Game Production

Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game

Geoffrey Engelstein

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000290981
• Edition: 1

Description:

Many new games are from first-time designers or are self-published, so there is a tremendous thirst for information about the nuts and bolts of tabletop game design. While there are many books about the design process in terms of mechanisms and player experience, there are no books that cover the arts and crafts aspects of how to create a prototype, software and physical tools that can be used, graphic design and rules writing, and considerations for final production. Gamecraft: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game presents this information in a single volume which will be invaluable for up-and-coming designers and publishers.

Key Features:

• The text compiles information from many websites, blogs, Facebook groups, subreddits, and the author's extensive experience in an easy-to-read volume.

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• The text illustrates how to lay out and assemble the physical aspects of an effective board game.

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• The book is divided into two sections for readability and covers a large array of different techniques.

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Geoffrey Engelstein is the designer of many tabletop games, including The Ares Project, the Space Cadets series, The Dragon & Flagon, and The Expanse. He is the founder of Ludology, a bi-weekly podcast about game design, and a contributor to the Dice Tower podcast with his bi-weekly GameTek segments that discuss the math, science, and psychology of games. He has also published several books, including GameTek: The Math and Science of Gaming, Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design, and Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design. He is on the faculty of the NYU Game Center as an adjunct professor for Board Game Design and has been invited to speak at PAX, GenCon, Metatopia, and the Game Developers Conference.

I

General Topics

CHAPTER 1

Tools of the Trade

Rapid Prototype Kit

This book is not about where to get ideas from, and how to design your game. It’s about the physical parts of your game – prototyping, layout, and production. But if you’re new to game design, I’ll tell you one thing about the design process: You’ll get lots of ideas, and more as you become more experienced. I’m sure the experienced game designers reading this will agree.

When those ideas hit, when inspiration strikes, you should have a notepad or list on your computer or someplace where you store them. But many ideas will have a way of worming their way into your brain, and demand to be tested.

You need the ability to try out these ideas as quickly as possible. And for that I highly recommend that you invest in a Rapid Prototype Kit. This is a set of core components that you can grab and use to quickly make mock-ups for your ideas.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find out pretty quickly that most of your ideas don’t have any merit – at least not initially. But the fastest way to figure that out is to make a quick prototype and push some pieces around.

Having a kit like this will give you options to rapidly test and discard ideas. If you have to order specific components to try out an idea, you’ll become more invested in it, which can be an issue when it turns out that the idea is not that great. The more you’re invested in an idea, both emotionally and financially, the harder it will be to let it go. Being able to just grab stuff you already have and try something out will make it easy to move on, and just put the materials back into your box.

Here are the core items you want to have at your fingertips:

Index Cards

Index cards are the backbone of your development kit. They are incredibly versatile, as you can use them for cards, tokens, player mats, tiles, and even standees.

Sticking with the classic 3″ × 5″ index card (metric A7) is good for a number of reasons. First, they are the least expensive. A thousand blank index cards can be had for about $10 and will last quite a while. Unlined are also preferred, as the lines typically go unused for a normal game prototype.

Second, half an index card (3″ × 2.5″) is very close to the size of a standard playing card, which is 3.5″ × 2.5″. Personally, I use index cards as is, and don’t worry about cutting them in half. However, the option is there, and they will fit well into sleeves (see “Penny Sleeves” section).

Of course, index cards are designed to just be scribbled on, and not fed through your printer, so you won’t be getting high quality output. However, sitting with a stack of index cards and colored markers can be a terrific brainstorming tool. The physical act of scribbling card ideas on the index cards, even in the middle of a playtest, can be very useful for rapidly generating ideas.

Index cards also are a quick and easy way to make standees. If you cut a strip the short way and fold it in half, you’ll get a piece that is about 1.5″ tall, an excellent height for a standee. It can either be used as is on the table (like a tent) or finished with a binder clip (see the Standee section in Chapter 4 for full details).

And, of course, don’t limit yourself to white. Having a variety of different colors will make it easy to prototype different card decks, tokens, or other objects.

Dice

There are two broad categories of dice that you should have in your toolkit: with numbers and blank.

For any design that uses dice, traditional dice with pips or numbers should be your first stop, even if you envision custom symbols or sides. We’ll talk more about this in Chapter 4, but in general you should want to get into testing as quickly as possible. Determine if you’re even in the ballpark of a workable design before spending time stickering blank dice.

Bulk six-sided dice are relatively inexpensive. Get them in sets of various colors. This gives more design flexibility than just buying a ton of white dice. A set of 100 in various colors typically costs around $10–$15. Similarly, sets of polyhedral dice (D4–D20) typically cost around $10 for seven sets of different colors when bought in bulk. Do a search for “bulk dice” on online retailers or educational supply sites to locate these.

Blank dice can also be purchased in a variety of colors, although white is typically the least expensive. Fifty blank white dice cost about $10 versus $15 for a pack of 50 dice with a variety of colors. Depending on your application, you may be able to use white dice and put color on the sticker. Blank polyhedral dice are also available, but given the smaller triangular or pentagonal facets, it can be challenging to sticker them properly.

The above pricing for blank dice is for traditional smooth-surfaced dice. There is another variety of blank dice called indented dice. These have an indent on each face to place a sticker of your custom design. The advantage of indented dice is that the raised edges protect the stickers from wear. If you are rolling stickered dice frequently, you will notice significant wear. For early testing, this is not an issue, but some designers prefer better aesthetics once they get into beta prototypes and publisher presentations. If you don’t want to sticker a fresh set of dice for these occasions, you may consider indented dice. However, be aware that they are more expensive and larger than traditional dice (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Indented (a) and smooth (b) blank dice

Cubes

It is always valuable to have a large supply of cubes on hand. They can act as markers, money, resources, workers, and a host of other functions. It’s great to have an assortment of different colors for different players or different representations.

The least expensive source for cubes is to purchase centimeter cubes (so-called because, not surprisingly, they measure 1 cm on each side – a shade under 1/2″). One thousand centimeter cubes in various colors cost around $20. These are readily available from traditional online retailers and educational supply stores.

If you prefer the feel or aesthetics of wooden cubes, these are actually a bit tricky to buy in bulk. The best sources I’ve found are board game prototypers like The Game Crafter and Print Play Productions. In these sites, look for bulk packages to get the best deals. The website Spielematerial.de in Germany also has great prices and selection, but you need to order enough to make the shipping worthwhile.

Regardless of where you order them from, wooden cubes are going to be much more expensive than centimeter cubes – about $100 per 1,000 rather than $20.

Penny Sleeves

Penny Sleeves are inexpensive card sleeves that are transparent on both sides. They get their name from their cost, which is usually around $0.01 each, but the price will vary widely based on the quantities purchased.

Plastic Tiles

To complement your centimeter cubes, it may also be worthwhile investing in a bucket of plastic tiles. These tiles are 1″ × 1″ and have a nice chunky feel. The cost of 400 of these in various colors is around $15. Not as critical as having cubes around, but I find myself dipping into this bucket when working on a prototype very frequently (Figure 1.2).

FIGURE 1.2 Plastic tiles

Specialty Components

There are a variety of components that are nice to have available, but tend to be more specialized in their application, or are more useful when making better quality prototypes (what we refer to here as beta prototypes).

Full-sheet Labels

Having a pack of full-sheet labels is invaluable. These can be used for creating boards, tiles, dice, and more. A pack of 100 sheets costs about $10–$15. Although office stores typically carry many varieties of labels, the brick-and-mortar locations usually do not have full-sheet labels. I speak from experience after making a last-minute dash around town one evening before a game design conference. However, they are readily available online at office supply stores and with most major retailers.

Chipboard

To go with the full-sheet labels, you should have a supply of 8.5″ × 11″ chipboard sheets. With the application of a full-sheet lab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• SECTION I General Topics
• SECTION II The Development Lifecycle
• INDEX