I am a loooong time board game enthusiast. I played Monopoly and Risk as very young kid, the basic basic Risk. My uncle introduced our family to Settlers of Catan when I was 12 years old and my interest in board games snowballed from there. I graduated to Risk 2210 A.D while I was in middle school and then started attending a weekly D&D group run by my friend's dad consistently all throughout High School. I collected several CCG's including Dragon Ball Z, Decipher's Star Wars CCG, and Magi-Nation (died before it's time RIP).
17 years later I'm still playing Catan as well as hundreds of other board games, RPG's and other Tabletop games. (Currently in a Blades in the Dark campaign)
In the past few years I have worked very hard at pimping out and modding other board games (from upgrading chits, cards, and tokens to creating personalized expansions to my favorite games).
Edit: (links taken down while I rework my site based on feedback)
I was spending too much time on improving other people's work and finally last year thought, "Why don't I just create my own game?" So, in the last few months I have begun work on a board game that had only previously been an idea rolling around in my head, but it's time for it to come alive.
Also in the last few months I have become heavily involved in a non-profit board gaming group local in my area called TAG (Tri-City Area Gaming) and their sub-group TAG'd (Tri-City Area Gaming Designers) who focus on designing board games.
I have begun reading a lot of the League of Gaming blog posts and started listening to the Board Game Design Lab podcast (GREAT content). Gabe @ Board Game Design Lab keeps mentioning that a true board game designer needs to start getting involved in the board game design community, so here I am.
My name is Nikolas Rex, and I am an aspiring board game designer.
I guess I can see how it isn't conveyed well on my site. My passion for these games and my early graphic design skills led me to want to modify these games, I spent many hours putting the designs together, photoshopping and manipulating, and much of the design aspect of it I created myself, like the borders of the cards, or the layout of the tiles, but yes, the picture artwork used is not mine. I definitely could've tracked better where I found the art, most of it was just google images.
But that is exactly where I found myself; there I was modifying other games that exist and not even using my own art in the process, and I didn't like being in that position. It looked cool, I could print it out, but it wasn't truly mine.
That's why I wanted to do more and actually create my own game and either do the art myself and do a Kickstarter, or pitch the game to a publisher and go that route.
I guess I was trying to convey my passion for board gaming but can see how it doesn't come off that way.