❓f/ all board game designers 🎲✂️ (esp. historians & amateurs #gamingthepast) Please share what aspects of design from idea to *any* degree of completion (including abandonment) you most enjoy AND, in what way you feel most rewarded by those particular elements of design. #boardgamedesign - ThreadSky

biffybeans.bsky.social • 72 days ago

❓f/ all board game designers 🎲✂️ (esp. historians & amateurs #gamingthepast) Please share what aspects of design from idea to *any* degree of completion (including abandonment) you most enjoy AND, in what way you feel most rewarded by those particular elements of design.
#boardgamedesign

Comments

stickydoodler.bsky.social•72 days ago

By far it's playtesting a working game and seeing the players' delight (or whatever the desired emotion is)

marcgwiz.bsky.social•72 days ago

I like early stage design -- coming up with the initial design and trying to find the core idea of the game. Tickles my brain to solve the problem.
Has anyone replied that they move enjoy the abandonment?

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

As an artist, letting go of something frees up space to do something else and sometimes that feels amazing. It can be a great feeling but not one I need to experience every time. 🤣

marcgwiz.bsky.social•72 days ago

Fair enough, that makes sense. I usually feel indifferent about abandoning a game -- not working, so move along

gamingthepast.bsky.social•71 days ago

Me too -- unfortunately I enjoy that so much that I have to work a bit to keep developing to prototype.

davekershaw.bsky.social•72 days ago

I really love the research phase. You get to read some incredible stories from first hand experience. Also unexpected gems, like UN reports on the actions in Mogadishu, which were written with such dark humour.

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

I was so thrilled when I found that I could download a ton of relevant articles and public domain books through the Internet Archive. Research is fun!

ronhallidaygames.bsky.social•72 days ago

I really enjoy the challenge of taking a competitive sport or activity (i.e. something with scoring) and turning it into a board game that its fans will enjoy. In this vein I have created games for baseball, soccer, Brazilian Carnaval, and most recently German nine-pin bowling.

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

That’s pretty neat! It is fun to create something based on a prompt.

ronhallidaygames.bsky.social•72 days ago

I guess the initial prompt would be that I'm going to the Nuremberg Toy Fair at the end of January, and I wanted to have a microgame to give to people who come by my table at the Inventors Fair. 🙂

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

That’s awesome.

smacktalkshowdown.bsky.social•72 days ago

For us, it was writing and working through card ideas after the initial gameplay mechanics were developed

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

Yes!

saluk64007.bsky.social•71 days ago

I often have ideas that are fairly fully formed in my head, so I would say the initial imaginings before details derail things. Beyond that I do really enjoy writing a ruleset, and thinking through how that ruleset forces certain design decisions elsewhere. Game may not be *fun, but it's *whole*.

tvielott.bsky.social•72 days ago

I come out of the historical wargaming side of the hobby; I view my job as trying to communicate some aspect of the past, some dynamic or experience

What I enjoy most as a designer is engaging with the rules as model that drives the players towards the decisions and experiences of past people

biffybeans.bsky.social•72 days ago

I myself have really enjoyed rules writing so far.

tvielott.bsky.social•72 days ago

There is a joy, I think anyway, in the iterative design process - in putting something out and watching it fail, then building it back up and going out again

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