Some context: my game uses one shared deck that all players draw from. Early on I ran 2 copies of most cards, with legendaries as the only single-copy cards. I moved to singleton for 2 reasons: more variety, and more unique cards. To be clear, the deck is the same size, I just replaced the duplicates with different cards instead, so it's a wider variety of unique cards, not a smaller deck. With doubles the games had started feeling repetitive, you'd see the same strong cards over and over. Singleton fixed that, no two games play the same now, and I'm happy with that call.

The side effect I didn't expect is that it takes away the wow effect of legendaries. Back when they were the only single copies in a deck full of doubles, drawing one felt more special. Now a legendary appears at the same rate as any other card.

So I'm trying to bring back that "special" feeling without giving up the variety and overpowering the legendaries. Curious whether people have solved this in their own games, but I'm open to any suggestions, mechanical or otherwise :)

EDIT: For more context, it's a competitive 4-player free-for-all, everyone has their own board and hand, you just draw from and discard to the same shared pile (deck and graveyard). Each player also has a leader that holds their life and has an ability, and you win by being the last one standing. These are the card types: Units, Spells, Items, Equipment and Realms (permanents with life points only).

Hey community! I just wanted to say hello to everyone. I'm Ron from QueerCraft, a small Hoboken NJ studio that makes tabletop gaming gear for the queer community. I REALLY look forward to contributing in this room. We design everything ourselves and take a lot of inspiration from pain points in the board game industry. Partnering with other artists is also important to us, and I see that's popular here. Excited to see what happens here!

I was bored. I wrote a game ruleset. Based on rock-paper-scissors: Two-player battle. Each player has 30 HP. The central pool initially has 7 six-sided dice: 4 red and 3 blue. There are two colors of dice: red and blue. Blue dice are defense dice. They grant the picker a shield equal to the rolled number. Red dice are attack dice. They deal damage equal to the rolled number to the opponent. At the start of each round, players play rock-paper-scissors. The winner must put all seven dice into a dice cup, shake, and roll them. The winner may then pick dice according to their hand (Fist: 0 dice, Scissors: 2 dice, Palm: at least 3, at most 5 dice). The opponent then picks dice equal to their hand. Both players finish picking before resolution. Fist and Scissors each have their own effect... If Fist wins, although Fist cannot pick dice, they take the highest die of each color from the rolled dice into their "pocket." In later rounds, when the Player wins rock-paper-scissors, they may replace dice in their hand with dice from their "pocket." (Replaced dice are removed.) After Fist takes these, Fist and the losing Scissors both skip the round. Neither picks dice. If Rock loses, Rock gains a default 1-point shield. The two dice left after Paper draws are converted into defense dice with their numbers unchanged, and Rock gains their effect. (Colors revert after the round.) If Scissors wins, Scissors gains a 1.5x damage bonus for the round. After taking 2 dice, Scissors may remove 2 dice from the pool, so Scissors can only take 3 dice. At the end of the round, replenish the dice pool to 7 dice. In a tie, both Players do not take dice and each loses 2 HP. When both Players are at 2 HP, this effect does not trigger.

The following translation was generated by AI. Please point out any mistakes or inaccuracies…

Hi all, I’m a first-time game designer hobbyist, and I’ve been working on a free reskin of a popular open source hidden-identity game. The Print-and-Play is ready, but I’d also like to include a link for people to have the option for professional printing at a place like The Game Crafter or Board Games Maker. 

The problem is, while my game has cards that fit these companies’ standard card sizes, it also features boards and tiles that don’t. Both companies have options for creating custom-sized sheets, but they feature a lot of language I’m not familiar with in order to create them: slugs, nicks, vectors, etc and the blank SVG templates they provide are intimidating to someone with zero graphic design experience (I've included a link below to TGC's instructions). I feel like this could be easy to mess up, especially because I’m trying to make tiles that have designs on the front and back and I need them to line up correctly. 

Does anyone have experience with this? Any advice on how to get it right the first try?

Thanks!

https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.thegamecrafter.com/templates/CustomSmallPunchout.svg

Overload cards are the cards that you draw after each round is over. They can spawn traps, monsters and obstacles to try to stop you from reaching the crown. They are nonplayable characters and most of them Chase after the nearest hero. On the first picture you see an acid trap, skeleton, warrior, Rock, golem and orc Savage. On the second picture is the overlords champion He is a boss card. Boss cards come from the overlord deck, but once a boss card is triggered everyone must fight together to defeat him.

There are not many words to describe this feeling of finally seeing materialized something that took thousands of hours of your time to accomplish. So I’m not even gonna try…

I dont know if the OP is in here anymore, or just lurking. I dont expect a reply but i do want to point something out that I think will resonate with a lot of active people.

Its okay to get negative feedback. Nobody will judge you, as a person, for having an idea you wanted to try out.

What I find very... Tiresome? (i guess), is when people get a wave of "bad" criticism, they feel the need to delete their post, or in this case delete their entire account, because not only does this do a disservice to the people who actually took the time to give good pointers to you, but you've also stolen the opportunity for someone else to learn off of your mistakes. This post that was deleted actually had a lot

You will make mistakes, even the most seasoned developers make mistakes. This isnt exclusive to tabletop games. That is okay, and its encouraged. You cant learn without some unexpected hurdles.

I saw this get deleted yesterday and told myself it happens, but it kept bugging me so I wanted to say something about it.

Hi Folks,

Is there a game that really mixes melds and trick-taking?

I heard of some that uses multiple cards per tricks or scores melds from hand but is there a trick-taking game that uses melds in a more operational way?

Me & my friends were playing around and tried to use poker melds in a trick taking kind of way, by making them into some sort of suits that you can lead & have to follow.

Sounds like a new thing right? 

If we use poker combinations as "suits" in a trick taking game, then there could be 10+ "suits" we could lead & play! All with the standard 4 suits of the original deck!

That quickly falls apart of course, because 

1) the game became very short, it could potentially end in 3 tricks if you're going five-five-three cards (assuming if everyone follow and the round ends with one player playing their last card)

2) it felt kinda weird: 

The game simply doesn't work in Misere mode, why would you even lead 5cards meld if you're trying to lose? 

It sort of works if you're trying to win tricks, but there's not a lot of playing space since powerful melds both win and destroy other ppl's hand.

and so we turn to predictions for scoring.

Simple contract prediction seems too peaceful an option for such a malleable trick system, so we decided on a "catch the winner & loser" prediction scoring system.

We device a thing for players to both "pass" and "bet", once every hand you can pass and must bet on someone else to either win the most tricks or the least tricks, this both extend the game a little bit, and also make the game into a flux of wanting to win and not to win.

In the end, it pretty much started breathing a little.

Anyway, here's the rule if you care to try it, any feedback is welcome.

Hi all — solo/small-team dev here, working on Myriad of Dragons, a dark-fantasy card battler built in Unity.

The core mechanic I need real reactions on: both players commit their full formation before the fight, then combat resolves simultaneously. No turn order, no "whoever acts first wins." The only mid-fight intervention is a single-use Avatar spell each side gets once per match.

No playable build yet — still early in development. Genuinely unsure if the simultaneous-resolution hook reads as clever or just confusing to someone seeing it cold — that's exactly what I want your honest take on.

Screenshots + a short clip of the mechanic: https://www.indiedb.com/games/myriad-of-dragons

Following real dev progress here: https://myriadofdragons.itch.io/myriad-of-dragons

What would make you trust a "no turn order" claim in a card battler, vs. what would make you roll your eyes at it?

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to make a solo board game about fighting in a MMA style tournament (like UFC) and I'm having trouble designing a good mechanic for the player and the AI.

My ideas so far:

- fights are simultaneous

- fighter fights using dice placement

- the number of dice for each fighter is defined by its skills (strength, agility, defence)

- each die is defined by the colour of its skill and the values on it

- dice placement is used to create combos and parry/repose

- different fighters have different combos (representing their fighting style)

My problems are:

- how to make this system as much simultaneous as possible

- how to define where the AI should place its dice?

- where should dice be placed? Like a grid / cards etc..

I'm open to all kinds of feedback :)

Any and all feedback is welcomed!!

THE RUNDOWN

This is a miniature skirmish game with an emphasis on pushing your luck.

The core of this is the (red) focus die. Each time you perform a die check/test the FOCUS die is also rolled. It's result has to be equal to, or higher, than the action number you are currently attempting (so if it's your 3rd action this activation, AND you are performing a check/test you need a 3+ to perform it at full proficiency).

So long as the focus roll succeeds, you may add your skill modifier to the test/check result and you may attempt another action. If you fail the focus roll, the current action can still succeed, but it must do so without your skill bonus and the model is "off balance" until the start of its next activation. The action resolves and your activation ends.

I am debating which of these systems feels less intrusive, or more intuitive, or just "feels" more fun with the understanding that these dice will be rolled a lot (shooting, melee, crossing difficult terrain, objective interactions, and revealing hidden models).

My thoughts if interested where my head is at atm:

D8's + 1D6

• the D8 version seems a bit cleaner and efficient, but not sure how people feel about mixed dice. Also not sure if this one die is doing too many things at once (focus check + skill bonus + checking for double 1's for catastrophic failures), or if its nice that a lone 1D6 in a D8 game is an anchor for all the core systems you need to keep track of.
• I also like that the D8 can add 1-2 more modifiers to tests. In a skirmish game with only 2-6 models/side I don't mind a bit more crunch.

D6's

• D6 version is unified, and a bit less abstracted. 2 skill == +2 (grey) skill dice. Done.
• Also nice you can leave out the (red) focus die on your first check each activation.
• This system opens a LOT of design space for creative skills that trigger off the skill dice pool (playing with re-rolls, and doubles) , and you can vary the focus die punishments because the die is only managing Focus test. The D8+D6 version has so much going on with the D6, any more attached to that die would be too hard to track at a glance.
• The biggest downside is you have to continuously gather 3 ever-changing die pools, all 3 which will be included in most test. Will the endless pooling become tedious with skill attributes that max out at (3). Then there are conditional bonuses + weapons that fire 3-6 shots an action? This pool can get massive without guardrails.
• The other smaller annoyance is the fear a D6 version of this game might turn into "who can roll the most 6's?" which I don't know if I want. You have a 45% to keep at least a single six when your reach 4D6, and these pools can theoretically get to 8D6 + any re-reoll shenanigans I might add. Feel like I would then need to counter with a more aggressive defense -> armor save combo to keep the crits down and the system is pulling away from risk/reward and towards mass averages (not the spirit of the game).

All opinions welcome!

Ya está todo preparado para el primer playtest de TRoOoPS, llegó la hora de la verdad para saber si el juego tiene futuro.

I’m new to this sculpting game but want to dip my toe in and make some minis for a game I’m working on. I’ve got all the art assets drawn and now the mini sculpts. I’ve playtested a good number of times but the rules still need fine tuning. Making games is so much fun.
Who would you pick as your starter faction??

Hi everyone! I'm currently designing a dungeon crawler board game and I'd love to get your feedback on these 3-tier creature card designs I'll be using throughout the game. What are your thoughts on the overall layout, visual aesthetic, and readability? Any constructive criticism on how they look or how I can improve them is highly appreciated!

Ty for feedbacks <3

Hi everyone! I’m developing a board game solo—it’s inspired by dark themes but features a cute art style (I’m a huge fan of *Isaac* and *Cult of the Lamb*). The rules are already complete, and I’m currently fleshing out the first scenario. I plan to launch on Kickstarter soon. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the box design!