Hello,
My name is soundslikeayouproblem (BGG: soundslikeayouproble). I have just recently got into board gaming (about 4-6 months ago) and am now curious about designing a board game. I do not know if I plan on going and publishing my works unless I feel like more than just myself would want to play them.
I come here in hopes that you guys can be a good resource to help me start out and I can give back by giving my own thoughts and opinions on design.
The first game that I am working on is a Civilization creation game. Where the goal is to have a strong enough culture and history to be remembered thoughout history (winner is the one who has the most "points" (still working on a name for that lol)). What makes this one different is that most civilization games (that I have played) don't reward stuff that actually makes a civilization great and remembered. For example, you can go to war with someone in these games and all it does is meaningless combat (well it can help you win but not directly).
I am also planning on focusing on the creation part. I plan on making the military units customizable, able to determine their strength and defense by die rolls. I also plan on making a very simple tech tree system based upon the terrain that you have in your kingdom. And a modular board scheme. Each piece of terrain is a hexagon tile and you can combine them to form whatever shape you wish and surround it by ocean tiles (for example, you can create a two island world by creating a 3x4 island with 2 ocean tiles inbetween them on all sides. Or even a "joust" map in which its just one long line of land to your opponent.) I want the game to be 2-6 players and at 4 players be somewhere between 2-4 hours of gameplay (but I'm open to this at the moment. I don't want the game to be drawn out by meaningless decisions.) I also plan on having a worker placement system for resource gathing on these tiles (need playtesting with some friends to see if this work properly).
My second one is still very very early in devolpment. It's a Tabletop RPG based around a character you create and shapeship you design yourself. This one will take me a long time to do as playtesting it will probably be quite ridiculous.
Thank you for reading my introduction on some of my ideas and thought process to design. If you have any input or advice or questions feel free to give/ask away.
My first exposure was a long time ago with Monopoly (I really dislike it and have played around with it to make it better. I might write a first blog about improving Monopoly.) It left a sour taste in my mouth cause I was very young and was always eliminated first and got really bored watching people play it.
My first REAL experience in board games came a few months ago with DC Deckbuilding Game (I used to play Magic: The Gathering and was getting tired of not having the funds to keep current with the shifting meta.) I really enjoyed it and my FLGS told me that it was a board game. I got super excited and started researching about modern board games cause I thought that they had gone extinct. Then I discovered Evolution. I instantly fell in love with it and got me super hooked to it. So then I went and started buying board games and playing them with my friends and wife. In the last 2 months I have played roughly 20ish board games of different types multiple times (3-22 times lol).
What helped me decide to enter the world of designing games is that I feel like something is missing in all of the board games I have played. I have fun don't get me wrong, but I felt there was something core missing. I noticed that a lot of games lack creativity and exploration in games for the player. So much is set in stone with board games that I have played that it feels a bit restricting. So I want to design board games that have a creative element to it. Which will require a lot of playtesting (but luckily my friends are those who love to break the design of games) but I believe that it will be worth it once I get it figured out to a science.