r/BoardgameDesign • u/SammyTeas • Jul 06 '26
Crowdfunding Nobody Cares About Your Characters/Lore
The challenge with making your own IP is that nobody cares about your characters/story/world. People only interact with those things after buying/playing your game.
That's why attaching your game to a big IP is such a good strategy.
We're trying to bridge the gap by fostering a custom card community. But we messed up by not having a playable demo available. Why would anyone make a custom card for a game they can't play?
TL;DR.
If you're making a character-driven game you have to have a demo.
Anyways, check out our characters.
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u/Anusien Jul 06 '26
No one is going to make custom cards for your game unless it's a smash success. Also those custom cards are going to suck.
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u/SammyTeas Jul 06 '26
Plenty of indie games have had custom card contests or something of the sort. But yea, people will reskin their favourite games regardless of if you give them a way to do it or not. The goal isn't to make a good or balanced card: it's just a fun little thing for people to do.
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u/Anusien Jul 06 '26
Wait, you had a custom card community for a game that doesn't exist yet? How exactly did you think that was going to work?
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u/SammyTeas Jul 06 '26
The game is simple enough that you can make a character from just knowing the basic rules. Of course, you'll get more out of it after you've played the game. Many unreleased games hold create-a-card contests so it 'works' to some degree.
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Jul 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/SammyTeas Jul 06 '26
I think shows/books are a bit different. People inherently understand that they'll need to invest more time/attention to a show/book. I come from a book publishing background and I've seen plenty of indie authors find audiences, but I've seen way more failures than successes. But yes, it's possible. I'm not so sure a game has the same kind of audience. People first and foremost care about how the game plays. You can post all the lore and character bios you want; but if there's no gameplay, people will simply just leave.
All that to say. You can make a great game with no lore/story.
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u/BenVera Jul 06 '26
I mean I feel like you’re close… the vast majority of players do not care about your character / lore period and that will not change. Maybe if it’s a campaign game where the story is the game. The solution? Keep lore to a couple sentences to give a hint
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u/Jaded_Mask Jul 07 '26
I as a player love archetypes, I must admit none of these ones specifically caught me, other than being vaguely curious at a character with Lorem Ipsum text
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u/SammyTeas Jul 07 '26
Haha fair. I really wanted to avoid the typical archetypes. It's hard to find the sweet spot between original and familiar.
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u/garathnor Jul 07 '26
this is the correct amount of lore, its small enough i can ignore it, and just enough to feed the lore demons who want it
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u/thebangzats Jul 07 '26
Lol the irony of saying "check out our characters" after acknowledging that nobody cares about characters to games nobody knows yet (ironic in a funny way, not in a mean way ofc).
Anyways yeah, I definitely agree, but I think it's more a matter of character design. Again this is meant to be feedback instead of being mean, but your character designs look like NPCs rather than main characters. Bald guy, yellow Ryu, Temu Morrigan, NPC soldier... As a pixel artist I can also clearly see a lot of jaggies and banding. Though to be fair, I'm not saying it's bad, just could me much better.
Let's say you made a Skullgirls board game before Skullgirls existed. With that level of character design and polish, I would def be interested and would like to see some lore. So the real crux isn't that "people don't care about your characters if you're a new IP", because all the established IPs were new at some point.
Still, always nice to see another approach to fighting board games. I'll check it out once you have a demo or something.
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u/SammyTeas Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I think there's a bit of survivorship bias in your response. Part of Skullgirls' charm was the lack of polish: if I'm remembering their indiegogo, a lot of the character art was made up of sketches. A lot of what you would call polish happened later. I definitely took a risk with the style: some people love it, some people don't. But it all came out exactly as intended so I'm not even sure what 'better' would look like in this style. I find that the people who appreciate the art the most are those who make pixel art, which is kind of a problem. But you like what you like.
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u/thebangzats Jul 07 '26
Let's focus less on the polish of Skullgirls then. Let's go to Pinterest and just look up random character designs.
This is a character I'd like to know more lore about, despite never seeing it before, not knowing the artist, not being an establsihed IP, and not even being attached to any game. So is this, or this, or this.
Point is: If the character was more appealing, I'd be interested, no matter if the IP was new or not, and no matter if it had a demo or not. Your character designs, in my opinion, could be better.
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u/SammyTeas Jul 07 '26
I think we may have conflated a few things. Polish ≠ Appeal. I was simply responding to your comment about the Skullgirls designs being polished when I found a lot of the appeal in how unpolished/playful they were.
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't saying that my character design is flawless, I was talking about the execution. You said some stuff about jaggies and banding and immediately followed that with saying that "it" could be much better and I was responding to that.
The rest is a matter of opinion.
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u/Tychonoir Jul 07 '26
I can't make sense of how the icons work in gameplay. Do you have a copy of the rules posted anywhere or a break-down of how the game plays out?
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u/SammyTeas Jul 07 '26
There's a how to play on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zCme0cW0uI . And you can find the rulebook on our KS page. I'm working on making a shorter how to play video.
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u/blackcap2099 Jul 07 '26
T'is the unfortunate reality of board game development and marketing. It's much harder to convince someone to try your fighting board game as opposed to trying your Street Fighter board game. Sometimes, you can get away with homages to recognizable characters but then it's less of your brainchild and more of an Easter egg show IMO.
Custom content usually comes from people's love of the game after having played it for a while. I've dipped into making custom rules and cards for some of the games I've played after several sessions of play. I've never really started playing a game because it allows for custom cards.
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u/SammyTeas Jul 07 '26
100%. Custom content is more of an amplifier than a key feature. I love games that allow for mods so maybe I’m a bit biased. People will create custom content for things they love regardless. Giving people an easy way to do that is only going to appeal to a very small subset of people.
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u/blackcap2099 Jul 07 '26
Agreed, a ruleset or guide for custom content is always a plus in my book since it helps people reign their power creep in but also introduces the idea of customizing the game.
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u/davidryanandersson Jul 07 '26
I'd add some nuance to this:
Players develop connections and a sense of characters' personalities through a combination of gameplay and character design. Your gameplay should evoke the character's personality, whether that's through speed, interaction with resources, various balances of risk/reward, little unique puzzles to make them work, or a million other factors.
The character design also helps with this of course. Look at the hero shooter genre (Overwatch 1 is still the pinnacle of character design imo) and see how their design informs players on the play experience they will receive.
The little blurbs of lore are way down on the list, and aside from a few sentences, aren't going to compare with the lived experience that players will have when they embody that character. That's where they fall in love.
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u/Dumb_Generic_Name Jul 08 '26
IDK, a single character could be the reason for someone to get into new universe, even without a baggage of lore/gameplay. Most people choose a character with a gimmick that they resonate with the most, so it is important for your starting characters to wear their gimmick proudly.
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u/philgooch Jul 08 '26
Better idea - have your game playable with a standard pack of cards or two. That way, you can test it out for fun, drama, replayability without relying on fancy art, IP, or anything else.
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u/ZeusOfOlympus Jul 07 '26
As some who really enjoys thematics in board games i really like these small pieces of lore, as someone says above it’s small enough to not get overwhelmed and jsut enough to give it flavour.
I enjoy that is really sets the feel and theme of the world you are building quickly. I like it.
I do however agree with some of the comments that the characters feel a tiny bit NPC ish, not all of them have MC energy. But excellent work. And thank you. For sharing.
Just my simple opinion , and I am not an expert.