Welcome, dear designer, to

The Designer’s Notebook 

Reference Guide. 
Handy resources and definitions
to help you build your board games.

 
Created by
Yann Burrett and Rick Davidson
As part of the GameDev.TV course,
“The Complete Board Game Developer”

(updated 12th September 2017)

Join us on the GameDev.TV community forums!

Join the conversation on our Discord!

Join the Steam group for Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia to help playtest
each other’s games!

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Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:

Tool #1: Victory Conditions

Elimination
Highest Score
Majority
Empty Hand
First to Finish
Capture Territory
N-In-A-Row
Destination
Capture the Flag
Special Conditions

Tool #2: Popular Board Game Mechanics

Tool #3: Rules

Layer 1: Structural Rules.
Layer 2: Setup.
Layer 3: Regular Play.
Layer 4: Exceptions.

Tool #4: The Player Experience

The Rick Method
The Yann Method
Some Example Player Experiences (and games to go with them)

Tool #5: Great Components

Dice
Cards
Cubes
Disks
Meeples
Pawns
Standees
Figurines
Sand Timers
String/Yarn
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Building Blocks
Edible Pieces
Bag
Dry Erase Pen
Sketch Pad & Pencil

Useful Resource:
Random Ideas for Board Games

Making Choices Interesting

Meaningful.
Informed.
Impactful.

The Three Circles of Feedback

Circle One - Close Friends
Circle Two - Other People
Circle Three - Blind Testing

Post-Playesting - Dealing with Feedback

Problem
Solution
Resolution
Check

Coming Up With Ideas

Evolve an Existing Game
Build off of a core mechanic
Mash Up
Playtesting Sessions
Real World Inspirations
Add tight Constraints
Random Generator

Steps to Minimise Feature Creep

Step One: Consider the New Thing in Isolation.
Step Two: Consider the New Thing in Context.

Probability in Games
Probability Basics
How to write probability.

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How to calculate the probability of X OR Y happening.

How to calculate the probability of X AND Y happening
Distributions
Probability groupings

Types of Asymmetry

Writing Your Rules Manual

Useful Resources:
Board Game Communities
Shut Up And Sit Down
Board Game Geek
Tabletop
The Dice Tower
Board Game Designers Forum
Board Game Design Lab
Stonemaier Games
Useful tools
Tabletop Simulator
Tabletopia
Game Crafter
Coalition Game Studios
Further Reading
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, 2nd Edition,
Challenges for Games Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers,
Kobold Guide to Board Game Design,
A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide.

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Tool #1: Victory Conditions 

Elimination
(Also “Last Player Standing” or “Player Elimination”)​ - Players win by removing all other
players from the game.
EG: ​Checkers/Draughts

Highest Score
(Also “Victory Point”)​ ​- Players win by having the highest score at the end of the game.
Some games represent score as money.
EG: ​Carcassonne

Majority
Players win by having the most pieces on the board at the end of the game
EG: ​Othello/Reversi

Empty Hand
Players win by being the first to play their last card.
EG: ​Uno

First to Finish
Players win by being the first to reach a specific point on the board. This is often at the
furthest point from where all the players start, but it can also be at the center.
EG: ​Snakes and Ladders/Chutes and Ladders

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Capture Territory
(Also “Area Control” or “Area Influence”)​- Players win by holding the most territory at
the end of the game. Typically, territory is controlled by having more pieces than any
other player in that area.
EG: ​Diplomacy

N-In-A-Row
Players win by connecting a certain amount of their pieces in a row.
EG: ​Connect Four

Destination
(“Also Reach Personal Objective”)​ -Similar to First To Finish, players win by being the first
to reach their destination, where every player has their own destination to reach.
EG: ​Chinese Checkers

Capture the Flag

Players win by capturing a specific piece on the board
EG: ​Stratego,​ C
​ hess

Special Conditions
Players win by fulfilling a combination of game-specific objectives.
​ ead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
EG: D

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Tool #2: Popular Board Game Mechanics 

Here is the list of board game mechanics from ​Board Game Geek
Acting Action / Movement Programming
Action Point Allowance System Area Control / Area Influence
Area Enclosure Area Movement
Area-Impulse Auction/Bidding
Betting/Wagering Campaign / Battle Card Driven
Card Drafting Chit-Pull System
Co-operative Play Commodity Speculation
Crayon Rail System Deck / Pool Building
Dice Rolling Grid Movement
Hand Management Hex-and-Counter
Line Drawing Memory
Modular Board Paper-and-Pencil
Partnerships Pattern Building
Pattern Recognition Pick-up and Deliver
Player Elimination Point to Point Movement
Press Your Luck Rock-Paper-Scissors
Role Playing Roll / Spin and Move
Route/Network Building Secret Unit Deployment
Set Collection Simulation
Simultaneous Action Selection Singing
Stock Holding Storytelling
Take That Tile Placement
Time Track Trading
Trick-taking Variable Phase Order
Variable Player Powers Voting
Worker Placement

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Tool #3: Rules 

If a mechanic is a description of what can happen in a game, a rule would be
the specific instructions on how to make that mechanic work. We can think
of rules as existing in four layers;

Layer 1: Structural Rules.

We can think of rules as having different layers. The top layer of rules tell players about the
structure of the game. The aim of the game, the victory condition, how player turns are
decided and what players do in what order on their turn. There’s not a lot of detail on this
level, but it describes the shape of the game.

Layer 2: Setup.
This layer deals with the state of the game at the start. How should the components be laid
out, what do players get, what decks need shuffling, where do players start on the board and so
on.

Layer 3: Regular Play.

What can we expect to happen each turn? What actions are permitted and how are the done?

Layer 4: Exceptions.
This layer describes unusual situations, or situations where two or more rules contradict each
other.

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Tool #4: The Player Experience 

We’re using a working definition of a game as “the experience the player has
while playing”. Here are some tips on how to build a game around that idea.

Some key questions to ask while coming up with your game:

● What is the game about?
● What do I do?
● How do I win?
From here, you have two methods to choose from.

The Rick Method

1. Player Experience
2. Mechanics
3. Theme

The Yann Method

1. Player Experience
2. Theme
3. Mechanics

Some Example Player Experiences (and games to go with them)

Designer James Mathe has a list of ​Games Designers Play​, which helpfully lists a bunch
of different player experiences (that he calls “catagories”) along with games that
exemplify them

   

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Tool #5: Great Components 

Dice
The perfect random number generator. Satisfying to hold and
throw, available in all kinds of sizes and materials and from
anywhere from 2 sided (a coin) to 100 sided. You can buy blank ones
that you can draw on with a sharpie if you want custom ones. You
can buy them cheaply in bulk online.
Dice aren’t just random number generators - they can be used as
counters (by turning them to the relevant side) or as blocks.

Cards
Easy to shuffle, fun to hold, extremely versatile. You
can do a lot with a standard deck of playing cards, but
blank ones are easily available (and easy to make too;
buy a cheap pack of index cards and cut them to size!).
Cards can be used to create random events, as
inventory items, to mark a player and all kinds of other
things.

Cubes
The perfect catch-all token, cubes often represent
goods and cargo. You could make them represent just
about anything though. Easy to stack, fun to play with
and easy to buy in bulk. These are most often made of
plastic or wood.

Disks
Exactly like cubes but a different shape. Disks can
represent anything from money to player pieces. Plus
you can roll them.

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Meeples
Popular in many modern games, the meeple usually
works as an avatar. It can also be used to represent
workers in a worker-placement game.

Pawns
Before the Meeple became popular, games would often ship
with pawns. Just like meeples, these are often used as avatars.
These usually feel old fashioned these days, but if you’re trying
to make an old-timey feeling game that’s perfect.

Standees
Standees are a great way to show
off character art in your game.
Simple card stock slotted into a
little stand is a great way to
represent players or non-player
characters.

Figurines
These small sculptures are three-dimensional representations
of players or non-player characters. Figurines come to us from
wargaming and were traditionally made from “white metal”.

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They’re more commonly made of plastic now. Part of the appeal is that figurines are usually
unpainted, and players can paint their own figurines.

Sand Timers
Great for when you want to add real time to a game, these
allow players to see time passing without telling them exactly
how much time is left. Great for situations where players either
have a certain amount of time to do something or a certain
amount of time to wait before they can act.

Available in lots of different sizes, common board game timers

can measure anything from 30 seconds to a minute and are
pretty cheap to obtain.

String/Yarn
Cheap. Fun to play with. Lots of colours available. Great for
distracting cats. Good quality string is an awesome
component.

Building Blocks
Fun to pick up and almost impossible not to play with during a rules
explanation, building blocks are a great way to add a huge amount of
tactility to your game

Edible Pieces
Pretty unusual, but great fun. Making your components delicious and edible makes player
really want to capture each other's pieces. If your game has edible pieces it’ll probably have to
ship with a recipe book and/or food mold, because shipping with perishable pieces that players
can only use once is pretty bad value for money.

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Bag
Drawing components from a mysterious, velveteen bag is a
lovely way to ratchet up the tension and add drama to a
random element. These bags often hold dice or resource
cubes, and players must draw them at certain points (EG. at
the start of each turn) and deal with whatever the game has
thrown at them. You can also use them as customizable dice
by letting players add or remove tokens that denote positive
and negative values at the start of the game (so a more
challenging game can have more negative tokens in it). These bags are available in all kinds of
colours and materials. Though probably go for the mysterious black velvet one.

Dry Erase Pen

Letting players write or draw on the game gets them very involved
and increases their sense of ownership. Coating your board or
components in a dry-erase friendly material and letting them mark
certain areas of the board, name their territory or anything else is
a lot of fun.

Sketch Pad & Pencil

An amazingly versatile and cost-effective components. You can use these for guessing and
party games, but also for deduction games where players are encouraged to make notes to
solve a puzzle.

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Useful Resource:  
Random Ideas for Board Games 
Sometimes your creativity needs a little push. Sometimes you just want to
test your design muscles by working to an idea you didn’t think of.
Sometimes you just want to press “generate new idea” a bunch until your
brain comes up with a wonderful plan.

Boardgamizer​ is a lovely resource. There’s a ​Randomizer​, which sets you mechanics, theme,
victory conditions and constraints. There’s a ​random theme generator​ too.

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Making Choices Interesting 

A good game is all about interesting choices, but how do we know that the
choices we’re making are interesting? Well, we should make sure that our
choices are;

Meaningful.
If a choice is meaningful, it has an actual effect on the game. If, on the other hand, it doesn’t
matter what the player decides to do because the same thing is going to happen anyway, our
choice isn’t meaningful. Avoid making the results of a choice identical, or making one choice
inherently better than another.

Informed.
Players need to understand what the choice is and have a decent idea of what the likely
consequences are. They don’t need to know everything, and you can still surprise them. But
you want to avoid choices feeling random at all costs. A random result is an uninformed choice,
and there’s no reason to make one decision over another. If you want a random result, use a
random generator like a dice or a deck of cards.

Impactful.
The decision needs to matter, not just to the player but to all the other players and to the state
of the game itself. Choices that only impact one player can massively decrease player
interaction, which can harm your game.

   

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The Three Circles of Feedback 

Circle One - Close Friends

You and a small number of close friends play the game together to see if the basics
work. Does the essential experience come through? Do the core mechanics work?
● The components for this stage should be very rough and ready - bits of paper,
paper clips, coins… whatever you have lying around. Making the game beautiful
at this point is a waste of time.
● Don’t worry about “fun”. Worry about “functional”
● Do everything you can to try and break the game. Find rules that aren’t clear,
strategies that are overpowered etc. The more ways to break the game you can
find, the more you can fix.
● Don’t write the rules down. Keep them in your head. You’re going to need to
change them a lot.

Circle Two - Other People

Get groups of players to test your game. You’re going to be in the room to teach the
game, answer any questions and observe.
● Look for what parts of the game they’re enjoying. Build on those
● Look for what parts are boring, frustrating or just busywork. Eliminate these.
● Make sure to keep adding groups who have never played before as well as
groups that have - you need to know the experience for new players as well as
returning players.

Circle Three - Blind Testing

The big one - send your rules and components (or online files for them to print the
components) to as many people as possible. Have them play and send feedback.
● The more people playing at this stage, the better. It’s all about the numbers!
● Your artwork and components (physical or printable) should be of good quality.
Don’t make the expensive and production ready, but the players should be
excited when they sit down to play.
● Make it easy for people to give you feedback - it’s hard to get more than a
handful of people to get back to you at this stage, so try online surveys, emails,
anything you can. Ask easy, open questions like “what would make you want to
play again)

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Post-Playesting - Dealing with Feedback 

Need a simple way to know how t use the feedback from your playtesting
session? Time to ​PSRC i​ t!

P​roblem
First identify what it is you’re trying to fix. Be specific - is the essential
experience not coming through? Is the game simply too difficult or too easy?

S​olution
Come up with two to five possible solutions to the problem. It’s possible that
your first solution is the best one, but how do you know unless you compare it
with others?

R​esolution
Pick one of the solutions and make it happen. If it’s changing the numbers in a
ryle (the “variables”, that’s easy. If you need to alter or prepare new
components, this takes a little more time

C​heck
Playtest again with your changes.

Keep running this cycle until the problem is solved!

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Coming Up With Ideas 

It’s not uncommon to struggle with coming up with an idea for a game.
Here are Rick’s 7 strategies for getting a great idea.

Evolve an Existing Game

Take an existing game and change something fundamental.

Build off of a core mechanic

Take an existing game’s core mechanic and build a brand new game from it.

Mash Up
Take the core elements from two (or more) games and combine them into something new.

Playtesting Sessions
Sometimes you’ll be playtesting a game and come across a really cool idea that doesn’t work
for the game you’re testing. Turn it into a whole new game!

Real World Inspirations

A very theme-first approach. Find something that interests you in the real world and abstract
the game from it. (Abstract means find the thing that makes the thing fun and remove
everything else)

Add tight Constraints

Giving yourself constraints means you can treat coming up with a game idea as a game itself.

Random Generator
Get to a random generator (or cut up a bunch of bits of paper with themes, mechanics,
constraints and so on) and see what comes up!

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Steps to Minimise Feature Creep 

It can be surprisingly easy to lose track of how many new ideas, mechanics,
components and rules we’re adding to a game. Whenever you’re adding
something to a design, going through these two steps can help you keep
your game streamlined.

Step One: Consider the New Thing in Isolation.

Look at the new thing you’re adding and make sure that it’s necessary and simple. How
does it improve upon the essential experience? How simply can you explain it to a
player?

Step Two: Consider the New Thing in Context.

Is there any way to get the positive effects of the new thing without adding new
mechanics etc. to what we’ve already got? How long will it take you to explain all of the
mechanics and rules to a player with this new thing? Is this new thing necessary or
cool? If it’s “cool”, can you live without it and try and get an existing aspect of the game
to have the same feeling?

   

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Probability in Games 
A good grasp of probability is a really helpful thing to have when designing a
board game.

Probability Basics

How to write probability.

Probability is always measured on a scale from impossible (it cannot happen) to
inescapable (it has to happen).
Impossible ​can be written as 0 or 0%
Inescapable ​can be written as 1 or 100%
Probability can be expressed as a number between 0 and 1 (there is a probability of 0.5
that this coin will land on heads) or as a percentage (there is a 50% probability that this
coin will land on heads)

If you include every possible outcome, the probability will always be 1 or 100%.

You can also write probability as a fraction, where the ​numerator ​(the top number) is
the chance of the thing you’re measuring will happen and the ​denominator ​(the bottom
number) is the total chance of anything happening.

For example, the chance of rolling a 1 on a 6-sided dice:

There is only 1 side with a 1 on it, the the numerator is 1.
There are six total sides, so the denominator is 6

The chance of rolling a 1 on a six sided dice = ​⅙

How to calculate the probability of X OR Y happening.
Whenever you see the word “or” in probability, ​add​ all of the probabilities up.
For example, the chance of rolling a 1 or a 2 on a six sided dice.

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There is a ​⅙​ chance of rolling a 1. There is a ​⅙​ chance of rolling a 2.

So the probability is ​⅙ ​+​ ⅙ ​(or 2/6, which is​ ⅓​)

You can add these numbers as decimals rather than fractions, it works the same way

How to calculate the probability of X AND Y happening

Whenever you see the word “and” in probability, ​multiply ​all of the probabilities up.
For example, the chance of rolling a 1 and a 2 on two six sided dice.
There is a ​⅙​ chance of rolling a 1. There is a ​⅙​ chance of rolling a 2.

So the probability is ​⅙​ ​x​ ⅙ ​(or 1/36)

You can add these numbers as decimals rather than fractions, it works the same way

Distributions
A distribution looks at how many ways a result can be achieved and measured how
likely each result is. For example, the distribution of rolling two 6-sided dice:

As you can see, different results have different “weighting” - you are much more likely
to roll a 7 on two 6-sided dice than a 2.
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Probability groupings
Players often see probability presented in one of the following groupings;
Binary​: Success/Fail ​(Did this work?)
Bonus​: Normal/Great ​(How much better is this than the normal result?)
Punishment:​ Normal/Bad ​(how much worse is this than the normal result?)
Scale: ​Very Bad, Bad, Normal, Good, Very Good ​(How good or bad was this result?)
Alternatives:​ A, B, C or D ​(which of the possible outcomes is it?)
Quantity: ​1, 2, 3 or 4? ​(How many did I get?)

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Types of Asymmetry 
Asymmetry can refer to a lot of different things in board game design.

Emergent Asymmetry:​ Players all start as equal but don’t remain so. They start with the same
number of pieces, the same choices and the same goal. As the game progresses this will
change; one player may have more pieces, for example.

Inherent Asymmetry: ​Players have different goals but the same options. We all start with the
same number of pieces and options but are trying to different things. For example, one team is
trying to score and the other trying to defend.

Variable Power Asymmetry:​ Players have different abilities which they pick at the start of the
game. This could be anything from one player being able to take an extra action to preparing
your deck before playing a collectible card game. The challenge here is making sure that the
possible choices are all as strong as each other. You want to avoid one choice being simply
better or worse than others.

“One Big Bad” Asymmetry: ​One player takes the role of the “big bad” and controls all of the
threats the other players will face. The challenge is that the hero players must all be balanced
with each other and the big bad must be balanced against the hero players as a group, no
matter how big that group is.

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Writing Your Rules Manual 

What to make sure your manual has

1. The Hook
○ Get players excited about playing
○ Include some theme and flavour
○ Tell the players how they win! Remember to include the victory condition early
2. The Components List
○ List every component. Use the name you’re actually using in your game (it’s not
a “cube” if it’s supposed to be “barley” in the game. Call it “barley”)
○ Include a picture for each component.
○ List how many of each component there are
3. The Setup
○ Teach players how to set the board up before play
○ What does each player get?
○ How many of each thing does each player get?
○ Include pictures
4. What happens each turn
○ Walk us through what a player does on their turn
○ How many actions can they take?
○ What order are the actions in?
○ Which actions are compulsory? Which actions are optional?
5. The weird stuff
○ What rare situations come up?
○ What rules conflicts can happen?
6. The end of the game
○ What happens when the game is over?
○ How is scoring calculated?
○ What happens if there’s a tie?

Additional tips:
● Use clear language
● Use simple language
● Use consistent language
● Playtest your rules manual

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Useful Resources: 

Board Game Communities

Some great places to learn more about board games, meet other board
gamers, read reviews and more;

Shut Up And Sit Down

This has been Yann’s favourite website for years. A warm, inclusive and welcoming community,
hilarious video reviews, great written articles, an engaging podcast, an annual conference…
Shut Up And Sit Down​ is a wonderful place to fall in love with board games and develop a broad
knowledge of the industry.

Board Game Geek

The largest board game community on the web, this site contains listings of every board game
you can think of. It also has game rankings, community posts and much more. The site is a
little on the unpolished side it can feel a little impenetrable at times, but there’s a ridiculous
amount of information, trading, news and more on there. Fans of the site swear by it. Yann
has trouble getting past the site design.

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Tabletop
Part of the Geek and Sundry video network, Tabletop has blossomed from a small web series
starring Wil Wheaton to a huge and influential community. You won’t find a lot of in depth
news and reviews on here, but this channel has done a lot to promote board gaming as a
mainstream hobby over the past few years. Tabletop is also responsible for ​International
Tabletop Day​, which has become a pretty successful international gaming festival.

The Dice Tower

One of the oldest board game review sites and home to several podcasts, top 10 lists and more.
Yann’s not a huge fan of this site, but it’s got a strong and loyal fanbase and is a great resource
if you want to learn about what board games are out there.

Board Game Designers Forum

An designer-focused site with an annual design challenge. A little dense and tough to navigate
if you’re just browsing, but a great place to pick up tips, make contacts and generally get a feel
for the industry.

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Board Game Design Lab

A “hub for specific topics in game design”, this site is a wonderful resource for when you need
to look up something. Maybe you want to read tips on how to write rules, or are looking for an
article on why a publisher might turn down a good game. There’s a podcast too. Highly
recommended.

Stonemaier Games
The website of designer and publisher Stonemaier Games, this site includes a number of
wonderful resources for anyone looking to get their design published. There’s a whole list of
articles on ​lessons learned from kickstarter​, ​tips for designing games​ , links to ​their book on
how to launch a successful crowdsourcing campaign for your game​ and more (look under the
Kickstarter drop down menu for more). The information is helpful, frank and well written. If
you’re looking to sell your games commercially, spend some time reading through the site.

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Useful tools

Tabletop Simulator

Useful if you want to prototype and playtest your game with people over a distance (or indeed
if you want to play board games at a distance), Tabletop Simulator does a decent job of
simulating the experience of playing an in person game over a distance. It’s absolutely not
required to make or play board games.

You can ​get it on Steam​ for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

The bad news is that teaching how to upload your own content into tabletop simulator is a little
outside the scope of this course. The good news is that it’s pretty simple, and Bezerk Games
have a series of ​video tutorials available for free​. At the time of writing, these tutorials are
slowly being updated.

Tabletopia

A free alternative to Tabletop Simulator, Tabletopia is slightly trickier to use but pretty feature
complete. It’s also free, which is worth mentioning again. It’s available ​on steam​ or from the
Tabletopia web page​.

Game Crafter

A high quality board game printing service that’s great if you’re looking to make a production
quality copy of your game. Ideal if you’re not looking to publish and you just want a great
quality game that you made, or if you’re looking to get a lot of finish on your (​fully playtested!
Don’t do this during the playtesting phase!)​ prototype to show to potential buyers. Upload your
artwork, select your components and box and pay to have from one to hundreds of copies
made and shipped to you.

You can browse their site here.

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Coalition Game Studios

A professional service that provides playtesting and financial estimates from board games that
you feel are ready for commercial release. This is not a free service - This is a professional site
that offers a service. But if you’re ready to pull the trigger on your game and you need some
professional advice, these folks provide it.

Their site is here.

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The Designer’s Toolkit Reference Guide

Further Reading

There are a number of excellent books out there to further your understanding of board game
design. None of these are required, but they can offer great insight (and all of these have, in
their own way, been influential on this course).

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, 2nd Edition​,

Jesse Schell, A K Peters/CRC Press; 2 edition , 2014

Pretty close to the gold standard text for game design of any type.
Schell offers a slew of “lenses” to see your game through and has a
lot of thought provoking ideas on everything from what a game is
through to playtesting.

Challenges for Games Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for

Video Game Designers​,
Ms Brenda L Brathwaite (Author), Mr Ian Schreiber (Contributor),
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition, 2008

Although this is aimed at video game designers who want to

improve their work by practicing with board games, this is an
amazing resource for board game designers too. Filled with
excellent insights and crammed with practical exercises.

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The Designer’s Toolkit Reference Guide

Kobold Guide to Board Game Design​,

Mike Selinker et al., Open Design LLC (2011)

A series of short essays by game designers. Most of this is probably

not that useful, but worth a read if only for the excellent essay by
Rob Daviau

A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide​.

Build a Better Business by Building Community

Jamey Stegmaier, Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1 edition (2015)

A deep and involved look at how to successfully crowdfund a

game so that it meets the needs of the player as well as the
designer. Written by Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games
after some very successful campaigns (including Scythe).
Worth a read if you want to self publish your games and feel
that crowdsourcing is right for you.

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