r/tabletopgamedesign

Looking for some feedback on our sell sheet for Sandmen, inc., a cooperative trick-taking boss-battler.

We’ve been working on card back designs for our superhero card game, Date Knights. Our graphic designer recently came back to us with new designs for card backs. 

As background the game has 4 types of cards and only two of them need backs (The rest are double sided/multiuse, so they don't use standard backs). We wanted a "Comic Panel" look that fits with the superhero theme but isn't so visually noisy that it distracts from the gameplay. This is especially for the Power Cards as these live on the table the whole game constantly flipping when they are used and then refreshed. 

I’d love feedback on:

• Visual Density: Does the panel effect make the card backs feel too "busy" when they are laid out in a row on the table?
• The "Comic Theme": Do you get the comic book aesthetic, or does it miss the mark?

I’m really happy to share that we’ve found the lead artist/illustrator for the game!

Miguel Valenzuela u/CarRaccoon is an awesome artist, who has already started working on the Tokelau, and attached you can see an early example of one of the character (crew) cards. https://www.instagram.com/mythicalcatraccoon/

This is still an early test, but I’m really excited about the direction. The style, personality, and overall mood feel like they could fit the world of the game really well, and it’s exciting to finally see more of Tokelau’s characters come to life visually.

I’d love to hear your feedback. How does the card design feel overall? Does the character art fit the Polynesian early settlers theme?

Tokelau is an upcoming 2–6 player fast-paced strategy board game about exploration, settlement, and trade across Polynesia.

Follow the project and upcoming board game here:
https://subscribepage.io/9A1ijq

Zizzit is a small flying creature with a purple body, large pink eyes, tiny insect legs, and translucent wings with colorful markings.

Hey everyone! I’m making a 5e book about fishing, and I’m hoping to get quick feedback on what people would want from this kind of supplement.

The current version turns fishing into a full downtime activity where it’s more than just “roll Survival.” It has grown a lot during development, so I’m trying to figure out whether the system should be simpler, or whether this level of depth is the right direction.

You don’t need to read the book to answer the form. Reading it gives more context, but each question gives enough context to answer, and it's all multiple choice.

Feedback Form Link — should take 2–3 minutes

Current Book Link — if you want more context or just want to check it out

Comments here are also very welcome. Thanks for your time!

————

Image credit: Mosslings by Chris Kintner

Traditional individual gold piles or gold held on player owned cards?

Quick Rundown:
In Thieves & Merchants you pay gold to play merchant cards in the market and thief cards in the alleys. Merchants gain gold from the bank and thieves steal gold from other players and kill merchants. Each card has a dice trigger and if you roll that number, you activate that cards effects.

First player to hold all market stalls or bankrupt their opponent wins.

Question:
Right now each player has their own gold piles. What if instead of having individual gold piles, you kept the gold on the card that collected it? And when that card is destroyed, the player who destroyed it gets the gold that was on that card. As of right now, thieves steal x amount of gold from players directly.

You can still spend freely from any card’s gold pile that you control.

I don’t think it will change the economy building dynamic completely, but just offer more choices. - Do I kill their best merchant or do I take that pile of gold on their “weaker” merchant?

Thieves & Merchants is fun as is and it plays well with a definitive winner each game, but I am just looking at small mechanic changes to make the game a little more unique or strategical.

Thanks for any feedback on this gold mechanic idea! Happy Play testing to you all! 🎲 🏆

Just wanted to share and get your thoughts on some of the background art for our game Battlesticks! 

We’ve been working with the incredible team at Brushe Studio https://www.brushestudio.com/home  They have really been pulling out all the stops creating these beautiful scenes, each of these feels so rich, full and really bring the cards to life! We’re producing over 80 unique illustrations for the game all hand crafted by their incredibly talented artists! 

Never want to gatekeeper and can’t recommend them enough if anyone is looking for artists or exploring options

Hi everyone, I'm working on a board game prototype and I've tested it once already.
I am planning on hiring a real artist for the final game, but in the mean time, I've drawn some of the game's "scenes/panels" of what I call the game's "scenarios" myself using stick figures because my own art skills are just that bad.

During the playtest, some feedbacks I've received were about how the drawings didn't convey the situations/scenes well, which made it hard for players to appreciate the humor I tried to put into them. The scenes were supposed to be about painting a situation in a DnD game, in which players would use different ridiculous strategies or lose their mind in a situation in which they are facing a mimic in a room and the mimic keeps successfuly disguising itself as different items in the room, creating a feeling a paranoia and panick in the DnD characters' party, leading to situations like attacking everything in the room, flicking coins at each item to see if they react, touching everything in the room in a self destructive way because "they just can't handle the pressure anymore" or even starting a camp in one corner of the room and taking rotations to always keep an eye on the whole room to wear the mimic out until it would have to move eventually because it would become hungry.

Recently, I've tried to generate AI images to replace my stick figures drawings, thinking it might give a better idea of what is actually happening in each panel, and I wonder how people would feel about it. I know AI is commonly not very liked (I personally dislike how it affects artists) but since it's only for a prototype and for testing, I would be interested in knowing if it could be a good tool to use temporarily for testing purposes.

Thanks in advance for your opinions and for sharing your own experiences when designing your games, regarding art and how you find ways to test a game which relies on its art assets in such a way, to make for a better testing experience !

Hey everyone, I'm back again with another one of these. Last post, I showed 4 different design options for one of my upgrade cards (the green ones). Between facebook and reddit, the majority of people liked option B the best. So I made one more option, and wanted to compare it to the winner of my last post. That design is "B" here, just like last time, and the new design is "A". I had a few people mention that they like a small amount of flavor text on the cards, and didn't like that I removed that with B. With A, I added it back in, reduced the size of the cost of the card and moved it to the top.

The main reason for any of this redesign in the first place was to unify the designs of what are now 3 different types of cards (upgrades, drones, and special weapons). I needed to make room for the stats on the weapon cards while maintaining enough space for the item image on the cards.

Please let me know which of the 2 designs you like better, and let me know any other feedback or questions that you have!

Hi again!

I’ve been slowly refining the visual identity of the four factions for my drafting card game, DRA&B - Devils Robots, Aliens & Beasts. And I finally completed the first two, DEVILS and BEASTS.

What I’m trying to achieve is making each faction feel recognizable not just mechanically, but visually too.

The devils ended up feeling more chaotic, with supernatural elements. The beasts are bigger and heavier and for this reason some of them almost turned into full-art cards. They have to look physically too large for the card itself :D

Who’s your favorite character so far?

As always, feel free to throw at me any feedback!

This is an early feedback draft of the Project AiO magic rules module.

I’m mainly looking for feedback on whether the spell-building logic is understandable, whether the system feels usable at the table, and where the rules become unclear or overloaded.

TLDR on Spell Weaving:

Magic in AiO is built from nodes. A caster chooses how the spell is delivered, what element it uses, and what effect it creates, then connects those pieces into a Spell Path with Links. For example, a simple fire attack might be Project + Heat + Damage. More advanced casters can add Special Effect Nodes, Interlinks, Rotes, Layering, Esoterica, and Enchanting, but the basic idea is Delivery + Element + Effect.

feedback questions:

After reading it, can you explain how to build a simple spell without me clarifying it?

Does the node system feel intuitive and flexible, or does it feel too complex to use during play?

Which part most needs examples, diagrams, or clearer wording?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hwRLeCYZrsdPQD042rQnsNJZwqPX2ldDGEnTTsfmkJk/edit?usp=sharing

For reference here is my core rules.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LbYaeo_31-c_SLwHh-wexl0CaEDTimKL7xmpeBHGrX8/edit?usp=sharing

Hi, everybody
My name is Roman (Nekr0ns), and I am looking for a job in these difficult times.
I draw characters, illustrations, maps, objects - basically everything that is in board games, haha. Except for the Ui and the labels - I'm not very good at them.
So if you are interested in my work, then I will be glad to work with you!
Have a nice day.