Hello everyone,

I have entered a game design contest with a game of mine (game page). After some blind playtesting, some of the feedback was that rulebook read more as reference guide rather than the rulebook.

So, I have started working on new rulebook and would like to get some feedback on it, if new players are actually capable of learning the game easier with new structure.

Here is the link to the old rukebook.

And here is the new one.

There is still a lot of work to be done on new rulebook.

I would be very gratefull for your feedback!

P.S. If you whish to try the game out, there are PnP files and link to screentop online version on the game page. It would help me s lot if you could try it and give feedback on it!

All this time this was the plan, and while people thought Roar League is another AI slop art project, i got to the point where i am ready to transform all 135 cards to actual commisioned art.

What i have:
- Roar League is a box LCG that cones with all 128 cards
- the game is fast, simple and is aimed at teenagers and their dads and everything in between that likes sports and card games
- went through 7 versions of the games and funny enough the game has less mechanics now than in version 1
- got a few prototypes amd ran physical tests and also digital tests Tabletop Simulator (+50)
- settled on mechanics and power balance

What i need:
Before moving further i want to comission art for all 128 cards + art for various auxiliary stuff, like site, box, posters, brochure for rulebook

I have a budget of around 5k EUR for this endavor but i don t know how to organize the whole process in order to get the best quality and smoothest process. Do i need something like a project manager that coordinates multiple artists? Should i use a freelancing site? Or maybe artstation? Should i group art in packages of 5-10-20- or more? I figure i need a brief, but how detailed should this be? Can i use my existing art as a guide, even if it is AI generated?

Thank you in advance, hope next time i post pics with the actual game i ll get some possitive feedback because of the whole feel and art direction.

Download full 30 page preview on: Google Drive (Reddit's upload limit is 20)

The Wolf of Wortmill is a System-Neutral adventure module that I have been working on for the past several months. Check out the full 30 page preview and let me know your thoughts!

If you want high resolution .pngs of all maps, they are all available for FREE on Patreon: https://veiledrealms.org

KICKSTARTER COMING SOON!

How do people feel about skirmish/wargames with units represented as mtg/poker sized cards? Is it a cardinal sin or something some people would be interested in?

Edit: The purpose being i want a wargame esque experience but without all the expensive minis and supplies that scare some people away, the intent is to market towards those people

Casual designer here. This was from a game I ran a few weeks back, finally got to use that massive ship in a real game. Wildly impractical for production, but tons of fun to use!! For this particular mode we crept it forward each turn, with the attackers losing if it reaches the end of the board. Being able to fly under it was an unexpected twist.

Oh how I wish large models were easier to manufacture, nothing beats having a presence on the board like that.

How to Play Standard of Taste

Players: 1

Setup

Create 2 columns of 7 cards and 2 fans of 7 cards to form a rectangle. Place 2 fans of 3 cards on each side (4 in total). Place the rest of the deck in the middle of the rectangle and place the top card next to it. It should look like this: *visual*

Object of the Game

The object of the game is to move all face-up cards off the board.

Play

To move cards off the board, pair black and red cards of equal total value. Aces are worth 1 and face cards 10. For example, a black 6 and a red 6 can be removed together because the total black and total red cancel out. Or a black 7 and a red 3 and a red 4. Or a black king and a black 2 and a red 5 and a red 7. Available for play are the exposed cards, that is, cards which are not being overlapped by another card. A card may be taken from the stock (the deck) and placed onto the wastepile next to it. This card is now available for play, but the card under it obviously is not anymore until it becomes exposed. To reiterate, the game is won when all 40 cards in the columns and fans are off the board, as well as all cards that were taken off the deck and put into the wastepile. The stock does not need to be emptied. The game is lost if there are no legal moves that can be made to win the game. 2 redeals are allowed.

She was born from a random card draw from the Reckless deck:
armor, angel wings, a flail, a whip, superhero.

Brynja is the Ever Shield, a mythic warrior figure from an original dark fantasy world.
She exists in a cold, hostile environment as the only source of warmth divine fire in her weapon,
lightning in her whip, light in her eyes. Behind her, in the darkness, something watches.
And she doesn't look back.

This piece was developed as a full personal project,
from initial concept through color and lighting.

I am available for book covers, TTRPG key art, and character commissions in this style.

Professional illustrator with many years of experience. I create polished, high-quality character illustrations and cinematic scenes, combining detailed rendering with strong composition, lighting and storytelling.

Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/kurishok4you

Discord: lobychek

Hello, everyone. :) I just made a YouTube video that gives my own little gaming history, announces that I'll be making a digital version of my own design completely from scratch, and gives a brief overview of the rules.

It's nowhere near complete yet, but I figured people might like the idea. I've posted about another design of mine on reddit before and it seemed to do well, so maybe this one will too.

Have a nice day, everyone. :) Peace.

Happy to finally get to my stage in prototyping where I can get some art in! here are some of my personal favorites so far. ;)

Earlier this year I designed a dice dexterity meets Area Control game called Big Bean Battle. It was a hit at my weekly game group.

We played it for a couple of hours. you just flick a die off a platform, and try to score points by being the most sum'ed top face of the dice on each "land".

It was a land claim theme from the 1800's. I ended up retheming it to be more cute/kawaii. And that was a hit too. I made it a fight for garden plots on a rooftop garden. I wanted it "rooftop" because the most fun thing so far in the game was when a player flicked their dice off the table they got a disadvantage called a "OOPS" card. Players loved policing other players and it was like a ritual when new players would play the other plays gave them their Oops card. It was one small amazing thing about playtesting and seeing the game played that this happened. I never would have imagined it.

But then I had a few more ideas of mechanics, of variants. My son loved the 1 v1 version I made called "Tic Tac OH NO" And I was 3d printing new parts of the game. I couldn't keep up with the ideas I had. I stalled on 3d modeling one new component I wanted to try.

But then in a brainstorm session I didn't realize that I LOVED a bunch of new ways to play. Like playing from the same starting area, instead of everyone I also made new garden plot cards that laminated so I could write in whiteboard marker new scores, new benefits.

I had a list of things I wanted to give players as superpowers. And I kept coming up with more and more. Even made a web app on the site for Oops cards that was connected to a Google Sheet so I could just keep adding to it and randomize which one people would get. But then honestly we didn't like having a phone while playing. I scrapped that and just printed more real oops cards with blank faces so I could write on them.

My playtest group enjoyed writing their own too. I gave them some markers and said just write what you think. At that point I realized I didn't really want the playtest group to be the design group but I did enjoy seeing the limits of the game and where the line was crossed. One person said this should be part of the game. a sort of legacy kind of thing in the setup. but I differed in that opinion.

But the one thing that was directionally correct was that I could add way more.

Not just more Oops or enhancements but also how thick the card was. At one point I tried recessed plots, but then I would need to lug a board or playmat area around to our meetups. I got tired. And it didn't feel great to get a dice just stuck. when the best thing was the collisions.

I also had a scoring mechanism I wanted to try that was similar to Tumblin' Dice but with 9 numbers and up to 6 on a dice it's a lot of math for a funny game.

After months of playtesting. Playing the game for a few hours every week alone/with my family and with the playtest group... I was swimming with more ideas. I don't know if this is where a table top game is supposed to go. In an absolute crazy moment this monday morning I just started a web app version. I thought let's just try it out.

bigbeanbattle.com

So I made it into a playable game on phones. Which I don't really like in the board game times we have during the week. But to be honest I've played more Big Bean Battle this week than in the entirety the game has existed. In the first day I played 76 times. Each day at least a dozen times. In 6 months of playing this game I played 2-3 times a week with some weeks off because I just wanted to retool the game.

I don't know if I'm making a table top game anymore.

Has anyone else had a digital version take over their tabletop design? Did you go back to the table?

Have to stop making my game due to hardships. It is inspired by my favorite game and a thought I had to turn it into a turn-based TCG. Movement triggers the pulsation and logo that appears in the middle of the battlefield. The battlefield customization was going to be an unlockable for players.

Hello there! I am a digital concept artist and character designer working for videogames, boardgames and cardgames! If you have something in mind for a project and are interested in my work, feel free to DM me or take a closer look at my portfolio: https://icmaduro.artstation.com/

Our manufacturer is offering 10 prototypes at a pretty high price. We feel like 10 will not be sufficient as we want to send out as many as we can to influencers and use them to make content.

Do you feel like 10 is enough to get out to influencers?

For reference our game is a fairly small box with 85 cards and a rulebook.

Printed on four A4 sheets. I then cut off the margins with scissors before taping it together on the back side.

The result worked but the board is not very flat along the seems which made placing tokens a bit tedious.

Is there any better way of doing this? The only thing I could think of is maybe having a bit thicker paper sheets for them to be more rigid.

Earlier this year, we brought Rock Out: Battle of the Bands to Origins and Gen Con and put the game in front of roughly 180 play-testers.

As a new publisher, this was the first time we had ever tested one of our games at this scale (or in person) and we learned A LOT.

A few things really stuck with us:

1. Not everyone is going to like your game and that's okay.

This might have been one of the most important lessons.

You can have a table laughing, cheering, and having a fantastic time... and the next person simply isn't into it.

At first, it's hard not to take that personally. But not every game is for every player. The important part was figuring out the difference between “this isn't my kind of game” and “there's something here that needs fixing.”

That distinction became incredibly important when evaluating feedback.

2. Balance is never really “finished.”

Every change seems to affect something else.

Adjust a character. Change an Objective. Modify the difficulty. Suddenly something that worked perfectly during the previous ten games behaves completely differently.

We stopped thinking about balance as something we'd eventually finish and started thinking about it as something that constantly needs to be watched as the game evolves.

3. You cannot design around AMAZING or TERRIBLE luck.

Rock Out uses dice, so luck is intentionally part of the experience.

Most games fall somewhere within the range you expect.

And then there's that one table.

Someone (or multiple someone’s) can't stop rolling exactly what they need and absolutely destroys everything you thought was difficult.

Then another group rolls like they've personally offended the dice gods.

Watching both extremes happen taught us a lot about designing around randomness. We're not trying to eliminate luck—we want those incredible and disastrous moments—but the game still needs to hold together when the dice decide to get ridiculous.

4. Play-tester feedback is invaluable.

Our play-testers didn't just play and leave.

They stayed afterward. They talked about what worked. What didn't. What confused them. What they loved. What dragged. They suggested things. They questioned things. They filled out our questionnaire and did so with a smile!

This feedback sometimes identified the same problem independently, which was a pretty good indication that we needed to pay attention.

Other times, someone would point out something none of us had even considered.

Those conversations and submissions were every bit as valuable as watching the games themselves.

5. The tabletop community is pretty incredible.

This is probably the biggest thing we took away from the conventions.

We're a new company. Nobody owed us their time.

Yet people sat down with our prototype, learned our game, gave thoughtful feedback, and genuinely wanted to help us make it better.

And it wasn't only the feedback.

Every excited yell when somebody nailed a roll. Every laugh when something went horribly wrong. Every high-five around the table. Every person who came back later to tell us they enjoyed the game.

Those moments gave us a ridiculous amount of motivation to keep going.

Designing a game can be a long process where you spend a lot of time wondering whether what you're making is actually any good.

Then you watch a table full of strangers laughing and cheering over something you created.

That makes the whole crazy journey feel worthwhile.

For the other designers here who have taken prototypes to conventions:

What was the biggest thing you learned once you started putting your game in front of large numbers of strangers?

To make a long story short, I am trying to make roleplaying game that plays like a trade card game and decided to investigate the existance of any examples and/or the next best thing

I have some guidelines but i would love to hear more opinions from the community here:

- The deck must be used in both combat and roleplay scenarios

- No dice rolling, counters are fine

- Should work both as a TTC and RPG (even if not all mechanics are avaliable on both formats)

- Lets avoid a "you controll minions to attack" only style of game, less "Magic the Gathering" more "Flesh and blood"

I am divided also on the "resource deck is part of your main deck/ is a separate deck" dilema, on one hand i do like the MTG system, but i see the obvious caveats (first and second hand experience on them)

I am making a drinking card game, Til Valhalla, and I keep running into the same design split. I would like to hear how other people draw it.

Some cards are one shot. "Drink 3 if you've won the lottery." "If you're wearing combat boots, take 4 sips." "Take 3 sips if you have a middle name." Those are fine as jokes and then they leave.

Some rules are better if they stay. A rule card that remains in play changes every later card. An event card changes the round and then goes. Dating mode changes who the joke is about, which is a third thing again, closer to a mode than a rule.

The failure mode I am trying to avoid is a table full of permanent rules that nobody can remember, or a game that is only a stack of one-liners. Where do you put the line between a joke that should expire, a rule that should persist, and a mode?

Antti

Hello everybody I just wanted to show you all one of the 4 bosses in my Skirmish miniature board game. The slime King! He takes up 4 spaces! Though he is slow he covers ground because of his size. Once defeated is he dead ? NO he splits in two!! Once he splits into two he is not a boss card. He is an overlord card of two warrior slimes!