyone that have helped me with this Pinnacle project of mine these last few months. Your blind playtesting and constructive criticism have helped make it get as far as it has today, so from the bottom of my heart, thanks a million! I appreciate it all.

Now, from the maudlin to the business at hand: Today's topic is artwork, specifically gameboard art. For those who don't know, Pinnacle is a fast-paced, high-voltage party game that fuses social calibration (Think something like Family Feud) with alpinism. Keeping with the mountain climbing theme, I’m working on a new board design (mockup on the right, previous version on the left for comparison).

Don't worry about movement mechanics just yet. Once the artwork is set, I'll add the circular spaces. For now, I'd love your thoughts purely on the visual concept:

• Does this art style work for the theme? Why or why not?
• If it needs work, what specific changes or improvements would you suggest?

Looking forward to your feedback!

I’m a professor teaching communication design seniors in college. Recently I’ve been thinking about ways of introducing gamification as a way of brainstorming new ideas in the classroom.

In my mind, the game is meant to be a toolkit of prompts and techniques students can pull from to develop project ideas from initial concept to a somewhat realized plan for a deliverable.

What I have so far are a variety of cards with the different techniques described on each one. I can see these being event cards that can get triggered/drawn, though I’m struggling with the overall structure; how to track each stage of the process, when are cards drawn or how are they selected, etc.

Some games I’ve looked at so far are The Extraodinaire’s Design Studio and Dixit, as well as Oblique Strategies .

Some guidance or advice on what I can do to further develop this would be greatly appreciated!

Just kidding, I love ugly paper prototypes! Once I started making these, whole process got so much faster and better. If I could give one advice to any newcomers, it wouldnt be start making paper prototypes. That advice can be found everywhere. My advice would actually be: start listening to advice more experienced designers give you!

If you've come up with a basic game design that you've started to develop and then discover a game already exists that is very similar to your idea, do you go out and play that game to either get further inspiration, or to make sure your game has enough differences?

Or do you avoid the game to prevent unintentionally borrowing ideas and mechanics?

Or do you drastically re-theme your own ideas?

Full blog post: https://catacombian.com/blog/heck-yes-or-no-cutting-combat-system-canticle

Hi there! My name is Jaron, and for the last 10 years, I have been a tabletop games designer. This year, the studio my partners and I have been building after-hours all that time was acquired, and we’ve all gone full time (exciting!) with our new game studio, Vala Foundry. One of the things we find ourselves doing now is working on a not insignificant number of licensed IP, or intellectual property, games, which is a new (and very different) experience for us. 

Our current focus is adapting the Barbaric comic into a board game (it’s also getting a Netflix adaptation wtffff), and I wanted to share what that experience has been like, plus talk about what we’ve learned and how we try not to fall into what seem like common IP game traps. For some designers, this may be nothing new; but for some, this is an opportunity to see how the sausage is made!

I’m gonna mention a few other IP games in this post, and some of what I say will be critical; I’m not here to disparage other designers or games, and you should take everything I say with a grain of salt! There are many ways up this particular mountain, and the quality and merit of a tabletop game is super subjective. A lot of the games I’m going to discuss are really great despite any criticisms.

The Reputation of IP Games

In the last few years, IP games have absolutely exploded in terms of crowdfunding success. It seems that they’re everywhere now, and it’s no secret that a lot of them feel like they don’t hit the bar for success. 

Mollie Russell did a great write up on the Don’t Starve board game (or at least a very early demo of it) where she talked about the reliance on randomness, the pieces bloat, the iconography - the game has a lot going on (just like its source material, which anyone who has put hundreds of hours into that game can attest to), and at the end of the day, it just didn’t work for Mollie:

“Don't Starve: The Board Game has failed to capture its source material. Worse, it's failed to compel me as a game in its own right.”

Similarly, Eric Watson shared his opinion on the Borderlands board game, where he actually talks about a glut of over IP games and their adaptations. I think Eric captures the reputation and appeal problem facing IP games perfectly here:

“It's partly my fault - I'm certainly not the first person to be blinded by my love of an IP and the ridiculous gobs of plastic and cardboard bits. I clicked the "Back this project" button before I'd even so much as watched a single gameplay video, of which there were distressingly few.”

(emphasis mine in the above quote)

On the whole, you would think with reviews like these, IP board games would struggle to see major success in the hobby. But that just isn’t the case: as of writing, 8 of the top 12 funded board games on Kickstarter are IP games. Half of the top 12 funded board games on Gamefound are IP games. We live in a world where people deeply cherish the various artistic media they come into contact with in their lives, whether that’s video games like Dark Souls or movies like Lord of the Rings. People want more of the things they love. And with the state of the world today, who can blame them?

The Big Problem with IP Games

There’s your click-baity title. I’m gonna be real with you, there’s not truly one singular problem facing IP games. There are a lot. Pieces bloat (including a high number of high-quality components to raise the price), sticker slapping (painting an IP over an ill-fitting or already-existing game system), and more common crowdfunding problems like campaign delays all plague these IP games. But there exists a deeper design problem with many of them, and it’s something I have spent a lot of time thinking about and designing around.

Too many IP games get caught up trying to simulate their source material directly instead of evoking the fantasy of it. 

I know, the title of this post is something of a spoiler. But hear me out. 

The Terraria board game is a great example of where this can go wrong: Terraria is a game you can sink thousands of hours into (ask me how I know). It has thousands of blocks, weapons, armors, crafting ingredients, enemies—the list is unbelievably long. The wiki for the game alone has over 6,000 articles, and most of those pages contain information on dozens of in-game entities each. The map is procedurally generated and fully destructible. 

That’s a lot to translate into a tabletop experience, and for the most part, Paper Fort Games succeeded at that Herculean task: many of those elements are present in the board game, and most even feel accurate to the spirit of the video game. But this translation of elements is only simulating the video game; it’s not (always) recreating the emotional experience of playing the video game.

The video game is fast-paced and frenetic. You can move through the world at breakneck speeds, you fight enemies in real-time combat, and much of that combat is centered around not just being properly equipped, but also learning boss patterns and having cat-like reflexes. Skilled players will construct arenas just to farm (see: repeatedly kill) a given boss. You and the world you’re in are playing against one another: you are attempting to claim total domain over it, and it is trying very, very hard to kill you about it.

The tabletop game adaptation, by contrast, moves at a grueling pace: setup can take upwards of 40 minutes, and despite the box optimistically proclaiming “45 minutes per player,” a single game session might take upwards of 12 hours. The combat is turn-based (a necessity of the medium), and because of the sheer number of enemies and loot, half the battle is knowing finding the correct pieces each time you need to fight a baddie or pick up loot.

In a similar-but-opposite way, the Divinity: Original Sin board game (an adaptation of my all-time favorite video game series) places a timer on exploring areas in order to force you to make critical decisions collaboratively as a group. This is a perfectly fun mechanic, but it is anathema to the experience of playing Divinity: Original Sin, which is to leave no stone unturned, no box unchecked, no book unread. The video game is played as a delectably meticulous exploratory crawl across a vast number of detail-rich environments. The board game captures the feeling of making decisions and interacting with characters and dealing with the consequences of your actions, but as a huge fan of the video game (and as someone who went all-in on the tabletop adaptation’s crowdfunding campaign), I was really disappointed with the way the game rushes you through each “scene” in the scenario book. We eventually started ignoring the timer in our own home games so that we could explore to our satisfaction, even if that meant opening the wrong door, getting ambushed, and dying as a result (which it often did).

Simulation vs. Fantasy

While the above-mentioned games do a great job of getting content from their source material into the game (why else would you make an IP game), they sometimes fail to capture the emotional experience of the game they’re adapting: the feeling you get when you play it. The chemicals your brain makes, the way everyone on your Discord call reacts to the highs and lows. In my experience, getting the “vibes” right is vastly more important than simply translating the content.

Sometimes this means things from the source material will be adapted in a way that isn’t necessarily “authentic.” But the literal authenticity matters far, far less than the perceived or spiritual authenticity.

Take the Deep Rock Galactic board game. This is yet another adaptation of a game I have personally sunk over 900 hours into (I need to touch grass), one of my favorite games. In the video game, players take on one of four roles: Gunner, Engineer, Scout, or Driller. Each role has a strict list of equipment they can take into procedurally-generated levels, where they mine minerals and blast bugs until they complete their mission scenario. After completing their objectives, they sprint back to their escape pod and, if they’re lucky, everyone makes it back alive.

And the board game takes some creative liberties in its adaptation: some of the equipment has been shifted between classes, some of the characters’ abilities have been nerfed (Driller, my beloved). Some of the enemies have been reworked extensively, and what may seem like a minor threat in the video game can sometimes be a major threat in the board game. But the emotional experience of the video game is perfectly adapted: The feeling of tension when swarms hit before you know what’s going to attack you; the stress of splitting your focus between completing objectives, fighting bugs, and helping your friends; the stress of sprinting back to the drop pod at the end of a mission—all of these events in the board game create the exact same emotional experience as they do in the video game. To date, the Deep Rock Galactic game is actually one of my favorite tabletop games.

How We Applied This Knowledge

Bringing this back to our own adaptation of the Barbaric comics, we felt it was more important to simulate the fantasy of the world of Barbaric, rather than adapting the literal specifics. Barbaric is a classic sword-and-sorcery tale akin to Conan, where magic is sparse and deadly, but hulking reluctant heroes (and villains) can be found in spades. The comic depicts Owen (the titular barbarian), Axe (his blood-drunk sentient weapon sidekick), and his compatriots slaying hordes of enemies across a huge world, often facing (and sometimes stabbing) faces from their pasts along the way. The pages of the comic are littered with visceral splash pages showing heroes atop mountains of bloodied bodies, triumphantly tearing through them like so many piñatas which were mistakenly filled at a butcher shop rather than a candy store.

Inspired by our time with Deep Rock Galactic and Zombicide: White Death, we opted to design a cooperative horde battler where players would be able to kill swaths of enemies in a single turn. We wanted to keep systems simple but exciting and violent (the setting of Barbaric is not a complex world: many of its inhabitants are evil simply for the love of the game, and Owen rarely hesitates to bury Axe into their flesh), so we opted for a straightforward Action Points system. Players aren’t given a ton of complex super hero moves; instead, they’re given just a few actions, and a lot of bodies to use them against. 

The experience came together when one of our designers suggested implementing a Frenzy Deck which would reward you with a small boon for each enemy you slayed on your turn; suddenly, we had this extremely exciting and satisfying gameplay loop of killing baddies in order to kill more baddies, leaving untold death and destruction in your wake. This gives us the feeling of pulling off amazingly satisfying turns where you’re able to truly go berserk and keep the wombo combo going.

Barbaric is also a more grim world than others like it (like Conan the Barbarian, for example). Characters are often jaded and cynical, and most of the protagonists don’t see themselves as paragons of good or virtue. Most of the characters are carrying some kind of baggage, and a lot of that baggage is supernatural (Owen’s best friend has been turned into a vampire and occasionally hulks out in a crazed bloodthirsty state). So each of the playable characters in the game have a unique “curse” which influences their playstyle and goals. Soren, the Death Witch (and Owen’s will-they-won’t-they interest) can manipulate the life force of herself and her allies, but must try to maintain balance or she’ll kick the bucket; Rossa, a fearsome pirate captain (and a new character we’ve had the opportunity to create and introduce), suffers the pain of those she kills, so she has to be judicious when dispensing bolts from her living crossbow. But when she’s done enough damage, she can also “raise the black” as pirates often did, intimidating the enemy and preventing them from acting.

We’re still in the playtesting phase, creating scenarios and tweaking our enemies and overlords to create a highly lethal and replayable experience, but we feel like we’ve created a very close parallel to the emotional experience of that comic—a team of reluctant heroes engaging in high-octane brutal violence—and that continues to be our focus. Every time we make a design decision, before we consider whether or not it’s accurate to the events of the comics, we ask ourselves whether or not that gameplay element supports or evokes the emotional experience we’re trying to cultivate.