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I ground through and edited about 30 pages of a 64 page rule set. Goodness editing is a chore.

I also poked around on a concept and core mechanics to keep me from losing my mind on editing.

Worked on a few army lists for Wars of the Roman Republic.

Today I tried to reconcile my accounts. Running a game design business isn't all rolling dice and painting minis.

Sent drafts to a couple of people to read, edit, and help me clarify the rules.

Struggling through being sick for a few weeks, but I did get a page full of stuff to edit/review/fix from my last playtest. Starting to open those files and look at fixes.

Also doing up a temporary work sheet since I'll be giving my newer game its first public outing this weekend at a convention nearby.

Like Precinct Omega- I had to spend the day working on the business side for Tax prep.

Yesterday I sorted 500 transparent bingo chips into separate bags by colour. As it turns out, 500 isn't that much, as it looks like I'll need ~40 per four-player set.

Trying - and failing - to come up with a solution for a "fail forward" mechanism for my skirmish game.

The rest of the core rules are basically done at this point, but all I need now is to get this concept working!

Got all my taxes for my little LLC filed. Haven't done much otherwise on any development work this year, though, sadly. Just a bunch of small eBay sales and minor royalties from DriveThru.

Hopefully this year I can get more done on a few projects, including getting another card game or two into POD and get more artwork commissioned for my big project, as well as some model-agnostic rule sets I've been toying with.

Yesterday, the dungeon crawler got its first public outing...so that was cool. Good responses, and the players had fun - that's all that matters to me.

Did some copy-editing the other day; it's amazing how many errors can creep in when you're mocking up cards. I think I need to learn how to do a mail merge with Visio.

 Elbows wrote:
Yesterday, the dungeon crawler got its first public outing...so that was cool. Good responses, and the players had fun - that's all that matters to me.

Spoiler:

Ha! I see the name of your company is a clever play on your name. Nice! It looks really impressive on the table.

I did NOTHING for the weekend on game design!

Thanks, I wanted to build a bit sexier/interesting dungeon but I was tired and rushed...so it ended up being a little "meh" for my tastes. However, the playtests went great, everyone seemed to have fun - can't complain. Now all the fixing...

What I really need to work on is figuring out how to produce some play-test copies without breaking the bank, that I can send out around the world for people to try/keep.

Nurglitch wrote:
What I really need to work on is figuring out how to produce some play-test copies without breaking the bank, that I can send out around the world for people to try/keep.

If you're needing cards to be printed out, DriveThruCards is actually pretty reasonable and doesn't have a minimum run. I've used them for printing out playtest versions of various stuff, as well as eventually going full Print-On-Demand offering for sales.

 Valander wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
What I really need to work on is figuring out how to produce some play-test copies without breaking the bank, that I can send out around the world for people to try/keep.

If you're needing cards to be printed out, DriveThruCards is actually pretty reasonable and doesn't have a minimum run. I've used them for printing out playtest versions of various stuff, as well as eventually going full Print-On-Demand offering for sales.

That's a good idea that I'm going to bookmark. The problem being the card has more components than just cards. Currently I need the following printed out: Cards, a board, building section stickers, a box, and a rulebook. Non-printed components would include 2" Meeples, 1" cubes, and transparent bingo markers. I'm uncertain about spreading what people need across so many vendors, you know? It would be easier to find a single source.

Nurglitch wrote:

 Valander wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
What I really need to work on is figuring out how to produce some play-test copies without breaking the bank, that I can send out around the world for people to try/keep.

If you're needing cards to be printed out, DriveThruCards is actually pretty reasonable and doesn't have a minimum run. I've used them for printing out playtest versions of various stuff, as well as eventually going full Print-On-Demand offering for sales.

That's a good idea that I'm going to bookmark. The problem being the card has more components than just cards. Currently I need the following printed out: Cards, a board, building section stickers, a box, and a rulebook. Non-printed components would include 2" Meeples, 1" cubes, and transparent bingo markers. I'm uncertain about spreading what people need across so many vendors, you know? It would be easier to find a single source.

Gotcha. Game Crafter might be an option for you, then, since they can do most, if not all that.

Sending playtesting copies is expensive and frustrating...especially if you're a single-man hobbyist like myself. I sent off two copies of SnS before more or less giving up. Sent both to large YouTube reviewers/gamers out of the US, and international shipping is expensive for US based companies. One of the guys at least responded and let me know he'd received it, but neither ever bothered to mention/discuss/try the game, etc. In retrospect I don't believe either of these reviewers were that interested in indie game designers. In both these instances I paid maybe $40 a pop to buy/ship the test item for zero result/feedback.

As I do my stuff print-to-order (don't have the money/time/space to start a proper shop or warehouse several hundred copies of my game), it's about the same cost for me as a normal customer.

PS: As mentioned above TheGameCrafter.com does most if not all of those things - but as the components pile up, so does the cost. You definitely pay for the convenience of single or tiny product runs...but it's a great solution, particularly for playtesting.

I was looking at the TheGameCrafter, and an outfit called BoardGameMaker who likewise do short runs. I think I need to get a quote from the latter, as places like that will often do things that aren't on their site, like the 1" cubes Titanomachina would need. I mean, in theory it could work with smaller cubes, but after a certain size these things get very difficult to actually use in play.

Still recovering from a minor illness which has sapped my willingness to paint/properly hobby, I'm slowly going through every existing card (over 300!) and editing with a style manual approach - making sure all of the cards read in a similar tone, with the proper terminology. Verifying timing during phases, basic grammar, removing "Your" and "You" and replacing with "This Hero", etc. Trying to make it all consistent to avoid any misunderstanding from players. Just massaging stuff basically.

Also inventing the last 11 cards, swapping out some Legendary encounters for normal ones, changing up the Elf's starting trait and abilities, etc. etc.

I published a quick MvM Fantasy Skirmish Game on the Wargame Vault as a palette cleanser for myself.


https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/03/wargame-design-rampant-swords-fantasy.html

If you just want a copy then you can check out my blog or my Wargame Vault page-
https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/11064/Blood-and-Spectacles-Publishing?term=blood+and

After seeing what I did with Godzilla, making a Titan Dashboard and Deck for it, my eldest asked me to do it with another Universal Studios Titan, and I figured "Ghidorah"

Some boring editing and business paperwork stuff.

I went back to my initial design document and see that I want to restructure the rules lay-out for the Wars of the Republic game. This means I will probably have to go do some more research that I am putting off doing.

Final 4 days for my baby on KS - lots of freebies included so that has kept me busy.

REALM LORDS - For castle and country!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mdsw/realm-lords-for-castle-and-country

My Godzilla mini-figures came in yesterday, and thankfully it was two Heisei-era Godzilla figs and one female MUTO. So today I whipped up a MUTO Titan dashboard and made a specialized systems, the EMP Pulse, Eye Pit, and Eggs. The Eye Pit is essentially just Sensors, but the Eggs are a Range 1 system that increases the value of the MUTO's building sections, and the EMP Pulse is an omni-directional Shock and Shield Breaker (2) weapon.

I sent the current draft of the Wars of the Republic onto my actual editor to review.

Then I turned to start working on re-organizing the rules for my next book.

Thanks to current coronavirus lockdown here in Poland I’ve finally been able to playtest my ruleset for the first time, and to my satisfaction it’s working as intended. Only minor tweaks were needed here and there, but overall it has proven to be easily understandable to new player.

I am currently working through some rules for my game. I had shelved it for a while, and after re-reading it, realised that I had blown it into a larger and much more complex game than I had wanted it to be - even as the designer, it intimidated me to read the rules!
So I've listed out the key aspects of what I wanted the game to be, and I am re-writing the core rules to cut out all the unnecessary crap that I had added in!

I'm now feeling a bit more motivation to get it done, where I had been feeling like it was too large of a task before.

 some bloke wrote:
I am currently working through some rules for my game. I had shelved it for a while, and after re-reading it, realised that I had blown it into a larger and much more complex game than I had wanted it to be - even as the designer, it intimidated me to read the rules!
So I've listed out the key aspects of what I wanted the game to be, and I am re-writing the core rules to cut out all the unnecessary crap that I had added in!

I'm now feeling a bit more motivation to get it done, where I had been feeling like it was too large of a task before.

A common issue! I am glad you are back at it.

What did I do you ask? NOTHING!