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Scripten

Anyone else like board games?

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So, at my college we're having a "Design your own board game" competition among the members of our (fairly sizable) gaming club. I've been working on one of my own, which takes elements of 4X games and applies them to a board game environment. So far, I've got most of the conceptual stuff done and have written a fairly extensive manual that I hope isn't too long or confusing. Now it's just a matter of printing out a few more pages of tokens and cutting everything out and I'll have a working prototype.

Thing is, I really want to get feedback from people who aren't my friends and can give more constructive criticism on it. Right now, the only thing I can provide is the manual, but it should give a clear idea on what the game entails.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CluPZ7QJ62SSytxXEL7x4_-yCtsE25nWW9BaO0KGML0/edit

So, if anyone wants to have a gander and thrown in some thoughts, it'd be awesome. And hey, if you've ever wanted to get in on the tabletop gaming scene or have any cool stories, it'd be pretty cool to hear about that, too.

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Me and a couple other virgins with rage friends used to play Risk back in college. Fun times were had.

I've honestly made an attempt to sit down and make up a board game, but I was flabbergasted at all the variations needed to balance the game. Much like a bad DM, games can come out overly sadistic without even attempting to make it so.

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I love board games, particularly Risk, me and my friends are just getting over a sort of Risk mania we had for a couple months.

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I used to be pretty big into chess. I'd look around online and study chess variants. I found a pretty cool 4-player version (somewhat based on a precursor) called Chatranj. Four teams would use 8 pieces in each corner on the board. Pieces moved much in the same way, except pawns could only move one space and bishops couldn't move more than 2 spaces.

Anyway... I tried making a few board games. One was a really simplified turn-based strategy game with elements of checkers. I also made a variant of Magic: The Gathering that used a poker deck. I can't say if any of my ideas were worth fleshing out.

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Thumbs up for Risk love. I'm nowhere near as good as my girlfriend and her stepdad, but damn if it isn't a fun game. Any of you guys ever try out Arkham Horror or Mansions of Madness? They're both Lovecraftian horror in the form of a board game, and super fun.

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I play a good bit of clue with my cousins. and I'm awesome at pictionary

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Chess. Also, Monopoly can be fun/a good way to waste 4+ hours with a few friends after a few drinks.

I'd love to be able to talk about the Warhammer tabletop games but I never learned how to play it. I used to just enjoy watching other people play it when I was a child and I thought it looked awesome, but never summoned the courage to ask them if they could teach me (this was in a time long before the internet).

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Yeah Warhammer always looked like a lot of fun, I used to read my friends rulebook (such a dark and cool world). The problem was I never had any money to buy the pieces.

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I scanned the first half of the manual, but overall tl;dr. I like the concept, tho. Have you played Settlers of Catan? That game has resources you use to settle areas on the board.

Anyway, it'd be nice to have a summary or abstract of what your game is, so one does not have to read the long manual without the benefit of looking at a board or other visual aids. Your game intrigues me, tho.

Monopoly produces some pretty wild and awesome games. Playing without house rules makes the game much more exciting and keeps most games from going beyond 2 hours. It's a bit sad how few people actually enjoy this game as it was intended. Free parking and other house rules make it harder for people to go bankrupt, extending the game. Also, people can't handle the harsh realities of the game, so they let their friend's off easy when they are no longer able to pay rent. I haven't played the game in awhile, tho. But I have probably played it a couple hundred times over the course of my life. :D

Risk is fun, too, but I never played that game all that much (I've only played it a handful of times) and I've never won.

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Hellbent said:

I scanned the first half of the manual, but overall tl;dr. I like the concept, tho. Have you played Settlers of Catan? That game has resources you use to settle areas on the board.

Anyway, it'd be nice to have a summary or abstract of what your game is, so one does not have to read the long manual without the benefit of looking at a board or other visual aids. Your game intrigues me, tho.


Settlers of Catan was the first game I played with gaming club, in fact. It introduced me to a lot of ideas that I'd before thought were limited to computer games. I didn't quite wholesale lift the concept and put it into space, but I did take a bit of inspiration from the game. I've had one friend describe it as "Risk of Catan. IN SPACE." As for the abstract, that is a really good idea, and I will probably put it in there at the very beginning.

"The game begins with a number of players, from 2 to 4, building empires out from their homeworlds. Players will colonize, develop, and defend their planets, and when every available planet is taken, any remaining players will try to take over the entire board from their opponents. A player wins when they are the only one left with a homeworld."

I don't think I want to minimize anything in the manual, since any ambiguity is really bad in this sort of game. The rules are only strict because the game is meticulously balanced and certain deviations can entirely break the game's balance and flow.

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Love Catan. I very rarely get to play board games because the only people I know who enjoy the kind of games I do live too far away. Generally speaking, if the game is all about luck (like Monopoly :P) it sucks, yet if it's - theoretically - solvable by a computer (like Chess...kinda), it's too boring. I like a certain level of uncertainty, since it keeps the game fresh, but once there's too much the game becomes a matter of pure luck.

Plus any game with free trading or anything similar player-to-player interaction gets bonus points. Technically, you can make a computer game out of Monopoly or Chess and it'll play exactly the same. But if you make a computer game out of Catan you'll butcher the whole trading mechanic.

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Monopoly and Risk both piss me off. You can usually see where the game is going long before it ends. Both those games are also so popular that almost every time you play with somebody else's set they have a different one with pieces that are somehow more annoying. For example, there was a millennium edition of monopoly that had shitty plastic money that was too hard to handle. Then there's the new one with a bank machine instead of cash. That one really makes the banker suffer.

Settlers of Catan is fun, but nobody over 30 knows it around here. Same goes for almost any game that isn't, Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Checkers or Chess.

Some people seem to like buying dozens of new games. It seems to me either they don't ever get around to opening half of them or we just spend our gaming sessions learning the rules.

I've converted some friends to playing Scrabble. The awesome part is we can do this on our phones while they're in other countries.

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Risk does become boring after a while which is why I created my own rules for it, had to add some strategy and remove some of the "god I hope I roll well this time!" aspect. Really though I like Risk because of player interaction, nothing like some timely betrayals and alliances to liven up a game!

Membrain, you may already be past the point of making tokens and the like but I'd like to show you this: nanDECK. It is the single greatest program for making tokens, cards, etc for any kind of board game. Give it a shot.

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I've played a lot of Stratego in my day. Board games are usually a common occurrence when my family gets together (usually all five of us are only present on Christmas), as it passes the time and keeps any actual arguments from blowing up.

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Settlers of Catan is a pretty good game. There's a something like 2 or 3 expansions for it. There's also Starfarers of Catan that's generally a Settlers played in space. It's been a few years since I've played that though. I generally go and play some game at least once a week.

Anyway, OT. I only glanced through the rules, but it looks like something I might enjoy playing. My biggest issue with it is the fact that it's straight elimination. When one player gets eliminated, he or she will just be sitting there waiting for someone else to become eliminated. It could be a good idea to have an alternate victory condition so that all players will be able to play until the end.

The rules seem solid, but without actually playing it, it's hard to say how well they work.

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@Chex Warrior: Ooh man. I just finished a few hours worth of cutting and such. Though, that was just a prototype and this will make things so much easier for the official tokens and cards. Thanks for the link!

@Seeker_of_Truth: I agree. I hate games that knock players out before the end of the game. However, I can't really think of any way a player might continue to play, seeing as it's a straight empire-building game. Perhaps they can keep a few tokens and act as a pirate/rebel factions to throw wrenches into the plans of the other players.

Also, another idea I was throwing around for the game was the idea of expansion packs. Not necessarily for "removed features to be put back in," but for advanced rules that would liven up the game for players who have gotten used to the normal rules. Things like tech trees, fleet sizes, board tiles that do various things to tokens on them, and special tokens/events.

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