New Board Game

"Various cartoon characters" also means licensing rights from each individual IP holder, which will be prohibitively expensive. This is why crossovers are so rare outside of properties owned by the same conglomerate. Phineas and Ferb meet Star Wars or Marvel, because Disney is the IP holder for all three.

However, parodies of these characters are protected as fair use under copyright law. For example, you couldn't use Spongebob Squarepants without licensing, but you could do Butterbob Wafflepants as a parody character. That said, the two big considerations are that a) You need to understand the limitations of fair use, as this protection only extends so far, and b) You can still be sued. It is not infrequent in U.S. law for a plaintiff to file a suit that they can't win, knowing that the legal expenses will bankrupt the defendant. Disney, for example, doesn't mind burning money for legal fees to protect the integrity of their brand. Even if the actual damages are trivial, the parody creates a precedent for future infringement. Microsoft actually used to have a variant of this on their books as a fund raising tactic. They sued small computer stores that were selling their OS for tremendous amounts but offered to settle out of court for under $100k. A lot of people settled and several stores went out of business in my native Indiana on account of this practice, which coincided with major distributors like Dell stepping in to take their place. I mention this to reinforce that the law is not on your side, so know it and make sure your product is iron clad. Chapterhouse Studios recently went up against Games Workshop, and the results generally favored them. However, look at what it cost them in stress, time, and lost revenue, even with pro bono representation.

Numerous successful Kickstarters have included thinly veiled pop culture "parodies" as their core offering or as stretch goals. CMON in particular produced miniatures that in no way, shape, or form could be construed as parodies. Their Zombicide game, for example, came with Bruce Willis' character from Die Hard and Danny Trejo from Machette simply renamed "Nick Walker" and "El Cholo." I am amazed that Impact Miniatures got away with doing chibi figures of characters from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. In both cases, I think that these products are flying under the noses of the IP holders, and I do expect that someone will eventually push things too far and trigger a major backlash of litigation. There is always something you can get away with, but actual court battles are emotionally draining, financially devastating, and should be avoided at all costs.

I read a story once about someone making a board game with the IP they wanted and didn't have rights to. I think it may have been Alien or Predator. Then the game became popular as a print and play or something (which they gave out for free), they decided it was time to make something commercial, so they made a new theme for it that didn't infringe on anyone's IP.

So you could just change the theme now, or just make your game and have fun with it. If it gets good enough that you want to try publishing it, you can always change the theme later.