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Greetings Designers,

I was looking over my past output and came to an interesting conclusion. Each of my rules projects has taken between 2.5 to 3 years for me to complete and release into the wilds of the interweb. Typically, the Core rules seem to take me about 9 months, and fleshing out the forces about 9 months, scenarios about 9 months, and potential campaign play fills 3 months. Formatting/editing (HA!) take another 6 months. So about 36 months. i also tend to work primarily on a single project at a time, with a secondary project in the scoping phase/defining stage.

I am just a part time designer who is mostly just dickering around here and there. Granted, I don't try to make any money, do a poor editing job, and generally do not get to playtest it too much; but this is just something I do for fun. I only get to work on things a few hours a week.

So, out of curiosity how long do your little projects take from beginning to end?

My current "project" is yet unreleased and so far its almost 3 years, but it has spawned to 5 different projects as the scope has been refined and things fell apart and re-purposed into other projects.

Did mine in three weeks + 1 month of playtesting

At the end of this month, KOG light will be 6 months old, and still in progress. I could finish it, but other stuff comes up and I get distracted. It's not really that high of a priority, I guess.

On average about 8-10 months but can take as short as 6 months to as long as 1.5 years. That is mainly because I am working on multiple projects. When I'm at a point that I'm waiting for art, testing, etc I focus extra time on a different project so something is always progressing forward.

It really depends on what your end goal is though. Are you looking to get it published and picked up by a company or are you looking to release it yourself. It takes less time if I'm trying to get it published since I don't have to deal with artwork or major prototyping. I just need enough to show, play the concept. If you are self publishing, then it really depends on when you consider it "completed".

6 years, and dozens of spawn-offs and some rewrites for my project(s).

I started with an RPG based on sci-fi economics with as much real science as possible and from there am now working on a single-system multi-genre RPG series that will have a tie-together book and a generic, fully customizable, miniatures wargame(playable with whatever miniatures you have).

I can probably get the miniatures rules set and placed on the site for playtesting within the next 6 months(would be sooner but have lots of other responsibilities).

Been at it for 5-6 months now, mostly information gathering (a somewhat historial game) I put down the very basics, but time is mostly spend on thinking on how/what to do and redifining what I want to do (yeah, sorta winging it as I go along)

I also read up on other games that is closest to my concept, either to see if I'm not stealing by accident or just read to see if my idea has already been done (nothing yet!)

Funny... I started writing down my rule set about 2011... it is still coming along slowly.

Closing in on a year for KOG light. But it's getting there... So close!

My alternate to 40k game has been through the works since 2012, with much idea scrapping. My latest concept seems to be sticking in my head well, partly because I understand game mechanics and their purpose a lot better, and partly because I've ripped off a lot of other TT and video game mechanics to build my concept

With all that in mind, I reckon it'd be ready for playtesting this time next year. If it ends up being successful and liked here, I'll be motivated to add in other factions beyond the 4 or 5 I'd start with, add in every existing unit in the game and also add a few new units myself. That'd probably add another 2 years on, not including any fixes I'd need to make to keep the game balanced after people have playtested it.

Man it's a good thing I only work on it about once every two weeks

G.A

I have spit out quick projects in under a month, and have experimental stuff that will never be "done".

It depends on scale and detail desired. A simple project with limited forces for a single game doesn't usually take long, depending on how detailed you get (say a quick play Norse raiders v. Saxon village v. modeling the battle of Edington). Likewise, a one off game should be faster to design than an interlinked campaign based system.

I am finding that my small game of KOG light has been taking much longer than larger games that I've been mucking with, mostly because this is going to be my signature game, also because I'm trying to be ruthless with the editing, rather than just throwing crap in because electronic ink is free.

Yeah, editing can be a time sink, but it also on of the most important steps if you pain for anyone else to use it!

Being a writer I focus on the lore much more, and now that I finally have an idea I really like, I am starting to try and pay people to do the artwork.