(Part 2) Best products from r/tabletopgamedesign

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.

There's two different questions here, so I'm going to try to address each on its own.

The easier question is: presuming you have a way to lay out the cards, how do you get them into a physical "card" form?

Personally, I think the best approach is to use card sleeves. You can get good sleeves for about $6.40 per 100 count:

http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-Protector-Sleeves-100ct/dp/B002GH2D8W/

They're eminently re-usable, and can be purchased in many different colors. That gives you the flexibility to use solid color backed sleeves (to avoid printing card backs), or, if you need double-sided cards with unique information on both sides, use clear sleeves.

Once you have your sleeves, you have a few options.

If you have a lot of excess cards laying around (e.g. M:tG commons, etc), I would suggest printing your cards on standard weight paper. Then, cut the cards to size, put a scrap card in the sleeve, and slide your printed card in front of that. It will fit very snugly, and give the feel of a real card. You can even do this double-sided with transparent-backed sleeves (basically make a sandwich with the scrap card in the middle).

If, on the other hand, you either don't have scrap cards on hand, or don't want to use them like that, you can print on card stock. You can get this done at any copy shop (e.g. a FedEx Office / Kinko's / Office Max / etc). Be aware, though, that it's not cheap. If you print on their heaviest stock, you're probably looking at $2-$2.75 per page (depending on double sided or not), and each page will only fit 9 standard sized cards. However, the end result, in sleeves, is quite good for a prototype.

Now, the harder question: how do you do the layout in the first place?

Probably the easiest approach is what you've said: use a word processor, like Microsoft Word. What I'd suggest is, start a new document, set the document margins to about 1/4 of an inch all around, and then make a 3x3 cell table (each cell representing a card). If you do this, and print black and white, and do it at home, it won't be terribly expensive. You could also bring the file to a copy shop and print there.

A harder way to go, but one that gives you a lot more fine-tuned control, is to use a desktop publishing program. The problem here is, a lot of them are quite expensive. The good news is, there's a fairly decent open source one, called Scribus:

http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

This is what I use, personally. It's good both for card layout, but also for rulebooks and the like. It is absolutely going to be more complicated than just using Word, and if you aren't comfortable getting a little more technical, may not be a good fit for you. But, if you are willing to learn it, it's very powerful.

Either way, you want to lay out a grid of cards on a page, preferably with some markings to indicate where to cut. Then, either get a paper cutter ($10 or less at an office supply store), or use one at your local copy shop (they likely have a large wheel cutter you can use for free, though they probably would prefer it be used on stuff you printed there). Cut away, and insert into sleeves as previously discussed.

That's the basic way I do it, and it's great for getting a functional prototype pretty cheaply, with many parts that can be re-used. Plus, you can easily write on your printed cards if you need to modify them, until you feel confident enough to print a new set with updates later in the process.

Hope that helps!

(Edit to add: I should have said, if you use something like Scribus, you'll probably also want an image editor (e.g. Photoshop, Gimp, etc). I do a lot of individual card layout in Photoshop, and then use Scribus to combine them all into a single printable PDF with all the cards included).

I don't know, you might not be the first

So it looks like a fun little card game! The rules explanation had no real surprises from my end, very easy to understand but with a few questions I had (listed below). I'll ramble on a bit so please feel free to take to heart or ignore at your discretion.

Within the summary section I always prefer to have flavor text and an actual breakdown of the gameplay early on so I can wrap my head around it. Example is that you have the flavor text:

>With that in mind, balance your work force, make some money, and when the time is right - Downsize!

I feel the instructions would benefit from also explaining the actual end game conditions in a quick blurb at the top (something to the effects of: "When all return cards have been collected, the game is over and players tally their returns against their losses with the highest scoring player declared the winner.") For me, knowing how the game plays and ends, at a glance (even without knowing all the keywords) is helpful.

I didn't quite understand the benefit / reasoning behind splitting the returns piles into 3. Perhaps I was missing something?

I really liked the pairs powers and the different interactions that you added. However i am not sure I am excited with the PR cards specifically. For example: Legal & Corporate vs Corporate & Public Relations. One is a Hire 2, one is a Hire1. I guess looking over the specifics I feel I'd rarely utilize PR (If I want to give 1, why not aim to give 2?) and wish there was a bit more options within the pairs. Perhaps that would make the game a bit too complex but I wouldnt mind a (Trade a return card with another opponents random return card) or activate to discard and draw that many workers. Shuffle the deck. Do you feel PR is balanced well right now in the games you've tried? What about Legal? ( I feel making folks lose a legal card isnt that big of a loss since its only purpose is to gain 1 returns (with investment) or have others lose a legal (with PR))

That being said I haven't played the game so perhaps the balance is there and I haven't seen it in action. All and all I really think it has some neat elements and thanks for sharing. Let me know if there is ever a PnP version out there :D

Yes, I did read Lock Step and loved it.

I knew I wanted to do a space 4X game that was like TI3 but more streamlined. When I really thought about what I loved about TI3 vs any other space 4x game it really comes down to the human interaction. There's no other game that gets people so emotionally invested (that I've played. I heard the stories about Diplomacy).

The Merchant Prince idea came out of the Neverness novel. I have to say, I didn't really enjoy the book but one cool idea in there was that space travel is closely controlled by a guild of pilots and these merchant princes are breaking away from the guild to build their own economic empires free of the guild's influence.

I like that programming idea too! I think there's definitely something there. Send the crews out to planets/asteroids/etc and they return at set intervals (if they've been successful). Definitely something to meditate on.

If you want an inexpensive laminator, I bought this one from amazon (http://amzn.to/2kxWSdz). It was around $22. It does one page at a time and seems to do a fine job. I only have experience with this one laminator, but for taking paper things and covering them with plastic it seems to work pretty well. It only comes with 5 pages of lamination material, so you will need to pick up a pack of the lamination pages. A pack of 100 of the "laminating pouches" cost around $12 on amazon. "Pouches" is kind of a misnomer. They open kind of like a clamshell (connected on one edge, the other three sides open). You slide whatever you want to laminate inside, then slide it through the machine. It was a little difficult getting the hang of laminating a bunch of small pieces on one sheet. The trick I used was to put a book in front of the laminator that was even with the level of the input slot, that way you could just gently slide the page forward without moving the little pieces around inside. My first few attempts were done just holding it by hand and feeding it in and I ended up having pieces move and overlap and get laminated overlapping each other.

I would also recommend a corner cutter (like this: http://amzn.to/2k64w1u). When I was cutting out laminated cards/pieces, I ended up with pointy corners. It wasn't a big deal, but being able to round out the corners makes things just feel better to handle.

The whole setup cost about $45 from amazon for laminator, 100 pages (of which I still have plenty left) and the corner cutter.

After buying a laminator, I ended up discovering all kinds of things that I didn't realize needed lamination. :)

I’ve home printed well over 1000 cards over the last few years. Here’s the supplies I use:

Cheap Standard Playing Cards:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B002XO760I/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1527087869&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=playing%2Bcards&dpPl=1&dpID=61b7LUzhLiL&ref=plSrch&th=1&psc=1

Dragon Shield sleeves: (better feel, opacity, and no watermark)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00WX57O7M/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1527088164&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dragon+sleeves

Optional new addition, Dragon Shield Smoke sleeves: (Love these things)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06Y1F3N5X/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1527088312&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dragon+shield+smoke

Cutting: Heavy box cutter, metal ruler, cutting surface.

Paper: Prefer 25-30lbs, but really anything. (free is best)

Then: Load all your playing cards backwards into your card sleeves (back pattern of the card showing through the front). Then all you need to do is cut out your paper cards and slide them into the sleeve; easy peasy.

The thing that always bugged me was the numbers and suits showing through the back of the card sleeve, so I would always need to buy black or dark sleeves. You don’t want to turn it around though, because it’s way worse to see those suits showing through your custom card; why you want a nice and simple repeating pattern as to not be destracting. The nice thing about the new smoke sleeves is that you load your playing cards into those then put them into your color sleeve and bam, no more suits showing through the back of your sleeves even with lighter colors.

One recommendation for the smoke sleeves is that you load them upside-down into the color sleeve; that way you can avoid sillyness later when you want to pull out your paper cards.

Earlier this year I saved up and bough 1000 cards, color sleeves, and smoke sleeves, a card box, and spent a day loading them all up and storing them. Really nice to be able to have a bunch of them avalible at anytime. One party, my friends and I just made a silly card game out of the blue and it was great to be able to pull that box out and have a stable way to shuffle and hold the cards (at the time, folded post-its notes).

I really like your wheel idea, if you want to make up prototypes for that you can use a Crop-A-Dile (link below). You could do multiple wheels that spin on one card so that different abilities can level up independently. Additionally, you can have a single hero card and then a hero deck that goes along with each hero. As they gain level's, they can draw cards from their hero deck that represent new skills or increased ability scores.

Crop-A-Dile: https://www.amazon.com/We-Memory-Keepers-Eyelet-Handle/dp/B001EWPYXG

I've ordered printed materials (boards, tiles, cards, boxes...) from the Game Crafter and I've also done tiles and hexes myself. Here's my 5 cents:

The Game Crafter is perfect for a polished personal copy. It's a really good service and the only down side is that it takes few weeks to get your game. The prices are reasonable. On the other hand if you're still iterating on your game I wouldn't use the Game Crafter. The reason is that it's frustrating to have to wait few weeks to get a replacement tile or two. It's much easier, faster and cheaper to change things if you make your own tiles and hexes. I do use the Game Crafter for my "final" version of a game. But only after I've play tested the game enough to be sure that there won't be any (major) changes.

I've also made my own tiles and hexes. The benefit of this method is the speed of getting them (takes about an evening to do). The quality is also pretty good, totally fine for playing the game, but not as "finished" as the Game Crafter version. But then again small tweaks are really easy and fast to do.

The method I used for tiles was to buy cheap memory games that had the tile size I wanted. Then I printed the tiles onto sticker paper [1] [2] and cut them up and stuck them on the tiles.


I also did this with hexes recently. I ordered some blank hexes from spielmaterial.de [3] and printed onto sticker paper and clued them on. My plan is to order a final version of these hexes from the Game Crafter, but I'm using these hexes to develop the game.


I haven't done a custom board yet, but I'm planning to do one this weekend. My plan is to follow these tutorials: [4] [5]. I've also ordered a Quad-Fold game board [6] from Game Crafter and the quality was great.

Finally here's some images of a game I made with a friend of mine (Erik Svedäng). There's some images of our DIY tiles and of the Game Crafter version of those tiles: [7]

DungeonQuest is the only one of these games I've played, but I liked it. You basically play a tomb raider exploring a labyrinth- which is randomly generated as you move through it- occasionally getting attacked by monsters, falling into traps, etc. The player who gets out with the most gold wins.

It's kind of a goofy game, since there's a chance of dying on literally every turn. You can also decide to turn around and start heading for the exit whenever you want, so it's possible the winner might be the only one who makes it out alive. I don't think it appeals to all gamer types, but if you like chaos and people yelling a lot at your board games, it's a good one.

My best friend and I just finished the Kickstarter fulfillment of our party card game Cult Following.

Unlike other party card games, ours makes use of and multiplies the creativity of the players at the table, while giving those who just enjoys company of their friends a way to have fun. Are your friends crazy fun people? This game will bring that our in spades. It's an awesome game and I'm continually shocked how fanatical (heh) the people who have played or game are about it.

It's been an exhausting process, but we're happy with the result. It's up on sale on Amazon right now. Go check it out!

Nice. Personally, I detest bidding games with a passion that burns like a thousand suns... but I can respect a well-crafted one, and it looks like you have the basis for one.

For your mana, you might consider using acrylic table scatter. You can't include that in a TGC-produced game, of course, but they're really satisfying to use at the table during testing. I use them all the time when prototyping games. They come in lots of colors and are relatively cheap and satisfying game component, and I think they'd especially lend themselves to your theme of Atlantis mana.

For the "character sheets" (I call them the faction mats), I used black cardboard (200 or 250gsm) with self-adhesive paper.
I might change these more often so I didn't want to use something thicker, and, in fact, I thought that I could build the thickness as I glue more and more paper to it until I've got a version that looks more final (and then I'll transition to thicker cardboard).

For the cards, I used the same black cardboard with the self-adhesive paper. This time, though I wrapped the cardboard with the adhesive paper so that I'd get front and back.
I then sprayed them with a clear lacquer to preserve the ink.

In the beginning they stick a little bit, but after some use, they feel a bit more like playing cards.

I want to use linen paper + spray glue + cardboard for my next version of the prototype as I hear those make them feel exactly like playing cards.

As for the rounded corners (on both the cards and the faction mats), it's just a rounded corner cutter.
It's not brilliant, and for thicker items you might have to have some hand strength, but it's cheap and it gets the job done.

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.

Well, the board does look nice, good job on that. Now, if you love Monopoly, let me give you two suggestions: Machi Koro and Lords of Vegas. Both fantastic games about building properties and getting money (although the gambling theme from LoV can put some people off.) You can pick them up from Amazon, or, since you're in Orlando, from the fine folks at CSG.

Steve Jackson's Illuminati. You can learn it in about 20 min, and it's hilarious fun. You don't see it getting much press these days, but it's 10 kinds of awesome.

http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/

Also, actually, Monopoly Deal. It's dead simple, you can learn it in 3 min, and it has suprisingly deep gameplay for a throwaway card game. It's a great way to get people into card games that aren's hearts or poker.

https://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-B0965-Monopoly-Deal-Card/dp/B00NQQTZCO

Ah! I've got one!

CROSSING

It's basically a game where everyone simultaneously points at mushrooms or players they want to take gems from. With the rule that if multiple people point at the same target, none of them get any gems. You can defend yourself by pointing at your own gems (which banks them), except that it takes you out of the next round.

The luck pushing comes from whether you want to keep playing for more vs whether you think your stack is too tasty and someone's gonna go for it. But if you can rely on multiple opponents trying to snipe your gems then neither of them get anything and you're free to try for more! The tension is fantastic and I highly recommend it as a silly party game.

https://www.amazon.com/Asmodee-CROS01ASM-Crossing-Game/dp/B016MLRG20

I think compiling a list of tools used for prototyping would be useful to add to the list.

Free Software

nanDECK (script based card creation tool)

GIMP (free photoshop-esque program)

Inkscape (another visual editing program)

Adobe Suite CS2 (requires adobe registration, but "free")

[Google Docs] (great resource to store files, create spreadsheets, design diaries, play-test notes, rulebook versions, etc)

Physical Tools

Super 77 Spray Abhesive (far better than any glue stick and easier to use)

Blank Assorted Dice (awesome when combined with pre-set sticker labels for fast custom dice)

Sticker Labels Paper (great for random stuff, templates available on the Avery website)


On that note, anyone have a recommendation for a good paper guillotine? I got burned by one of the cheaper models from Officemax and have been nervous to buy a more expensive one.