Game Design UPDATE - #2

[@jnewman12777]

If I was making an adventure game like this, I would reference Breath of the Wild and real world hiking to try to “bottle up” that emotion. BotW does a good job at putting distinct landmarks in the distance that make you want to go that direction.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Absolutely! I referenced BOTW in my previous videos because I want to do just that. The consistent intrigue of exploring in that game is so addicting. I’d love capture something like that.

[@pablomorralla3256]

OMG new video from the tabletop game guy!! the best christmas present :D

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Happy Holidays!

[@jonathansnow7421]

Legit been waiting for this for so long 😊

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Feels good to post something again! Thanks for watching!

[@stopsomewhere9104]

Coffee roaster is a great little bag builder with an amazing win condition of creating the perfect cup of coffee

[@corydaggy]

I love that dice adventure mechanic! But i guess change it however you like.

[@heylg24]

FINALLY! It’s fun to see how this has evolved and how you work through these design challenges.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thank you!

[@nicksims2827]

OK, long post alert! If there’s a better and/or private place you collect stuff like this, let me know. Firstly, wow! I binged all your videos in a day, I’ve been waiting for this forever. Plus, it’s beautiful. Some other board game channels need to up their game! I have some feedback, but it’s all meant as positive & constructive. I hope you find it helpful Firstly, as a fellow outdoors person, I love the theme! And who didn’t love exploring as a kid? The only thing I think may be missing a touch is the occasional bad thing to introduce a touch of jeopardy? I like that the night dice is positive, it’s such a refreshing change from day=good/night=bad but maybe being a bit nervous when you delve into that bag wouldn’t be so bad? Complexity wise, you seem to be creeping a bit towards Robinson Crusoe level complexity. That’s not a bad thing on its own (great game!) but I think it’s something to keep in mind, and act to reduce the ‘intellectual budget’ where possible. RC’s rule book isn’t perfect IMO, but the board does a really good job of reminding you of the steps and order to do things. This isn’t a comment on your game at all, but if you want to inject narrative and some surprises, I’d suggest looking at a surprising source - Dead of Winter (specifically the crossroads cards element). This keeps others engaged and adds extra theme and decisions without necessarily slowing the game down I don’t know what your end goal for this is, but whether if you might want to work with a publisher, or self publish, you might want to keep potential production cost in mind. The more bits/different tiles you include, the more the art & production cost will come into play. Controlled randomness and exploration is a great marriage of theme and mechanic so I love bag building - the only thing I’d suggest that links back to my previous comment is maybe if you discover something good, you drop a consequence in there for later - like if you photograph a bird, that’s good, but you also drop an angry/agitated bird in the bag so the next person who pulls it has a less positive experience Also, you asked for suggestions of components for the bag, but reminded us that they all need to come out again. This is true, but more things than will go in the bag is not a bad thing - at setup you can choose eg 20 items at random from a larger pool and just put these 20 in the bag. It means you’ll never get the same game twice - which is important when exploring (though totally flies in the face off my production cost warning!) I hope this is useful, and if you’d like a playtester/rules reviewer or (free) development help, let me know Good luck, and keep the videos coming!

[@31then]

Yes! So happy you keep doing this videos cheers and merry christmas

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Merry Christmas! Thanks!

[@stephendefalco5081]

Kinda out of left field from the nature theme but your bag building idea reminds me of the chaos bags in Arkham Horror. Worth investigating 😃

[@SnowFoxDiver]

I have a game I'm trying to make as a hobby, the idea is that each player is an employee working with the other employees to finish a project in time, with each player having a role, such as Marketer, whose job is to play the right social cards to get the right consumers interested in the project; and the Accountant, whom has the job of trying to make sure that everything fits within the budget and if not, figure out what cards he has can reduce how much is being spent while keeping as much of the benefits as possible. My idea for stats are such, Creativity (how often a character can pull more tactics cards) Motivation (how many of those cards the player can play in a turn) Talent (how many times a player can use their special skills) and stress (how many times they can fail before suffering a mental break). One way I figured to keep a bit of tension is that event cards play after every turn, causing slight chaos within the group as they have to try and fix any problems that might happen because of them.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Sounds fun! How far along are you in the design?

[@SnowFoxDiver]

@@NewBoardGameDesign trying to make some physical objects for testing the mechanics, now that I have a basic foundation for how the game should work, going to try and see if the ideas that I have put together click or just crumble

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Good luck!

[@xandermichael78]

I like the idea of shared bag building. I might add something sweet to the bag, but then you might be the one to find it! If you wanted to make sure that everything got discovered (ie you have 14 hexes with forest, so you only want 14 tiles drawn from the bag) every time you add a tile to the bag, you first have to randomly remove a tile. This could be done in two ways, firstly that you must remove the tile drawn, or secondly you then have to choose about keeping the drawn tile or replacing it with the new tile. I think the second way works better because then there is less luck involved in what goes in the bag.

[@dirkkors5387]

Ive got an idea for one of the cards. You could make a card that says: your compas has been acting up. Roll 2 dice of a symvol to find the magnets in your pocket and get rid of them. If you dont succed lose a turn.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks for the suggestion, dirk! I like the idea of playing around with the compass mechanics, but I’ve been warned to avoid forcing players to miss their turns. The f there’s another way to penalize players without creating downtime, that might be a better option. Your ideas are always welcome though. Keep them coming!

[@danieldesignsgames4383]

Amazing video Jesse! Your game looks like it is coming along well! You are able to articulate the process and ideas your working through easily. I wonder though if you could provide more content on the actual making of the prototype pieces. It seems like everyone design these days has background or skill in graphic design. As someone with little to no experience in graphic design or even drawing I marvel at other people prototypes. I often wonder “how did they ‘think’ to do that”. Given the quality of your graphic design, videography and drawing I feel you could shed a great deal of insight on that topic!

[@LordoftheBoard]

Yssssss I didn’t realize this posted! Watching now!

[@erlijne8330]

if players get to put stuff into the bags, they should be allowed to put some of the contents out of play to keep the luck factor from getting too much. like in Fort or The Quest for El Dorado (deck builder) where you can destroy cards to get a higher chance of drawing the good ones. you might also want to put a limit to the number of tokens in a bag, so players might want to add something but can only take a destroy action and hope they can add something in the next turn? might be a bit too disruptive though.

[@erlijne8330]

(this might be stupidly obvious. if so: I'm sorry for stating the obvious! no game design material here 😅)

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Haha, no worries! I agree that the bags definitely have a limit to how much can be in them any time. But if players are able to get better at “exploring” then they may be able to draw more and more content from the bag as the game goes on (increasing their chance of finding any single token). Definitely a give and take. The randomness is what I’m fighting against right now. Thanks foe your thoughts! They’re always welcome.

[@jeromedemeyere1002]

Great work!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks!

[@ocemgencer]

great video again! i had a similar dead-end, lasted quite a long time (about a year). but in this time, i simply played around with all the side-mechanics, which act like various numerical displays for stats & states of the player. i played also with the randomness idea at begin, drawing from a pile of event-cards (as in terraforming mars). but, it didnt clicked, it was only a mediocre way to push things. so i moved over to removing the luck totally, leaving all choices to the players by giving them actions to affect things. and then it clicked totally! they have the whole freedom to do things. but actually it isnt a freedom at all (philosophically critical thinking: all options lead only to one option, to let THEM do things and give them a sense of freedom). this idea is quite much rooted in philosophy, sociology, game theory etc. let me rephrase it this way: ANY possibility always needs something opposing. if you want to give freedom, you have to take it away first (e.g. creating rules is one way of giving a gameplay border). if you have that border in tact, you can leave it up to them. let THEM think they are free to act. using the di(c)e-randomness generator and this idea.... to use a dice with 'uncontrollable and not preferrable output, you had to be in a very restricting situation, such as usage of the dice in frp games for combat. there is an ongoing combat scene and it can result in this or that or any other predeteremined way. a combat will result 19 of 20 times with some damage. the dice only acts as a small attribute to the combat act. anyway... maybe talked too much. but when i gave the palyers the whole choice, it became the main engine of the whole dynamic within my game. i used the idea of rondel, but changed it to my theme as well. i am now thinkig how i can restrict players more in ways to funnel their choices...

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks for the thorough comment, Cem! Yea, I agree that player choice is where the sense of “freedom” comes from, but limitations ultimately make the choices interesting. I’ll think more about your suggestion of player choices being the engine to the gameplay. Thanks again!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

We’re you able to finish your game? How’s it going?

[@ocemgencer]

NewBoardGameDesign quite much has been finished. still thinking to add 1-2 side mechanics according to my specific theme. i am thinking the variety of actions and try to distribute them to different parts of the game.

[@jacobcain8203]

I really love watching this, it inspired me to make my own game!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

You got this!

[@mauriciogerhardt3209]

There's a lewis and clark board game that reminds me of this

[@jtpromolab]

I don't know if you have ever been to Mammoth Cave National park, but underground trails could be an interesting twist. Dunno how that would fit in....maybe a future expansion 😁

[@chiquitafajita]

using drawbags that you can add events/encounters to is such a cool idea! :) that would be so fun to apply to hexcrawls in general!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

That’s what I’m hoping! However, I’m trying my best to make the gameplay itself fun. The idea may be exciting, but it all comes down to the gameplay.

[@Tysto]

“Unfortunately, everything is waiting for the core gameplay to come together…” If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.

[@newadventuresingaming]

This is really a great series. I was watched your first design video and really liked where you were going. This one just added to that. I did have one thought - that may have already been shared - but it was around the weather changes that you spoke about in the first video. It looked like that was on a track so you would know what is coming up next. Have you thought about randomizing that? When you talked about bag building I thought that mechanic would make it easy to randomize the weather of the day this way players don’t know what to expect. Keep up the outstanding work and again I’m really looking forward to following the channel!

[@Gabriel-rb3cl]

Hi Jesse, nice to see you're healthy and posting again :D Watching them is making me having this itch to report my process too. I'm currently developing a board game called Lunch Break (my profile pic) and I'm inspired by your videos to keep ongoing. I'm also in the prototyping and iterating phase, trying to find the meaningful/joyful experience that locks altogether.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks for watching, GameDev! You should definitely start posting your own content. It’s helpful to process things out loud and over video, but the viewers are often helpful in pitching ideas or directions to consider. I’m using the platform to learn. You could too!

[@seangrady9542]

Your vids are inspiring. Keep em coming!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks Sean! It means a lot.

[@jnorlin-5502]

I am a big fan of the idéa that player can help eachother out during the game. I get it, it is not a co-op game, but when i have been traveling, alot of the fun is to meet new people. I dont think you should "force" the players to get together, but i like the idéa that players can in if they choose to, be able to travel together. I dont know if this can count against a goal of the game, but it would be cool to have the option. *Items: *Walkie talkie, ofc.. *Flashlight - make it so you can read a book, or play a game during nighttime - gains some extra advantages during day (you dont need to read the "flora and fauna book" during the day = spares time) *Different kind of books - Flora and fauna of specifik tile-regions; History of the specifik villages that you can encounter (if you are at a specific village, and have the right history you can speak with the villagers more easy); Languagebooks (in the beginning each player can choose what language they know, but during the gameplay they can buy more books to learn more languages, which gives advantages when encountering villagers, and ancient scripts. You might also need to know the other players language to be able to interact with them. *Maps.. Make it easier to travel, if you get a map from another player, you are able to visit "their tiles" - Maybe as a player discovers a tile they put 2-4 colored dots on the tile corresponding to each player. If you are next to a tile you can remove your dot (you have discovered it yourself) or, you can get a map from a player that have already discovered it, so you can travel long distances without removing a dot.. Hope this gives some ideas! Love the work, and ill be more than glad to buy the game when it is finnished! Here is another bag-game, it is about probability. Don´t know if thats what you are after, but it might give some ideas about the bag-mechanic. www.theboardgamefamily.com/2014/01/steam-park-board-game-review/

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks so much for he comment and suggestions, J! I really like your idea about placing player cubes on tiles until they discover the area themselves. That could work well for the development of the characters and possibly make the exploration action not feel like a race to scoop up more tiles. Great suggestion!

[@ralphking117]

I think most board game mechanics that employ action/event cards and /or dice to determine outcomes or open new pathways etc always present a problem to the designer about where to focus on the explore/exploit spectrum. Too much exploring(randomness essentially) is reactive and can get dull very quickly. At the other end of the spectrum, exploitation can lead to the game being less realistic and more abstract. The trick I think is to allow the players to mix these decision making mechanics together. Players should get to choose what they know based on what outcomes they've experienced earlier in the game like the learned knowledge from how they have travelled through the landscape (maybe pattern recognition of some kind?) with some certainty of getting close to what you expect (‘exploit’) or alternatively choose something they aren’t sure about (and possibly learn more (‘explore’). Bag building would edge the game towards the explore end of the spectrum, which I think is what you are after and indeed the theme of the game. In real life, we often have this dilemma, play safe or take a risk, and a board game that teaches us something about ourselves when we play it would be a winner.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Yea, you have a great point. I’m already recognizing how I need to counter the randomness of exploration (randomized hex tiles and drawing from a bag) with LOTS of player decisions that directly impact the game. I would hate to make a game where the players have too little input in their own destiny. That’s why I agree that allowing players to “build” the world and giving them precise control over their character growth would be a better balance to the game. Great point! That actually helped me put words to the thoughts I already had. Thanks!!

[@_spoosh]

Very nice!! Love to see the changes that have been made. The update to the board size makes a lot of sense, especially if you're attempting to direct the game to a smaller group of players. Would it be possible to allow for a secondary board size if there are more players, similar to the multiple board rules of games like Secret Hitler? This may help keep the game sized appropriately regardless of group size (to a certain limit, of course).

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Absolutely! If the game can accommodate 5-6 players, I’m all for having a double sided board with a larger hex board.

[@nicksims2827]

Scalable board size is a great idea. You could also keep 1 board - just size it to the larger player count and have a ring of blank tiles for smaller counts (reference Small World for board:player count too)

[@rylantaylor2913]

finally after 3 monthsssss lmao 🤣🤣

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

About time, huh?! 😅

[@LievenDV]

In my design, I al going through a very similar stage; digging into mechanics to gather inspiration to find the curb I need to twist to get a good direction again. I ended up with deckbuilding and bagbuilding as well. Bags don't need to get shuffled which is a plus and add a more physical experience than decks. Yet my game is a lot about cards and assiging dice to them to do actions so for me it will be more of a personal decks + locations decks...kinda like your terrain bags. Funny to see how you are (a step further) with a similar step in the evolution. Your idea makes you work with "fuzzy" forks of probabilities which seem cooler than the mathy games where you could AP quick. with your bags where people have a notion of what's in it but can't really remember the probabilities, they are more likely to become...adventerous. There, I said it. I like your progress; congrats on your persistence. Keep us updated!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks for watching, Lieven! I appreciate the encouragement. I’m just stumbling around trying to find something that works. I agree about bag building - they help with the quick randomized adventures, which i think can work. However, the bags REALLY only simulate a “search” mechanic. I’m currently brainstorming resolution mechanics - like what will players do when they encounter a challenge or skill check? Will they roll dice? Will they play cards? Idk 🤷‍♂️

[@LievenDV]

@@NewBoardGameDesign yeah you want them to still feel clever and have meaningful decisions while you retain an elegant random factor. Don’t worry that this takes time. I’m rather new to design as well while I was less critical for myself as a kid designing games :) coming up with impromptu game mechanics with my kids is a refreshing and inspiring thing to stay motivated and sharp for me. I dwell between crawler and a 4x’y map concept with unique missions and abilities but I grant myself patience to try and theory craft. It seems to me you are also in this with a strong “the trip is the destination” feeling (how meta, considering your game theme ;)) love your approach and editing style btw. There aren’t much good video’s out there that make viewers sympathize with the hard, slow, frustrating phases and that’s what we, designers, need more: confirmation that we all sweat! :D love that about your video’s

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

That’s exactly what I’m going for. So I’m glad you’re finding value from the edited videos and my design diaries. The channel is also helping me become a better designer by allowing me to chat with folks like you. So thanks for the engagement and encouragement!

[@Quackalope]

Hey you - do more content :) less edited.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks man! I get it. More videos = more content for people to view. Working on the efficiency of it all.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Ahhhhh... now that I’m watching this video again after several days since posting, I see how it’s over edited. Thanks for the feedback, Jesse! This was an important lesson for me to learn and I now feel like a better content creator. Cheers! 🍻

[@Quackalope]

@@NewBoardGameDesign Nah, not over edited - I want you to make more content. Editing is slowing you down.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Honestly, what’s slowing me down is my desire to become a better designer. I don’t want to make a lot of design content without knowing what I’m talking about. Just trying to put in the necessary hours to level up my design skills before posting. Either way, I hear you!

[@Quackalope]

@@NewBoardGameDesign You have custom tiles, dice, cut out cardboard bits, you are taking items from other games, and learning everything as you grow. Don't claim to be a expert - I don't want to watch a expert. I want to watch you as you learn, experiment, screw up, and find solutions. Just document!

[@alessiobelli]

Bag building is actually a very cool mechanism. My only concern is: "what if I discover something that i'm putting in the bag and the next player is going to draw it?" Maybe that's a problem, because I would like to find that thing I added! I love the story system in "The King's dilemma" where everything you discover in game is added to the event deck and you may draw later in the game, very fun. Good Luck!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Good thought. Those are scenarios I would like to avoid. Most things added to the bag need to make sense for ALL players to encounter.

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Also, thanks for the Kings Dilemma suggestion. I’ll be checking that out

[@sventheultimate]

@@NewBoardGameDesign Maybe you could have personal bags for the players, as well as a big shared bag. So sometimes you would draw a tile from the big shared bag that just says "draw a tile from personal bag". The personal bags could have some randomly distributed starting events from setup, and later on events get added that are specific to your player's story. So sometimes you would add new events to the shared bag like "Animal footprints found in the mud" adds "Bear sighting". (So anyone could find this.) Or you would get a personal event into your bag "Strange diary found in a cave" adds "You encounter crypting writings on the wall of another cave, similar to the glyphs in the diary". (Only you can find this, because you possess the diary.)

[@haydengray2315]

First!

[@Wolcik3000]

there are empty dice in all K-sizes and different colours to buy

[@Ping54]

I'm assuming life has gotten to busy or you lost interest but have you been designing this game still? Found your channel about a week ago and have loved going through all your videos.

[@HereticalGeek]

Looks really great! I'd stray from using the word "Gypsy" though, just a thought

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks for that reminder because i truly don’t want to offend anyone. I didn’t think of the use of that word being inappropriate, so I’m glad you said something. I will not be using that term anymore.

[@HereticalGeek]

@@NewBoardGameDesign No worries, its important to spread awareness! Your videos actually inspired me to set my New Year's goal of one playable prototype each month of 2021, so thanks for the extra workload :P

[@riseofthesage1021]

What game did you get your prop from? Or did you make it yourself. By prop i mean the player, building and other components.

[@GloryToGodOurSaviour]

Where did you get the pieces made? Did I miss this

[@georgegoldie7007]

Just finding your videos now but doesn't seem like uploads have continued the past few years :( what happened?

[@Arachdrakon]

I'm really enjoying your videos and I'm impressed by the quality of both your vids and the game so far! :D I've recently started to develop a strategy board game (building, trading, fighting) on a map with hexagon tiles myself. My hexagons are much smaller than yours (about 1.5 cm in diameter) and they show stylized symbols of the respective terrain type (e. g. grassland, mountain, river, forest, etc.) Do you maybe have an idea what I could do, so that they can't easily be moved anymore once placed? At the moment it's still impossible to move over the tiles because they slip away once touched. Maybe you or someone who reads this comment has a suggestion ... :) Wish you all the best!

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Thanks so much for the compliment! And congrats on your own design journey. 1.5 centimeters sounds quite small, unless those hex tiles are strictly being managed by 1 player (for example, on a player mat). I’ve actually had to consider the size of my tiles and about to make them larger to assist with legibility and interactivity. Up to you, though. If there’s a way to make tiles heavier (metal or resin) for the final published design, that might be best for your issue. Otherwise, you could possibly use an inset border ( like in the game Calico). The outer edges could keep your tiles held in place as more and more tiles get placed.

[@Arachdrakon]

@@NewBoardGameDesign Thanks a lot for your answer! I’ve actually doubled the size to 3 cm now and I might use a magnetic foil for the prototype. One of my goals is to offer the players the opportunity to create their map together, and once placed, the hex tiles aren’t meant to be moved anymore until the game is over. The players are meant to place their pieces on the map, so the map can’t move, but has to stay put for quite a stretch of time. Anyways, I’ve subscribed and I can’t wait to see more of your journey. :)

[@NewBoardGameDesign]

Sounds fun! Good luck with your game!

[@Wolcik3000]

can players block one another while placing tiles in order to achive their own victory - how you play this it seems that everyone is trying to place the titles correctly There will be games when someone feels so behind that the only winning strategy is to play a dick move.