Gabe Barrett, founder of the BGDL, discusses why this hobby of ours matters and why game design is much more than just a fun, little activity. He also shares some stories that relate to design and talks about where the BGDL is headed in the future.

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Mike Mihealsick, from Coalition Games, discusses all the lessons and insights he’s learned after facilitating hundreds of blind playtests. Blind playtesting is the purifying fire in which we truly get to find out what our games are made of, and Mike offers a ton of advice on how to navigate the process well.

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Chris Kirkman, designer of Fate of the Elder Gods, discusses Cthulhu themed games and what makes them so popular. There’s just something about Cthulhu that continues to intrigue people, and even with all the Cthulhu games that have come out, there’s still a great deal left to be explored.

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Morten Pedersen, designer behind the solo modes for games such as Scythe and Viticulture, discusses how to scale a game down to one player and create a great solo experience.

Morten has his own design company that focuses on creating single player systems for games and has even won awards for it. For more, check out Morten’s blog here.

The post Creating a Great Solo Variant with Morten Pedersen appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

Patrick Leder, designer of Vast, discusses what all goes into designing an asymmetrical game. In Vast, each player takes on an incredibly different role with different actions, different win conditions, and different ways to play. And creating a game of this scope is no small task.

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Chris Rowlands, designer of Last Garden and host of NPC-Cast, discusses creating awesome content that helps people as much as possible and also builds up goodwill toward you and your games.

The board game community is incredible, and there are tons of opportunities to help fellow designers and add value to what they’re trying to create. And in doing so, you build relationships that will likely lead to people wanting to help you when the opportunity arises.

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Rob Daviau, designer of Pandemic Legacy, and I discuss how to run playtests like an absolute pro.

Rob started designing games for Hasbro before moving into the designer game space, and he has a TON of insight on how to playtest your way to an amazing game.

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Brent Kinney, vice president at Panda Game Manufacturing, discusses the details and nuances of getting your game printed. We talk typical setbacks, what the different phases in the process look like, ways to make the process easier, and much more. Panda GM is one of the major manufacturers of board games in the world, and Brent brings a ton of experience and insight to the discussion.

The post The Ins & Outs of Printing with a Vice President from Panda Game Manufacturing, Brent Kinney appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

Tom Vasel, founder of the Dice Tower, discusses some of the many things he’s learned after playing an astronomical number of games. We talk themes, mechanics, Kickstarter, publishing, trends, and tons of other stuff.

Tom has played and reviewed thousands upon thousands of games which has led to some interesting insight on what makes a great game.

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Sen-Foong Lim, designer of Belfort and Junk Art, discusses the many things a good game design space needs and ways to organize it all.

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the show:

Gimp

Canva

Cropodile

Rotary Cutter

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