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[Eric McQuiggan]

instead of rolling dice you should divine up the movement like an ouija board.

[Amon26]

instead of rolling dice you should divine up the movement like an ouija board.

pendulum!

that's it.  this weekend I'm makin' a boardgame.

[Danmark]

I made a bunch of futury hexagonal road network tiles for a wargame that turned out too abstract for its own good. If anyone wants them (free of charge, licensing, support, & responsibility) PM me.

So far that's my only foray into board game design, but I have an idea for a coop tactical RPG that I'll get around to prototyping soonish. I want to reconcile complexity with fast play, as by weird techniques like prescribed random number sequences.

[The Ivy]

At the risk of sounding like a snobby boardgame elitist... you're kidding, right?

You've never played THE SETTLERS OF CATAN?  I mean, that shit's bigger than Halo 3 (at least in terms of copies sold).

Oh don't worry, I've played Catan in a variety of venues and in various states of sobriety. When I was in school I even had plans to make a giant game board with a friend of mine. We wanted to make it like one of those giant chess sets in the park, but with hexes the size of stop signs. We never figured out a good way to make the pieces waterproof, though.

Maybe I'll figure something out by the next GDC...

[Danmark]

"Made in Germany. You know the Germans always make good stuff!"

Settlers of Catan is grossly overrated. Initial town placement order is a good predictor of victory, and luck is far too important considering it's a construction game. That's all forgivable though. Where Catan really falls over is interactivity- it's not unlikely to have your hands tied for 3 or more turns, because you just happen not to get enough resources to do anything.

It's interesting at first, but once you've played it 10 or so times, having done all possible strategic experimentation, there's no point in ever playing it again (I've played maybe 50 matches). Of course that doesn't make it bad, but it surely isn't the gaming messiah everyone makes it out to be.

Frankly the board game exclusivist crowd has generally poor taste in my eyes. Why anyone would recommend Commands & Colors: Ancients, an utter failure of game design, is beyond me. It's why I've wanted to make board games lately. Not to sound imperialist, but I think they could benefit from a computer game perspective. The Ivy's Treehouse happens to be more computer-y than your standard board game. An environment randomly generated to such a great extent is rare even among games of exploration (I browse the BGG frequently, despite my clear board game geek failure).

[PaleFox]

I think that when strategy games are concerned, it's the abstract strategy that is where it's at. Look at games like Dvonn or even Einfach Genial: they are simple to explain to anyone, simpler than chess and certainly simpler than Cataan (which I have never explained successfully to anyone), and yet allow much strategy in placement. The key is that the possible moves are much easier to see, and so seeing consequences and using actual tactics is possible for everyone, not just those who penetrate the ruleset. To give an illustration ofthis, let's take fighting games. The best fighting games are the best because the moves are possible to pull off and so it becomes about reflex and reading your opponent rather than understanding how to pull off an attack. It is all about lowering the entrance bar, to get to the *actual game,* where the choices are made. How the developer does this can vary, but it is important. Does this make sense?

[AdamAtomic]

I agree that settlers is frustrating but that is not the be-all-end-all of board games that go above and beyond Risk and Monopoly!  I've written about some of my personal favs:

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSaltsman/20090511/1356/Encountering_the_Unknown.php

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSaltsman/20090518/1397/Swine_Flu__Risk__Best_Board_Game_Ever.php

[Jason Rohrer]

Whoa there!  I didn't mean to imply that Settlers was the board game messiah!

Just, you know, if someone claims to not know about German board games... they probably do actually know about at least one (Settlers).

And the big point is that there are about 100 more German/Euro games out there that are each about 10 times more interesting and well-designed than Settlers.

So, by all means, don't stop at Settlers.  But do start there... if you really have never played it.

[Danmark]

That comment wasn't directed at you, but at the legion of hardcore Settlers fans. Among the board games I'm still looking to pick up are Agricola, it's just too damn expensive. I really want Antiquity, which unfortunately isn't available in the US. Guess it can't considered a eurogame though.

@AdamAtomic: I have Pandemic, which is a fine game, especially admirable for the clever implementation of its mechanics. But it has severely limited replayability.

Regarding the original topic, although it's not of the free print-and-play variety, Caledea is an interesting example of an amateur board game effort. It's some pretty avant-garde stuff.

[Burr]

Wow I should try this sometime, it's so interesting to look up all the things you all are posting. 

I made a knight tournament boardgame with a friend sometime in early junior high. It was all about resource management and a rock-paper-scissors fighting system. Unfortunately, it got unfair quickly if only two people played.

A guy I know who calls himself Miky is working on developing a board game in Sphere. It's a little like Go, a little like Tron's lightcycle racing. Here are the rules. We call it Cores

[Zaphos]

My favorite board games lately are ones that everyone plays simultaneously, and the feedback cycle is fast (so people know if they're doing well or not).  In particular Ricochet Robots and Anagrams / Snatch-It are great.

instead of rolling dice you should divine up the movement like an ouija board.

Only tangentially related, but -- A fun alternative to rolling a dN die, for d2 through d10: Everyone privately chooses a number and the players simultaneously show (rock paper scissors style) their chosen numbers with their fingers.  All thrown numbers are summed, and the result is taken mod N.  Add 1 to the result, and you have your 'random' die value in the range from 1 to N.  Of course, if all the players collude, the results are no longer unpredictable, so this isn't suited for purely co-operative (PvE?) games.

[Radix]

Settlers of Catan

I'm pretty sick of Catan myself, but I don't think you're giving it enough credit, and you're missing the human interaction element that comes with bluffing and manipulating people through trading: there's no way you're gonna explore every strategy in only ten games.

May I ask, did you play those 50 games face-to-face or on BSW?

[Amon26]

I took a few minutes and knocked this out in sketchup.  the "hero" rectangles are just representations of where card stacks could go. 

So...An AOOFAD game with the pendulum being the random factor, possible? and how can it go about crawling under the skin of the players like its digital cousin?



Ill do my best to cook something up good for you.  Hope this interests somebody

[Alec S.]

Ooh, we're making board game versions of our games now?  In that case...

Dadaists Gone Wild:  The Board Game

Get a random fruit (using a d20 at a produce isle).





Do with it what you will.   



(The "Board" is more of a metaphorical board, or a rhetorical concept, or an allegory, whichever you prefer/have easier access to.)

[The Ivy]

How many roads must a man walk down before he can settle Catan?