I think it requires a lot more familiarity than something like a tag, I probably wouldn't bring it up unless I knew them quite well.

I hadn't thought about it that way but it totally makes sense. Going from not caring about that limit due to no actions/little money, then building your deck to where it is a real blocker, to getting the tools to bypass it is a great little arc.

This is very real. After the first play or two the data playtesters give goes from "How is this game to learn" to "How is this game balanced". I tend to not run games past all of my playtesters initially just so I have some people that can give that initial experience later in the design process.

Oh interesting! I have this on my watch list, I'm now looking forward to seeing this contrast.

Some of the simplest combos can be the most compelling. When Dominions first came out I still remember how cool it felt to realize I could play Village into Smithy and come out ahead.

It is very weird and very cool to have family members who are not at all into games to be sending me this article. It is great to see this level of recognition!

I kinda want these, I wonder what shapes they would be.

Chugging away with games, tinkering with hydroponics so I can grow my own veggies, and slowing watching my way through Star Trek.

This seems like a good project to pair with an 18 card game game jam

This was almost certainly not the most efficient use of my time, but it was quite satisfying and if the project does end up happening it'll eventually pay off.

Crossing my fingers.
#boardgames

Getting the cells with the cards to appear on the map wasn't too hard. The thing that stumped me for an embarrassing amount of time was figuring out the arrows, and making sure they pointed the right direction.

The thing that took most of the time was figuring out how to set up a map to help visualize things. The picture shown is generated entirely from the card data, there is no hand entered data on this sheet.

Nothing super fancy about the templates. There is one each for the front and backs of the cards, and to make my life easier the .csv has the data for both of them.

The above document is set up so it can nicely be exported as a .csv and used with data merge.

Also early in the process you will often have a choice between two reasonable paths, one of which is a lot more difficult to manufacturer.

At that early point you can make choice without sacrifices, less so if you wait until it's a finished game.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with how board games demand a level of active engagement that video games, books, and movies do no not. In that way board games are closer to things like sports than anything else.

That said it's very possible to have some memorable interactions with other characters, when they are controlled by other players. But then becomes more like vehicles for the interaction, and players are a lot less likely to care about that vehicle in another context without the person behind it.

I think the closest we have is some of the characters from Magic the Gathering, assuming you consider it a board game.

I suspect a lot of it is because of the social aspect, when the players must run the game in a social setting it's hard to give NPCs enough for players to latch on to.

Board game designer here, formerly Funko / Prospero Hall and currently freelance.