Game Design and Creating a Board Game

We recently had a guest speaker at university called Ian who came to talk to us about his love of board games and tabletop RPGs. Ian currently works on Dungeons and Dragons guides but is curious about what the next generation of tabletop RPGs will bring, perhaps diceless games or other new styles. Firstly though he gave us a brief history of table top games.

Apparently table top games originated from Prussian military simulations in the 1800s. These simulations involved moving figurines resembling soldiers to different locations to test out battle strategies. This idea was popularised further in the 1950s and 60s with the release of H.G.Wells' Little Wars.

In the 1970s Dungeons and Dragons was released. This game proved to be a lot more popular then Little Wars because of its fantasy elements, immersion and character progression; starting as a weak character and turning into an epic hero. Ian loved this concept and also loved how the games were open ended, where there were no limits and you could imagine anything you wanted and make it part of your story. He also stated his interest in the idea of winning by losing which is where your character may die saving the other players - so although you have lost the game you have died a hero and won.

Ian gave us an assignment in which we had to create our own board game. There were only a couple of rules that had to be incorporated, one was that the game had to be a multi-player where players had to race to the finish, and the other was that the game couldn't just rely on chance, the players had to have some sort of choice - either setting other players back or helping themselves through clever thinking.

Originally i came up with a game for four to six people, with each player controlling a character with unique skills. This idea evolved into each character having a different class e.g ranger and warrior. These classes would allow players to do certain abilities like the ranger being able to attack players far away from them - this would have fit the brief by not letting the game be decided by chance however this idea proved to be very difficult to even make a prototype of and so i decided to scrap the idea and start again.

I decided to stick with a fantasy theme but this time experimented with a map with a lot of different pathways where players could choose which path to take which could help or hinder them. This also wouldn't leave the game entirely to chance. However, this idea was quickly rejected as it become clear which pathways were more beneficial to take very quickly.

I decided to simplify my idea and aimed to let chance cards shape how the game played out. Although these cards were called chance cards, many of the cards let the player make choices that could help benefit them and put other players at a disadvantage. I simplified my map and my idea and created a prototype of my game with these new cards.

The final prototype before i made the real thing

These were my cards and tokens needed to play the game, the eight different coloured tokens are what the player is aiming to collect to win the game, whilst the cards dictate what happens. After testing the game it proved to be highly successful and very fun. A few times players who were about to win were thrown back into the game as another player received a helpful chance card and targeted them. I will add pictures of the game when i go back home and can use an A3 scanner.

I think my project was a big success as not only did my game fit the brief by being a race to the finish and mildy strategical game, but it was also very fun, with players wanting to play up to four games in a row. This project was also very fun to do and demanded a lot of creativity and thought which was a good challenge.