Game Design: Fleshing Out an Idea

Designing a new board game always starts with an idea, whether this is an idea for a really clever game mechanic ("The game board should be a randomly generated shape based on player actions"), a great theme or setting ("Man, this book/movie/video game would make a GREAT board game!"), some random game component you want to utilize (Did you know there are 7-sided dice?), a goal for the players to achieve ("I really want to make a truly cooperative game"), or some goal you want to accomplish as a designer ("I want to make a game that has absolutely no violence in it"). Ultimately, all games need to have all of those things (game mechanics, setting, game components, a player goal, and a personal goal), your source of inspiration merely tells you which area is already filled and what to base all your design decisions on.

So now you have a starting point and as I stated, you have other major areas to fill in. Using this, I like to make a Microsoft Word doc with headings for each of those areas - Game Overview, Winning Objective, Player Turn, Game Components, Game Design Goal.

Game Overview:

Where does the game take place? Who are the opposing sides? Is this game a funny game or a serious adventure? Being thorough about the setting and theme of the game will help players immerse themselves in the game. There's a reason there are a million versions of Fluxx and Munchkin. Some players want to be pirates. Some want to be space ninjas from the future. Some want to be vampire chickens. Do note, however, that when play testing a game, it will be important to test just the game mechanics themselves minus any theme because if the game isn't fun without a theme, it will be difficult to have fun with it even with the best of themes, but at the same time, keep in mind what theme you will want the game to have eventually because some game mechanics may change to better fit a certain theme over another.

Winning Objective:

What are the player goals? Are they working together? Are they competing? How do they win? This is almost always where I start my game design documents because deciding whether a game is directly competitive, indirectly competitive, mostly cooperative, completely cooperative, etc. will greatly impact many other decisions made about the game.

Player Turn:

What does a player do each turn? What actions can they take? Do all players play at the same time? This is really the core of the game. This is where all the game mechanics and rules are defined. You also must define here how a full game round works and if anything happens each round. For example, do all players take their turns simultaneously? Do they take turns one at a time? Does some even take place between game rounds (after each player gets a turn)?

Game Components:

What are the actual physical pieces required to play the game? Does it have a custom board? Is it just a card game? What are the player tokens? What other counters or other tokens are needed in the game? Are there dice? Being as thorough and precise about this section will greatly help you when you start trying to figure out how to build the game and will keep you from having moments during play testing where you have to grab random things around the house to represent things.

Game Design Goal:

Goals you as the game designer have for this game that you want to base decisions on. Some examples include, "Must fit theme", "Must not have any numbers in the game", "Must use as few game components as possible", or "Must be a 15 minute or less game". Every decision you make while designing/testing/refining the game must keep these goals in mind. You can have as many goals as you like, but if the list is too big, you're going to be hard-pressed to make everything fit them all.