Tabletop Design Catch All

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I've been getting into tabletop design and I figure I would open a thread for other tabletop designers. Here are some resources on the web:

Tabletop Designer Subreddit

BGG Board Game Design Forum

Board Game Design Lab Podcast

So tell me about what you are working on?

I'm designing a VR game that essentially works like a board game (well 2 board games mushed together). I'd love to chat about it here with folks and get some feedback. It's VR and not a traditional tabletop game because its the first steps of a bigger project that involves online multiplayer etc. For now this is a solo experience where the computer/console is managing the slower, trivial, or complicated parts of the game for you, like setup and measuring and rules interactions while you're doing the fun stuff like decision making and rolling dice. It's VR and not a normal PC game because I think the user interaction is important; doing things with your hands, inspecting the cool models etc.

Part 1 is a miniatures game where you will face a sort of set piece combat situation. Move your pieces, activate abilities and roll dice to see if you hit. The game play is closest to Xwing Miniatures or Warmachine, only since its VR you dont have to measure or carefully move things along cardboard rails while accidentally knocking over other minis, you just pick up the piece and decide where to drop it.
The enemies have a small deck of cards which determine its 'programming' on its turn it draws the next card and executes the text. The closest analog is Kingdom Death: Monster. You get some clues as to what card is coming up next. Also, as they play through their deck and you deal damage to them, you destroy their cards, limiting the possibilities.

Part 2 is almost a traditional worker placement game. You have a village and its surroundings with various hot spots that represent different activities that non-combat characters and heroes you don't take into battle can be assigned to. Your 'turn' is what happens between the battles. So assign your folks, go battle, when you come back learn the results. Some of it is simple resource gathering, some is helping heroes grow or recover from injury, and some is more story based, like learn about a neighboring ruin and unlock it for future missions or meet and recruit a new character. You'll also determine which mission to take and who to assign to it in the same way.

That's the basic intro. If there's interest I'd like to go into more detail and explore some design decisions I'm thinking about!

Sounds interesting and ambitious! I’m assuming you’re making it in tabletopia?

Unity actually, with playtesting on my kitchen table and in Tabletop Simulator. We have the first 3 characters designed (visually, game design needs work) and the first boss. So far the combat part of the game is coded up and mostly working, the 2nd/meta part is on paper only. My hope is to launch the combat part as early access while working on the meta game.

WIP hero art
IMAGE(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Y_ytPzQi-xtm4-JOw8pUd9tJCWTb-PVY43a4bHotk0yEkfu2PtBs5fUce36PLTmM5HXJgEHRsSHNVBef_smj5e_De5InYMMYaeGecjjV7qSSYltYhXv_2mmG5Hl5FZ-diqmnZgAiy3TiwZWtdrawd8lYRnZ-LilsmsR8cWzI279DyWAP6YKoyEEZ0Q_lphFPXNO5NoZztvnH1sBdUVom175tVRqISVrC1h2gAZ5EQhLXfCXYFWkE2KNy1HAcIN7LJdg45U22l2gYcEF1FaqLfC3oeh4jg7YXN8a2kUoiL6oFVXznhPuHeT7NDYqLvnFdb9NYIRt7BgLzS2jLUPGjfjs7a6LHyZ-_rAw-85rdRhiHRKq6wNOl8ZkWxLdE9w_icxBSLywPENGeiKKWS8b0vG6DqnTp7tbtbfAQLUiH6DQbAj1SyMMy_CBRODKR_pDpbg_2ndTaHxhzpPNt8Ozm6a8KiUuG97tmSgVrSMo7HSEJTPI2Gw903KdtPYt0Sl8dNifEDavwlipCpP0A-S2HC-tazH4FcSWQuyQx_woVTbj7-tI5NrCA_b__8Er3sYnRYDLYcvOpW8E7_4NU8pQ4nU8h-CvG3QvStYdKxmY_gep6SFeTHvatKW9z9xlOEVQ=w1504-h918-no)

Wow! That looks great!

I'm probably going to to be designing some sort of tabletop game for my end of year project this year at school I think, so I shall be following this thread with interest.

Right now, my "off the top of my head idea" is some sort of all-ages friendly pnp rpg which leans heavily towards enabling discussion of social issues (bullying, gender, etc). Possibly with either a 'magical boarding school' or 'Saturday morning cartoon' theme.

I'll plug the main thing I'm working on here.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1485...

pyxistyx wrote:

I'm probably going to to be designing some sort of tabletop game for my end of year project this year at school I think, so I shall be following this thread with interest.

Right now, my "off the top of my head idea" is some sort of all-ages friendly pnp rpg which leans heavily towards enabling discussion of social issues (bullying, gender, etc). Possibly with either a 'magical boarding school' or 'Saturday morning cartoon' theme.

Reading 'magical boarding room theme' made me spontaneously reach for my wallet while grinning wildly. So, you know, I like that.

I worry it’ll be too tricky to avoid being too close to Harry Potter, but we’ll see. Was thinking of making it a school for classic horror figures (vampires, fish boys, grudge girls, etc)

Oohhhh.. yiss! Happy to see a designer thread for board games in here.

Digging your ideas, poly. A XWing - esque based VR game could be really nice, but honestly, I am more intrigued by your second idea. Can you lose / recruit more people? What's the end goal? Can you disrupt other players plans? Is it a single player game? I HAVE ALL THE QUESTIONS!

Right now I’m working on three games. None of them are at prototype but getting close.

My first one is in cyberpunk 90s rural Colorado. Ya I know, weird. Cooperative skirmish/dungeon crawl. The goal is to wrangle up and control robot livestock and animals via scenarios and campaign. Think horizon zero dawn mix with modern farming.

If I had to mash up two games it’s probably going to be like Gloomhaven and summoner wars. Mostly card movement on a board and with a playmat where you allocate cubes and build up combos in later turns. I have an aggro AI system that seems really cool. The hardier you fight the more likely you’re going to get back hardier. So you have to manage the aggro of the bots and your actions.

I’m mostly working on the gameplay itself and making sure each turn is really tight and fun. I have some ideas for the campaign being card driven but I’m holding off for now. Maybe light legacy elements like gloomhaven.

Just writing that was a trip in itself. Complete passion project. My goal is just to build this world and something to work on everyday. When it’s done I’ll ask myself if it’s publishable and if not I’ll work on something else.

pyxistyx 'magical boarding school' + 'Saturday morning cartoon'! Like a slightly darker Adventure Time. That would be fun to see.

Fredrik for the 'meta' game I was really inspired by Cultist Simulator. In it, you get resources, plug them into different 'sites' in different combinations and at different times to see what comes out. Its about experimentation and discovery. I think I would have it be a little less abstract and make you blunder about less on your own than that game does since the turns are slower. So for example you might send a charismatic scout character into the valley with a supporting resource or two like a gift for NPCs they might meet. They might encounter a character that can be recruited, a cache of supplies, a new tiny community to trade with, a new site to plunder, lots of possibilities. The state of the game and the traits of the character/supplies affect what encounters are likely and their outcome more than chance.

For multiplayer, I think it would be fun to have something like an official season where you get a few turns at the meta game and a few official combat matches per day/week/whatever and each one has its own setup, story arc etc. As long as its not too art heavy it should be mostly writing and scripting, maybe players could make their own even (super long term thinking)

In the beginning though, Im working on it as a single player game. I want to get the combat working nicely and develop something for all the people who rather play games on their own first, especially while the audience for VR is still too small for multiplayer games to survive long.

Online game design conference coming later this month! Only $15 or free if you support the Board game lab podcast via Patreon.

That sounds really neat, Poly. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

Myself, I am working on iterations of dicescrapers that take the feedback I got from cardboard edison's judges into account. Trying to make it less head to head and more of a puzzle to get the most points instead. I don't think I will completely abandon the confrontational aspects of the game, but will def. lessen the severity of the actions and start treating it as a faster paced worker placement game.

Another game I have run into a super solid block is a 9 card game called color cross which I am stuck figuring out a solution for. It'll get there after a bit.

Still working on my 2 player head to head game of resource collection / summoning monsters / defeating the other player's tower.

Crockpot wrote:

Online game design conference coming later this month! Only $15 or free if you support the Board game lab podcast via Patreon.

I'm not getting anything at that link? Sounds interesting though.

I'll be following this thread with interest as well! I have two table top game ideas that I have been glacially developing over the past few years. I'd love to see what other folks are working on and maybe use this thread as an impetus to make more significant progress.

My main project is a cooperative adventure RPG (genre undetermined) with story & encounter elements seeded into a proc-gen board that expands as the players explore. Character development, encounter resolution, basic AI and story delivered through deckbuilding. Not at all ambitious. I began thinking about an Indiana Jones style tomb-raider theme, but---nostalgia aside---have backed off of that due to the problematic narrative baggage. I'm happy to leave the genre to develop after the mechanics.

The other abandoned project (which came first) is a tabletop adaptation of Advance Wars using custom dice for units, with a somewhat BattleLore board treatment. (The dice replace the minis and there is no banner system or card based activation, so only superficially BattleLore-like.) A real mish-mosh of an idea, since there isn't any randomness in Advance Wars to begin with, but I like dice and tactics. Some of the ideas in this concept lead me to develop the one above, which---being less abstract---has more room for narrative.

Thanks for starting this thread Crock!

pyxistyx wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

Online game design conference coming later this month! Only $15 or free if you support the Board game lab podcast via Patreon.

I'm not getting anything at that link? Sounds interesting though.

Sorry better link here.

perfect, thanks!

Great thread idea! Following with interest. I'm mainly focused on learning digital game development at the moment, but have toyed with the idea of developing some tabletop games. I'll be reading with interest!

Is there a digital design thread? Maybe I should combine digital and tabletop so we can have more activity? I’m sure digital and tabletop can learn from each other.

There's the game creation/design thread but it's really just digital at the moment.

Ah, I’ll keep things separate then. I also don’t really mind if people share digital designs here especially if they are digital board game.

pyxistyx wrote:

There's the game creation/design thread but it's really just digital at the moment.

That’s true. When I originally created the thread I completely spaced tabletop design (board, card and rpg) since I’m primarily a digital designer.

PewPewRobo wrote:

The other abandoned project (which came first) is a tabletop adaptation of Advance Wars using custom dice for units, with a somewhat BattleLore board treatment. (The dice replace the minis and there is no banner system or card based activation, so only superficially BattleLore-like.) A real mish-mosh of an idea, since there isn't any randomness in Advance Wars to begin with, but I like dice and tactics. Some of the ideas in this concept lead me to develop the one above, which---being less abstract---has more room for narrative.

Thanks for starting this thread Crock!

I love this idea. It reminds of why I love summoner wars and why I’m taking specific design decisions. Miniatures are nice and everything but they don’t add anything but eye candy. Don’t get me wrong I love miniatures but miniatures can slow down the game if not used correctly. ( ie “Where do you put damage tokens? What does that unit do again? I can’t see the card. I found the miniature now where is it’s card?”) So why not use cards that add ease of use? Or do dice in your case?

I'm at the point where I need to start doing some prototyping. Can anyone recommend a program that allows you to make and test virtual custom decks. I don't need to program any interactions, just create custom cards (or tiles), shuffle them into individual decks and then play them to a virtual table top. I realize that Tabletop Simulator probably can do this, but I really don't need the physics simulation, which seems like it would get in the way.

To be sure, I can probably get away with making a physical prototype of the card decks, but the scope I have in mind for the board tiles would be much easier to play with virtually.

Best answer to my own question so far seems like it might be Roll 20, an online tabletop RPG portal. Don't think it will help with vitrtual prototyping of board tiles, but I'm hopeful it will work for the card deck aspect of things. It's free to check out anyway!

you can switch off physics simulation in TTS I think? I don't know much about it beyond actually playing some games with it though.

I would still recommend tabletopia because it seems a lot of playtesters use it when you need to send it to them.

I'm not sure it this would help, as it is only sitting on my Steam Wishlist at the moment, but the program Card Creator might be what you're looking for.

I can vouch for Tabletop Simulator (TS) for creating cards and card decks. In under an hour I was up and running with their simple utility for importing images or just using plain text to generate card fronts and backs, then testing them in TS. If you already have it, it's surely the way to go.

Since it is such a big playground you can also import tokens, tools, play mats, etc from other games or also make those yourself, so it can do more than just the card part. I did a bunch of prototyping for my miniatures game in it. Being able to test it online with others was a big help.

I can't compare to Tabletopia, never used it.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Tabletopia looks like a much more explicitly boardgame focused version of Roll20, and probably a better fit for my needs as a result. I'm probably going to snag TS when it goes on sale next, in any case.

My understanding of Card Creator is that it's all about aiding the graphics and production aspects, not dealing with actual playtesting, which I need to do a lot of right now. Graphic design will come later (and I'll probably do that with Adobe CS, since that's in my wheelhouse).

I'll share my progress, when there is some to report on!

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