Tips & Resources for Board Game Designers
Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources for every step of the process, is back!
evaluating playtesters’ feedback
improving your rulebook
making your prototype more usable with graphic design
setting design goals for yourself
and lots more!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EPqJLYnwt0LXDEmZaZ8ebbA6M2MS_quN/view
Our annual Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources, is back for 2024! Lots of articles and interviews covering all steps of the board game design process!
https://cardboardedison.com/award
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eM_Y1BBUi3ts7jaei99zojTya1N-qVzV/view
Cardboard Edison’s annual Best Practices book filled with original articles and interviews about board game design that you won’t find anywhere else is out now:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oHHAAgAcRS9gH4YUMQ5kL310lv0NrOwQ/view
See also: https://cardboardedison.com/award
Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet is jam-packed with articles and interviews covering every step of the board game design process!
In this year’s book, you'll find:
tips from past winners of the Cardboard Edison Award
a sample template script for your game’s 5-minute pitch
designing a game with a multilingual release in mind
the difference between how designers, developers, and publishers see games
a board game design checklist
and LOTS more!
Board game publishing contracts: everything you need to know before signing a game—featuring us!
You can find our licensing-terms infographics here: https://cardboardedison.com/reports
This month, our roundup of favorite board game design links and quotes includes counterintuitive tips, deep thoughts that are worth thinking about, advice for working in the industry, and more.
theory:
process:
“my biggest piece of advice for aspiring board game designers is to play more modern games. play so many games. as many as you can. different kinds. pay attention to designers and their styles. learn what you can about how people who know what they’re doing do their thing.”—Daniel Newman
“If you never try your game idea because you doubt it’ll be any good, then it will never improve, and it will never be any good. Don’t expect your game to be perfect the first time you play it.”—Seth Jaffee
industry:
publishing:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Justin Gibbs, Robin Kay
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), Calvin Johns, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games, Nick Thacker
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Matt Wolfe
This month, our list of favorite board game design links and quotes includes lots of advice for playtesting, pitching, and entering contests, in-depth discussions about various kinds of games, industry trend data, and more.
featured:
contests:
theory:
Designing games with non-traditional themes (audio): Part 1, Part 2
Two discussions about designing party games: Ludology, CoOp Cast (audio)
A discussion about good design for tabletop escape-room games (audio)
playtesting:
process:
rules:
“Consistency in language is one of those small things that makes games so much easier to play. Refer to the same actions, components, and game sections by the same terms every time in rules, card text, reference materials, etc." - John Brieger
licensing:
publishing:
industry:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Robin Kay, Andrew Young
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), Calvin Johns, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games, Nick Thacker
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Matt Wolfe
Cardboard Edison’s new podcast, Immersed, takes listeners deep inside the world of a different game each episode
Our huge annual roundup of great board game design links and quotes is here!
featured:
Meaningful Decisions: J. Alex Kevern on Design Choices in World’s Fair 1893
Meaningful Decisions: Benoit Turpin on Design Choices in Welcome To...
Meaningful Decisions: Bruno Cathala on Design Choices in Kingdomino
theory:
A board game critic’s view of what makes a game memorable (video)
A discussion of “soft” and “hard” incentives in game design (audio)
A discussion about the assumptions we make about games—and how to design games that challenge them (audio): Part 1, Part 2
“What is the goal of your game? It’s impossible to make decisions in the void, but if you know your audience, your game’s weight, the focus of the decisions, and the tone of your game (your goals), you can use that to hem in your decision.” - Grant Rodiek
process:
Ideas aren't worthless: the important role they play in making a game
A thread offering ways to foster ideas and innovation in your designs
Tips for researching games that might be similar to your design (audio)
“Who are you designing your game for? You? Go wild with weird mechanics. Friends? Listen & tune the game to suit them. A publisher? Learn to pitch a product to a business - you’re B2B. The world? It’s a product in the market that you will need to sell.” - Emma Larkins
“The more I create, the more I develop the skill of persistence. I see people ‘give up’ so easily, convinced that a problem is unsolvable, resigning themselves to a flaw in their work that they see as unavoidable. With very rare exceptions, there’s ALWAYS a solution. Find it.” - Peter C. Hayward
rules:
Rulebooks that nail it—a BoardGameGeek designers forum discussion
“Don’t blame the reader for misreading the rule book. Ask how you can improve the rule book.” - Dr. Wictz
prototyping:
playtesting:
Ways to get people to playtest your prototype: from designer groups to print-and-plays to conventions and more (audio)
licensing:
The essential elements of pitching your design to a publisher (audio)
Questions you should ask yourself before submitting a game to a contest or publisher
Charlie Hoopes on the design process, finding a publisher, recovering from disappointment, replayability, playtesting early and often, and more
“If I ask ‘What makes your game different from other games of the same theme and weight?’ and you can’t answer me? don’t make the game.” - Avonelle Wing
publishing:
Board game fulfillment logistics, and companies that do the work
A Kickstarter "launch sequence": the steps to take immediately after launching a project
How to make a budget for a Kickstarter board game project (video)
contests:
industry:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
In The Process, board game designers walk us through the process of creating their game from start to finish, and how following their path can help others along theirs.
In this installment, Matt Riddle describes how he and Ben Pinchback created Beta Colony, including merging designs, using a new mechanic, upgrading prototypes, failing fast, and more.
Our process is pretty consistent across every design. Make it and break it as quickly as possible.
Beta Colony started over four years ago as a game about monks building temples in ancient Bagan. Turns out monks are not a theme that people immediately grab on to. It had a clever but very dry tile placement mechanic that still exists in a modified form in Beta Colony. Thanks to some great feedback from Unpub 4, we began working it to make it less dry and not as focused on the tile laying, but instead having that become the primary scoring/euro thing but with a whole new resource acquisition mechanic and focus.
We were working on a game called Space Vikings 2.0, which featured our “roldel.” (More below! And a random side note: Space Vikings 1.0 is now Wasteland Express Delivery Service!) We saw an opportunity to merge the good stuff from two active projects into one and did it.
We pitched it at Origins to Rio Grande Games and they went, “What about space?” That was funny since half its DNA was a space game, so we did. After a year of development, the game was better and comes out late 2018.
The Takeaway: Fail fast. I know that is a business-y buzzword, but it holds true for our design process. Get an idea into alpha test as quickly as possible. If it’s good, work at it. If it is not, move on to the next one.
Mechanically, it our first published use of what Ben and I call our “roldel” mechanic. The basis is simple: Use dice to move pawns around a rondel to select actions/cards/stuff. It is simple but fun and can be twisted in several ways. For Beta Colony, the start player rolls four dice and all players match that roll. Each turn, players use two dice to take an action—one die to move around the rondel, another to activate where you land. That was the basis for Beta Colony: Move around the rondel, gather resources, and use those resources to build tiles (colony buildings) on the planet. It is a relatively simple base goal. Granted, there are tile bonuses, special buildings, VP tracks, and more going on, but the base goal is simple.
That wasn’t always the case. Beta Colony suffered from design barnacles. Good ideas that worked and were even thematic, but only added length, not depth. We worked with the Rio Grande Games developer Ken Hill, to “Knizia” (i.e., streamline) Beta Colony into a 75-minute thematic euro with an engaging dice puzzle to solve each turn, and good, tight decisions.
The Takeaway: Knizia your designs. Find what the fun is, and more importantly, what is actually needed. Get rid of the rest.
If you follow Ben or me on Twitter, you know that our working protos are famously bland. We spend a good chunk of design working with black-and-white, pencil-covered, ugly protos. When we are finally ready to show it to anyone else, that proto turns into an alpha—which means art stolen from the google and DeviantArt, game icons from game-icons.net, laid out poorly by me in a graphic-design program that is worse but cheaper than InDesign or sometimes PowerPoint even.
Ben and I both have bit bins, so we dig into those for pieces. Tiles are full-page labels stuck to medium-weight Grafix chipboard and cut out with my awesome paper cutter. Pro Tip: Buy a good paper cutter. Unless you are an X-Acto Knife cyborg and can freehand everything, a good paper cutter is key.
Beta Colony has a very large board. Boards are hard. They can be made with chipboard using packing tape to act as the seam. Another option is to have it printed poster-size at Staples. I have done that once; it was expensive but looked great.
The Takeaway: Full-page labels make everything easier.
Make it and break it, be quick to fail, pick your buzzword. Make a proto as soon as there is a game to play and see if it works. If it does, play it 500 times. If after that it still works, then try and get someone that isn’t you to play it. That is difficult, so use conventions and designer meetups.
The Takeaway: Design with a partner. Blind testing is important, but the umpteen reps that happen before a game is ready for blind testing is invaluable.
Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback have over 15 published games to date, including Fleet, Piepmatz, and Wasteland Express Delivery Service, to name a few.
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
In this month's roundup of great board game design links and quotes, we have useful guides for writing rulebooks, a new source of art for prototypes, thought-provoking articles on game design theory, and more.
theory:
A detailed look at objectives and victory conditions: how players can win a game
Ways of making a dice-rolling system that feels thematically appropriate
“Every rule, every component, every aspect of your game must solve a problem or provide an experience that is essential to your game. Everything else compromises quality.” - Jay Treat
rules:
prototyping:
licensing:
publishing:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Icarus Must Burn, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
In this month's roundup of excellent board game design links and quotes, we have several different ways of thinking about games, lists of useful resources for making prototypes, reminders about the design process, and more.
theory:
A board game critic’s view of what makes a game memorable (video)
A discussion about the assumptions we make about games—and how to design games that challenge them (audio): Part 1, Part 2
prototyping:
publishing:
playtesting:
“Don’t give up if the feedback is negative; correct and move on. Be prepared to question everything you have done and to change even when changing is the most painful thing to do. It will eventually pay off.” - Nestor Tyr
process:
“The more I create, the more I develop the skill of persistence. I see people ‘give up’ so easily, convinced that a problem is unsolvable, resigning themselves to a flaw in their work that they see as unavoidable. With very rare exceptions, there’s ALWAYS a solution. Find it.” - Peter C. Hayward
“You’re going to have bad playtests, bad feedback, lack of solutions to problems, and especially lack of time. Take feedback for what it is and try something different. Most importantly: Don’t stop trying.” - Lock Watson
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
In this month's roundup of great board game design links, we have in-depth looks at some game mechanics, advice for writing clearer rulebooks, advice for operating in the industry, and more.
featured:
Meaningful Decisions: J. Alex Kevern on Design Choices in World’s Fair 1893
Meaningful Decisions: Benoit Turpin on Design Choices in Welcome To...
theory:
rules:
industry:
process:
Common mistakes in board game design—a BoardGameGeek designers forum discussion
“If you want to do something, it’s not important how you start. Just that you start. And then continue. And be willing to change and improve your project.” - Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, S GO Explore, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
In our Meaningful Decisions series, we ask designers about the design choices they made while creating their games, and what lessons other designers can take away from those decisions.
In this edition, we talk with Benoit Turpin, the designer of Welcome To…, about roll-and-write games, randomness and control, low-interaction designs, game rhythms, and more.
Welcome To... is often grouped together with roll-and-write games despite the fact that it doesn't have any dice. Instead, the game uses a deck of cards to control the random output from which players select their actions each round. Was this core system always the same, or did it change during development?
Actually, not at all. The core system was originally dice-based. You had three custom D8 dice with a color and a number on each side. You rolled the three dice and then combined them two-by-two, numerically and chromatically. For example, you would get a 2 blue and a 3 yellow, and that would make a 5 green. So you had, in the end, three combinations with numbers ranging 1 to 16 and six different colors corresponding to the six effects. That was the system I came up with, with the express desire to make a game system as pure and elegant as can be. Three dice and nothing more; but lots of possibilities. So at its core, Welcome to... is definitely a roll-and-write.
However, during the development phase, two things came up: One, the game length was too long. Around 40 to 45 minutes a game. And a good chunk of the game was dedicated to figuring out the three combinations each turn (six mathematical operations every time). And one of our playtesters (a local store owner) felt that the game was not a dice game in the sense that the player rolling the dice had no benefit compared to the other players. He was just “the Randomizer” (a cool title but still...).
So we went on looking for a better way to randomize the results (after a brief but painful phase where I had to say goodbye to the basic principle of my game--a necessary evil and a good lesson for a new game designer like me, but ouch...). The first goal was to replicate purely the dice roll without any dice. And we tried many things, from tokens pulled out of a bag, tokens dropped on a board, and many variations of card dealing. It was not easy to replicate the breadth of possible combinations without having an insane amount of components or a very clunky interface. But when we tried the card system present in the final game, we knew we had found the solution. Having the combination created by pairing the different sides of the cards allowed both the replication of the dice randomizer to a T, and got rid of the lengthy math phase. Suddenly, the game was 15-20 minutes shorter.
And from there, new options came: altering the gaussian bell curve to better fit the flow of the game; adding the effect on the top part of the number side to give player a bit more info to make their decision; and also, quite naturally, give the players a sense of control to the randomness. So, even though this “better control of the randomness” is often hailed by reviewers as a key part of the game system, it is just a byproduct of a completely different game design issue… And from my perspective, controlling randomness is important but not always a good thing...
Are there things that designers of roll-and-write games (or flip-and-fill games, as Welcome To… has been called) can or should do to mitigate randomness and give players more predictability or control?
In a roll-and-write, randomness is structurally a factor players have to take into account. Sure, there is a wide range of randomness from Yahtzee to La Granja: No Siesta, but if there is no randomness, then it is not a roll-and-write. It becomes a very different type of game, more akin to worker placement or action selection than R&W. So mitigating randomness should not be the ultimate goal when designing a R&W. For example, in Welcome To..., players can know the distribution of the cards, and can do a bit of card counting, but we limited this control by allowing at least one reshuffle of the deck during a game. Why? Because if players had access to complete information, then AP (analysis paralysis) could set in, and the game would just be a solvable, dry math problem. And that’s no fun… (at least for me).
So “things designers can or should do to mitigate randomness” are two very different questions...
Should they do it depends on the kind of experience they want to create. For example, Avenue has more randomness than Welcome To... and it gives a very different feeling: more highs and more lows because players are less in control, so they enjoy more having a break (feeling lucky is feeling good) and whine more (or is it just me?) when the fourth golden card comes too soon. And it is not a problem at all. It makes the game more accessible thanks to the lack of mitigating mechanics. It also can make games meaner, in Qwinto most notably. In Qwinto, the design is so sparse that there is very little luck-mitigating elements. And it can feel brutal sometimes. But this feeling is also explained by the type of randomness involved in these games.
Qwinto and Welcome To... share some similarities (most notably the three lines of ascending numbers) but the type of randomness in these games are very different. Qwinto has what is called output randomness: players make a decision (roll one, two or three dice) and then the die roll gives a random result and players have to deal with it. The designer mitigated the randomness using two tactics: First, by allowing the players to choose which die to roll, he gave the players control of the bet they were making. And then, the players can reroll if the result isn’t satisfying. But as you made your decision beforehand, the stakes are very high with each roll.
In Welcome To..., there is rather input randomness: players are randomly dealt three choices beforehand, and then they decide what to do with it. This type of randomness gives the player a bigger sense of control (it’s the same one you get in euro-style games; whereas output randomness is more akin to “ameritrash”). You pretty much always have the opportunity to adjust your strategy to the random result, and you get a feeling of “building something” more coherent. But at the same time, you won’t quite get the thrill of rolling the perfect number after sticking to your bet. You do get a bit of it, bingo-style, waiting for the 10-pool you so desperately need, but the stakes are lower.
So “should” is very much a design philosophy, and many great games went opposite routes on that.
As for “can,” designers have a very large panel of options. The most frequent design strategies are allowing the players to re-roll, allowing some players (usually the passive players in R&W) to refuse using the results; and giving several options to pick from the random result: In Ganz schön clever, for example, as the active player, you get to reroll and pick from several dice.
Designers can also use modifiers, powers that allow the player to manipulate the result of the die roll (+1 to a die, turning a die on its opposite side, etc.). For cards, Welcome To... uses a system where players know the effects of the next turn, but not the numbers, so that they can form a bet, akin to the dice selection in Qwinto. In Roll to the Top!, the designer used another system where players can adjust the random factor of the die by picking a different die, from a D4 to a D20, forcing the players to choose between safety and potential high rewards, which is pretty smart.
But personally, one of the best ways to mitigate the randomness is not by controlling the die roll or card flip, but rather by giving the players decisions to make after the random result. What I mean is that if the only thing to mitigate the luck you have is to act on the die roll, you will feel pretty helpless once you used all your tricks (rerolls, modifiers, etc.) if you have only one place to put your result in. Just imagine playing Qwixx by rolling one white die and one colored die (that you chose). You would feel very dependent to the randomness. As soon as you give players options on the result (which dice to use in Qwixx, which line to write your number in Qwinto, which route you connect in Avenue), then not only do you mitigate the luck, but you give the players a feeling of control over their game. And the best games are those where this decision is crucial because whatever you do, you always give something up in the process.
There are various ways to score points in Welcome To..., which allows players to pursue a variety of strategies. At the same time, each score track is capped at a certain number, which usually forces players to diversify at least somewhat. How did you settle on this approach?
Even though all score tracks are capped in Welcome To... the way they are capped is different. The goal of this is to give the game different rhythms. Parks have a very low cap, meaning you can get a feeling of achievement during the game, giving it a rhythm of small victories after another. Pools, on the other hand, have a very high cap: You aim for the target and fail most of the time, until that one epic moment when you finally get all the stars aligned and complete all the pools. It gives a different feeling for the player. Temp workers have a very high cap as well, so that you wouldn’t focus on it but rather on the race with the others. As for the real-estate agency, the rather low cap was made to avoid creating too big of a discrepancy between players not using the real estate and players using it. It was for balance purposes only. As for the Bis, I’ll get to it later on.
The way we settled on this approach was intense playtesting, trying all strategies to balance the game while aiming for different feelings corresponding to the different strategies. And the last phase of the development--with the graphic designer--helped us also define the structure of the score tracks. We needed something simple and common to all score tracks to make it easy for the players to follow their progress. The way Anne Heidsieck implemented that with the effect always being “crossing off the topmost available box” and the result always being “the topmost non-crossed box” was amazing but not compatible with other ways we explored without any cap. So it took the whole development for us to reach this final state.
How much leeway should designers give players for certain kinds of experiences? Are there times when giving players more or less freedom to pursue one strategy single-mindedly is appropriate?
All depends on the amount of leeway a designer wants to give the players… Giving a lot of freedom to players is a great but risky approach because if you remove any incentive to “play well,” you run the risk of having players playing very poorly and blaming the game for it, or feeling very bad.
For example, in Avenue, you are free to do pretty much what you want with each card. That can lead to very wide scoring differences (from -10 to 120 in the same game at my house) which can be frustrating but also exhilarating for players scoring very high, because they feel they earned it completely.
Usually, you need some kind of control over which strategy the players will use or you risk having a flaw in your game design.
For example, in Qwixx, you cannot end a line without having five numbers crossed previously, to avoid rushing. In Avenue, you have the “-5 if you don’t score more than the previous village.” In Twenty-One, you must cross off the numbers from the left to avoid players biding their time. In Ganz schön clever, the designer used different caps for the scoring tracks to give leeway to the players. They can play purple and orange as much as they want, while the others are more constrained. But he used the foxes to balance out that leeway (to paraphrase the rugby quote, “no fox, no win”).
I don’t pretend to know all the designers’ intent, but from an outside perspective, giving a sense of freedom to the players is probably better than giving them actual freedom (but don’t put that out of gaming context... it sounds awful).
The box for Welcome To... says 1 to 100 players can play at a time, but theoretically any number of players can play at once if they all have a play sheet. This makes the game a relatively low-interaction affair. Was this always your intention?
The very first iteration of Welcome To… was much more “take that-ish” than the final game, but this high interaction brought so many problems that it got cut off progressively during playtesting. At first, players could lock out other players from certain estates, or lower the value of their estates. But that created timing issues in a simultaneous game and could not be properly scaled for a large number of players. It was also some of the most hated parts of the prototypes during playtesting.
It is very difficult to have high interaction in a roll-and-write due to its indelible nature (at least until now) and its tendency toward simultaneous play. And we felt it was not a needed feature in the game.
Not all games need high interaction between players, and there are many advantages to low (but not altogether absent) interaction. As soon as we settled on this gameplay, we tried to remove any hurdle to higher numbers of players, especially around balancing issues. For example, we made the City Plans scalable to any count by allowing all other players to score the lower value of the card. Being first still mattered, but then everyone could still play.
What can designers of low-interaction games do to make their game accessible to a wider range of player counts?
Well, should they? Sure, it is always great to put on the box “1 to 100 players” as it is a good marketing tool, but using such a scale is very rare and probably not very interesting. And games such as Ganz schön clever did not need any of that to succeed: It doesn’t scale very well, especially at four players, but no one cares because it is such an amazing one- and two-player game. Players (and publishers) tend to want everything: a 1-100 player game with high interaction, fast-paced but strategic, deep but fun, thematic but thinky... But I believe a game should fit a specific niche rather than aim at the impossible and remove what makes it unique.
That said (sorry for the rant), if designers want to make games accessible to a wider range of player counts, there are a few things they can do. First, they have to look at it from a component perspective. To have a higher count, you need to take into account the need for each player to have all that they need. Roll-and-writes are structurally pretty good at this because you can put all a player needs on the sheet, without any need for multiple copies of tokens. Other designs need to find a way to minimize component gloat.
One way is to adapt your gameplay to fit that structure: You cannot have any mechanism that requires players to grab central tokens. You cannot have a “complete race,” with every position mattering. You cannot have limited action spots for a turn. Working on the sequel to Welcome To… with the express goal of making it also 1-100 players, I felt a bit limited in my scope of mechanics when I wanted to interject some interaction. I had to rely on a few that scaled well: majority, semi-racing (first gets better, rest gets a little).
You can also stick to “non-interacting mechanics,” with which you’ll have greater freedom. In games like Qwixx or Noch mal!, all passive players can pick from the “remains” of the active players. You can also have games where everyone use the same random result: Criss Cross, Knister or Avenue, for example; the variability coming from the individual positioning. From that initial stance, then designers can go to any mechanics that don’t affect other players (route building, hand management, etc.)
But at some point you must also consider simultaneous play (or semi-simultaneous with passive players still engaged on the active player’s turn). You probably will have to turn away from turn-based, drafting mechanics because variability in game length can be a dealbreaker if you want to increase player count.
The Bis action allows players to advance more quickly toward completion of a goal card, but at a penalty. How did this action come about?
It started as an action that let players write the card number next to a previously written identical number: You have a 7/Bis card and if there is a 7 somewhere, you can place another 7 next to it. It was meant as a tool for players to soften the harshness of the draw and erase some of their missteps. But it was very random depending on your game state and not that effective. Then we switched to “you place a 7 and then you can place another 7 next to it.” But it was clunky and also too luck-based. So we went to the actual Bis action: You can place a 7, and then anywhere on the board, you can write the same number next to a previously written number.
Bear in mind that it was developed before the City Plans/goal cards. So it was useful for players to get themselves out of a tight spot and finish a housing estate. It became much more powerful with the goal cards as it was also a way to race these. So we had to come up with a penalty. And there came into play psychological balance... We first gave a fixed penalty for each Bis. And it was statistically pretty balanced. But players refused to use the Bis action, seeing it as too costly (which it wasn’t). It was left unused, except by experienced playtesters who would crush the others by rushing Bis. By switching to a more progressive penalty, we almost completely erased that psychological barrier, and people started using it way more, even though it is statistically costlier today.
Are there things you learned from developing the Bis action that would help other designers who want to allow players to take risks in pursuit of a goal?
The most important thing is to make sure there is a real risk. If the action is just an alternate way of progressing through the game at a faster pace for a cost, there is a chance that some players will be able to math out the equation and find the exact amount of Bis that should be used. In Welcome To..., you are not guaranteed that your bet will pay off. If you fail to get goal cards or finish up housing estate even though you used Bis, because other players played differently, then it was not a worthy strategy. And that is important.
Another thing, as I mentioned before, is psychological balance. If your gain-to-risk ratio is perfect but players feel that it’s too good or too hard, then you have a design problem. And it happens in great games. And you can’t math-talk your way out of it. Players’ perception always wins, even when they’re wrong. And it is hard to make sure both mathematical balance and psychological balance are fine.
Finally, this action revealed an unexpected boon: It speeds up the game by cutting 2-3 turns. And in this day and age of impatient gamers, that is pretty interesting (and it led to a fun new action in the sequel). It turned out well for us, but I think it is important to look further than your expected target when introducing a new action like that because it can lead to unexpected results, both ways.
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, S GO Explore, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
In our Meaningful Decisions series, we ask designers about the design choices they made while creating their games, and what lessons other designers can take away from those decisions.
In this edition, we talk with J. Alex Kevern, the designer World’s Fair 1893, about guiding and incentivizing players, cohesion in a design, identifying your audience, the development process, and more.
Players start World’s Fair 1893 with a certain number of supporters already on the board. They also receive a bonus based on where they are in turn order. Was this always the case, and how did you settle on the specific setup rules to get players into the meat of the game from the first turn?
In the initial prototype, players chose their starting spots in reverse turn order. For more experienced players this was a good solution, but for players new to the game, they would either choose a spot randomly, or agonize too long over it.
We decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, so we settled on assigning the starting placements based on turn order. Those later in turn order get more “sole” majorities to start, and more placements on locations with lower card limits where there will be less future competition. This provided the needed balancing, without bogging down the start of the game.
What determines how much early guidance players should receive, without being too heavy-handed or too lax?
As designer I think the best thing you can do is make the value of things explicit. If you can clearly articulate what is rewarded in the game, players know what they are shooting for and they can fill in the gaps of how to get there themselves.
In World’s Fair 1893, the primary ways you earn points are by a) having majorities, and b) matching your exhibit cards to where you have those majorities. Players can then fill in the gaps and quickly figure out that placing a supporter in an area that contains an exhibit card of the same type is a good decision, especially if it also gives you majority there. I’ve found players often grasp this even on the first turn of their first game.
Where you need to be a bit more heavy-handed, like pre-determining the starting placements, is where the value of things is more obscured. There is inherent value in having your starting supporters in the Fine Arts and Electricity areas, as each of those locations can only hold up to three cards (as opposed to four in the other locations), so there are typically fewer supporters placed there over the course of the game--meaning more value for each supporter placed there. Given that’s not something less experienced players would be considering, it made sense to be more prescriptive with something like starting position.
Every turn, three cards are added to the board, but each location can hold a maximum of three or four cards. Why implement a cap rather than allow cards to continue stacking up at a location until a player takes them?
We did do some early testing without a cap, but it often led to too few interesting locations to choose from each turn. Once a location reaches three or four cards, it will always be a viable option for players to consider, so there wasn’t a reason to continue incentivising that spot, as it would end up being chosen within the next few turns anyway. It made more sense to improve the other locations, increasing their viability, and creating more interesting options for players to choose from.
How can a designer know when it's better to add hard restrictions and when it's better to let incentives guide the player experience?
Typically I think hard restrictions--like strict hand limit--are only necessary when not having one would a) potentially break the game, by pulling too many cards out of the deck, for instance, or b) ruin the experience for the other players playing in the spirit of the game. Otherwise, if you want to keep buying Copper cards in Dominion, for example, that’s fine--there are plenty in the supply, and it’s not impacting the other player’s ability to pursue their legitimate strategy, so you can just enjoy your coppery deck until the game ends.
However, if you do find you need to impose something like a hand limit, sometimes it can be enforced through a game mechanism rather than a strict rule. For example, there’s no explicit hand limit in Catan, but anytime you have more than seven cards, you must discard half of them when a 7 is rolled. Other games allow players to take cards from the player who has the most. So there are other ways of enforcing various “soft” limits on things, rather than simply putting a hard cap on it.
World's Fair 1893 went through an extensive development process after it was signed with Foxtrot Games. What core ideas guided that process?
We knew we wanted to make a gateway-style game, with cohesive mechanics and interesting decisions. The idea of cohesion guided a lot of the development process--for example, originally the cards that moved the ferris wheel “game timer” forward were something separate from the Midway cards. There were only nine or 10 of these “timer” cards, and the round would trigger once four were taken, which made round length far too variable (presumably, all four could come out in two turns). After trying a few different things, we discovered the solution of making the Midway cards the game timer--there were a few dozen of them in the deck, which meant that the round could end after 12 or so were taken, leading to a much more predictable round length. It also removed a whole superfluous element from the game, and created something that was much more cohesive.
It could have gone a different direction, where instead we could have added cards or mechanisms to make it work properly. But, because of the style of game we wanted to make, we were focused on a development process centered boiling down rather than building up.
What should a designer keep in mind during the development process? How can they know what to try to hold on to and what to let go?
The most important thing is articulating what you want the game to be, its purpose, and who is the intended audience. Developing a game that you are intending to be played by experienced hobby gamers will be very different than developing a game you want to be in the conversation for the Spiel des Jahres. If you can articulate what type of experience you are trying to create, from there you really just have to “listen to the game.” It will tell you what it needs--more player control, more long-term strategy, less analysis paralysis--and it’s up to you as the designer to listen to those signals the game is telling you and figure out what adjustments to make. Playtesters can help you listen and help you hear new and different things, but in the end you have to trust your ears, and follow the sound.
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Samuel Lees, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, S GO Explore, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
In this month's roundup of great board game design links, we have our own interview with a giant in the industry, tips for entering--and winning--design contests, advice from a newcomer who's been having a lot of success, and more.
featured:
contests:
rules:
licensing:
industry:
process:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Stephen B Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Samuel Lees, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Game
In our Meaningful Decisions series, we ask designers about the design choices they made while creating their games, and what lessons other designers can take away from those decisions.
In this edition, we talk with Bruno Cathala, the designer of the Spiel des Jahres winner Kingdomino, about putting restrictions on players, variable turn order, rule changes for different player counts, and more.
In Kingdomino, players select tiles using a drafting system that makes players weigh a tradeoff between getting a better tile now versus getting better drafting position next round. Where did this system come from? What other aspects of the design rely on it for the game to work as a whole?
This system is one example of what I call a “blessing in disguise.” In my games, very often, when I’m offering something very good to one player in the short term, he will pay a kind of counterpart. This is the case here: If you choose to draft the best domino, on the next turn, you will have no choice at all, just having to accept what other players don’t want. This kind of mechanism really helps to get a good balance.
One other aspect which is important in the game, is the distribution of different land categories. You have a lot of wheat fields and forests, but few crowns inside them. You have few gold mines or swamps, but many more crowns inside. And as far as points are, at the end, the result of multiplying the number of spaces by the number of crowns, you will be able to get a satisfying number of victory points, never mind the category of land you chose at the beginning.
Do games that allow players to vary turn order have any particular design considerations or pitfalls to avoid?
I like systems that break the basic “clockwise turn sequence” because it avoids having to always play after the same player. If the player is not very good, it gives you an advantage, and when it’s a very good player, you have a disadvantage. The counterpart can be increasing downtime, when you go first on one round, and last on the next one.
Players in Kingdomino must build their kingdom within a tight, five-by-five grid. This forces players to plan ahead or risk being unable to place a tile later on. Did the game always restrict players to that five-by-five grid, and what was it about that restriction that made you decide to use it?
In a game as simple as Kingdomino, tension comes from restrictions: If you were in a position to always place your tiles the way you want, you would lose some tension in the game. That’s the reason why I introduced two restrictions: You must be connected with your castle and/or to the same color, and you must stay in a 5x5 grid. Two simple restrictions which create a tension that increases throughout the game.
Also, it’s a way to introduce a little more interaction between the players. If I’m playing before you, I will make my choice analyzing what is good for me, and what could be absolutely bad for you. (Maybe I can force you to discard one tile because you have no solution.)
My first prototype, to validate the concept, was on a 4x4 grid, with eight dominoes per player. It was nice, but not long enough. So I increased it to 12 dominoes. At first, there was no castle, and players had to fulfill a 4x6 grid. But it was confusing for some of them. That’s the reason why Sébastien Pauchon (Jaipur), who is a friend and a talented game designer, suggested to me to add the castle tile, allowing players to play on a 5x5 grid.
How do you know if a particular restriction on players will be fun or just frustrating?
First of all, my personal theory is that frustration is the main mechanism which leads to games you want to play again and again. After your first game, if you have absolutely no frustration, you don’t want to play again. If frustration is too high, same: You don’t want to play again.
So I try to find a good level, which is not easy, because we all have our own frustration limits. For example, for some players, rolling a die and having no chance to change the result is too frustrating.
Then I have to say that I’m designing my games… for myself! I’m always working on the game I want to play. So the final balance for frustration is the one which is satisfying to me.
I consider a game designer to be someone who shows a path and then tries to convince people to follow him in that direction.
In the two-player version of Kingdomino, each player uses two pawns instead of one. This means players can and should plan further ahead each round. How did the rules for the two-player game come together?
This change to the rules was necessary to keep some tension during the choice of dominos with fewer players. Imagine that players have only one pawn. Selection would have been very automatic. No tension at all. So it would have been uninteresting.
As you know, I’m really a fan of two-player games. I myself play a lot at only two players. So I wanted the game to be interesting for two. I don’t like when it’s written “for 2 to X players” on the box, but with the game being very flat at two players.
So… It seemed to me that playing with two pawns could be a good solution. This was confirmed the first time I tried it.
And moreover, at two players, you can play on a 7x7 grid, using all the tiles, which is probably my favorite configuration.
When a game has to change some rules for certain player counts, how do you decide how different the game should be when it is played with that many players?
I don’t really care to have exactly the same game experience depending on the number of players. The thing which matters for me is to create the best game experience possible, never mind how many players you are. So, to keep that interesting game experience, I have no problem making the changes which seem necessary to me.
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Stephen B Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Samuel Lees, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, Tony Miller, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
