Episode 21 – Agony Board Gamers

2 Replies to “Episode 21 – Agony Board Gamers”

1. 

   RogerBW

   8 September 2020 at 4:06 pm

   Reply

   As far as components go, the thing that I’ve heard from several experienced designers is “make them basic” – handwritten scraps of paper in card sleeves, components taken from a game you’ll want to put them back into. If you go to the trouble of carefully laying out cards and 3d-printing pieces, you won’t be as willing to change things that aren’t working.

   I’ve blinged a few games, such as Colt Express (where I 3d-printed loot tokens, including some of my own design, to go with the printed meeples I got in a BGG trade), and my 3d-printed inlays for a couple of small-box games. However, the problem case for me is Quacks, where I played with the resin pieces (from BGG) and decided I didn’t want the game without them. Well, thanks to eBay I have the pieces… but I haven’t found the game itself at a good price yet.

   The proper way to store dice is in a Rolykit (photo of mine at https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/what-do-boardgamers-collect-dice/1070/11). Though for RPGs I’m plaing in regularly that get their own dice I’ve now started keeping them in their own box, for ease of picking up and taking to the Videoconference Room.

   One thing I really like to see in a rulebook for a complex game is a guide to components, and distinct names. “Give each player a reinforcement token”… OK, what does that look like?

   I’m the co-admin for my local board game meetup, and they’ve had a switch for a few months now saying “make this a virtual meeting” – once you say you’re going to turn up, you get the URL of the videoconference.

   In my experience the smelly people are also the people who are desperately socially awkward and easily insulted…

   For slow players: try explicitly realtime games? 🙂

   • 

     Oliver

     9 September 2020 at 9:05 am

     Reply

     Thank you for your comment, Roger. We really appreciate it.

     Your comment about “keeping it basic” when it comes to prototyping designs is very true. You don’t want to spend four hours printing, cutting, glueing and otherwise getting your game design to the table, when chances are you’re going to change it quite a bit, quite quickly and probably quite frequently. You want to be flexible with your design, until it has settled down a bit.

     Thank you also for sharing your experiences with 3D-printing tokens, inlays and other bits. As you found with Quacks, some games you don’t want to play with anything other than deluxe tokens or pieces.

     I like your Rolykit idea. It looks cool. Dice deserve to be treated respectfully. 😉

     Your point about explaining specific terms is a good one. Some games even come with a reference booklet, where all terms are described, often with illustrations. That’s also why I like rulebooks with illustrations so you can see what different tokens or cards or other items look like.

     It’s also great to hear how you have switched to virtual meetings for your MeetUp group. My games group is also now only meeting online, which works quite well, but of course isn’t the same as moving real tokens around the board and seeing players face-to-face.

     The issue with telling someone they “smell” is hard. I appreciate it can feel insulting to some.

     I like your idea of trying realtime games with slow players. However, chances are they hate those. I know my wife and I hate realtime games, so I guess it all depends.

     Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to comment on our episode. We hope you enjoy our podcast and will listen again when our next episode comes out – or even go through our back catalogue, if you haven’t done so already.