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Frozen Peach posted:Depends on how you define "starting a new project." That makes sense, I definitely think that was more of a thing when I wasn't employed at a Publisher. Now, while we pitch ideas all the time, I'm often told like "Hey, we're greenlighting the Godzilla game. We got the license. Go!" So I have a very definitive start date in my head and on the calendar. I also have a looming ship date as well that can often be scary but that's a different thing. I think most game makers talents lend themselves to one side of the design/development spectrum than the other. In our office there are designers like myself who are very good at concepting and putting together the first half of a game design really well, and there are others who are really good at the development end of the spectrum. Sometimes games make a hand-off between us to help hit ship dates and such.
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May 11, 2020 20:21
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Sarx posted:That makes sense, I definitely think that was more of a thing when I wasn't employed at a Publisher. Now, while we pitch ideas all the time, I'm often told like "Hey, we're greenlighting the Godzilla game. We got the license. Go!" So I have a very definitive start date in my head and on the calendar. I also have a looming ship date as well that can often be scary but that's a different thing. I'm definitely of the latter type. Once I have a project I have a much easier time shaping it and whittling it down, but I have a hard time getting the rules fleshed out in the first place. I usually start off with a concept I think is strong and worth pursuing, but I often struggle with getting it to the point of being a full-on game rather than just one or two interesting mechanics / themes with some rules slapped on to make it technically a game. Actually, if anyone has some advice on how to better do that, I'd love to hear it haha.
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May 11, 2020 22:56
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CodfishCartographer posted:I'm definitely of the latter type. Once I have a project I have a much easier time shaping it and whittling it down, but I have a hard time getting the rules fleshed out in the first place. I usually start off with a concept I think is strong and worth pursuing, but I often struggle with getting it to the point of being a full-on game rather than just one or two interesting mechanics / themes with some rules slapped on to make it technically a game. Force yourself to come up with like a two paragraph game idea every day for a set period. If constraints help, come up with some, like going to a random wikipedia article and having to use it as your theme or something.
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May 11, 2020 23:04
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Edit: still open for more testers! Hey folks, I'm seeking blind playtesters for Miami Nights, a board game I'm developing! It's a property management and backstabbing/trick-taking game for up to four players, set on the art deco neon shorefront of South Beach!  Light up your hotel, get guests to check in, and play as one of seven different characters with their own unique abilities and victory conditions! Just watch out - you might have a tourist that's actually a Cuban spy in disguise, or a member of the Mafia might end up checking in...  Tabletop Simulator is required. I'm trying to see what feedback arises when I'm not around to answer questions and help run the game. Cards, hotel game boards, and art assets are all subject to change, so I'm looking to focus on the rules, the gameplay, any weird interactions, imbalance, etc.  Don't have a group of TTS gamers? No problem! I'll try to get some matchmaking done if we get enough interest.  If you're interested, please fill out the form here and I'll be in touch! Feel free to share with other possible interested playtesters! See you in Miami! MJP fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jun 3, 2020 |
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May 16, 2020 20:59
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MJP posted:Hey folks, I'm seeking blind playtesters for Miami Nights, a board game I'm developing! It's a property management and backstabbing/trick-taking game for up to four players, set on the art deco neon shorefront of South Beach! Not sure I'd be up for playing - but I'd give feedback on rules if you post them.
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May 16, 2020 22:38
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Is tabletop simulator a pretty good way to prototype games (especially card games) I'm working on something. Also wanted to offer up makeplayingcards.com as a resource, you can print very high-quality cards with custom backs and fronts very cheap, I use it to print proxies to play with for Magic the gathering, and it comes out to like .25 a card.
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May 17, 2020 18:01
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MJP posted:you might have a tourist in disguise as a Cuban spy
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May 17, 2020 18:02
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Splicer posted:Is this a typo? Tell me it's not a typo. Goes over pretty well with the ladies
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May 17, 2020 19:47
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Splicer posted:Is this a typo? Tell me it's not a typo. Unfortunately it's a typo but I won't rule out a reverse version of this card to go into the game...  pseudanonymous posted:Is tabletop simulator a pretty good way to prototype games (especially card games) I'm working on something. It's awesome to prototype games. You can make images and just add 'em in. PDFs, or especially decks of cards so long as you read up real quick on how TTS imports decks. You can also use Component Studio - it's been a gigantically useful tool for developing this game. You can import a CSV with your cards' data, then use a variable on the design to just populate the deck of cards. When you like the design, it's two clicks to export it in a TTS-ready format. Import it to TTS and you're go. I'm not compensated for it, it's so freaking great. Three day trial, $9.99/mo, cloud-based. https://component.studio
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May 18, 2020 15:12
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love the card design
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May 18, 2020 15:44
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Check out Nandeck, http://www.nand.it/nandeck/, as well. It does everything Component.Studio does, but for free.
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May 18, 2020 20:15
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I filled out the form but said I don't currently have TTS, just posting to say that I'm cool with getting it at some point. but only if you let me flip the table 
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May 19, 2020 00:25
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MJP posted:Hey folks, I'm seeking blind playtesters for Miami Nights, a board game I'm developing! It's a property management and backstabbing/trick-taking game for up to four players, set on the art deco neon shorefront of South Beach! I signed up! I actually live on South Beach so really interested in this!
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May 19, 2020 01:15
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If anyone wants a PNP of my game, Walking Doggos, it's now on my website (https://walkingdoggos.com), itch (https://afrozenpeach.itch.io/walking-doggos), and BGG (https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/201788/print-and-play-files) I've been meaning to finally just release a PNP copy for a while now, and COVID is a convenient excuse to get off my rear end and actually do it.
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May 19, 2020 05:15
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swickles posted:I actually live on South Beach Feel like being our location scout and maybe doing a Tom Green style promo commercial? HiroProtagonist posted:I filled out the form but said I don't currently have TTS, just posting to say that I'm cool with getting it at some point. If you're OK with a winner-gets-to-flip rule I have no qualms, as long as TTS gets cheap again.
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May 19, 2020 19:45
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MJP posted:Feel like being our location scout and maybe doing a Tom Green style promo commercial? Yeah, I wasn't sure how familiar you guys are with the area, but can give feedback and even take photos on the geography and architecture. I might even be able to give some cultural context and ideas for things that "fit" in here.
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May 19, 2020 19:58
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Miami Nights looks amazing. I love the art! Really makes me wish I could stand playing on TTS more than I do. I broke down and finally rewrote the rules for White Hat from scratch. So, uh, if anyone wants to read them, or even blind play test on TTS, and provide feedback that'd be pretty sweet. https://whitehat.games/downloads/WhiteHatCTF.pdf I think they turned out really good. I tried to make them as "official rulebooky" as possible, rather than just a bullet pointed list of things that happen. This is the first time I've tried to do rules properly too, so it was kind of a fun adventure. I also got an email back from the publisher I've been talking to since last fall, and was introduced to another publisher that might be interested. Progress! Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 22, 2020 |
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May 22, 2020 04:50
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I broke down and finally reupped my subscription to Creative Suite. Inkscape and Gimp just don't do it for me, unfortunately. With my newfound power of graphic designing capabilities I made a thing: 
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May 24, 2020 10:24
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Frozen Peach posted:publisher I'm super curious about the Publisher Experience. I wouldn't be opposed to trying to sell my game to a publisher, but I don't have the foggiest where to start. Is there some kind of guide to doing so that you followed and/or found helpful?
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May 24, 2020 14:22
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MJP posted:I'm super curious about the Publisher Experience. I wouldn't be opposed to trying to sell my game to a publisher, but I don't have the foggiest where to start. Is there some kind of guide to doing so that you followed and/or found helpful? I might not be the best person to talk on the Publisher Experience as I'm not published and barely know what I'm doing, but from my limited experience pitching to publishers is hard. Real hard. Every publisher is different, so you really have to do research into a publisher to find out how they like to do things. Usually it's one of the following though: 1) Email 2) Form linked on their website These just mean going to each publisher you think is a fit for your game and browsing their website until you find something about submissions or pitching. 3) Find them in person at a convention This means going to GenCon, BGGCon, Geekway DiceTower, PAX Unplugged, or Origins. Each con is different, and provides different experiences. GenCon is busy as hell. Most pitches are setup weeks/months in advance, but it's a good way to meet people and get started. BGGCon/Geekway/DiceTower/PAX are more "playing" conventions. They have vendor halls, but pitching isn't a huge thing there, but It can get you started. Origins are like THE place to pitch at. 4) Get introduced to them through someone else Hope you're already in the industry or know people who are! I'm kinda lucky in this regard because I got on the Geekway board and they've helped me by introducing me to some people. 5) Publisher Speed Dating Some conventions have a speed dating event. You submit your game, and if chosen you set it up and have 5 minute pitch sessions with various publishers that also show up. 6) Protospeils/Unpubs Conventions specifically for playing unpublished games. Show up, get playtesters, play other people's games, and sometimes you'll get noticed by an actual publisher. 7) Contests There are lots of prototype contests out there. The Game Crafter hosts them sometimes, sometimes publiishers themselves host them. I tend to find these by them being posted on various subreddits or Facebook groups. 8) Indie Game Alliance (https://indiegamealliance.com/) This is a group that tries to connect indie publishers and indie designers. Some features are free, but others you have to get a subscription for. 9) Sheer luck of posting your work somewhere and it getting found Regardless of how you find a publisher to pitch to, and how you pitch to them, you'll need at least one or two of the following things: 1) Sell sheet - a quick one page handout that tells a publisher everything you need to know about a game 2) Pitch video - A < 5 minute the shorter the better pitch where you talk about the game and show off components and mechanics really quickly. 3) How to play/Demonstration video - If they like your quick pitch video, they might watch a full how to play 4) The rules - Good enough rules that someone can play blindly from them 5) In today's COVID climate: A Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia demo The more you can provide a publisher about your game the better, but you want it to be setup so they can take baby steps into it. Once you've gotten their attention, they'll respond setting up a pitch meeting. I've been pitching to publishers for about three years now, on my two projects. I've had 3 official pitch meetings. Two of them with the same company and involved getting on Skype with my web cam and showing them the game. The other I was able to schedule a meeting at PixelPop Festival where they actually played the whole game through with me. If you do well enough in the pitch meeting, they'll ask for a playable prototype. It doesn't have to be fancy. My first prototype for White Hat that a publisher currently has is blank cards from The Game Crafter that I drew on with Sharpies. In my case, a publisher liked the prototype, but had a few issues with the version of the game as it was. They offered some feedback and asked if I could improve the mechanics for a few parts of the game. This is a HUGE win for me. I spent the next month or so refactoring the game and adding/removing mechanics to fit their feedback. In this stage you want to be flexible because you're starting to tailor your game for a publisher. Be prepared to "undo" the changes they ask for and "redo" them for a different publisher's taste later on. That's where I am at right now with one publisher. We've been emailing back and forth about progress on the prototype since last Fall, and I'm just waiting for all the insanity to be over so they can playtest it again with the new mechanics. Eventually I'll get a firm yes or no. If it's a no, I have to figure out what aspects of the game were tailor made for that publisher, and which aspects I can salvage or redo for another publisher. If it's a yes, you move onto negotiations. I've never gotten a yes yet.  The publisher I'm further along with I cold emailed their submissions email address shortly before GenCon. I got a response back a month or so later, and setup a pitch meeting at PixelPop, another convention I was attending that year. The other publisher I'm talking to was introduced to me by a friend in the industry. The other publisher I'm talking to was introduced to me through the Indie Game Alliance. I worked for IGA at GenCon last year, running their booth for them. They invited me to pitch at a publisher's speed dating event. While the speed dating event didn't get me anywhere, the owner of IGA loved my idea and has been periodically introducing me to publishers that might be interested in it. So that's where I'm at right now. Hopefully it helps.
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May 24, 2020 15:58
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Frozen Peach posted:So that's where I'm at right now. Hopefully it helps. All of that is legit good advice, but if I can throw an additional option up there: BGG frequently has annual creation contests (solo games, microcard games, etc), and a disproportionately large number of winners and runner-ups have gone on to be published, either independently via Kickstarter or by a helping hand from a publisher. The braindrain is real on making X new games every year if you permanently committed to the process, but winners do come out of that venue as well.
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May 24, 2020 17:58
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All good poo poo, with just one add on:Frozen Peach posted:GenCon is busy as hell. Most pitches are setup weeks/months in advance, but it's a good way to meet people and get started. This is absolutely true for the big conventions, the formal slots will be booked months in advance. But there's always cancellations. Get on your walking feet, go to booths, and ask if the person who's responsible for new game acquisitions is around. If they aren't, ask if they've got a business card handy for acquisitions. Leave a card and/or sellsheet if you've got it. Take a moment to shoot an email at the address on the card. Hit every booth that you think would be even remotely interested. I walked into GenCon 2017 with four publisher meetings scheduled. I had done ~15 by convention's end. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 04:12 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 04:07
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Gutter Owl posted:I walked into GenCon 2017 with four publisher meetings scheduled. I had done ~15 by convention's end. That's amazing :o I didn't have near that luck last year. I did another pass on board design, this time also adding the application offer. It's looking pretty good, but I'm not sure how I feel about the font or the empty space between draw/discard piles. 
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May 25, 2020 23:34
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The gray-on-gray is pretty hard to read at a glance, imo
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May 26, 2020 19:23
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Apologies if this is the wrong thread to ask, seemed like the closest topic - does SA have a Tabletop Sim thread? Since the pandemic I kinda miss playing games, and my boardgame friends aren't big on playing on PC
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May 26, 2020 19:39
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There's a mechanic that I recently ended up developing by accident that I haven't seen anywhere else and I'd like to share. Background: I was playtesting a set of rules for a wargame with some friends and I wanted to make sure that the mechanics I'd set up properly led to units working in a paper, scissors, stone pattern: skirmishers should beat archers, who beat pikemen, who beat great weapons, who beat sword-and-shield, who beat skirmishers. It struck me that for the playtest, it'd be better to make the game more deterministic, so a string of bad rolls didn't make it look like a unit was worse than it actually was. So instead of using a d6 for each roll, each player had a hand of four cards numbered 1-4. When a player would have rolled, they and their opponent both selected a card from their hand and revealed it; the total value was their card minus their opponent's plus 3. Then both players discarded the card they'd played; when a player had completely discarded their hand, they picked their discard pile back up. The rest of the game mechanics were pretty unremarkable but the system of using hands of cards rather than an RNG worked really well: it meant that players could plan their successes and failures ahead of time, they couldn't be screwed over by a string of bad rolls, and added a whole new dimension of bluffing and double-bluffing your opponent. I refuse to believe I'm the first person to think of this as a way of making wargames less reliant on luck. Are there other games which have used a similar mechanic, or have I come up with something new?
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May 28, 2020 10:22
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Whybird posted:There's a mechanic that I recently ended up developing by accident that I haven't seen anywhere else and I'd like to share. Is this not how Land Air and Sea works to a large degree?
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May 28, 2020 10:30
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1977 WarpWar had both players write their combat orders on paper in secret, allocating power to shields, weapons and other things. They had to pick a tactic and engine power which was them compared to enemy tactic and engine power, and a table decided whether it was a hit or a miss. http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/gc00/reviews/warpwar.html You can even order your slow ship to fire beams and fire fast missiles to that one or the other catches the enemy in the hit range. Oh, and all ships were custom-built out of parts.
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May 28, 2020 11:11
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Aramoro posted:Is this not how Land Air and Sea works to a large degree? I've not played that one - but from a brief glance at the rules it does look pretty similar, yeah.
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May 28, 2020 11:21
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Aramoro posted:Is this not how Land Air and Sea works to a large degree? A bit, but you get a random hand of cards, you can only play those cards in certain areas, and cards have special abilities that modify other cards. You can absolutely be dealt a poo poo hand from the get go, so the game has a forfeit mechanism built in where an early withdrawal gives fewer points to the opponent, and the game is played over several hands.
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May 28, 2020 13:41
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Whybird posted:There's a mechanic that I recently ended up developing by accident that I haven't seen anywhere else and I'd like to share. The game of thrones game did something similar
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May 28, 2020 13:50
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The choosing a value from a fixed hand is a pretty weel established mechanic, see things like Libertalia where everyone has the same cards and you all pick on round on round. Air Land and Sea you're picking from a fixed deck I think but peoples hands are different turn to turn. Thinking about it it is how combat is resolved in Kemet. You have a hand of cards which are more complex than a single number but still the concept is the same.
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May 28, 2020 13:52
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Pseudoscorpion posted:The gray-on-gray is pretty hard to read at a glance, imo I think it's more the lowercase letters than the gray-on-gray but I could be wrong.  Here's a slightly improved version. I still want to change the font completely but I haven't found one I like yet. Whybird posted:It struck me that for the playtest, it'd be better to make the game more deterministic, so a string of bad rolls didn't make it look like a unit was worse than it actually was. So instead of using a d6 for each roll, each player had a hand of four cards numbered 1-4. When a player would have rolled, they and their opponent both selected a card from their hand and revealed it; the total value was their card minus their opponent's plus 3. Then both players discarded the card they'd played; when a player had completely discarded their hand, they picked their discard pile back up. Maybe I'm missing something, and math certainly isn't my strong suit, but what's the point in adding 3 to each player's card?
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May 28, 2020 14:49
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Frozen Peach posted:Maybe I'm missing something, and math certainly isn't my strong suit, but what's the point in adding 3 to each player's card? Just to avoid negative numbers and get close to a 1d6 distribution, I would guess. This way the lowest result is 0 (highest is 6).
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May 28, 2020 14:55
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Sanglorian posted:Just to avoid negative numbers and get close to a 1d6 distribution, I would guess. This way the lowest result is 0 (highest is 6). That makes enough sense for me. Thanks!
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May 28, 2020 14:59
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Sanglorian posted:Just to avoid negative numbers and get close to a 1d6 distribution, I would guess. This way the lowest result is 0 (highest is 6). Yup, that's the one! Though I didn't realise until now that gave an 0-6 distribution. Whoops.
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May 31, 2020 08:34
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Does anyone here have any tips or recomendations on tutorials for how to make a deckbuilder in Tabletop Simulator? I get that I'm going to need to make a bunch of different decks to import but its the making the cards so they can be added to decks at will while playing that is confusing me.
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Jun 18, 2020 22:23
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All cards can go in all decks in tabletop simulator. A deck in TTS is just a stack of cards, regardless of how those cards got made or what deck they started in. So if you're making a dominion-like deck builder, you'd have a grid of X by Y cards on an image, and import that as a custom deck in TTS. Then do that for each unique card, and for each starting deck.
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Jun 18, 2020 23:51
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Trying to gather data and feelings about a chess puzzle microgame I've been working on. It's an 18-card micro, and the game ends in a victory for Black if the last card is played without a winner. I'm worried that too many games might go to this sudden death condition, and I'm worries it gives black too much of an advantage. Would anyone be willing to take a couple cracks at it and offer thoughts? I'll PM links to the online prototype to anyone curious. (The digital proto uses https://screentop.gg, which is kind of a free browser-based 2D tabletop sim. No download needed. I'd just put the link here, but I don't wanna risk pissing off any publisher's "no prior web publishing" clause.) Also, a followup question: Is chess as a game theme/reference point a complete turnoff to you in hobby games? I'm worried I might be chasing a dead end here, because I'm afraid a hobbyist market will look at something with pawns on it and think, "Chess? I hate chess," or discount it as Wal*Mart discount bin fodder.
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