F@#$ making a game part 1 cards and game board.

So those of you who don't know yet I am designing a game.  I'm not going to post specifics here on the blog, because tricksy little hobbitses are always after my precious.

Instead I am going to write about how the hell do you make a prototype game.

I've play tested games before, and the materials weren't very good.   Card stock just doesn't have the feel of playing cards, and your dice collection is a poor substitute for meeples.





The game has run through 3 prototypes now.

Prototype one was a disaster.  The board was hand cut and hand drawn from 22X28 card stock.  (10pt Carolina C1S for any print nerds out there.  no?  just me?)






Now, you may think your hand writing is bad, but I guarantee that mine looks like yours while riding on a bus.  Add to that I created some kind of short hand for game terms in my mind, and put those on the board without suitable explanations.  Whoops.

Next I attempted to make cards real playing cards.  I had catalog referencing what does what, like 2 of diamonds corresponds to such and such actions.  This was also awful.  It slowed the game way way down referencing every which thing.  A conundrum!

Which was solved by doing my taxes this year.  You can deduct crap for a hobby business.  Since I eventually want to sell my game I can spend money on prototype materials.  Huzzah!

I bought some print labels for the next game, and stuck these onto playing cards and that worked much better.  I printed the board on 13X19 Carolina C1S card stock and that was almost adequate.  Here's the problem.  There's no good way to carry  a 13X19 game board.  Sure you can fold it, but you still have a 13X9.5 rectangle which still doesn't fit into most folders.  You can tube it, but then it doesn't lay flat.  I think next try I am doing to print on 8.5X11 plain paper and mount on cardboard with spray adhesive.  Updates to follow.