Realizations in Game Design

Yep!
I suck at art, too. And that was a hurdle for me as well. I started to get frustrated that I couldn't draw and couldn't come up with awesome card art that would make my friends say, "Wow! You designed this? This is great!"

Meh.

One of the ways I got around that hurdle was to work on other aspects of the game that need to be done regardless of the art work. (I actually DID come up with a card design I liked, but it took a long time.) You still need to come up with rules, pieces, a board, etc. I just worked on other things. Also, I highly recommend learning some techniques you can find from tutorials for paint.NET (or any other painting/drawing program out there). The reason I mention this is because someone else already has the talent to come up with these tutorials. All you need to do is follow their instructions and viola! Something cool that you made yourself, but you don't need to know how to draw! For instance....my game is space based...there are lots of tutorials out on the net that show you how to create a starscape, planets, nebulas...etc. Once you do some of these tutorials, you can quickly see how to apply other effects/colors to make something your own.

Have fun!

-CB-

Prototyping rule number 1: Unless you are near the end of the game design and you are playtesting with real players, make your prototype as cheap as possible. Especially if you solo playtest.

Not doing so will simply make you lose valuable time. Using generic components saves you a lot of time. You can even use regular cards instead of doing your own custom cards.

I remember once designing a series of heroes. I took a week to balance all their stats, designed their special abilities, and make the cards in black an white and print them. I play tested once, and I needed to scrap the cards because the core of the game simply did not work.

Start making better components when you are sure it is not going to change. Remember that you cannot be entirely sure unless your game is almost complete.

Some times, I don't even design stuff on the computer. I have card board shaped as token and cards. I take a pen and write directly what I want on it. Sometimes it's faster than doing it with a computer.

Matt Leacock designed Pandemic, which has won several awards. He was kind enough to post his first prototype of the game to BGG.com http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/303842/pandemic?size=medium
As you can see, he probably spent 10 minutes scribbling out the board and then used a standard deck of playing cards. He says that he actually played that version a few times with his wife. Also available are pictures of his later boards and it looks like he just took a picture of the world from the internet and drew circles and lines on it. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/303843/pandemic?size=medium

Having never been published or gone through the process, I don't know how it works, but I have to believe if your game is good enough to attract a publisher, they probably have contacts with artists who can clean things up for you. I used to spend a lot of time on Artscow trying to get the perfect cards and now I just buy blank business cards and fill them with text and they work just fine. If any of my games turn out to be marketable, I'll hire an artist then.

Having seen some of their prototypes I know Knizia, Kramer, & Colovini use clip art and in at least one instance Teuber made figures out of playdough.