I remember I was running a game of RISK (because a bunch didn't know how to play) and someone suggested that instead of defending, you could retreat to an adjacent country they owned so as not to lose armies. That was all well and good, but I let people take cards for conquering territories that way. So two players who were about to lose, teamed up and started attacking and retreating armies back and forth, farming cards until they got a set. On that day I learned an important lesson about adding homebrew rules to games.
+TheThunderbirdRising adding homemade rules is a brilliant way to design mechanics without having to create an outlining set of mechanics. whether you add retreating, do additional trading in monopoly or, my personal favorite, editing the rules of chess it is a lot easier for casual design than designing a full blown game.
another thing about board games is that you can fine tune the experience to be yours. like you can make "house rules" to have rules that only you and your group follow, but makes Your particular experience more fun. So you can add/ tweak rules, so that the experience is more fun to you/your groups specific playstyle. While in video games you are limited to the experience that the devolper made for you
In a few of my grade 12 classes in high school, I had the option for some projects turning them into a board game, well for one in Global Politics we had to write an essay or make a board game explaining how economic systems work. Well I made a board game, it was a very EVE Online like game, with the players gathering resources and selling them to each other with the ultimate goal of getting 1 million currency and building a Titan, it took me only about three days to have most of it done, and test it myself, I also had help from a few of my friends in EVE with testing it. I then after tweaking a few rules to make it not take forever (games were lasting around 3-4 hours), and how turns would work (turn based just was not the way to go), I decided to make it so everyone rolled one die and they all move at once and made their decisions at once depending on their dice roll, and after all of that I handed it in, my teacher in the next few days went about setting the board games out for the students to play, mine was the most complex, but also the most fun, having ways built into the game to screw the other players over. My teacher asked me after the third play session why I was telling people that if they had a question I was not going to answer it, and I told my teacher that it would ruin the experience if I held their hands the whole time, I game then a small book telling them the most basic way to play, and they need to use their own minds to figure the rest out. Like find the purposeful holes in the rules that let you do really what ever you want. (even destroy the other players ships) And that running out of currency wasn't really the end for a player depending on what they had for ships.(Like use your industrial ship to move ore for someone else so that can sell it a a higher price and charge them for it or use a combat ship to protect another player while they gather resources only in this case if they don't pay you can just destroy their ship and take their freshly harvested resources) After the games had been tested by the class the teacher took then home and tested them, mine was the only to receive a perfect mark, and the teacher asked if they could keep it in the class to use as an example of what they wanted and so on days their was not much work to do the class could play. I said yes because that told me I made something good and I have been ever sense working on ways to improve it, its box currently has "Version 3.2" on it as I have updated the game that much sense. I have had the request to go in on multiple occasions to hear how the students are reacting to the game. Kinda makes me want to make a version to get released, and just change ship names to my own creations rather than just using EVE ships,
hmm... I doing a few programing classes right now, I may be able to make a digital copy some time soon, just need to learn what I'm doing first. If I do start working on it I will be sure to reply here and say.
Shadowofthenight If you ever plan to make money off of your idea, be sure that you legally own the IP rights to your game. Some schools have agreements where they own the copyright to their students' work.
Kickstarter has a bunch of projects like this running all the time; I have funded two of them myself. Crowdfunding could be a solution for you if you are willing to put in the work to give the game that layer of polish worthy of grabbing everyone's attention and incentivizing the donation process properly
Wow. I remember watching this episode when it first came out and at the time not having a care in the world for board games. i thought games like risk or monopoly represented the majority of what board games were like and wanted none of it. But on a whim i took you guys advice and watched a couple episodes of Shut Up and Sit Down. Then a couple of more. Then their entire video line up. And i discovered there was an entire world of game play i had no idea existed. So many themes and mechanics other than role and move. And I finally discovered a form of multiplayer gaming that i actually enjoy. Just under two years later and i now have a board game collection of about 50 games and counting. I don't know if you guys still look at these old comments but i just wanted to say thanks to cluing me in on Board Games. And of course big fan of the rest of your work too.
i go to school for game development and design and our final was to work on a team and make a board game, it was a great experience and we all learned a lot and when we got to play each others game it was so much fun.
Totally agree with you, Garth Palmer! Board games are the best! ...however, we had to ban Settlers of Catan from our household in order to preserve friendships. Haha.
One of the problems is finding people to play with. Growing up I was interested in lot of games, including board games. I got Hero Quest yet only manage to play it like 3 times. Star Fleet Battles I only managed to get 2 games in and after I read the entire manual :(. There were several other games I got as gifts and yet barely was able to play. None of my friends and siblings were interested in Board games because they thought they were "Boring". Instead they wanted to play console games, like street fighter, or do sports, like street hockey or soccer. The other problem then is making changes to the rules and testing those out. If you can't get them to play the base game trying to get them to play modified rules could be even more of a challenge since you could make it less fun. Sure it's great for learning exercises but you need to find other inspiring designers to test it out with. In College the only "Board" Games I found people playing was Table Top RPGs like D&D which I don't think are technically "Board" games. And they were open to so many house rules you couldn't really rely on a tight rule set baseline. But yea I do see a lot of the "Why study Board game" mindset. I'd love to get into game design but I think I've gotten too old and didn't get much time in on experimenting with design when younger. Now it seems like all these young kids with start up Indie studios are making games with the Ideas that I'd pitch to friends all time. Got no Capital and no Contacts in the industry. Only people I hang with are fellow software engineers working on corporate applications that are married with kids. :P Ah well Life is what happens while making other plans.
Yeah, I use to love board games, frome Manopoly, to Jenga, to Yugioh, to pokimon life (I can just keep going) But when we all started to grow up and get computors no one ever wants to play them anymore -_- (I use to love Munchkins it was the best)
I went into a videogame design course thinking I wanted to build videogames. After the first assignment, which involved adapting Sim City into a card game, I realised that I actually really wanted to design boardgames. In this year's Global Game Jam, me and a group of friends are going to try to make a boardgame instead of a videogame. Wish us luck!
+Mae Funnell You know what I haven't seen is someone translate a board game onto a tablet, or at least not well. I'm a huge fan of Risk and sometimes I don't want to drag the board with me and it's difficult teaching board game novices some of the more extraneous rules from special version of the game. A lot of those kind of game rules would be easier if handled by a computer and streamlined for the player. The problem is I can't find a version of said board games that are that good. The best Risk on a phone, or tablet I could find only used the bare bones rules and streamlined the game too much. I'd like to play Risk Star Wars on a tablet with all it's extra rules. They could add all sorts of sound effects and animation to liven it up as well.
I used to make a ton of board games and TCGs when I was young, they were unbalanced, certain things basically said "you lose the game"and all of it was made out of cardboard paper...it was amazing! no one really played them, but...it definetly helped me be a better game developer!
I'm really glad you included this. I have some friends who are board game creators, and while I'm more interested in video game design, I've always admired board games and have tried to utilize some of the techniques used in board games while making games. I'm still not really where I want to be with that, but I feel like this video has helped me along that path.
Once, I was playing War (boar game about taking countries and cards, basically) with some friends. It was already our third match, and we wanted to speed up a little bit. One thing that always got us bored was that, since the game didn't had a maximun amount of moves or attacks, sometimes one player would take an enormous amount of time doing their play, while the others would just wait. So, to avoid that, and (as we tought) to make the game end faster, we set a few extra rules: each player would have only 3 attacks and 2 moves per "round". In the early game, everything got way funnier, we had to strategyze more, make better use of our resources, etc. Also, as players couldn't do much, the game was sped-up, making us play way more times than before. The problems started in the late game: since we couldn't attack multiple times, the game progress itself was slowed, our board was fulled, and it reached a point where there were so many pieces in the board that became impossible to get to the objectives. Basically, they game stacked too much, and, since we could only attack 3 times, there was no way to remove those pieces. It was fun to see how a small rule can completely change the game, and oh, our games usually last one to two hours, that one ended up in about four hours, and because no one wanted to play anymore.
I've learned so much from my years of running D&D games: analyzing and predicting player behavior, level design, even how to write a well crafted world. There's so much that actually carries over between mediums.
Look into the card game "Race for the Galaxy". It is by far the hardest game I had to learn, but once you learn, it is a masterpiece of design. It is one of my favorite games of all time.
I teach game design / level development and I couldn't agree more. one of my mantras is "prove it on paper" make the game playable, start to finish, with basic rudimentary pawns and "logic algorithms" (dice, cards, spinner...) to help understand player vs player, player vs environment and player vs game rule sets. +1
I've been making my own board game lately and I was thinking about how fun board games are that have good mechanics. This video really helped solidify my thoughts. Well explained!
Ever since I started watching this series, I was amazed at how much I agreed with EVERYTHING the authors say in these videos. It is as if they read my mind. Now, this. I've been saying that boardgames are to videogames what cinematography or even photography are for cinema for ages. Thank you VERY much for this!
I'm a video game design major and all of what your saying makes sense. In fact, The first major-related course I took focused on board games and how they work. Things like power creep and especially concepts like the "Three Wizard Rule" are as prevalent in board games as they are in Video games. Which makes them such an excellent start for game designers. In fact, in a program at my college a group of us sat down with a game designer in the field and made a board game. It was awesome.
First of all, great episode, as always. But I feel you guys missed a little bit on this one. There are a number of board games that, in my opinion at least, touch on historical reality far better then any computer game I ever played, and somehow I think this deserves mention (especially connected to your ongoing discussion about the educational value of games) - off the top of my head Britannia and Axis and Allies (especially the collector's edition). It is actually remarkable how those game, via almost abstract mechanics, manage to recreate historical events with fairly high fidelity. Either way, keep up the good work, love Extra Credits! PS: wish you would have included Battlestar Galactica in the social games bit of the episode, it's an amazing game! :)
Designing board games, and especially designing abstract board games, has been a huge help to me in understanding the relationships between mechanics and player dynamics. I would even recommend designing an abstract board game as its own exercise: what can you do when rules are the *only* material you have?
Top notch epidsode and right on point. I am an avid gamer and that includes card games, board games and computer games. My favorite games include games from each. Designers would do well to complete the task mentioned in the video. I would also say watch at a group of people play a game of settlers or monopoly and watch what rules they all agree to break or change (such as free parking money).
This. Love this video so much. All games are games, electronic or not. A good designer should recognize this. It's also worthy of note that board games are a good way of rapidly prototyping rulesets for video games, especially combat scenarios. This lets you do a lot of your work without the need to program and compile every single time you need to change something.
Great video! As a kid I used to love making board games. I made one for a school project in elementary school involving marbles going through paper mache volcanoes. Can't recommend this kind of thing enough!
In an effort to pull together a panel for local Conventions about ''Gamifying Education'', this is where I want to start with my points about how effective teaching through game play can be. This is right up my ally and I feel you've been saying in short what I could go on and on about from a teacher's perspective about board game play!
Couldn't agree more. "Three Moves Ahead" had a great podcast where they had Jake Solomon on and how he talked about working on the rules of the game and running into issues. He then talked to Sid Meier and the two of the hashed out a board game version that roughly translated into the actual game. A great video game should be translatable in spirit to a board game.
As an aspiring game designer (and currently working on a soon-to-release game) i agree with playing board games to learn more, and learned a couple of useful interesting things in this video. good content
it's a convention on forms of gaming. It stands for Penny Arcade Expo (the guys who own or shown Extra Credits). PAX prime is the big one, going on right now in Seattle (whoo! where I live). However, there is also PAX East and other ones located around. However, they also set
this is why I'm subscribed to geek and sundry, because of the different tabletop series they've got either showing off different tabletop games or following a specific long term type game, I'd say my collection is larger and better because of them x3 I just wish I had people to play the more interesting ones with
A lot of board games designed for co-op play can be played just fine with one person (or have explicit rules for a one player mode). Examples include Castle Panic, Space Alert, and Pandemic, and there are a bunch of others.
I grew up playing board games and card games, and while I now quite enjoy video games as well, board games will always hold the primary spot in my heart.
I remember making a board game in 5th grade as a project. I thought I would make it similar to Mario Party but as I got further along, I deviated pretty far from MP as I realized that some things could not translate to the physical world without being overly complex or having a long list of if-that-than-this. It was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.
In elementary, me and my friends would always make up board and card games. It was from that love of game making that I eventually sought to learn video game development. :3
I want to mention a REALLY good board game that is a lot of fun. It's called 7 Wonders, and I have never really liked a board game like this before. You build a city, and compete against neighboring cities in many different ways to gain points, which are counted and ranked at the end. It seems complicated at first, but after a game or two, you fee like a genius, and don't want to stop playing! I love the amount of options, and the fact that you are still rewarded even if you loose.
Im currently am working on a board game and I think its a decent idea as part of the kind of werewolf card games but with different mechanics. This video helped me lay out clearer rules, thank you.
A wise gamedesigner said to me the same thing about larp. Seeing that games like wow have to use a spreadsheet to show a shop, while in a larp you can barter with the owner who has kids to raise so will not go to low on his price unless you can do a little something something for him. Larp can be an excellent way to test interaction and other gameplay mechanics like with board games. Great vid. And some Warhammer shown, Yeah!
I was lucky enough to have all my possessions robbed of me while in South America. Left with only some emergency cash, a game design book, deck of cards, two dice and a wife who was as equally bored, I set out to create an original D'n'D (deck and dice :P) game. It was the best I could make of the situation and it opened me right up to the key points in this video.
Honestly I was expecting this video to not detail the design benefits of Board Games but rather the unwarranted social stigma that surrounds them in the modern era. Most people see Board Games and think, "This is too simple. I need something with more complexity than something as basic as Scrabble or Candyland can provide," which is horribly flawed thinking brought about as a result of the board games we consider "Mainstream." The fact of the matter is, there is a whole world of board games that the toy aisles in Wal-Mart never even scratch, and these are oftentimes the boardgames most deserving of play and analysis. In reality, the world of board games is similar to the world of mobile games, except with less accessibility. The Angry Birds and Candy Crush games are often the only ones people find, while more complex gems of the App Stores are buried beneath a sea of more "casual" titles. For anyone interested in investigating boardgames, there's plenty to be found below the surface. Try looking up games like Twilight Imperium, Fluxx, Race for the Galaxy, anything made by Fantasy Flight, etc, or just simply going down to Geek and Sundry to watch Wil Weaton's Tabletop series. You'll find that board games are a lot more interesting a medium than you had at first thought. Kudos to you guys for putting this subject into the spotlight, even if it wasn't in quite the way I had hoped. +)
Great video and me makes me recall how this past weekend my friends showed & then we played yet another new board game "Galaxy Trucker". Fun simple and veteran players can take penalties to give new players a advantage. And it is true i have had a lot more/maybe the same social interaction via boardgames vs the MMO's. Hell i know in my city there is a pub in the downtown core that has board game SUNDAY its a blast to be at.
i had an idea to reinvent chess in a video game. it will use the steam workshop and will be highly customizeible. changing the board, creating new pieces with new movement patterns, new looks, and you can be able to change the rules of the entire game. it is called ultimate chess.
RobotSnake Seems like a good idea. It's important to find balance in there. May I ask what kind of abilities were there? By the way, If you don't mind I could think of some ideas and post them here for this kind of special abilities.
sebool112 Each player had 2 hitpoints The Archer's ability was shooting an arrow in 1 non-diagonal direction that would travel 2 blocks, the Mage could summon a familiar that would be controlled along with the player(The zombie would have to be placed adjacent to the Mage, and could only move 2 spaces per turn), the Healer could cast an orb that would heal a point of damage, but not be able to move for 2 turns, and the Warrior's ability was a Berserk state that would let him move 6 spaces instead of 4, at the cost of losing the next turn.
If anyone's in the greater Seattle area *coughliketheECteamcough* there's a handful of board game Meetup groups, sometimes with people play-testing games they've made. (I'm a fan of the meetup at Zulu's in Bothell. Board games & drinks until midnight!)
On a similar note, try writing a mission (or even GM'ing) for a table top RPG. You can see what kind of crazy ways people come up with solving a problem or what kind of blatantly obvious clues get missed.
It's funny that a couple of the graphics they included had an AD&D book in it. There's an interesting rules notation in later versions of Tomb Of Horrors. There are is a Sceptre and Crown of Disintegration that can be found. Originally there were rules about how they worked (place the crown on your head, touch the sceptre to it, you disintegrate yourself), but that was it. Later versions had an extensive list of rules explaining how the two items could never leave the room. They went to extreme lengths to make sure the rules covered every eventuality. As it went, an artist on an earlier version of ToH was invited to play through the module. The game was DM'd by none other than Gary Gygax himself (rest his soul). The artist picked up the items and took them with him. When he found the skull of Acererak he put the crown on the skull and touched the rod to it. Gary was stunned by this outcome and while it wasn't the intended solution, he ruled that it happened and created a non-conventional win for the artist.
Right. I usually tend to start writing down an idea immediately as it comes to mind (most of the time... >.>), and start piecing things together gradually as more ideas come to light.
Construction of the prototype can be pretty easy too. After all, the point of a prototype is to test the idea. Also, I follow an Agile approach whereby I design a single feature of a project at a time, so documentation/schematics are usually easy, actually, unless my idea is too far out there. Of course, this isn't bad; it forces me to excersize creative restraint, which helps.
The good thing about experimenting with a board game is that is easy, fast to build and relies only on balance and the clarity of your rules...so you can test it right away....in videogame dev, there are a lot of extra complications that deviate you from the balance and rules topic....
Agree 100% with this video. I've been playing video games all my life, I only just recently REALLY got into table top board gaming. The way they borrow from each other kinda surprised me. Arkham Horror and Eldrich Horror are basically Roguelike board games. Shadows of Brimstone is a Diablo style dungeon crawling loot/level grinder. Rum & Bones plays like League of Legends on a board game. I doubt I even need to mention how influential Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer were to video games.
I once created a card game called cats vs elephants with a friend of mine, and it helped me see many balencing issues and power creep in the cards. Testing it and creating it was a learning experiance.
Kind of funny that making a board game is the prototype for a project I'm hoping to start with tomorrow. I will be gamedesign and artwork, my friend is programing, and then we might ask some more friends for music and extra art. Thank you for helping me in the design help. :)
fascinating, i love both types of games, but i often say to people (like my granddad) who says i waste my time playing games that it is just the same as him playing board games, it's a fun way to pass time with friends or alone (he loves solitaire).
I like board games, but my favorite games are often more action-oriented. I'd love to see more of that being made in real life. Sports like football and skiing already exist and is pretty much perfected already, but things like Laser Tag and Beyblade are on the decline, and I've yet to see someone build a Super Mario-like obstacle course for rent, or a hedge maze with rule-regulated pretend-fencing. It'd be expensive, sure, but AAA games today have budgets over a hundred million dollars. We have go-carts, now make Mario Kart.
You guys are amazing! I always wanted to make a board game and now I can shove this in their faces when they call it useless! This is why I'm subscribed to you, you guys are awesome!
I highly recommend getting together a Dungeons and Dragons group if you're intending to start game design. It gives you a great understanding of the core information that needs to be stored in a video game for even the background characters. Start off with a Game Master who knows the game and try to learn how to do what he/she does. Becoming a game master is an invaluable learning tool for level design, combat balancing, ramping difficulty and player interaction.
I am a huge fan of BoardGames, mostly strategy ones, and table-top RPGs. First, I play them with friends and second, they allow for different experiences. Hell, after watching this week’s show, if some people still have doubts about their importance, play Twilight Imperium and then have a look at Civ. Firaxis took a lot from there. As for RPGs, games like D&D, Shadowrun and Descent teach you about which variables go where or how to build a proper character or to implement a skill tree...
For those of you that have never played a proper board game, go buy a respectable entry level board game and invite your friends over. You'll most likely enjoy the experience more than video games and make it a regular thing. To start with I'd recommend looking into Smallworld, King of Tokyo and 7 Wonders.
+Jamie Cutts Small World is one of my favorite easy going yet fairly humorous games. It's like 'Risk-lite'. I use it as my basic 'ease into' games for those hesitent to play board games. Another fun 'board game' is Zombie Dice which is super easy and super fun due to the risk factor it involves. Though my general go-to game, despite it being hard to get these days, is Omega Virus. It's 'Clue' like game play combined with the electronic terminal that mocks the players, having a semi-competitive vibe, and being full of 90's glory makes it such a fun game. Every person I've had sit down and play always wants me to bring it to the shop when I go.
Here's my experience with rules being obfuscated. When I first got Terraria, there were many things that were really confusing. For example, it was difficult for me to build stuff, or build a house near some trees, and at first, I didn't even know how to mine wood! In fact, I almost gave up on Terraria, but later on once I had built a house it became really fun.
Omg you mentioned Shut Up & Sit Down! They are amaaaaazing! Never in my life I'd have thought that I'd hear of any actual board game reviewer here, much less of so _good_ game reviewers as those people.
Not all games can be put on paper, but making a board game is a really good tool for learning how to make a video game better. No matter what type of game somebody wants to make, the most valuable skill is making a game fun. It's much easier to learn that skill through making a board game, where the designer can see every interaction between the player and the game.
If you protest board games, do not care for chess or games like it, or only played games like monopoly you are missing out. Visit a board game store get some of the really cool ones, try kickstarter even the already succesful ones to track a copy of them. The new and indie ones are sooo much fun, the ones made by the industry like monopoly normally screw it up before you are willing to find the fun ones... and average parent doesn't know about them... just the ones in walmart dullll....
I remember when it was my dream to make video games and after struggling and failing to wrap my head around Java programming, I dropped from college thinking "What do I do now?" So for the last decade I have been figuring out board game ideas since I have fellow tabletop gamers who enjoy playing board games and, as soon as I have the courage to do so, I'd like to test out my finished ideas with them. One of the great things about board games is not having to worry about system requirements like a video game would.
I watch this you guys because I am a board game developer. While some of the programming and art directions is different, development is very similar and get a lot of interesting ideas. So thanks for saying I matter to your industry as much as you matter to mine.
+RadiantRaichu There are actually some people who compose for tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. I know your comment is meant as a joke (and it's funny, I laughed) but you might actually want to try that. 99.9% of board games do not have music, so you could start composing for your favorite game! There's a lot of design questions behind it. Would you try to compose a single really long, looping track that would fit the overall tone of the game, so that players could leave it on in the background? Possibly, there could be a companion app that plays music or jingles based on who's leading, what phase the game is in or what action was performed, along with having a visual interface for keeping track of scores, dice rolls and more. I know apps like that exist to an extent, but I haven't heard any of them use music.
+PlaystationMasterPS3 most people now are mindless peasants who cant play anything with three feet of thought or imagine anything outside of Instagram or kim K's ass
Nnnnot necessarily! But it may be interesting to compose music for a particular scene in a story/webcomic you read. Do this enough times and you can learn how to capture a mood with music. Also, webcomic people love fanart - you can often email the tune to the creator and get some free publicity, especially if the webcomic has a small-to-midsize fanbase. :D (Note: I have actually done this before.)
It's really interesting to see how mechanics affect play in tabletop role playing games, considering how "loose" they can be. In Dungeons and Dragons the rules for combat are much more detailed than the rules for most other things and I think this may be part of the reason why D&D players are so quick to start a fight. When most of the cool options and abilities are focused on combat as well this pushes it further. Then there's some of the more specific mechanics. In Shadowrun you have a small pool of points called Edge that refill each session. You can spend Edge to add dice to a roll or reroll it. Edge encourages players to make a small number of really gutsy actions in a session because edge lets them boost those high risk/high reward attempts. Another example is Fate Core's system. Fate uses a similar mechanic in fate points but fate points can be regained in more ways than refreshing at the beginning of each session. Every time you allow one of your character's flaws to hamper them (an arrogant character mouthing off to a king) your character gains a fate point. This encourages players to take actions that make an interesting story but don't benefit their character by giving the player something useful. As a person who's seen players make greedy characters who never steal something when it's a bad idea, or paranoid characters that never have their paranoia interfere with their daily lives, this mechanic is very good at making character flaws matter. Well that's just some of my thoughts, I hope somebody enjoys my ramblings.
Board games are no doubt a gateway to game design as a whole. I once tried to get into D&d but I was not wanting to read and understand the rules. So i instead built my own game system and found it engrossing. Everything I knew about the game changed once I sat down and had my players go at it. It may sound like hell or it may sound easy, but board games got me more than interested in game design as a whole.
Speaking of patch rules, my favourite type of patch rule is the one that patches a problem that has since disappeared due to other changes - they stick out, so you know they're a patch, but there's nothing there for them to fix any more. They're pretty rare, for obvious reasons - patch rules are generally only introduced fairly late in the development process - at a stage where the design and balance are mostly settled, and you don't want to change any more than the absolute minimum to close a loophole. An orphaned patch means that something balance-changing was done late enough in development that an explicit patch had already been written into the rules, and either there then wasn't enough time to playtest removing the patch, or it was decided that the patch should be left in as a safety valve in case the balance shifted with later development changes, or with an expansion...
Funny story, Im a game design student. One of my classes Im taking is called "Game Design I" and on the first day, everyones sitting in class, the teacher goes up to the front and the first words out of her mouth were "This class is going to focus entirely on board games". You could hear the collective "huh?" of the confused students thinking they were going to be working in the purely digital realm. She went on about why (using much the same reasoning you guys did) and every was fine after that
I like video games but I'm almost definitely a person whose money and time goes towards board games and other tabletop experiences and it's awesome to see some credit, from a systematic design perspective, to board games.
A great board game whose design is very important to the game play is a Filipino board game known as "Game of the Generals" or "Salpakan." The game, published by Mind Masters, Inc, often includes a booklet explaining the process involved with creating the game. This booklet is an intriguing look into how much thought goes into how rules affect gameplay- divulging how what started as a spinoff of chess became a much different game, and one that, like chess, requires intensely planned strategy in its own right.
This episode made me think, the popular board games have tons of communication. UNO, for example causes a lot of conflict; hence using an advantage for yourself or disarm another player.
Man this is oddly relevant to myself, learning to be a judge for Magic the Gathering. It's such an old game, and there's so many sub-rulings for certain cards, even just for one particular interaction with one other card.
you know what's funny im writing a 2 page essay about dungeons and dragons and just by writing the essay its teaching me so much about game design .what makes laugh even more is that just like video games dungeons and dragons was started thanks to the British military in the 1800's !
Really good point.... I own the Wii, XBox360, and PS3. The 360 and PS3 were not planned, friends were selling the ones they had. Number of games I own for each is 15, 6, 6. My wife and I enjoy playing cooperatively offline. I even wrote a letter to GamePro Magazine (letter of the month), highlighting the cooperative nature of the Wii as a staple for why console gaming was still relevant to me (if I did not want a couch coop experience I'd use my PC instead). Might look at Wii U.
Also you guys should do an episode on tabletop role-playing you vaguely referenced things about it before and I would love for you guys to do an episode on it.
I remember I was running a game of RISK (because a bunch didn't know how to play) and someone suggested that instead of defending, you could retreat to an adjacent country they owned so as not to lose armies. That was all well and good, but I let people take cards for conquering territories that way. So two players who were about to lose, teamed up and started attacking and retreating armies back and forth, farming cards until they got a set.
On that day I learned an important lesson about adding homebrew rules to games.
TheThunderbirdRising bees?
KawaiiKitten Cutsie NOT THE BEES
+TheThunderbirdRising adding homemade rules is a brilliant way to design mechanics without having to create an outlining set of mechanics. whether you add retreating, do additional trading in monopoly or, my personal favorite, editing the rules of chess it is a lot easier for casual design than designing a full blown game.
Playing Zombicide taught me that, sometimes, you need to homebrew to make the game worth it. xP
+TheThunderbirdRising the retreating idea could work if it came at the cost of some number of units
I'm taking a college game design course right now that seems to be doing exactly this.
Good signs!
Bruh, you were gonna be a game designer?
Amogus
Now I get why you were thinking about that Pokemon map design.
another thing about board games is that you can fine tune the experience to be yours. like you can make "house rules" to have rules that only you and your group follow, but makes Your particular experience more fun. So you can add/ tweak rules, so that the experience is more fun to you/your groups specific playstyle. While in video games you are limited to the experience that the devolper made for you
In a few of my grade 12 classes in high school, I had the option for some projects turning them into a board game, well for one in Global Politics we had to write an essay or make a board game explaining how economic systems work. Well I made a board game, it was a very EVE Online like game, with the players gathering resources and selling them to each other with the ultimate goal of getting 1 million currency and building a Titan, it took me only about three days to have most of it done, and test it myself, I also had help from a few of my friends in EVE with testing it.
I then after tweaking a few rules to make it not take forever (games were lasting around 3-4 hours), and how turns would work (turn based just was not the way to go), I decided to make it so everyone rolled one die and they all move at once and made their decisions at once depending on their dice roll, and after all of that I handed it in, my teacher in the next few days went about setting the board games out for the students to play, mine was the most complex, but also the most fun, having ways built into the game to screw the other players over. My teacher asked me after the third play session why I was telling people that if they had a question I was not going to answer it, and I told my teacher that it would ruin the experience if I held their hands the whole time, I game then a small book telling them the most basic way to play, and they need to use their own minds to figure the rest out. Like find the purposeful holes in the rules that let you do really what ever you want. (even destroy the other players ships) And that running out of currency wasn't really the end for a player depending on what they had for ships.(Like use your industrial ship to move ore for someone else so that can sell it a a higher price and charge them for it or use a combat ship to protect another player while they gather resources only in this case if they don't pay you can just destroy their ship and take their freshly harvested resources)
After the games had been tested by the class the teacher took then home and tested them, mine was the only to receive a perfect mark, and the teacher asked if they could keep it in the class to use as an example of what they wanted and so on days their was not much work to do the class could play. I said yes because that told me I made something good and I have been ever sense working on ways to improve it, its box currently has "Version 3.2" on it as I have updated the game that much sense.
I have had the request to go in on multiple occasions to hear how the students are reacting to the game. Kinda makes me want to make a version to get released, and just change ship names to my own creations rather than just using EVE ships,
Hm, neat!
I kinda wanna play it. Seriously, I could see myself having a lot of fun with it
hmm... I doing a few programing classes right now, I may be able to make a digital copy some time soon, just need to learn what I'm doing first. If I do start working on it I will be sure to reply here and say.
Shadowofthenight
If you ever plan to make money off of your idea, be sure that you legally own the IP rights to your game. Some schools have agreements where they own the copyright to their students' work.
Kickstarter has a bunch of projects like this running all the time; I have funded two of them myself. Crowdfunding could be a solution for you if you are willing to put in the work to give the game that layer of polish worthy of grabbing everyone's attention and incentivizing the donation process properly
Wow. I remember watching this episode when it first came out and at the time not having a care in the world for board games. i thought games like risk or monopoly represented the majority of what board games were like and wanted none of it. But on a whim i took you guys advice and watched a couple episodes of Shut Up and Sit Down. Then a couple of more. Then their entire video line up. And i discovered there was an entire world of game play i had no idea existed. So many themes and mechanics other than role and move. And I finally discovered a form of multiplayer gaming that i actually enjoy. Just under two years later and i now have a board game collection of about 50 games and counting. I don't know if you guys still look at these old comments but i just wanted to say thanks to cluing me in on Board Games.
And of course big fan of the rest of your work too.
i go to school for game development and design and our final was to work on a team and make a board game, it was a great experience and we all learned a lot and when we got to play each others game it was so much fun.
that's awsome.
i LOVE board games, sadly i dont know a lot of people that feel the same as i do. i would actually much rather design a board game than a video game.
Totally agree with you, Garth Palmer! Board games are the best! ...however, we had to ban Settlers of Catan from our household in order to preserve friendships. Haha.
321grammar , I somehow managed to get myself into the exact same position. :P
I love board games too, but only if they have a rule book at least 30 pages long
Make a video game board video game
I love board games and I really want to get into the hobby but I don’t know where to start (What games to get)
One of the problems is finding people to play with. Growing up I was interested in lot of games, including board games. I got Hero Quest yet only manage to play it like 3 times. Star Fleet Battles I only managed to get 2 games in and after I read the entire manual :(. There were several other games I got as gifts and yet barely was able to play. None of my friends and siblings were interested in Board games because they thought they were "Boring". Instead they wanted to play console games, like street fighter, or do sports, like street hockey or soccer.
The other problem then is making changes to the rules and testing those out. If you can't get them to play the base game trying to get them to play modified rules could be even more of a challenge since you could make it less fun. Sure it's great for learning exercises but you need to find other inspiring designers to test it out with.
In College the only "Board" Games I found people playing was Table Top RPGs like D&D which I don't think are technically "Board" games. And they were open to so many house rules you couldn't really rely on a tight rule set baseline.
But yea I do see a lot of the "Why study Board game" mindset. I'd love to get into game design but I think I've gotten too old and didn't get much time in on experimenting with design when younger. Now it seems like all these young kids with start up Indie studios are making games with the Ideas that I'd pitch to friends all time. Got no Capital and no Contacts in the industry. Only people I hang with are fellow software engineers working on corporate applications that are married with kids. :P
Ah well Life is what happens while making other plans.
Like we have SOMEBODY to play them with.
+Kulpas125 Hahahaha
I feel your pain.
jake tdog find a game shop around you
jake tdog Sure are, met one of my best friends at a game shop. Been playing games at my house ever since.
Yeah, I use to love board games, frome Manopoly, to Jenga, to Yugioh, to pokimon life (I can just keep going) But when we all started to grow up and get computors no one ever wants to play them anymore -_- (I use to love Munchkins it was the best)
I went into a videogame design course thinking I wanted to build videogames. After the first assignment, which involved adapting Sim City into a card game, I realised that I actually really wanted to design boardgames. In this year's Global Game Jam, me and a group of friends are going to try to make a boardgame instead of a videogame. Wish us luck!
I love board games, I just lack enough similarly minded friends to play very often... or at all really
Mae Funnell Same here they all want to play video games and that's it.
I mean this is the nicest possible way, but your friends suck.
+Mae Funnell Maybe you can find a middleground and play a digital boardgame from time to time :)
Board games aren't the same digitally, you might as well just play a computer one Permafrostrock
+Mae Funnell You know what I haven't seen is someone translate a board game onto a tablet, or at least not well. I'm a huge fan of Risk and sometimes I don't want to drag the board with me and it's difficult teaching board game novices some of the more extraneous rules from special version of the game. A lot of those kind of game rules would be easier if handled by a computer and streamlined for the player. The problem is I can't find a version of said board games that are that good. The best Risk on a phone, or tablet I could find only used the bare bones rules and streamlined the game too much. I'd like to play Risk Star Wars on a tablet with all it's extra rules. They could add all sorts of sound effects and animation to liven it up as well.
I used to make a ton of board games and TCGs when I was young, they were unbalanced, certain things basically said "you lose the game"and all of it was made out of cardboard paper...it was amazing! no one really played them, but...it definetly helped me be a better game developer!
I'm really glad you included this. I have some friends who are board game creators, and while I'm more interested in video game design, I've always admired board games and have tried to utilize some of the techniques used in board games while making games. I'm still not really where I want to be with that, but I feel like this video has helped me along that path.
Once, I was playing War (boar game about taking countries and cards, basically) with some friends. It was already our third match, and we wanted to speed up a little bit. One thing that always got us bored was that, since the game didn't had a maximun amount of moves or attacks, sometimes one player would take an enormous amount of time doing their play, while the others would just wait.
So, to avoid that, and (as we tought) to make the game end faster, we set a few extra rules: each player would have only 3 attacks and 2 moves per "round". In the early game, everything got way funnier, we had to strategyze more, make better use of our resources, etc. Also, as players couldn't do much, the game was sped-up, making us play way more times than before.
The problems started in the late game: since we couldn't attack multiple times, the game progress itself was slowed, our board was fulled, and it reached a point where there were so many pieces in the board that became impossible to get to the objectives. Basically, they game stacked too much, and, since we could only attack 3 times, there was no way to remove those pieces. It was fun to see how a small rule can completely change the game, and oh, our games usually last one to two hours, that one ended up in about four hours, and because no one wanted to play anymore.
I've learned so much from my years of running D&D games: analyzing and predicting player behavior, level design, even how to write a well crafted world. There's so much that actually carries over between mediums.
Look into the card game "Race for the Galaxy". It is by far the hardest game I had to learn, but once you learn, it is a masterpiece of design. It is one of my favorite games of all time.
I teach game design / level development and I couldn't agree more. one of my mantras is "prove it on paper"
make the game playable, start to finish, with basic rudimentary pawns and "logic algorithms" (dice, cards, spinner...) to help understand player vs player, player vs environment and player vs game rule sets.
+1
I've been making my own board game lately and I was thinking about how fun board games are that have good mechanics. This video really helped solidify my thoughts. Well explained!
Ever since I started watching this series, I was amazed at how much I agreed with EVERYTHING the authors say in these videos. It is as if they read my mind.
Now, this. I've been saying that boardgames are to videogames what cinematography or even photography are for cinema for ages.
Thank you VERY much for this!
I'm a video game design major and all of what your saying makes sense. In fact, The first major-related course I took focused on board games and how they work. Things like power creep and especially concepts like the "Three Wizard Rule" are as prevalent in board games as they are in Video games. Which makes them such an excellent start for game designers. In fact, in a program at my college a group of us sat down with a game designer in the field and made a board game. It was awesome.
First of all, great episode, as always. But I feel you guys missed a little bit on this one. There are a number of board games that, in my opinion at least, touch on historical reality far better then any computer game I ever played, and somehow I think this deserves mention (especially connected to your ongoing discussion about the educational value of games) - off the top of my head Britannia and Axis and Allies (especially the collector's edition). It is actually remarkable how those game, via almost abstract mechanics, manage to recreate historical events with fairly high fidelity. Either way, keep up the good work, love Extra Credits! PS: wish you would have included Battlestar Galactica in the social games bit of the episode, it's an amazing game! :)
Designing board games, and especially designing abstract board games, has been a huge help to me in understanding the relationships between mechanics and player dynamics. I would even recommend designing an abstract board game as its own exercise: what can you do when rules are the *only* material you have?
Thanks for the sweet outro music. I've been listening to the album off and on for a while now. Also thanks for having such an amazing channel.
Top notch epidsode and right on point. I am an avid gamer and that includes card games, board games and computer games. My favorite games include games from each. Designers would do well to complete the task mentioned in the video. I would also say watch at a group of people play a game of settlers or monopoly and watch what rules they all agree to break or change (such as free parking money).
This. Love this video so much. All games are games, electronic or not. A good designer should recognize this. It's also worthy of note that board games are a good way of rapidly prototyping rulesets for video games, especially combat scenarios. This lets you do a lot of your work without the need to program and compile every single time you need to change something.
Great video! As a kid I used to love making board games. I made one for a school project in elementary school involving marbles going through paper mache volcanoes. Can't recommend this kind of thing enough!
In an effort to pull together a panel for local Conventions about ''Gamifying Education'', this is where I want to start with my points about how effective teaching through game play can be. This is right up my ally and I feel you've been saying in short what I could go on and on about from a teacher's perspective about board game play!
My two gaming worlds coming together :D
When I saw the title I was like "That's a good pun."
Couldn't agree more. "Three Moves Ahead" had a great podcast where they had Jake Solomon on and how he talked about working on the rules of the game and running into issues. He then talked to Sid Meier and the two of the hashed out a board game version that roughly translated into the actual game. A great video game should be translatable in spirit to a board game.
As an aspiring game designer (and currently working on a soon-to-release game) i agree with playing board games to learn more, and learned a couple of useful interesting things in this video.
good content
"I don't play board games" My mom says I can't hang out with you anymore.
As a game dev student this information is golden. Keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing your new episode.
My first real experience doing a game design was creating a tug of war board game. Board games are absolutely a great learning experience.
Board games are the best. I've stopped playing video games for the most part, but love playing board games.
it's a convention on forms of gaming. It stands for Penny Arcade Expo (the guys who own or shown Extra Credits).
PAX prime is the big one, going on right now in Seattle (whoo! where I live). However, there is also PAX East and other ones located around.
However, they also set
this is why I'm subscribed to geek and sundry, because of the different tabletop series they've got either showing off different tabletop games or following a specific long term type game, I'd say my collection is larger and better because of them x3
I just wish I had people to play the more interesting ones with
I just love board games. A ridiculously complex game that takes a day of full study just to start playing is perfect for me
A lot of board games designed for co-op play can be played just fine with one person (or have explicit rules for a one player mode). Examples include Castle Panic, Space Alert, and Pandemic, and there are a bunch of others.
I grew up playing board games and card games, and while I now quite enjoy video games as well, board games will always hold the primary spot in my heart.
I'm kind of the opposite.I'm studying video games to make board games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's an interesting concept, good luck!
Thanks!!!!!!
It's going good!!!
I'm studying video games to make video games...
That seems like it might work... Your basically just making a more simple video game. It sounds cool.
I remember making a board game in 5th grade as a project. I thought I would make it similar to Mario Party but as I got further along, I deviated pretty far from MP as I realized that some things could not translate to the physical world without being overly complex or having a long list of if-that-than-this. It was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.
In elementary, me and my friends would always make up board and card games. It was from that love of game making that I eventually sought to learn video game development. :3
I want to mention a REALLY good board game that is a lot of fun. It's called 7 Wonders, and I have never really liked a board game like this before. You build a city, and compete against neighboring cities in many different ways to gain points, which are counted and ranked at the end. It seems complicated at first, but after a game or two, you fee like a genius, and don't want to stop playing! I love the amount of options, and the fact that you are still rewarded even if you loose.
Im currently am working on a board game and I think its a decent idea as part of the kind of werewolf card games but with different mechanics. This video helped me lay out clearer rules, thank you.
A wise gamedesigner said to me the same thing about larp. Seeing that games like wow have to use a spreadsheet to show a shop, while in a larp you can barter with the owner who has kids to raise so will not go to low on his price unless you can do a little something something for him. Larp can be an excellent way to test interaction and other gameplay mechanics like with board games. Great vid. And some Warhammer shown, Yeah!
That passing comment about board games taking over the offline co-op that video games are abandoning...
Mind. Blown.
Halo board game on the horizon? :p
I was lucky enough to have all my possessions robbed of me while in South America. Left with only some emergency cash, a game design book, deck of cards, two dice and a wife who was as equally bored, I set out to create an original D'n'D (deck and dice :P) game. It was the best I could make of the situation and it opened me right up to the key points in this video.
Honestly I was expecting this video to not detail the design benefits of Board Games but rather the unwarranted social stigma that surrounds them in the modern era. Most people see Board Games and think, "This is too simple. I need something with more complexity than something as basic as Scrabble or Candyland can provide," which is horribly flawed thinking brought about as a result of the board games we consider "Mainstream." The fact of the matter is, there is a whole world of board games that the toy aisles in Wal-Mart never even scratch, and these are oftentimes the boardgames most deserving of play and analysis. In reality, the world of board games is similar to the world of mobile games, except with less accessibility. The Angry Birds and Candy Crush games are often the only ones people find, while more complex gems of the App Stores are buried beneath a sea of more "casual" titles. For anyone interested in investigating boardgames, there's plenty to be found below the surface. Try looking up games like Twilight Imperium, Fluxx, Race for the Galaxy, anything made by Fantasy Flight, etc, or just simply going down to Geek and Sundry to watch Wil Weaton's Tabletop series. You'll find that board games are a lot more interesting a medium than you had at first thought.
Kudos to you guys for putting this subject into the spotlight, even if it wasn't in quite the way I had hoped. +)
Great video and me makes me recall how this past weekend my friends showed & then we played yet another new board game "Galaxy Trucker". Fun simple and veteran players can take penalties to give new players a advantage. And it is true i have had a lot more/maybe the same social interaction via boardgames vs the MMO's. Hell i know in my city there is a pub in the downtown core that has board game SUNDAY its a blast to be at.
i had an idea to reinvent chess in a video game. it will use the steam workshop and will be highly customizeible. changing the board, creating new pieces with new movement patterns, new looks, and you can be able to change the rules of the entire game. it is called ultimate chess.
That would be really awesome. I tried something like this with real chess, but I was too young to come up with anything solid.
Wish you great luck.
sebool112 Me too. Good luck. I'd love to see something like that. Maybe you could even customize the shape and design of the new pieces you make!
Me and my friend made a somewhat similar RPG type chess game where special abilities could be used, but would replace moving on that turn.
RobotSnake Seems like a good idea. It's important to find balance in there. May I ask what kind of abilities were there?
By the way, If you don't mind I could think of some ideas and post them here for this kind of special abilities.
sebool112 Each player had 2 hitpoints The Archer's ability was shooting an arrow in 1 non-diagonal direction that would travel 2 blocks, the Mage could summon a familiar that would be controlled along with the player(The zombie would have to be placed adjacent to the Mage, and could only move 2 spaces per turn), the Healer could cast an orb that would heal a point of damage, but not be able to move for 2 turns, and the Warrior's ability was a Berserk state that would let him move 6 spaces instead of 4, at the cost of losing the next turn.
2:51 I find this funny how when they were talking about easy to learn rules they showed pictures of d&d one of the most complicated games I have seen
If anyone's in the greater Seattle area *coughliketheECteamcough* there's a handful of board game Meetup groups, sometimes with people play-testing games they've made. (I'm a fan of the meetup at Zulu's in Bothell. Board games & drinks until midnight!)
Do show on board games or tabletop RPGs and how to design them!
Glad to see an episode like this. Board games certainly deserve it and designers that ignore their helpfulness certainly need it.
Finally, you guys are talking some good, clean, philosphicaly sound logic. Great video! Fantastic insight.
On a similar note, try writing a mission (or even GM'ing) for a table top RPG. You can see what kind of crazy ways people come up with solving a problem or what kind of blatantly obvious clues get missed.
Writing modules is hella fun too, and you can reuse them with different groups if you keep them saved on a computer like I do
It's funny that a couple of the graphics they included had an AD&D book in it.
There's an interesting rules notation in later versions of Tomb Of Horrors. There are is a Sceptre and Crown of Disintegration that can be found. Originally there were rules about how they worked (place the crown on your head, touch the sceptre to it, you disintegrate yourself), but that was it. Later versions had an extensive list of rules explaining how the two items could never leave the room. They went to extreme lengths to make sure the rules covered every eventuality.
As it went, an artist on an earlier version of ToH was invited to play through the module. The game was DM'd by none other than Gary Gygax himself (rest his soul). The artist picked up the items and took them with him. When he found the skull of Acererak he put the crown on the skull and touched the rod to it.
Gary was stunned by this outcome and while it wasn't the intended solution, he ruled that it happened and created a non-conventional win for the artist.
Right. I usually tend to start writing down an idea immediately as it comes to mind (most of the time... >.>), and start piecing things together gradually as more ideas come to light.
Construction of the prototype can be pretty easy too. After all, the point of a prototype is to test the idea.
Also, I follow an Agile approach whereby I design a single feature of a project at a time, so documentation/schematics are usually easy, actually, unless my idea is too far out there. Of course, this isn't bad; it forces me to excersize creative restraint, which helps.
The outro was from OcRemixes Balance and Ruin...God that has to be the best album ever made, I've had my ipod rock it for like months straight now!
The good thing about experimenting with a board game is that is easy, fast to build and relies only on balance and the clarity of your rules...so you can test it right away....in videogame dev, there are a lot of extra complications that deviate you from the balance and rules topic....
Agree 100% with this video. I've been playing video games all my life, I only just recently REALLY got into table top board gaming. The way they borrow from each other kinda surprised me.
Arkham Horror and Eldrich Horror are basically Roguelike board games. Shadows of Brimstone is a Diablo style dungeon crawling loot/level grinder. Rum & Bones plays like League of Legends on a board game. I doubt I even need to mention how influential Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer were to video games.
I once created a card game called cats vs elephants with a friend of mine, and it helped me see many balencing issues and power creep in the cards. Testing it and creating it was a learning experiance.
Kind of funny that making a board game is the prototype for a project I'm hoping to start with tomorrow. I will be gamedesign and artwork, my friend is programing, and then we might ask some more friends for music and extra art.
Thank you for helping me in the design help. :)
fascinating, i love both types of games, but i often say to people (like my granddad) who says i waste my time playing games that it is just the same as him playing board games, it's a fun way to pass time with friends or alone (he loves solitaire).
I like board games, but my favorite games are often more action-oriented. I'd love to see more of that being made in real life. Sports like football and skiing already exist and is pretty much perfected already, but things like Laser Tag and Beyblade are on the decline, and I've yet to see someone build a Super Mario-like obstacle course for rent, or a hedge maze with rule-regulated pretend-fencing. It'd be expensive, sure, but AAA games today have budgets over a hundred million dollars. We have go-carts, now make Mario Kart.
You guys are amazing! I always wanted to make a board game and now I can shove this in their faces when they call it useless! This is why I'm subscribed to you, you guys are awesome!
I highly recommend getting together a Dungeons and Dragons group if you're intending to start game design. It gives you a great understanding of the core information that needs to be stored in a video game for even the background characters. Start off with a Game Master who knows the game and try to learn how to do what he/she does. Becoming a game master is an invaluable learning tool for level design, combat balancing, ramping difficulty and player interaction.
I'm a big player of games like Agricola and Settlers of Catan, and it's very interesting to me to see this perspective on it!
I am a huge fan of BoardGames, mostly strategy ones, and table-top RPGs. First, I play them with friends and second, they allow for different experiences. Hell, after watching this week’s show, if some people still have doubts about their importance, play Twilight Imperium and then have a look at Civ. Firaxis took a lot from there. As for RPGs, games like D&D, Shadowrun and Descent teach you about which variables go where or how to build a proper character or to implement a skill tree...
For those of you that have never played a proper board game, go buy a respectable entry level board game and invite your friends over. You'll most likely enjoy the experience more than video games and make it a regular thing. To start with I'd recommend looking into Smallworld, King of Tokyo and 7 Wonders.
+Jamie Cutts I'd add Ticket to Ride to those.
+TheGrooves Ticket to Ride is a great one. I'm using it to introduce some family members to my world. xP
+Jamie Cutts
Small World is one of my favorite easy going yet fairly humorous games. It's like 'Risk-lite'. I use it as my basic 'ease into' games for those hesitent to play board games. Another fun 'board game' is Zombie Dice which is super easy and super fun due to the risk factor it involves.
Though my general go-to game, despite it being hard to get these days, is Omega Virus. It's 'Clue' like game play combined with the electronic terminal that mocks the players, having a semi-competitive vibe, and being full of 90's glory makes it such a fun game. Every person I've had sit down and play always wants me to bring it to the shop when I go.
Here's my experience with rules being obfuscated. When I first got Terraria, there were many things that were really confusing. For example, it was difficult for me to build stuff, or build a house near some trees, and at first, I didn't even know how to mine wood! In fact, I almost gave up on Terraria, but later on once I had built a house it became really fun.
Omg you mentioned Shut Up & Sit Down! They are amaaaaazing! Never in my life I'd have thought that I'd hear of any actual board game reviewer here, much less of so _good_ game reviewers as those people.
I kinda wanna see an EC episode about app-based board games like XCOM or Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition now...
Not all games can be put on paper, but making a board game is a really good tool for learning how to make a video game better. No matter what type of game somebody wants to make, the most valuable skill is making a game fun. It's much easier to learn that skill through making a board game, where the designer can see every interaction between the player and the game.
If someone ever mentions wanting to play Ticket to Ride or Pandemic, I AM SO THERE! IN! A! FLASH!
I'm really learning a lot about game design with these videos, thanks a lot!
If you protest board games, do not care for chess or games like it, or only played games like monopoly you are missing out. Visit a board game store get some of the really cool ones, try kickstarter even the already succesful ones to track a copy of them. The new and indie ones are sooo much fun, the ones made by the industry like monopoly normally screw it up before you are willing to find the fun ones... and average parent doesn't know about them... just the ones in walmart dullll....
I remember when it was my dream to make video games and after struggling and failing to wrap my head around Java programming, I dropped from college thinking "What do I do now?" So for the last decade I have been figuring out board game ideas since I have fellow tabletop gamers who enjoy playing board games and, as soon as I have the courage to do so, I'd like to test out my finished ideas with them. One of the great things about board games is not having to worry about system requirements like a video game would.
I watch this you guys because I am a board game developer. While some of the programming and art directions is different, development is very similar and get a lot of interesting ideas. So thanks for saying I matter to your industry as much as you matter to mine.
So if I want to begin video game music composing, I compose for my favorite board games?
+RadiantRaichu There are actually some people who compose for tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. I know your comment is meant as a joke (and it's funny, I laughed) but you might actually want to try that. 99.9% of board games do not have music, so you could start composing for your favorite game! There's a lot of design questions behind it. Would you try to compose a single really long, looping track that would fit the overall tone of the game, so that players could leave it on in the background? Possibly, there could be a companion app that plays music or jingles based on who's leading, what phase the game is in or what action was performed, along with having a visual interface for keeping track of scores, dice rolls and more. I know apps like that exist to an extent, but I haven't heard any of them use music.
+RadiantRaichu try it, it might just work.
+RadiantRaichu Sure, why not?
+PlaystationMasterPS3 most people now are mindless peasants who cant play anything with three feet of thought or imagine anything outside of Instagram or kim K's ass
Nnnnot necessarily! But it may be interesting to compose music for a particular scene in a story/webcomic you read. Do this enough times and you can learn how to capture a mood with music. Also, webcomic people love fanart - you can often email the tune to the creator and get some free publicity, especially if the webcomic has a small-to-midsize fanbase. :D (Note: I have actually done this before.)
It's really interesting to see how mechanics affect play in tabletop role playing games, considering how "loose" they can be. In Dungeons and Dragons the rules for combat are much more detailed than the rules for most other things and I think this may be part of the reason why D&D players are so quick to start a fight. When most of the cool options and abilities are focused on combat as well this pushes it further.
Then there's some of the more specific mechanics. In Shadowrun you have a small pool of points called Edge that refill each session. You can spend Edge to add dice to a roll or reroll it. Edge encourages players to make a small number of really gutsy actions in a session because edge lets them boost those high risk/high reward attempts.
Another example is Fate Core's system. Fate uses a similar mechanic in fate points but fate points can be regained in more ways than refreshing at the beginning of each session. Every time you allow one of your character's flaws to hamper them (an arrogant character mouthing off to a king) your character gains a fate point. This encourages players to take actions that make an interesting story but don't benefit their character by giving the player something useful. As a person who's seen players make greedy characters who never steal something when it's a bad idea, or paranoid characters that never have their paranoia interfere with their daily lives, this mechanic is very good at making character flaws matter.
Well that's just some of my thoughts, I hope somebody enjoys my ramblings.
Board games are no doubt a gateway to game design as a whole. I once tried to get into D&d but I was not wanting to read and understand the rules. So i instead built my own game system and found it engrossing. Everything I knew about the game changed once I sat down and had my players go at it. It may sound like hell or it may sound easy, but board games got me more than interested in game design as a whole.
2:52 was that parks and recreation!?! i must see that episode!
Speaking of patch rules, my favourite type of patch rule is the one that patches a problem that has since disappeared due to other changes - they stick out, so you know they're a patch, but there's nothing there for them to fix any more. They're pretty rare, for obvious reasons - patch rules are generally only introduced fairly late in the development process - at a stage where the design and balance are mostly settled, and you don't want to change any more than the absolute minimum to close a loophole. An orphaned patch means that something balance-changing was done late enough in development that an explicit patch had already been written into the rules, and either there then wasn't enough time to playtest removing the patch, or it was decided that the patch should be left in as a safety valve in case the balance shifted with later development changes, or with an expansion...
for over 20 years thats all i did, make board games and card gams. most very fun. i made a lot of long term friends from that. :)
Funny story, Im a game design student. One of my classes Im taking is called "Game Design I" and on the first day, everyones sitting in class, the teacher goes up to the front and the first words out of her mouth were "This class is going to focus entirely on board games". You could hear the collective "huh?" of the confused students thinking they were going to be working in the purely digital realm. She went on about why (using much the same reasoning you guys did) and every was fine after that
Ooh, board games. I play a LOT of them. Ones from Catan, Munchkins, Dominion, and even my favorite, Cosmic Encounter.
I like video games but I'm almost definitely a person whose money and time goes towards board games and other tabletop experiences and it's awesome to see some credit, from a systematic design perspective, to board games.
A great board game whose design is very important to the game play is a Filipino board game known as "Game of the Generals" or "Salpakan." The game, published by Mind Masters, Inc, often includes a booklet explaining the process involved with creating the game. This booklet is an intriguing look into how much thought goes into how rules affect gameplay- divulging how what started as a spinoff of chess became a much different game, and one that, like chess, requires intensely planned strategy in its own right.
This episode made me think, the popular board games have tons of communication. UNO, for example causes a lot of conflict; hence using an advantage for yourself or disarm another player.
I just came up with a fix to a board game I made just by watching this. This show is useful for so many things!
My class is actually designing board games right now. Thanks for the tips about playtesting. Those will help a lot :D
Fascinating. I guess this would apply just as much to the simpler board games than the ones you mentioned such as Monopoly or Scrabble as well.
Man this is oddly relevant to myself, learning to be a judge for Magic the Gathering. It's such an old game, and there's so many sub-rulings for certain cards, even just for one particular interaction with one other card.
trying to be a designer, and i already designed a board game , and it really helps!
great video :)
(also love the picture of community :D)
you know what's funny im writing a 2 page essay about dungeons and dragons and just by writing the essay its teaching me so much about game design .what makes laugh even more is that just like video games dungeons and dragons was started thanks to the British military in the 1800's !
Really good point.... I own the Wii, XBox360, and PS3. The 360 and PS3 were not planned, friends were selling the ones they had. Number of games I own for each is 15, 6, 6. My wife and I enjoy playing cooperatively offline. I even wrote a letter to GamePro Magazine (letter of the month), highlighting the cooperative nature of the Wii as a staple for why console gaming was still relevant to me (if I did not want a couch coop experience I'd use my PC instead). Might look at Wii U.
Also you guys should do an episode on tabletop role-playing you vaguely referenced things about it before and I would love for you guys to do an episode on it.