Tabletop Mentorship Stories

 As I find myself doing more and more playtesting, making smaller and smaller changes, and feeling just about ready to cross the pitch-ready finish line, I wanted to take reflect on the design process that has taken place over the past three years in hopes that someone finds something about it useful/relatable. Here we go! *Quick note: This is a continuation of my first post, "Homophobia Brought Me Here". You can read that first if you want some more context around my the design choices. -Design Pillars- When I decided I wanted to design a new game, I went in with some parameters to help guide my choices. Mechanical • Gameplay and rules should be relatively simple and accessible to a wide audience, while still providing a level of decision making that is engaging and challenging.  • Setup and play time should be relatively short (~30min), where several playthroughs are possible without inducing player exhaustion. • Gameplay should utilizing mechanics that eliminate individual...

Semi-Technical discussion ahead. A few people that have seen the game have suggested I try to simulate lots of play tests to make sure nothing breaks in the game. I'd heard about Monte Carlo simulations, but did not know how to make one. Searching online for examples didn't show me much in the way of examples either. So, I decided to brute force it using Excel and macros. I think it turned out pretty well, and wanted to share it with everyone in case others can use it too. Below is a description of how the tool works: 1st, a quick description of the game I'm modeling. Abstractly, it's a card shedding game, like Crazy 8's, or Uno. A game ends when one player plays the last card in their hand.  Cards can be identified by a color (Coded SF, R, H, M as the first character(s) in the description) or a suite (Coded S, C, M, A as the next characters in the description), and finally a number. An example of one of my cards is coded SFC3, or RM2. There are also starting cards ...

Shiny things. They’re the bane of my creativity. Those new ideas that seem like precious unique flakes of snow that you must give your attention to before they melt away. This week I had an ambitious goal – to tear apart a key aspect of The Queen Must Die that had its’ carefully engineered mechanics throughout other systems of the game and would refuse to be extricated without a critical breakdown. And then to come up with a leaner version that held on to as much richness as possible while being fast (hopefully play could be much more rapid) and less prone to analysis paralysis. It was going to be a lot of manual overhead, and apart from a few parameters and sub-goals I had basically no idea where to embark. And then things ran away on me. Badly. I try to leave a few evenings a week to hanging out with my wife. More often than not we just watch TV, and that is good. It shuts down my mind for a few hours and I focus on other things than “What is the expectation value of these custo...

I had my first meeting with my mentor Aaron (from Boards Alive ) and as I mentioned in my last blog post, I really wanted to focus on three things: Improving the sound and content of my podcast, improving my reach, and reducing my editing time.  With Aaron's help, I've already started to work on all three of these!   Let's start with reducing my editing time, which has become my #1 priority.  This was taking up much of my free time, as I was averaging between 8-12 hours to do as single hour long episode.  With a full time job, this was cutting into my time to do other things (not to mention playing games to generate content for the channel).  Aaron gave me the advice to "let it go".  I was deleting every single "um", "but yeah", and other crutch words that I frequently use.  Part of the process is trying to not say them so much, but the other part is to let a couple slide occasionally, which actually helps the podcast sound more organic and not...

 When I signed up for this mentorship, I was surprised that they included content creators. It's daunting sometimes to see the level of work, creativity, and iterative process that goes into designing and creating a game. What's become more and more apparent over the last couple of months, however, is that good good content creators have a really big role to play in the development cycle. Really? You think so? When you take the bigger players out of the picture, the massive studios and publishers, there's a real dogfight going on for the space that's left, and all those smaller voices can easily drown one another out. Through groups and channels that I'm now a member of, I see how many requests for coverage go out to reviewers and content creators. A good review on a channel with thousands, or even just hundreds of viewers gives these folks a voice. It's made me realise there are two really important jobs that any reviewer or content creator (like me) should be ...

I mentioned in a previous post that I had largely left The Queen Must Die untouched for the better part of a year. In that time I did push some imaginary cardboard around in my head as I lay in bed on a great number of nights, but both the IRL version and the TTS version remained untouched. This was all due to my early Covid crisis responsibilities and then, essentially, momentum. It was actually really useful time. I was – and kinda knew it at the time – overly connected to too much of the game. I desperately needed to trim. “Kill your darlings” they say. This is also a well-worn philosophy in film. It seems however that the psychology between taking a beloved scene out of a screenplay or an edit is very different from taking a favourite mechanic or phase out of a game. A lot of this difference is simply practical. Hit ‘delete’ and read or play the screenplay or film over and see what damage you’ve done and what has benefitted – apply fixes as necessary (which may actually be ‘just...

I will never forget my first, and only, GenCon experience. After years of playing the modern 'classics' with a small group of friends, refining my Kickstarter preferences, and working through the overwhelming regret of missing out on the 50th anniversary, to simply say I was excited for GenCon 2018 would be an egregious understatement. Even the anxiety of traveling with new friends to a new city, to attended the largest board game convention in the country, was not enough the dissuade me. But despite all the incredible experiences I had during those four days, there was one, specific instance that challenged me to try my hand at game design and ultimately lead me here. I was wandering the main hall with my best friend, demoing games, when we came across a cooperative, ninja-themed board game that peaked our interest. The woman at the booth was very friendly and walked us through a scenario where we attempted to assassinate a crime boss (you know, as ninja's do). Then at the...

I have a fulltime job in the crazy world of robotics and automation. I won’t say which company, but during crunch time, it’s reasonable to expect 60+ hours weeks. I’m heavily involved in my church, especially this past year, as they’ve relied on me almost exclusively to move services online during the Covid crisis. I have a family. My oldest child has autism, and my youngest is all of 7 weeks old. My wife is also quite busy, trying to get her new business venture off the ground. I said all of that to say that when I read about people who describe their morning or afternoon or weekend routine where they’ve set aside a few hours to work on their game project, I stand up and salute those people! I wish I had my act together to be able to do that. Mad props to those who are able to pull that off. I am not one of those people. But, the good news is that it is still possible to make progress. I keep a notebook with me and try to make notes about ideas or cards during my lunch break. Hold...

Hi everyone!  Arwen from the Cardboard Time Podcast here. A bit of background: The Cardboard Time Podcast is about my journey to reduce my shelf of shame (unplayed games) from what was a massive 330+ games down to 0.  I release it every two weeks.  Honestly at this point, it's as much about being a driving force that gives me a structured excuse to play my games as it is providing content for people to consume and give another data point as they look to make informed purchasing decisions.   I've always been involved in media production in some small shape or form ever since I was young.  I grew up operating cameras, editing videos, and operating live production equipment at my local Public Access station (I remember using Amiga computers for graphics and Betamax tapes for recording, so that might date me a bit).  I was involved with making videos with friends and ultimately made a full length movie that I might talk about...eventually.  I was a Tw...

This right here. These words. This is what you could fairly call "procrastination." But I do know myself. I know that it often takes me 45 minutes to really get going – to grind through my ‘first gear’ – and once I hit flow-state… well, then its flow-state. But it often takes a bit of puttering around on something irrelevant – or in this case, adjacent – to my intended work before I can really capitalize on a functional creative space. I went looking for a good procrastination image and got owned by the internet. Before fatherhood I could make real hay this way. Come home from work, cook up some anti-hangry medication, and fill a glass with something cold. Then do just about anything but what I wanted to work on for a half hour or an hour and then switch gears into the real work… often the next thing I’d know I’d have only a half dozen hours until I had to be back at work, but I’d have a heap-load of work done. But these days, no. The dinners I cook need a little more atten...

  I have never made a game before.  I have written a great deal. I have edited videos. I have blogged . I have designed robots . Lots of robots . I have a family, two cats, and a willingness to try almost any food that's ever been put in front of me.  But, I've never made a game before. I discovered modern games at a relatively late age. Growing up, we had Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Mouse trap, and half a dozen puzzles, but that was about it. It was not until my mid-twenties that I cut my teeth on Settlers, Ninja Burger, and discovered Board Game Geek. I've since become hooked, and have a running list of games that I want to get and play.  Current game closet. Unfortunately, my family does not enjoy games as much as I do, so many remain in shrinkwrap for now.  I think this is the natural progression of that enjoyment. Now that I've had a chance to enjoy so many creations, I want to add to the pool with something of my own. That does not mean I'm not intimidated. It's...

Hello everyone!  I thought I would drop a line and share a bit of my story.  I absolutely love world building. I have spent my entire life building worlds in my head. When I was introduced to RPGs I realized I could finally use all these worlds in my head. The struggle I face is getting the worlds from my head onto paper. There are several reasons for that but one of them is that I have a physical disability that makes sitting at my computer typing impossible sometimes.  My mentor suggested I use a speech to text software. It was something that I had thought about but had never actually used before. I did a quick google search for free options and found one that actually works reasonably well. It records what you say as well as does a transcription that you can go through and edit afterward. It is really good for when I need to take it easy physically as I can set up my laptop and talk at it from any position.  I'm really looking forward to continuing to find tools t...

You've Never Heard of This The Queen Must Die began life as a screenplay – I once worked in film, most of my biggest credits are things no one has heard of, or they died in development - “Development Hell” they call it… hence, I used to work in film. Though it’s a screenplay I never finished, it was an idea I cherished and when I left film behind and my creative outlet switched to game design, it was one of the first things I ever considered. Based ever so loosely on the fantasy RPG trope of a group of adventurers invading some demi-human tribe’s – kobolds in this case – home and mining it for gold and experience, yet turned on its head. In my imagination it was the classic D&D module The Keep on the Borderlands , with the kobolds as the protagonists… and as a board game. Over about two and a half years it has inched along – getting far too bloated in the process. Every other game I’ve ever designed has been far simpler, far leaner than The Queen Must Die – but the id...

 Anyone who's ever learned any kind of programming has almost certainly seen those words a few times - "Hello World!".  It's what many languages get you to do in your first tutorial, as if to say, 'Hey, you're up and running now, good job!'.  So it seemed fitting for me to choose it, given my day job involves a lot of nerdtastic things like programming, and that these are my first steps in the Tabletop Mentorship Program. My name's Adam, and I'm forty-something and live in Cornwall, that bit on the south-west of England that sticks out into the Atlantic. I'm a would-be board game reviewer who set himself up with a site ( hey look, a link the the very same site! ) and a purpose last year. I've really enjoyed what I've done so far, and really enjoyed the people I've met, and the things I've learned by myself. I was scrolling through Twitter a little while ago when I saw a tweet about this program go by, so I stopped and took the t...

Hello, reader! Thank you for coming to our community blog! We have invited members of our mentorship program to document their journey as a tabletop creator and share their stories here. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into the life of a tabletop creator. If you'd like to get the latest blog posts straight to your inbox, click on the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page.