| Title | : | The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1936781042 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781936781041 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 138 |
| Publication | : | First published September 4, 2011 |
The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design Reviews
-
Welcome, brave reader, to your own intrepid boardgame design adventure-in-a-book-review: The Perilous Path to Publishing Your Own Game!
You are an aspiring board game designer. You dream of creating a great boardgame to rival Catan, Scrabble or Codenames- games that have fervent fans and sell masses of copies.
Many have failed before you, plunging to their financial deaths from the sheer cliffs of bad game mechanics, lost in the tempestuous seas of mediocre design, or devoured by the fearsome Dragon of Poor Sales.
As you progress through your quest you will need to roll a die to determine your actions on each page, using the number you roll to select the outcome of each scenario. Add +1 to your die roll for each chapter of the The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design that you have read.
Page One:
You are sitting at your desk one afternoon when inspiration strikes - you have an idea for a guaranteed million-seller boardgame! Roll a die for a perception test and take the relevant action:
1: You are too focused on your great idea to take any notice of your surroundings. Using the tools at hand you design and self-publish your unique boardgame Airport Bomber, complete with maps of real life airports. Sadly your masterpiece catches the eye of Homeland Security! You spend the next fifteen years hiding in a mountain cabin playing solitaire.
2-4 You send draft copies of your re-design of a classic game - working title ‘Monopoly: Soviet Moscow’ - to every game publisher in the United States. Months tick by, and you hear nothing. You send another copy. And another. And another. You visit each company and hand deliver another copy. Wizards of the Coast take out a restraining order against you.
5-6: You have an interesting game idea, but before you even draft it up you notice the edge of a book poking out from underneath your desk. On closer inspection you discover it is The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design and you start reading. Advance to page 2!
Page Two:
Sitting in the late afternoon sun at your desk you read the first chapter of The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design and your raw inspiration begins to harden into an exciting new idea. You are tempted to start designing a new game immediately and must roll a die for a willpower check, choosing from the options below.
1: You cast the book aside and redesign Risk into a multi-player farming simulator where the nations of the world battle for supremacy in the hyper-competitive raw carrot market! You self publish the game and are soon wallpapering your house with cease and desist letters from Hasbro.
2-4: Remembering some of what you read you design a new game of astonishing complexity, based on nineteenth century New Zealand politics. The rule book is seventy pages long, but you are sure that I Know Why the Caged Kiwi Sings will be a massive hit. You release it to the market and the game soon finds a hard-core fanbase of two people - your parents.
5-6: Taking the lessons of the first chapters to heart, you resolve to read on and learn as much as you can. Advance to page three.
Page Three:
You read on into the evening, making notes and marking pages for future reference. You reach the end of the book and must decide on your next course of action. Roll a die for a wisdom check.
1: You realise that your idea for a game based on Moby Dick (with airships) isn't ready for prime time. You resolve to continue prototyping and playtesting your game until it is good enough to be published.
2-4 You thoroughly playtest, edit and re-design a game set in a futuristic 25th century Ohio, getting great feedback from everyone who plays it. You produce a great prototype and know that it's ready for submission. You send Midwest Mania to two publishers who specialise in games like yours and one responds positively. You're on your way to being a paid game designer!
5-6: Using the wisdom you've gained from reading The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design you design a ground-breaking new game that combines elements of Risk, Monopoly and the life cycle of the Puffer fish. You outsell every other game on the market and retire to a reproduction Scottish castle on your own personal island.
The End.
Postscript: If you have any aspirations towards game design, read this book. It will save you a world of pain and make your games far, far better. -
A great collection of essays on the art and craftsmanship of board game design. If this is something you want to take on as an amateur, you need to read this. It's packed full of relevant and useful advice. Even if you've already heard everything these industry pros have to tell you, it's worth reviewing. Each of the authors (save one*) writes with passion and expertise about their subject.
While reading this book, I frequently found myself looking around the room, asking, "Geez, where'd I'd leave a pen?" so I could highlight or underline something. Usually I didn't find it; I suppose that means I'll just need to review its contents as I continue through my own game design and development process.
* Except Steve Jackson. His essay is caustic, mean spirited, and actively discourages me from buying stuff with his name in the future. -
This is a highly-recommended starter book for people with no background in designing games but have already play an amount of games. What I like about this one is that the book sets a clear line among being a game player, being a game critic and being a game designer.
Though it doesn't provide any in-depth of game designing methods or materials or tools or anything in-depth at all, the book contains a very general view on game designing as a whole: the designer's feelings, the goal of a designer, what a game should be under each person's perspective and some small but helpful tips for reviewing your games.
Will recommend for any game-design starters so that they grab some general idea of the work in the field. -
1) ["The Game is Not the Rules," by James Ernest]
"Now ask yourself, why do I like the games I like? And what kind of emotions do I want to create in my players? Forget about starting with your favorite game mechanic, or your favorite theme. Start with a concise expression of how you want your players to feel. And 'I want them to have fun' doesn’t cut it. There are different kinds of fun.
There is nothing compelling about game mechanics. There is something compelling about games. Games engage players on a gut level that they are barely aware of. As a designer, you must be aware of the real reasons that people will want to play your games, even if they will never notice it themselves."
2) ["Design Intuitively," by Rob Daviau]
"Rules shouldn’t explain a game; they should only confirm what the rest of the game tells you.
That is, if your game makes intuitive sense from the moment players crack open the box, then you’ve done far more work toward people learning the game than you think.
Because tabletop games, unlike videogames, require every player to understand the entire game system to play. You need to understand not only the components, the goal, the rules, and the flow of play, but also how to assemble all these into a comprehensive strategy that will lead you to victory.
We’ve all played games that make no sense at all, where every rule fights another and the pieces seem like an afterthought. Don’t design one of those. Instead, design games that need the rulebook as little as possible.
If you are using the rulebook to fix an unintuitive game, you are making it very hard on your players to enjoy what you designed."
3) ["Strategy is Luck," by James Ernest]
"My actual thesis here is that 'strategy' and 'skill' are different, and the main difference between them is that strategy has a luck component, while 'skill' doesn’t. Understanding the roles of luck, strategy, and skill will help you design better games.
Here are the terms.
Luck: In games, 'luck' is not necessarily 'good luck' or 'bad luck.' It’s just something beyond your control. It’s a fork in the road, a random choice that might help you or hurt you. It might be a die roll, a card flip, or the actions of other players.
Strategy: 'Strategy' is the act of making plans and decisions during the game, given limited information.
Skill: 'Skill' is an aptitude for the game that you bring from the outside. Specifically, skill allows you to know the correct choice in a given situation."
4) [ibid.]
"'Creativity,' as [Bobby] Fischer suggests, is what makes games fun to play. Learning perfect strategy does not make a game more fun; it just makes it more likely that you will win."
5) ["Let's Make It Interesting: Designing Gambling Games," by James Ernest]
"'Killer Bunnies' is a story, not a contest. The point is to play the game, not to win it. The cards are funny. The interactions are funny. People are funny. Even the suspenseful counting-off of the losing carrots is funny. If players had to work at this game, they would not have time to enjoy it.
Believe it or not, most people seek out games as entertainment, not as a challenge. They play to escape, not to engage. They want to hang out with their friends, not to dominate them. And thinking too hard will wreck that groove.
Yes, I know it’s hard to swallow, but it really doesn’t matter who wins.
Obviously, if you ask a gambler 'Do you want to win?' he will say yes. But if you watch him, you will see that it really doesn’t make much difference. He plays until he runs out of money, or out of time. If losing actually mattered, he would do something else."
6) ["Amazing Errors in Prototyping," by Steve Jackson]
"The moral of the story -- All of this boils down to:
* A working prototype must include everything it actually takes to play the game.
* A working prototype must not include anything you have not tested thoroughly.
* A working prototype should be about gameplay. Don’t try to dictate the art or the marketing!
Above all, and summarizing everything else: A working prototype must be playable, legible, and user-friendly." -
Boardgame design is a long and windy process which definitely needs some guidelines like this book provides. But what I personally am into learning more about is mechanism design and there I was a bit let down content wise.
Some things were good in that respect though. I liked most the chapter "stealing the fun" by Dave Howell since it actually provided useful insight to guide mechanism design. -
Plenty of valuable advice through all steps of game design and development. Recommended!
-
Must read for all who want to design their own game.
Love the writing style and the humour, too.
Bonus: a lot of useful references inside. -
I have no intention of designing my own board games. I picked up this book from my library for entertainment reasons and gain some insight into how people design games.
The essays were entertaining, for the most part. Some authors were a little drier than others, but many struck right the humorous tone without being too comedic. You can tell these designers are familiar with writing well.
The most insightful essays, from my perspective, were the ones that focused on actual mechanics and game design. Unfortunately, many of the other essays were focused on other practical manners that an actual game designer would be interested in: creating prototypes, properly playtesting a game, working through development with a publisher, etc. Those topics fell flat for me since I was only interested in the game design items. And since less than half of the 20 essays dealt directly with game play design, I was personally disappointed. If you plan to develop and sell your game to a publisher, then this practical advice will likely serve you very well.
I was not familiar with many of the game designers, but I'm only just beginning to learn more names beyond heavy hitters like Richard Garfield, Alan Moon, Reiner Knizia, and Uwe Rosenberg. So the designers included in this book helped me expand that knowledge. -
This is a really great read and a book I might just have to buy (got it from the library). It's a collection of essays on all the various stages of creating a board game. I would have liked to get more in-depth about the creation. For example, how exactly do you go about creating "balance" in a game? Is it really just hit and miss that gets smoothed out in playtesting?
Some essayists are better than others but there's at least a nugget I got out of every one of the essays. Highly recommend to anyone who has considered creating a board game. This book will either encourage you or discourage you, but either way, you will learn a lot. -
کاش این کتاب به زبان فارسی موجود بود. من به زبان انگلیسی خوندم. ولی برای خیلی ها که به طراحی بازی رومیزی علاقه دارن ولی زبان انگلیسیشون خیلی قوی نیست یه جای خالی رو پر میکرد. کتاب خیلی خوبه. بعضی از مقاله ها عالین، کل فرایند طراحی بازی رو از ابتدا تا انتها توضیح میده. کتاب به صورت مجموعه مقالست و هر مقاله یه نویسنده و یه موضوع داره. ولی هر مقاله و موضوعش هوشمندانه انتخاب شده و یه روند پیشرفتی داره. اسامی مهمی بین نویسنده ها هست مثل استیو جکسون طراح بزرگ بازی.
-
Knowing that I was approaching a moment of intentional unemployment, I decided I needed a Ben Wyatt hobby to keep me busy and was gifted this book.
The expert advice articles can only be helpful if you’re actually in the process of building a game and have played many games (many Magic references went above my head). An interesting world that I hadn’t known much about before now. -
I would rate the core book 3/5, however the Polish appendix (unblocked via crowdfunding campaign) is a +1. The main part of the book is too general imho. I felt like I was listening to a "celebrity" life coach. Polish addition describes the board games industry in more details and with actual numbers, etc. It gives you a better idea how it looks like on this side of the ocean in Europe.
-
Much better than the cover suggests, at least. Definitely recommended if you’re interested in designing games or just understanding the process a bit better.
The essays are as brief as the book is slim — this is an approachable starting point.
However, it does lack elements like a references section that might have made this a more valuable selection of essays (admittedly a bit hit or miss). -
I enjoyed the book and I think I learned a lot but was inspired even more. Also very much intimidated about the idea of making a game now.
One really critical comment, the print in this book was way, way too small. If I had seen the book in a store before I bought it, I wouldn’t have bought it based on the size of the text. -
I am not really a big fan of these type of books. A bunch of short articles by some game designers focused either on some specific aspect of game design, or, being very general, not focused on anything and just describing an overview of the whole process. Some of the articles were interesting and good, but as a whole it doesn't hold up and is a bit of a waste.
-
There's some decent advice in here. But, since it's a series of essays, the book lacks cohesion and any larger messages that would more likely stay with me.
-
Great read full of good information. It might be a little outdated (for all I know), but it seems to me that the core concepts still ring true.
-
Awesome short consise essays expressing varying design ideas!
-
good roadnap for designing a game
-
Inspiring and humbling
I liked the range of topics covered and the frankness of the authors. I plan to come back to this book again and again over time as an aspiring game developer. -
There's a lot of good stuff in this book if you are an aspiring board game designer. Parts 1 and 2, Concepting and Design, are especially good and applicable in all situations. Parts 3 and 4, Development and Presentation are important as well, but a lot of it is only applicable if you plan on licensing your design to a publisher.
For me personally, the Concepting and Design chapters were mainly just a reinforcement of what I already knew from listening to a lot of game design and review podcasts, and playing a lot of games. It was still helpful to read, and there were a few new concepts. A lot of it reminded me about something I once read about art: great artists can break the rules and get away with it, but only because they already know the rules, and know why they are breaking them. These two chapters collectively explain many of the rules of game design. A game can break some of them and still be good, but a designer should be aware of when they're breaking them and be able to justify why.
The second half of the book started to get into new territory for me. I knew a bit about development going into it, but it went into more detail and was overall quite useful. The one exception was the article on playtesting which felt like it belonged in a completely different book. While its interesting to know what a company like Hasbro does in playtesting, and there's value in knowing that there's no way you can afford to do that, discussions that begin with the line "you'll need to budget between $5000 to $50,000 to go this route" pretty much told me I wasn't going to be going that route without having to read anything more about it.
I don't want to rant about it too much. I do appreciate greatly the use of actual numbers in the article. Still, I felt it was out of place in a book that seems primarily aimed at aspiring board game designers. The article felt like it should have been in a book titled "So, You're A Hasbro Executive Now."
The first part of the final chapter was possibly colored by my impression of the article on playtesting. The article on what not to do with prototypes came off sounding like "how dare these people that have no experience in the industry fail to understand the things we do every day." Hopefully now they will if they read the article, but still.
Things got back on track with the next article which also discussed prototyping. The article after that discussed pitching your game, and was nearly all completely new to me. It alone is probably worth the price of the book if you are trying to sell your game to a publisher. Then again, its honest discussion of the odds may just crush your spirit, so you may want to put off reading it until your game is already done. It's also an article that might not be as useful to as many aspiring designers as it used to be given the existence of Kickstarter.
The final article is one of the best in the book and in many ways is a summary of everything else that comes before it. While it is focused on the traditional "this is what happens when you sell your game to a publisher" model, it was still a great read, and most of it will be useful to all aspiring designers.
The biggest lack in the book was any discussion of self-publishing. While it was written before Kickstarter was a major player, self-publishing existed before that, and some of the authors are in fact self publishers, so some discussion of that area would have been appreciated.
It's still a recommended read for anyone thinking about designing a board game. -
Board games are a passion of mine, one that I've recently rekindled. I not only like to play board games, but I'm interested in their themes and mechanics. There seems to be a tremendous amount of innovation that is continually going on with board and card games. After playing a game, I'll often revisit the rules and spend some time thinking about what I would change to improve the experience. Occasionally I'll have my own ideas about what would make for an interesting game and have wondered what it would take to produce one.
I love this book for what it is, a small collection of essays regarding board game design. The essayists are a collection of famous designers, producers and names in the board game industry. The books is broken up into 4 sections: Concepting, Design, Development and Presentation; with each section having about 5 essays each. The information is practical, useful and insightful.
For anyone with the slightest interest in board game design, I'd recommend picking this book up. It is small (about 130 pages) and a quick read, but with enough different viewpoints and voices to keep all the topics they cover interesting. -
Čist fino branje, velik zanimivih idej in nasvetov in me to čist zanima zdj k sm se nad igrami navdušu in sm poln idej kaj bi lahko ble krasne teme za nove igre. heh
Edino na konc ko pišejo bl o izdajanju in previcah in produkciji in predstavljanju ideje in prototipov velikim firmam ki bi ti igro natisnle me kr mejčkeno stiska, mene je kr strah... kr se mi zdi preveliko... oz. se sam ne počutim zadost velikega da bi spravu kej to te stopnje... nevem
Js sm samo navdušen nad idejo da bi naredu kako igro, k bi dejansko delovala in bi lepo zgledala. V bistvu zlo velik razmišlam o tem kako bi igra zgledala in mi je blo zlo čudno k v celi knjigi skor vsi predvidevajo da ti bo nekdo drug naredu oz. da si bo celo firma kteri prodaš igro dobila ilustratorja ki jo bo oblikvou - in se mi zdi to čist čudno.
Men se zdi da bi blo čist fino bit ilustrator družabnih iger. -
A lovely collection of essays on board game design by some big names in the field. I don't plan on professionally publishing a board game anytime soon, but I'm interested in the creative process and how board games are designed. Plus it was cool to hear about how Dominion was tested. Most of the advice comes down to: test your game, change what doesn't work, and make the rules and pieces simple (or spare?) but interesting. Imagine if there were a collection of the best Gamasutra articles about game design, only for board games, and this is it.
As a sidenote, the graphic design of the book was really... 90s. It does give it a DIY-friendly feel, but I think it could have been much more attractive. Thanks to my sister for this fun gift!
