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.