Final Draft - Diagrams

I updated in-line diagrams this week for final draft of PDF. Now I just need to do some art. Then I think I have a final v1.0 of Realms of Solace (at least in pdf form). I just need to decide if I should just release as PDF or if I'm going to try to print a physical book, and if so, how? Kickstarter, POD, etc...

Here are some updated diagrams:

Seed terrain.

Terrain type based on roll.

Grow terrain.

Connect like-terrain in close proximity. 

Seed civilizations.

Civ type based on terrain, civ size based on roll.

Human kingdoms: map industry and roads. Calculate Age and Prosperity (P) Value of individual civs and of trade networks.

Dwarven civilizations: Calculate age, depth, and P Value.

Elven Realms: map habitat boundary, calculate age and P Value.

Dark Powers: map reach, note subverted civs.

Connect land masses, fill small gaps.

Map Sea Ports.

Map Rivers, embellish coastline, add detail.

The rules include roll tables and explain each step in detail. There are many more steps to the rules including: features, creatures, labels, relationships and narrative. But this will give you an idea of terrain and civilization generation for the final draft.

Approaching Rules Complete

I'm doing final-final-final draft edits this week. I'm also play testing a bunch. There are certain aspects of the game that I love, and certain aspects I'm unsure about. The 6d6 mapping of terrain and civilizations is a blast. Some of the industry rules feel a little too bookkeeper-ish. Some of the narrative rules seem tedious. I've created an "Additional Rules" section and have thrown a lot of the more crunchy rules in there, to separate the basic world building and story telling from the more advanced interpretation stuff, but it's hard to know how much of that to do. My instinct is to ditch all the optional stuff, and just keep the game simple and small. Some players like crunch and additional content, but I'm not really sure how much that content adds to the game, and how much it just convolutes the experience. Dunno. Lots of executive decisions to make this week.

Here's a random playtest I did:

FROZEN SORCERER & SCORCHED EARTH

Four Human kingdoms dot the central valley of a sprawling realm, connected by a network of ancient trading roads stretching the length of continent from chilly North Port at the top to Southerton at the bottom.

Riverdale, the large kingdom in the southeast, suffers. A expansive wasteland of scorched earth to the north prohibits sufficient industry for the kingdom’s size, resulting in a deficit state. No one knows the cause of the scorched earth, and all who have ventured there to investigate have suffered and died, but there is rumor of a sorcerer frozen in ice somewhere on glaciated slopes of the mountains to the south, possibly linked to the devastation. 

Riverdale is militarizing and mobilizing. Southerton, its sister kingdom to the east, has constructed a defensive wall around its main citadel in preparation for the war that seems imminent. But that’s not Southerton’s only problem. A Sentient Fog has settled in Silent Bay and is rolling inland, consuming farmland north of the castle. 

North Port has constructed a mighty wall and boasts a sea port, but the waters are infested with pirates, making seafaring very risky business. Fortunately the port’s relationship with the smaller keep to their southern border is harmonious. A mysterious shaman that lives in the farmlands between these two castles is said to be the keeper of tranquility in these northern parts for many centuries.

To the far east, in the Copper Mountains, two Dwarven civilizations have merged into a giant underground empire traversing the entire mountain range. A vast uninhabited forest separates the mining civilization from the human realm, so the Dwarves and humans are unaware of each other’s existence. All would be perfect for these industrious tunnelers, if not for a Dark menace sitting on the bottom of the sea directly offshore…festering, waiting…

Simple iconic version

shaded version of same map

Update: as I continued to play test today, I had a breakthrough. I'd been wrestling with a game mechanic I called "Deficits". The idea is that depending on the size of the civilization you role, you need to create a specific number of industry hexes adjacent to it: farmland (adjacent empty hex), logging (adjacent forest), grazing (adjacent hills), mining (adjacent mountains), and the total number of industry needs to equal its size, and if this is not possible, then that civilization is in a "deficit" state. This created a lot of bookkeeping, because other rules down the line could change the total industry value, leading to lots of erasing and re-calculating industry surplus and deficits. On top of that, deficits were calculated differently for each civilization type. In other words, this mechanic was tedious and boring. 

Tonight, in a mad frenzy of thinking and editing, fueled by Jamaican rum, I completely eliminated the deficit mechanic and replaced it with a simple "Prosperity" mechanic. Instead of keeping track of penalties, I am now just keeping track of surplus in a way that is consistent across civ types. Prosperity comparison also facilitates a simple war mechanic between civilizations. And it replaces most of the "optional / advanced" rules. Ultimately I was able to completely eliminate the optional/advanced rules section, make the basic rules more engaging and easier to use. 

It's easy to get locked into and enslaved by ideas that I've written down. I have to constantly remind myself that everything is negotiable when it comes to making art, and writing, and logic. I have to be willing to toss ideas. 

The only purpose of this game is to facilitate the creative process. It's not a simulation. So any rule that's not fostering the map creation or the narrative writing is just getting in the way of "fun"...

Scribus Rocks!

So, I installed an open source book layout app called Scribus based on a comment/recommendation left on my previous post where I complain about Adobe and Apple removing useful functionality from their creativity software that was making it impossible for me to design a book. First impressions: Scribus rocks!

Originally I wanted to layout my RPG rulebook in Apple Pages, but basic "facing pages" functionality was removed from that app for the latest version (5) that I own. It was impossible for me to set inside-outside bleeds separately or for the app to recognize left vrs right page. Also, it was impossible for me to set a page size or bleed size to three decimal places. In others words, Pages doesn't handle 1/8th inch increments.

So then I decided to just use Photoshop since I already own that app and have been using it since 1995. Photoshop is awesome but not ideal for book layout. And Adobe removed the ability for photoshop to batch export PSDs into a multipage PDF. So then I tried to batch process them in Preview, but it kept breaking embedded fonts, and didn't really work correctly. I then installed Adobe Creative Cloud so that I could do an Acrobat free trial. Acrobat was able to build my PDF from multiple PSDs. I finally had a workflow, but it was complicated, and required multiple apps. And editing and iterating on PSDs was insanely tedious. And eventually I was going to have to give Adobe money on a monthly basis just to build my PDFs. Thanks Obama...

Finally, I listened to reason and installed Scribus. Since it's open source, it required launching Terminal and doing a command line install, which always makes me cringe a little. But it was painless. First, I was instructed to enter a single command to instal Brew, and then another single command to install Scribus via Brew. Then on launch I got an error that I needed to install Ghostscript, but after a little research was able to instal that via Brew too with a single command. In summary, a total of three copy-pasted commands in my Terminal and Scribus was installed and running, fewer than the number of mouse clicks many apps require on instal.

Within 5 minutes of launching Scribus, I had a blank book test layout ready to go with left and right independent inside-outside bleeds at 1/8th inch increments. I also exported a multi-page pdf of my test with full control over every possible aspect of the PDF I was creating. Scribus does everything I want it to, and more. It was almost painless to instal, and IT IS FREE. God bless open source. I'll will definitely be throwing some money their way and/or recommending Scribus to anyone needing book layout tools.

New Approach to Procedural World Creation

I’ve tried to design smart (yet simple) procedural rules for world creation many times but have always been disappointed with the results. With the Realms of Solace ruleset, I think I’ve finally made a breakthrough.

All of my previous failed attempts used a similar order of operations: define realm borders, then map terrain/biomes, then add civilizations. it’s logical—make earth, make land masses, add people. But this either requires a messier ruleset than I want, or it burdens the player with making many tough decisions about realm borders without really having any context for those decisions since the realm they’re defining borders for is empty at that point. The burden is magnified at each subsequent step. Random biomes are jammed into the arbitrary borders. Civilizations are plopped down on top of that.

This time I tried something different. First I seed some terrain, planting six random seeds in a void. Then I grow these seeds logically. Then I connect the biomes that are in close proximity into large biomes. The realm blooms like a mold from the blank hex map. Civilizations are just seeds sprinkled into the void as well. Some land on biomes and take root. Some land on the void and bloom into valleys and farmlands between existing biomes, filling in gaps. 

Defining the realm borders is the final step. It’s almost backwards from all my previous designs. But this order of operations is producing more balanced realm maps than my old approach. The transitions between biomes are more organic, the civilizations feel nestled into the world instead of plopped down on top of it, and the realm borders feel natural, being just the by-product of all the growth.

Most importantly, the rule set is very simple. All of this is achieved by rolling 6d6 twice on a hex map. I'm currently applying this same idea to relationships and feature/creature mapping.

Rulebook Diagrams

I've been iterating on the rulebook diagrams. Below are diagrams illustrating the first few steps of the game. I don't include the actual rules in this post, but do provide basic descriptions of what you're looking at.

The hex map in these diagrams is much smaller than the one for the actual game, both in terms of hex size and number of hexes, due to the size constraints of the book. Feature/Creature Mapping and Labeling/Describing are not represented here. I am working on them this week, and will then have a complete working draft of the basic rules.

Roll 6d6, seed terrain, grow terrain.

Connect like terrain. Roll 6d6 to map civilizations.

Map civ locations, types and sizes.

Human Civs: define industries and build roads & walls based on size, establish relationships.

Dwarven Civs: establish mining kingdom, tunnel reach based on size.

Elven Civs: define boundary of elven forest, radius based on size. 

Dark Powers: establish reach based on size. A large Human Civ is consumed by this Dark Power.

Connect land masses separated by a gap of 1 or 2 hexes.

Define realm coastline and map sea ports.

As you can see, after rolling 6d6 a couple times and following a few simple rules based on the dice locations and values, a realm is already taking shape. There are three human kingdoms, all of which are sea ports. Two are connected by road through a great forest and are thus trading partners and allies. BUT, a Dark Power in the wastelands to the far northwest with broad reach has consumed the larger of the two kingdoms, putting its ally in great peril. The third human kingdom is isolated in the far east by a vast mountain range, below which a Dwarven Civilization is thriving. In the south coast forest, far from the scampering of men, A modest elven civilization goes undetected by all.

And the real meat of the game has yet to begin: Features and Creatures.

Diagram Concepts

I've been in editing frenzy mode on the rulebook. I made a ton of changes, both to the rules and the book layout, mostly pruning and making rules as clear and concise as possible, which led to fewer pages, which led to book design revisions, etc. It'd be a whole lot easier if this project was just a PDF, and while I plan to release a PDF too, I visualize the official "product" as a real world object to be held and written in and drawn in. The 4x6 inch pocket sized format is having a huge impact on every design decision I make, what I write, and how I write it.

I've been mocking up some diagrams that will accompany the rules text. I'll probably iterate on these a bit, as they don't cover all the stuff I want them to, but it's a start:

And here's a sample of a two page spread containing a diagram:

Book Layout

As I continue to edit and play test, I've been doing some more book layout for my solo realm-making RPG. I've finalized a trim size of 4x6 inches. I was originally shooting for Moleskin Sketchbook size of 3.5x5.5 inches, the goal being to make this product a pocket book, but couldn't find a POD printer that offers it. I finally found a print-on-demand printer that offers 4x6. I like the idea of a portable, discreet game that can be played anywhere: lunch breaks, coffee shops, the train, etc. 4x6 fits the bill.

I have also been wrestling with book layout software, or lack thereof. I wanted to use Apple Pages, which would have worked fine if they had not removed the ability to layout facing pages in version 5. What good is a book layout app that can't even do facing pages? It also rejects a page size to three decimal places, like 4.125 inches for example. It truncates the dimension to 4.12. I guess Apple doesn't want you have a page size on an 1/8th inch increment, which my printer requires. So then I looked into InDesign. Looks great, but Adobe's subscription model is absurd. So I landed with using good old Adobe Photoshop, bought and paid for before they switched to the subscription model.

Photoshop is not the ideal book layout software, but frankly it does everything I need it to. And I've been using the app for 15 years so there's zero earning curve. I would never use it for a big book, but I'm only dealing with 24 pages or so. It looks like I'll be able to export all the files into a PDF with embedded fonts. So...we'll see...so far so good.

Here's a sneak peek at a home printer proof of some of my newer layout stuff. I have some of the illustrations for the book already done, but have a dozen or so left to do: 4 or 5 full page images, and a hand full of smaller diagrams.

Ruleset Draft Complete

Been playtesting and writing and editing rules a lot this week. Right now the book is weighing in at about 24 pages give or take. I've reserved some space for art, tables, and instructional diagrams. It could grow. I could go ape shit with optional and advanced rules. But I think for this first "pocket" edition, I'll try to keep it as light weight as possible. Maybe, if anything, I'll add one sample playthrough. But I'm even on the fence about that.

 Rough first drafts of the Table of Contents and the intro page:

My goal next week is to pound on this ruleset, play test a dozen sessions, do one more ruleset edit based how those play tests go, then work on some rough art and layout. Then, run a private beta test.

Editing Rules & Actual Play Testing

I finally have a first draft of all the rules of chapter one (realm creation mode) and have been play testing.  Even with a limited ruleset and no real game loop yet, the emergent relationships and interactions between the civilizations, features and creatures are quite entertaining.

Five Kingdoms and a Crater

In my first play test, most of the dice landed along the edges of the hex grid, so I ended up with a large doughnut shaped realm populated with 5 coastal kingdoms and a Dwarven civilization. I in-filled the doughnut hole with a wasteland, which resulted in me rolling three wasteland features: A Black Monolith, Scorched Earth, and (in a stroke of luck) I rolled a Meteor Crater on the same hex as the Scorched Earth. Clearly the main conflict in this story was about the Meteor, and the blight it created, the sickness it spread, and the wizards trying to harness its power, which explained the Lunatics I rolled near that site.

An Elven War
In my second test, I rolled what appeared to be an underwhelming map: no mountains, only two human kingdoms, both already consumed by the same darkness. Was this story over before it even began? Then I noticed something. I rolled two healthy sized Elven Civilizations…in the same forest. Their territories overlapped, so they were in conflict with each other. One of their territories contained a mushroom forest and a witch! The other contained wolves and a petrified forest! The story of this realm quickly became one of my favorite play tests. It was about two very different Elven Kingdoms on the brink of war. One was led by an elven witch and mind controlled by an enchanted mushroom forest, and the other was comprised of wolf riders trying to save their forest from petrification. And just for good measure, there was a new Dark Power creeping into the contested woods from the north… 

Here are more detailed descriptions of the outcome of each play through:

Maps Of Solace

Play Test 1: 10/24/16

Five Kingdoms And a Crater

Five Human Castles dot the coastline of an island Realm. Four are active Sea Ports. The fifth hosts and protects a bustling Village just beyond it’s north wall.

A Road connects Southport and Shadowdawn, traversing the Southern Bluffs around the Shadowhorn Mountains. 

Veins of gold run through the Shadowhorns, discovered and mined by an industrious unnamed Dwarven Civilization that rarely mingles with humankind. Few men explore these mountains, for an Abominable Snow Monster feeds upon those who stray too high into the snow zone.

East Port and Northdon have built their own trading Road through the relatively benign Northern Woods, save for a Sentient Fog lingering off the coast. East Port is on the receiving end of the realm’s Tradewinds, which would be great for sea trade, but for the Sea Serpent which feeds along the route. Legends are also told of a Lost Civilization sitting at the bottom of the sea, a mere two days off the coast from East Port, but separated by a thousand vertical feet of water.

The isolated Bogmoor Keep stands alone on the northwest shore of the island, at the edge of Dim Bog. Bogmoor began building a road to Northdon years ago, but the road was never completed…

The center of the island is a vast Wasteland. On the western edge of the Great Waste, at the foot of the the Tallest Summit in the kingdom—Mt. Apex—is a blight of Scorched Earth, the center of which is marked by a deep Meteor Crater containing shards of glowing rock. All who approach it have become sick and died, but Wizards have been working to harness the power of the rock. It’s no wonder that Lunatics have been seen running in the hills northwest of the crater.

On the western edge of the Great Waste is a Black Monolith, taller than any castle, and blacker than total darkness. It’s material and purpose are unknown. It not only casts a dark shadow across the wastelands, but also a dark shadow through the minds of those who gaze upon it.

Lastly, no one thinks much about the Lost Forest beyond the Farmlands of Shadowdawn, or the caves hidden within…

Maps Of Solace

Play Test 2: 10/24/16

An Elven War

Only two functioning Human Castles occupy this remote realm, and both have been compromised by a Dark Power emanating from Scorched Earth. A third castle has fallen into Ruins to the east. Beyond the ruins lies a Sea of Bones, and beyond that, Two Elven Empires are just beginning to collide. 

The Northern Forest is home to the oldest of the two elven kingdoms, the Enchanted Fungus Eaters. This Elven Kingdom is ruled by an ancient Elven Witch responsible for beginning to turn the opposing Elven kingdom’s forest to Stone. 

Along with the Magic Fungus that drives their entire civilization, and the ruling witch that petrifies entire swaths of enemy territory, there is also a Dark Power emerging from the Wastelands to the north and infiltrating their forest.

The younger Elven Kingdom, The Wolf Riders, are gearing up for an epic Elven war that could destroy all Elvenkind.

Pocket Version

I stumbled onto the Lone Wolf Roleplaying group on Google+ the other day while doing some research for my project. Lots of great ideas floating around there. One thread was about using only a small pocket sized Moleskin sketchbook or notebook and pencil as a solo RPG toolbox. I like the idea a lot. In the realm of design, constraints often foster simplification, streamlining, and fresh thinking on weathered ideas.

So I started thinking a bit about what this project would look like if I applied the 3.5 x 5.5 Moleskin constraint. Then I started mocking up some hex grids and die roll lookup tables in Photoshop, but that was extremely time consuming, so then I dusted off my coding knowledge and wrote a little app that lets me build and save any sized hex grid with any sized labeled hexes, D6 lookup tables, etc.

Even if I don't end up using the Moleskin size constraint for my final product, I can definitely use the app I built to make maps and tables for any size format I go with.

3.5 X 5.5 inch two-page spreads

11x17 hex grid spread at 3.5 x 5.5 inches

D6 lookup table. Need to roll 3D6? Just plop 3 fingers down on the spread.

Here's a random hex cell lookup table for my 11x17 hex grid. It's basically just a D187 table.

Here's what a digit-based D6 lookup table would look like. I can change it to work with any kind of die: D4, D8, D20, d53, etc....

If you are as big of a geek as I am and have any use for these grids or lookup tables, feel free to snag them: right-click>open image in new tab>save as. The images are all 3.5x5.5 inches at 300DPI for printing.

Anyways, it's time to get back to finishing the first draft of my game ruleset, but this was an interesting and productive diversion/thought experiment which produced an asset creation tool that I can use moving forward....

Realm Building

It's been a while since I've posted, not because I haven't been working on this game design, but because I've been iterating so much that I wanted to let the dust settle before I logged an actual milestone. 

I've struggled to decide whether this game is more of a "board game" with a purely mechanistic ruleset and physical assets, or simply an RPG ruleset for "theater-of-the-mind" gameplay. As a solitaire game, both directions have their pros and cons. A purely mechanistic approach (board game) would produce a "roll to move, roll to fight" sort of experience with limited, predictable outcomes. A dice-light RPG approach would be a little too hand wavy and abstract for my tastes. 

This game needs to facilitate story-crafting, but with visual-spacial mapping of people, places and conflicts over time, ranging from minutes to centuries. My ruleset (in-progress) includes:

1) Terrain Mapping

2) Civilization Mapping

3) Relationship Mapping

4) Special Feature and Creature Mapping (Conflict Mapping?)

5) Time Mapping  (the "game loop"): World Mode and Adventure Mode

Below are the results of some play tests (roughly 15 minute duration each) including Terrain, Civ, and Feature/Creature mapping. I've moved from tile-based assets to player-drawn hex maps. The game doesn't require manufactured assets at this point, and I may keep it that way. 

It's not really a game yet. So far it's just a procedural (not random) world creator. It won't really become a game until I've got Conflict Mapping and Time Mapping. But even in its early stages, just rolling maps, placing kingdoms, and adding features is quite fun and engaging. For me. Which is my only metric. Since I'm probably the only one who will play it.

Hex Tile Art Test

I'm very early in the game design process and nowhere close to needing final art. But since I'm the game designer and the artist, I want to build up the art style while I'm designing the game systems. To me, the mechanics and visuals are of equal importance. Below is a concept iteration on a basic "Mountain Pass" terrain tile. 

1) rough pencil sketch

2) rough marker concept

3) digital draft 1

4) digital draft 2

5) digital draft 2 version b

In the third iteration, I've started tinkering with digital inking, coloring, and shading techniques. I've played around with overlaying a hex grid for movement. I've thrown in some text to get an idea of what's readable at this scale. I'm also playing around with visualizing a "road" system. Movement hexes transected by roads will be faster and cheaper to traverse. I'm currently deciding how much of the road art can be obfuscated by terrain features and still read as road hexes. 

If last two versions I'm iterating, trying to fill the space and make the mountains feel more mountainous. Now I'm trying to decide if I should really push the level of stylization, draw the mountains twice as tall, make the roads twice as steep and winding, and maybe even tweak  the colors, make the sun side glow. Or go with the current, more naturalistic, yet illustrated, approach...

All in all, I think this particular perspective is more appealing than straight top-down art. But we'll see. It's early. Anything can happen.

Game Board Design

(note: This is not a tutorial on game board design, or an instructional post. This is just me working through my specific game board design problem)

Most tabletop fantasy games have some sort of game board that represents the game world. There are many decisions to make about what kind of game board best suites my design:

Should the game board represent some sort of “world space” or is it more of an abstract space for incrementing counters, positioning card decks and tracking progress meters?

Descent (game board represents a space to be inhabited), Lords of Waterdeep (abstract/metaphoric/sybolic game board)

Descent is a fantasy tabletop game with a game board that functions spatially. Characters move through the grid spaces of the game board which represents a dungeon map. Lords of Waterdeep has beautifully rendered game board, but it functions primarily as a surface for organizing cards and counters. There is a "map" but it doesn't really represent space that the characters move through. It's more an abstract/symbolic map for bookkeeping purposes.

I am more interested in playing (and making) tabletop games where the game board represents some sort of game world space to be inhabited. My game board will define a space that the characters move through, explore, and exploit.

Should character movement around the game board use nodal pathways or some sort of regular grid? 

Magic Realm and High Frontier: node-based movement

An example of a nodal game board (irregular pathways with waypoints) would be the stunning game board from High Frontier. Another example would be the waypoint clearings of the hex tiles in Magic Realm. Even though Magic Realm uses regular hex shaped tiles, the actual movement is non-regular along irregular paths.

An example of the other approach—a regular grid—would be the hex tiles in Mage Knight where each grid space represents a specific unit of distance with a specific movement cost.

Mage Knight: regular grid-based movement  

I almost went with a node-based approach due to the organic and fresh visual results it can produce, but I like games with structured game world space, so I’ve decided on a somewhat hybrid approach. I want movement in the game to be based on a clean set of simple rules. I want to avoid needless special case movement situations. I think the safest way to achieve this is with an underlying movement grid.

Since my game prioritizes exploration, I envision my game board representing an outdoor map of a fantasy realm. I prefer hexagonal grids over square grids for outdoor maps to eliminate confusing “diagonal movement” issues in a nature setting.

What I’m not crazy about with games that utilize outdoor hex grid maps is the cookie cutter “stamp” graphics that can result. For example, every mountain hex has an identical mountain icon, etc. My graphics will not be tiled to fit perfectly within each hex, but character movement will be regulated by the grid.  In this way, the game board will feel organic but also accommodate grid movement.

How big will the game board / game world be?

Since this game is about exploration and questing, it’s screaming “tile base game board” to me. I want the game world to be reconfigurable, customizable, and expandable. I also want to limit the cost and size of the final product. Since the grid itself is hexagonal, the tiles can be hexagonal too. Each tile will contain a cluster of 7 hexes. Each tile will represent a specific region or biome. Characters can traverse tiles either on road or overland and enter adjacent existing tiles, or add new tiles where none exist.

my game tile layout with print safe and bleed guides

I envision two modes of play: a) known realm where a game world is constructed during set-up phase, and b) unknown realm where the characters basically wash up on a beach and explore a totally unknown place, building it out as they go.

How many game board tiles will the game come with?

I’ve done some good old fashioned paper and scissors prototyping to get a sense of how big the tiles should be and how many of them make a decent sized game world. I want there to be enough to feel like an epic adventure, but I want the entire game session to fit on a normal table. I also need to factor in movement speeds. How fast can the characters traverse a tile, a terrain type, or biome per turn? Right now, my gut instinct is that the basic game will ship with about between 30 unique terrain tiles. Some will contain castles, settlements, or roads, and some will be roadless wilderness.

Art Direction?

So I've decided on:
- exterior realm map game board
- configurable hex tiles (about 30)
- hex grid overlaying organic art (7 hexes per tile)

Now I do some thumbnailing. It takes several passes to begin to get the right perspective and scale of terrain features and structures. First, I experiment with top-down. Straight top-down tiles are good in that they can be rotated during play for great variation in realm configuration (see Magic Realm), but I don’t really think top-down is expressive enough for my purposes. I want to show more of the structure and mountain faces. So I try a view where the fronts and tops of the features are visible. I like this better. It’s shows off more of the terrain and structures and activates the player’s imagination. I don’t really want to go fully isometric for this game. I don’t really need to. This is not a computer game. Z-Sorting is not an issue. Purely isometric can make art feel too mechanical. Here are some thumbnail concepts I’ve been working out on paper. Right now I'm just figuring out scale, level of detail, perspective, etc:

my Citadel concepts

my Mountain Terrain concepts

The one downside to this art direction--and it does impact the overall design--is that every tile has a top and a bottom. All tiles will be oriented the same way for visual consistency. This puts limitations on game board configurations, but I think it'll strengthen the aesthetic of the game play experience.

Summary

A lot of thought goes into my game board design. It isn’t the first or only component I'm tackling right now, but it’s the component with the most visibility as I play the game in my mind , so it’s the first thing I cover here. There is no right or wrong direction to take. Each decision I make should simply push the game play experience closer to the visualization I have in my head. I could have gone with a node-based, fixed-size board and figured out a way to make it work. I'm just working to facilitate my "narrative-driven" game and tinker with game board types that I love.