Making Board/Pen and Paper games.

I've been making my own tabletop games for about 5 years. Mostly because my friends and I were too broke and/or lived to far away from anywhere that sold REAL tabletop games. At first they were very simplistic but over the last 2 or 3 years, and after losing my job, I had nothing better to do with my time other than refine and create my games.

I love making these games but now that I'm jobless with no real hope of getting a new job anytime soon, I was thinking of selling finished versions of these games. My main problem is that I have no idea how to make money off of something like this and was wondering if anyone here had any idea how I would go about doing this.

I've self-published a roleplaying game. It had been in development for some years, enough to get some fans via local conventions.

Once I felt it was good enough to justify selling, I ran an IndieGoGo fundraising campaign to pay for editing, art, and the initial print run costs. I'm just starting to hit profit now, a month after the books were finally printed and ready.

Lessons that I've learned that might be useful:
- Kickstarter style fundraising works well, if you can generate some enthusiasm amongst your social networks.
- Getting the game from "almost finished" to "actually finished" takes a lot more time and effort than I expected.
- Your profit margin is going to be quite slim (I suspect that is even more the case for a boardgame, given the board, extra parts, etc).
- A few very keen fans are essential, especially people in places you can't get to yourself.

Let me know if you've got any more specific questions, and I can let you know my experience. I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but I have at least gone through this over the last year.

Generating interest I think is going to be my hardest part, I am not very good at the sales pitch part of it...or talking to people in general to be completely honest. I have 2 games that are mostly done enough to demo it for the few people I know that are slightly interested in tabletop games. Another hindrance I think I might have is that, aside from the games me or an old friend of mine have made, I've never played any other tabletop games. I've read manuals and such but never actually played a published game before. As far as Profit is concerned I'm not too worried about making too much. I'm just looking to make something that people enjoy to play.

In that case, my advice would be to play a variety of games (including your own).

It might be worth finding a game convention and go along: you can play a bunch of different games, and it will give you a chance to run a playtest of your designs too.

I wouldn't worry too much about the sales pitch - from the sounds of it you're more at the stage where you want to get the games played. Once people play them and have fun, that's what generates interest.

In terms of getting the games to people who will give them a try, my own experience has been that personal contact is the best way to manage it: specifically friends and convention games. I think it's difficult to get people's attention with a playtest draft on the Internet, simply because there are so many other games competing for attention.

Can I ask what the games are about in one sentence? (I describe mine as "Monster hunters in the modern day, inspired by Supernatural and Buffy").

The first one is like Firefly with Deus Ex style story beats and elements. The Second is a Fantasy/steampunk with highly customizable gear focusing around a group of assassins.

Pretty soon a friend of mine should be starting up a werewolf themed game called white wolf I think...or it was made by white wolf. I can't remember what they said, I'll have to ask.

I've been meaning to go to PAX for years. would that be a good place to try out a few games as well as getting mine some exposure? I can't think of anywhere else thats close to me.

These days there's a lot of advice out the for self-publishing designers, both from a board game perspective and from a roleplaying perspective. I've designed a few board games (unpublished) and I've followed the publishing process from a distance. So I'm no expert, but I may be able to point you at some people who are.

I second the advice to play a bunch of games. It makes you a better designer, because you can see how other people solved the same problems you run into or even how they solved problems that you didn't realize were problems. Not just rules, but issues like interface design and training the players. Plus, you'll have a larger vocabulary for when you want to discuss your game ("It's like X, but with more Y and less Z").

PAX would be a good bet. There should be a games on demand room/area, that would be a good place to try a bunch of different things. (That's basically an event where you turn up and play whatever game has a GM available and people who want to play it). I think there's plenty of other boardgame and rpg events, too.

The Werewolf game is made by White Wolf. I played the 90s version, which was a lot of fun.

Both your game concepts sound cool!

Zembonez wrote:

I've been meaning to go to PAX for years. would that be a good place to try out a few games as well as getting mine some exposure? I can't think of anywhere else thats close to me.

PAX is definitely great, there's several board game rooms that you could coax some people into trying your games. Other suggestions would be any local game shops you can go to, just demo it to pickup groups there.

Only con I know in Portland is the Retro Game Expo there. They most likely don't cover this material, but maybe you could coax some people there to try it. Also some anime conventions will have board game rooms. They're usually not super popular, but that can make it easy to grab some people desperate for a game of anything.

This is a good book for general game design. This, this, and this, have been really insightful reads as well.

I'm curious how you go about the production part. How do you go about finding a company to produce any cards, boards, dice, miniatures, box that you'd need and then put it all together? This is something I've been interested in doing myself for years.

Honestly I have no idea how I'm going to go about doing any of this. I keep thinking that I'm in over my head for something like this. but really trying to do this is the most fun I've had in months.

I'm not going to worry too much about boxes, minis, and they like until the games themselves have been tested a few times and are nearly ready to go. The real test for my game is if I can hand it to someone else and they can make an enjoyable experience out of the world and mechanics themselves.

oh and although the idea of going to a local game shop is a admittedly great idea, but there are none near the town I live in. all those books also look like good ideas, but I just don't have the money to buy them.

MikeSands wrote:

The Werewolf game is made by White Wolf. I played the 90s version, which was a lot of fun.

Both your game concepts sound cool!

I found out the game I was thinking of was Werewolf the Forsaken. also I have access to a guide for World of Darkness that looks like it might have some helpful tips in it. and its awesome to hear you think they sounded cool.

Ok, for board game design, Board Game Geek has a Game Design section of the forums. They also have a DIY section which is useful if you need to put together cards and boards and things for playtesting. Tom Sloper has a couple of things on his site that specifically talk about board game production, and there are several board game designers who have blogged about their production process.

For roleplaying it gets trickier, because all of the design-focused forums I'm aware of tend to revolve around their particular approaches and I don't want to throw you to the metaphorical wolves just yet.

Gremlin wrote:

For roleplaying it gets trickier, because all of the design-focused forums I'm aware of tend to revolve around their particular approaches and I don't want to throw you to the metaphorical wolves just yet.

That's why I haven't mentioned any particular forums either: there are some out there, but they've all got particular cultures, which probably won't help much.

Playing a variety of games to see what works and what doesn't is, I think, the best way to learn. Then make your own, try it, and see what breaks.

Every book Delerat mentioned is on my bookshelf. Fantastic choices there.

I would look at Meetup.Com and see if there are any board, RPG or video game related groups in your area. I help run a video game developer group in Cleveland and we've done workshops on paper prototyping games and seen quite a few board game developers join in. We recently held a Board Game Night event to expose video game developers to non-traditional board games that was a huge success. If there isn't a group in your area, maybe try starting one and seeing what happens. Sometimes it just takes someone to make that initial push to get the ball rolling.

Also, you might want to look and see if there are any "Unpub" gaming conventions in a bigger city near you. I just learned about these but they are events by board gaming companies to see unpublished titles. I've never attended one but it's something to consider.

Some other tips... read, play, experiment and fail fast.

Use cheap little bags of wooden junk from craft stores as pieces. The wooden knobs you use to decoratively cover screw holes look like little mushrooms and are great as playing pieces. Michaels has $2 bags of wafer thin wooden circles and squares that work as playing pieces too. Doodle / paint directly on them. Use a white board as a game board or throw down some cash for a Chessex wet-erase battle mat.

You might want to consider contacting some of the newer companies and see what they did for materials. I remember at the last PenguinCon, Dirk from Conquistador Games was demoing Road to Enlightenment and the gameboard was paper and printed at a Kinkos the previous day. Dirk's since gone on to a successful Kickstarter for Road to Enlightenment which comes out this fall I believe.

You want your materials to look good but don't spend money if it isn't necessary. Prototypes are okay if they are rough. If an idea doesn't work, toss it out and start over.

A game dev I follow on Twitter just mentioned he used this service for making a prototype as well... https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

Looks kind of cool. I need a decent artist!

Hand-crafted artisanal board games. You're from Oregon, it could work!

LockAndLoad wrote:

A game dev I follow on Twitter just mentioned he used this service for making a prototype as well... https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

Looks kind of cool. I need a decent artist! :)

I've read a few accounts of dealings with Game Crafter. They seem to basically be good, but a little expensive. Great for getting a decent prototype out, at least.

I just checked Meetup.Com and saddly theres nothing near me. The only large city semi near me is Portland and I don't have enough money at any given time to justify a trip up there just for research purposes. www.thegamecrafter.com/ looks interesting and I'll check out more of it later when I have more time.

I've actually already been using poster board and small bits of wood for games off and on. Never drawn on any of them though. mostly because my hands aren't nearly steady enough to draw or make much of anything on my own. So I'll have to find someone locally who can.

Oh and I might disappear from the thread for awhile at some point because I'm thinking soon here I'll get the inspiration to either dive back into my mechanics and/or delve heavily into research.

Not sure if anyone wanted it but I've got an update on how things are going.

Got myself an artist to help me out...turns out my girlfriend is quite good. Fixed a lot of holes in how the game plays. Most of which I didn't even know were there, and currently I'm expanding the lore so that other people can use the systems to make their own games using them easier. I'm thinking that if all goes according to plan I'll have a finished retail model done by sometime in the first few months of next year.