I have a confession. I don’t watch football—not even the games of my hometown team, the Cincinnati Bengals. So, whenever an in-law corners me at a dinner party and asks “How ‘bout them Bengals,” I often fake my way through the conversation. Luckily, I see enough news snippets and have enough friends posting on my social media feeds that I have a general sense of how the Bengals are doing. I can usually talk the good talk without having to admit I couldn’t pick the Bengal’s quarterback out of a line-up. 

“Talking the good talk” is basically what most modern Artificial Intelligence (or AI) is doing.

AI understands patterns in knowledge and conversation, enough to make you believe it’s some kind of subject matter expert. But just like me and my lack of football knowledge, AIs don’t necessarily have a lot of factual information on the specific question asked. AI’s ability to “fake” expertise is a nice trick. I’d even say it’s a useful trick. Some may say it’s a dangerous trick. Admittedly, I find the rapidly growing abilities of AI a little ominous as well. But in my opinion, the chances of AI taking over the world are about as slim as me getting hired as the Bengals’ head coach.

I recently developed an interest in AI because of…

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Tabletop Playground is published by Modularity. It is currently in “Early Access” and available on Epic or Steam for $14.99. Modularity plans to end Early Access at the end of 2023.

The platform has several helpful tutorials to help familiarize the user with Tabletop Playgound’s controls. After going through those tutorials, I recruited Susan N. and Harry T., two fellow members of the Cincinnati Tabletop Game Designer’s group, to play a rousing game of Carcassonne on Tabletop Playground. We each had varying degrees…

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Adam Kwapiński has designed such games as Nemesis, Lords of Hellas, Frostpunk, and Origins: First Builders. Now, he’s also a published author after penning Board Games on My Mind, a book about designing games. Kwapiński shares his experience in the board game industry, the challenges he faced, the strategies he used, and the lessons he learned along the way. The book publishers, Board&Dice, launches a crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound on May 30, 2023. The work appears specifically tailored for aspiring game designers, taking them through the process of initial concept, through prototyping, playtesting, and pitching publishers. Overall, I highly recommend the book for new designers.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the game design process, from concept development and prototyping to playtesting to working with publishers. It emphasizes the importance of playtesting and iteration. In particular, Kwapiński lays out his own definitions of technical game design concepts such as choice, dynamics, and tempo. The game design theory portions of the book go into a level of depth that a new designer may find difficult to follow at first. However, game designers who reread the book after gaining more…

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While game design does have specific steps like initial concept creation, development, and playtesting, the process for tackling design problems often presents a daunting challenge for the new designer since there is no one correct method. The approach for taking a game through these steps varies greatly among designers. The Game Crafter’s Single Card Challenge is a great opportunity to illustrate this idea. This design contest is basically a challenge to design a game that uses a single playing card. The Game Crafter is a print on demand service for board games used by many designers to make prototypes for their games.

The Game Crafter issued this game design challenge in the Fall of 2022 and gave designers five weeks to meet it. While the design community had a great time sharing ideas, I thought the unique design and time constraints would provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the game development processes of individual designers.

After the contest, I asked those who participated to answer 5 questions about their process for making their single card game. The answers below highlight how they approached the obstacles associated with concept creation, development, and playtesting.

Question 1: What was your inspiration for your single card game design? What is your process for finding inspiration and turning that inspiration into a viable game…

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The lower level of the Indianapolis bar has a ceiling about 2 inches lower than most places, instilling a sense of claustrophobia that adds to my nervousness. Men and women who look as anxious as I feel fill the room. With the speed dating event starting in 10 minutes, I find an empty seat and quietly review my lines. Even after practicing my opening for two hours in my car, I still feel unprepared. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. It’s my wife texting me, wishing me good luck on my speed dating event.

Unlike most speed dating events which match up potential mates, this speed dating event matches up game designers and publishers. The speed dating event at Gen Con has been connecting established publishers with indie game designers for almost a decade. Many other conventions, such as Origins, have also held their own speed dating events for several years. While most boardgamers have never heard of designer/publisher speed dating, also called speed pitching, it’s ultimately boardgamers who reap the benefits.

“Speed pitching introduces variety to publishers' lineups, keeping them from getting too repetitive,” claims Matt Holden, owner of Indie Game Alliance, “It also helps designers who have made games targeting a particular IP link up with publishers that have access to licensing for it.”

Matt Holden…

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Putting your game design through many playtests is essential to developing an amazing game. But how do you know you’re done with the game design? More specifically, how do you know when you have the right game mechanics and are ready to pitch it to a publisher or commission some art in preparation for a Kickstarter? That’s a challenging question even for experienced game designers. Here are 6 tips to help you know if you’re done with your game design and ready to move forward.

1. When You Achieve Your Game Design Vision

Whenever I start on a new game design, I grab a blank notebook and write my vision for the game on the first page. My vision statement usually includes theme, number of players, components, main mechanic, and gameplay time. My vision statement may also include other attributes that interest me, such as price point and box size. Here’s an example:

Villianopolis – a dice and card game about supervillains fighting each other for dominance in a city. This game will be for 6 players and last about an hour. During gameplay, villains will recruit henchmen/minions and research super weapons. Combat between villains will be resolved by dice. The game should cost no more than $25.

This vision should serve you more as a guide than a hard…

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Find rulebook editors in our Ultimate Guide to Board Game Services

1. Decide on a Structure

Every game is different. So there is no standard structure for rulebooks. However, the best rulebooks I’ve seen generally follow the format below. Each section builds on information presented in previous sections. This format builds knowledge in a logical and concise manner. Whatever structure you decide on, I recommend drafting an outline of the format at the beginning of the rulebook document. It’s a good way to keep your thoughts organized as you continually make changes. Just be sure to delete the outline in the final version of the rulebook.

• Thematic Intro/Background - A short summary regarding the setting and theme of your game
• Thematic Objective – Explain what the goals of the players in terms of the theme. From this, players should have a rough idea of how they will be interacting with each other…

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Creating a game takes many different skills and very few people possess them all. Maybe you’re like me and you’re good with getting your game mechanics to work but you can’t draw to save your life. Perhaps you have friends well-versed in Kickstarter marketing but what you really need is someone who can put together a gameplay video. It’s also possible you consider yourself a decent writer but you really need someone more familiar with the current standards and practices for rulebook writing. At some point, moving forward with your game design will probably mean hiring someone to help you with specific tasks. The purpose of this article is to help you find the person you need.

What You Should Ask Before Hiring

For each pro you contact, you will likely want to know most or all of the items below. In my experience, most people will voluntarily provide this information but if they don’t, you should feel free to ask.

• Education/training – Ask what kind of formal education…

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The OODA loop is a military concept I was introduced to during my time in the Air Force. It also turns out to be a surprisingly useful game design tool that you can apply to almost all games regardless of mechanics, audience, or theme. For me, the OODA Loop is most useful when I get to the point in game design when I feel that I’ve got something good and I ask, “now how do I make it even better?”

OODA is an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It’s basically a breakdown of the decision-making process. The next few paragraphs will describe the elements of the OODA Loop and how they relate to a player’s thoughts and actions. This background knowledge will show how you can use the OODA Loop as a framework to address some key design questions and improve the overall design of your game.

OODA Loop Basics

US Air…

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Read Gary's article: The OODA Loop: Using a Military Concept to Make Good Games Even Better.

Do you agree or disagree with Gary's points? Do you have a different perspective on this? Feel free to provide feedback in the comments or email Gary at gcrsgames@gcrocketscience.com.

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Gary Chavez teaches the basics of Tabletop Simulator step by step. You can open up your own copy of Tabletop Simulator and follow along at your own pace.

After you learn the ropes, check out these 8 amazing, scripted mods for Tabletop Simulator.

Read more about Tabletop Simulator in our Versus: Tabletop Simulator vs. Tabletopia article.

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Read more about Tabletopia in our Versus: Tabletop Simulator vs. Tabletopia article.

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Tabletop Simulator

Pay Once, Enjoy Forever – You only need to pay for Tabletop Simulator once. Afterwards, it’s yours to keep and use. Typically, Tabletop Simulator costs $20 but every so often Steam will put it on sale for $10. Also be on the lookout for other websites like Humble Bundle that sell Tabletop Simulator at a discount. But even at the full price you still get a great value with free access to over 3000 games. Steam also has a special where you can buy 4 licenses for $60. So if you have 3 other friends interested in online gaming this offer is a great bargain.

The App You Won’t Scrap – Tabletop Simulator is a standalone app. It includes some basic games like Chess and Checkers while other games are available as add-ons (most of which are free). The app has some helpful features such as…

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