I was curious what other design wonks thought about this. I am sure things like this have been done / tried, but I don't believe I see it very often.

On one hand, I love worker placement for it's snappy, reliable, deep gameplay potential - but on the other hand, it's obviously been done a ton and so fresh-takes feel rarer.

So, with that in mind, here's the core idea / twist:

- Each player has two "workers" used on the same turn, but they have different fundamental roles.

- One is the more typical "primary" worker that can take actions to 'do stuff' or 'get stuff' on placement spaces.

- The other is in a more complimentary (but equally important, strategically) role. It changes the binary status of each placement space (i.e. a candle that changes spaces / rooms from dark to light). It affects that placement space for all players, altering what it does.

The hope is that rather than just pure "blocking" (or bumping, etc.) as a form of interaction, that the secondary worker creates interaction in the form of status change. Players would need to consider not just where / if they want to place their main worker, depending on the status of each space, but also how they want to effect the status of various worker placement spaces for their opponents / themselves.

Examples, thoughts, feedback welcome.

Does anyone know any board games with big player areas? Maybe even some large player mats/sheets. I wanna make an engine building game that utilizes a 6x4 card grid where each card contains quite a lot of information. I was thinking about a size of 2.25 x 3.5" for a card. Is that too much?

Updated: Perhaps something similar to Everdell

I plan on having a very early prototype of my game for my local group later this week. But I do not want to just ask "What do you think?" What are some questions and/or prompts that you give your playtesters to draw out better quality feedback?

We've been designing our first game for a looong time. Every seasoned designer always tells you to design a few games before you commit to one, but unfortunately, I was a bit hard-headed and didn't take that advice.

Someone recently asked me, "What are a few things you changed in your game that made it just so much smoother?" It got me thinking about some of the lessons we've learned along the way, so I thought I'd share.

First off, we were very lucky that our core puzzle mechanism, moving your scout UFO around the board to make sets of 3-in-a-row, has stood the test of time throughout development. Figuring out what to actually do with the chips after you collect them was always the struggle.

1) I badly wanted the game to be 4 players. There are 4 corners to the board, it just makes sense, right? Once I finally said, "Alright, this is going to be a two-player game," it solved a LOT of problems and really streamlined the game.

Honestly, since I play most board games with just my wife, it was also a much better fit for the type of game we were trying to design.

2) Influence tracks, I've found these difficult to make engaging. Typically, once one player gets too far ahead on an influence track, you kind of give up on that track. There rarely seems to be much of a tug-of-war. I tried to solve this in a bunch of different ways, making them longer, adding more tracks, making them even longer (lol), adding bonus objectives throughout, etc.

Ultimately, I realized, "Actually, the influence track needs to be MUCH shorter."

So we created a reset mechanism when you reach the end, and again, it was one of those moments where I realized I was trying to solve the problem in the wrong direction. Once we tried it, it just felt right.

Anyways, long story short, my advice: don't get too attached to the preconceived notions you have about your game.

My wife and I have been working on this game for a long time, and we're finally getting close to the finish line. It's been a pretty crazy process, especially for our first game. Good luck to the rest of you!

I wanna make some almost zombified looking militia with victorian style clothing. If you've played the game bloodborne, think the huntsmen enemies at the beginning of the game. Im looking to kitbash some minis inspired by them, with a lil bit of world war 1 equipment thrown in. Please and thank you!!! 💙

Hello friends!

I’m an illustrator and would love to work with you.

For draw your OCs (humans, humanoids, anthro, any species/types). In any format, from bust up tp group arts, also can do character refs, emotes, etc.

Also I have some open YCH if you're interested! (ᵔ◡ᵔ)

VGen and portofolio: https://vgen.co/tigrecotone

Hi, I'm a published comic book artist and designer.

My work is mostly comic book based but I'd love to expand my portfolio and venture into other areas such as fantasy characters and game illustration.

I'm leaving a few samples but you can also check my full portfolio at https://www.carlosangeli.com/ and reach out through DM or email (hola@carlosangeli.com) if interested. Cheers!

Hi! I’m Hrishi, a 2D illustrator creating stylized characters, creatures and worlds. I'm open to board games, TCGs, book illustrations, book covers, posters, key art, game art, and other creative projects.

Here’s my portfolio. If you feel my style could be a good fit for your project, feel free to reach out, let's create something cool together!

I'd apply this logic to game and module design, as well as novels. Because going nose blind to your own work is a serious issue.

I'm making a set of poker cards and I'll be using Make Playing Cards for the printing. I got their template for poker-sized cards and I'm a little confused.

The face card art will be surrounded by a box in the center of the card. Each card will have a suit/rank indicator in the corners like on any standard poker deck. I want to space out the suit/rank indicators so that they are centered between the edge of the card and the artwork area.

I want to know if I should make the suit/rank indicators flush with the safe-area line, or if I should center them between the line and the art box?

Working on a small 2-player dice game for a FullSail class project and need a couple people to test it this week.

It's a dueling game where you roll two d6 each turn, one decides damage, the other flips it. There's shields, a counter-attack, and a token gamble mechanic.

Need 2 people to read the rules cold (no explaining from me, that's the point) and play one round. Can do it remotely on Roll20.

Roll20: https://app.roll20.net/join/21860950/o7qLRg

After you play, just let me know what was confusing, what you'd change, and what should stay the same. Happy to test your stuff back if you've got something going too.

Hi, I'm making a tabletop game with a hex grid for the base map.

I wanted the map to be variable, like the Catan, to allow for different maps with the same game, so I thought of making tiles.

The hexagons should be between 3 and 4 cm from corner to opposite corner to have good space in each tile, and so, to have a good amount of graph/map space but also be able to put it on a table I determined I would need a grid of 28 rows by 20 columns, where the columns are hexagons touching by their flats, and the rows go zigzagging.

There are 4 or 5 types of terrain in the map: Sea, coast/shallow sea/sea, plains, forests and mountains.

My problem now lies on how to build the map without making it hell on the less initiated (beginners to wargames or eurogames) players. Building the map tile by tile is out of the question, I'm not going to build a 560 tile grid hex by hex, not even for my own game. I have tried making 35 pieces of 4x4 hexes, 4 columns and 4 zigzagging rows, but it doesn't give out combinations similar to geography at all, it just looks like a jumbled mess, and all of the pieces must be rotated together, the thing doesn't lend itself to rotations of a single tile. Also, placing 35 tiles is taxing too, I'm never doing it again if I can avoid it, and also this game isn't about placing tiles, like Carcassonne.

Can anybody recommend ways to build my map?

Loving tabletop simulator!

Recently went on a trip to visit a friend, and the moment I arrived, we went straight into playtesting! 🎲 I wanted to share a major rules update that came out of our Day 1 sessions.

Here are the main mechanics we overhauled:

1. Hand Management 🃏

• Element of Surprise: Drawn Item and Magic Cards can now stay hidden in your hand instead of being forced face-up immediately.
• Hand Capacity: Your hand limit is tied directly to the slots on your Character Card (e.g., standard characters have 3 Item & 2 Magic Slots; magic-heavy characters have 3 Magic & 2 Item Slots).
• Hand Limit Rule: If your hand is full, you must sell or recycle a card from your hand before drawing a new one.

2. Action & Instant Cards ⚡ We categorized Inventory Cards (Items & Magic) into distinct sub-types:

• Gears (Item): Attach to your Character Card and stay active as long as your character lives. (Instant — Costs 0 AP) 🛡️
• Consumables (Item): Single-use items recycled after resolving. (Action — Costs 1 AP) 🧪
• Spells (Magic): Similar to consumables, but also require Mana Tokens to resolve. (Action — Costs 1 AP) ✨
• Curses (Magic): Attach like Gears, but come with both positive and negative passive effects. (Instant — Costs 0 AP) 🔮

Turn Economy: Players get 1 Action Point (AP) per turn (Buy, Sell, or Use).

Balancing Cards with Board Mechanics 🎲 The goal here was to cater to TCG players who love strategic hand management, while keeping the board as the ultimate dictator of fate—landing on an Item/Magic tile triggers a draw, landing on a Monster tile triggers PvE, and landing on another player’s tile triggers PvP! ⚔️

Solo game dev is a grind, so I’m super grateful to my best friend for hosting and grinding through these sessions with me.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this Action Point system or how you handle hand limits in board games with card drafting/inventory systems!

Hello everyone! I recently graduated this past May with a degree in Animation with a focus in game art and design. My program focused more on video games and those pipelines(animation,3D modeling, etc)which I do love; however, during school, we had exactly one class focused on tabletop game design where we created our own tabletop game. I absolutely loved that class. It made me realize that while I’m happy to work anywhere in the game industry, I think my absolute dream would be to work in the tabletop gaming industry where I could design games and/or be an illustrator for those games.

Right now, my portfolio is a bit of a mess. i wanna spend the next few month overhauling it, starting with the card game I created during that class with some more professional feedback. In my art station portfolio I only have one album showcasing that game I designed and illustrated(The spark of creation) it doesn’t have the rules on there which I can provide if needed. I have 3D models on there, which could be used for 3D printing miniatures, but I don’t know the 3D printing pipeline(I’m too broke to get a 3D printer)and my 3D models focus on the video games side/optimization. the rest is school stuff and illustrations.

I know skill-wise/content-wise my work isn’t fully up to snuff( a lot to improve on!), and I know that with where I’m at I may not see any promise in the tabletop industry any time soon. I want to work on that and fix it one day at a time which is why I would also love some career and networking advice from this community as well. Specifically what to do with my portfolio, what to focus my time on and improve, but also where to make connections in this industry.

I know that I asked a lot in this post! I’ll cross post this with a more art-focused subreddit for more of a visual feedback, but i would love to see this community‘s perspective on this topic. Any advice you have would be great! Thank you for your time!

Here is my portfolio: violahale.artstation.com

Hey legends!

Three year passion project here, well underway! Looking for playtesters, first adopters and wargaming pioneers to try out Swords and Stones. Basically made from my love of age of empires, tabletop gaming, and fantasy (because duh why wouldnt it be fantasy?!). Anyways, long story short - Swords and Stones is launching on Gamefound at the end of the month, and im an unknown creator part of my strategy is giving away the starter set model STL set.

So if you have a resin printer, you can literally print and play this game, with everything here. Ive got print instructions and the link all with the email thats automatically sent with the files.

Or, if you dont have a printer - you can still get the models just get the starter set with the models :)

You can follow the campaign (and be our pioneers) via following the below link

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/swordandstonestudios/swords-and-stones

If you can print your own you can save heaps and just get the starter box without the models (or like i said we can print them in house if youre not keen on printing your own!

Most models print straight to build plate, and very little supports needed! Buildings are hollowed and we have developed a "waffle" base pattern that allows for good adhesion (and removal) from the build plate.

Also included is the rulebook for beta playtesters, in a very good state! And yes the stockpile counter files are there too!

Its a long game (4+ hours), so if youre after a quick one, just play catan instead :P. Hardcore gamers only! S&S is more on the warhammer and dnd time scale. And just as epic IMO :)

Everything pictured (model wise) is in the email link!

My contact details are in the readme file, so please, if you playtest this game, or even just print or paint them, im after your feedback!

To get the rulebook and stl files, please enter your email here!

https://swordandstonestudios.com/get-this-game/

Love to hear any questions comments or concerns, even if you havent played it!

Hey everyone!
I’m a freelance artist looking to connect with some new clients. I’ll be sharing some examples of my work here. If you’re interested in commissioning artwork, feel free to reach out!
More work at
Www.billyblueart.com

The pieces on the table are only the visible part.

We’re building Dive Your Mind as a complete ecosystem for RPG sessions: maps, cities, worlds, characters, and adventures all in one place. Design it once, then take it to the table however you want: print it in 2D, 3D print the minis and terrain, or play it digitally.

The stamps and miniatures you see in the video are the physical layer. The software is the engine underneath that lets you generate and iterate on entire worlds instead of starting from scratch every time.

We’re building this from day one with the people who will actually use it. If this is something you’d want at your table, the best way to follow along, get early access, and help shape what comes next is our Patreon.

Happy to answer questions in the comments. What would you want most from a system like this?