The 7 Deadly Sins of Board Game Design

Comments · 706

• BI

  @BigPasti · 6 months ago (edited) · pinned

  Hey everyone, thank you so much for all the support over the years. Wheels are in motion, and my team and I are excited to properly announce &apos;Sunlit&apos;s Eulogy&apos;. The first game from &apos;Dear Euthyphro Studio&apos;.<br><br><a href="https://gamefound.com/en/projects/dear-euthyphro-studio/sunlits-eulogy">https://gamefound.com/en/projects/dear-euthyphro-studio/sunlits-eulogy</a><br><br>You can follow it right now for a $5 discount at Gamefound! <br><br>Also, while I don&apos;t go too in-depth about the game in this video, you can check out our site with our first article for some juicy details and design thoughts!<br><br><a href="https://www.deareuthyphro.com/articles/a-religious-board-game-seriously">https://www.deareuthyphro.com/articles/a-religious-board-game-seriously</a><br><br>I can not express how incredibly thankful we are for your support. It is honestly unbelievable all the kind words and support we&apos;ve received, and we hope to deliver something truly special for you!

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• TH

  @TheIronicRaven · 6 months ago

  Sin #8 for me would be designing a board game that is only meant to be viewed from one side of the table. Every board is designed as though its only the members of the last supper that are playing, as opposed to how people normally set up a game which is to sit around a table. I hate having to decide who is going to be the player has to be forced to read everything upside down. 95% of board games have this sin, and about 98% of those can fix this problem.

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• KO

  @KobKoi · 6 months ago

  You didn&apos;t even mention the biggest sin (imo): the so-called &quot;oh is it my turn now?&quot; problem that is caused by the lack of interactions between the players. The worst board games are those where there&apos;s no reason so focus outside your own turn, nothing that the other people can do will affect you whatsoever, and theres no gameplay mechanisms like trades or battles to be involved with other players when its their turn. <br>Many traditional board games like Trouble and Snakes&amp;Ladders suffer from this sin, since all you can do is to throw the dice, move your piece accordingly, and then just sit there and wait until its your turn again. No need to be bothered what the other players are doing, you might just as well browse your phone while the others are taking their turns. Those are the worst board games imo.

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• GA

  @GarrettPetersen · 6 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB0aEyTRbBs&amp;t=953">15:53</a> I&apos;ve said it before: Munchkin is 20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours.

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• NE

  @nERVEcenter117 · 6 months ago (edited)

  This is an impassioned and lengthy argument for one concept, lost to the industry: Simplicity. And I appreciate it. It&apos;s always easy to add more, more, more. It&apos;s difficult to take away. My current shelf of board games is looking more and more like an essentialist&apos;s paradise, as I prune the bloat and fluff for finely tuned and compact design bunker-busters that know what they want to accomplish, and how.

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• KI

  @ki0w0-lordofwatersheep · 6 months ago (edited)

  The thing about &quot;ending the game before the fun ends&quot; is interestingly divisive when it comes to engine building: some only see fun in the assembly and growth, and running the built engine is simply executing foregone conclusion. Yet some feel that not getting to run the engine you&apos;ve meticulously crafted ruins the point of engine crafting itself

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• NE

  @neruval_the_dreamer · 6 months ago

  So fitting for the rulebook for a game based on Dune novels to be a confusing, feverish read.

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• WE

  @WestTaiwan4Ever · 6 months ago

  I remember having one group of Werewolf with around 15 players where I got constantly kicked out early.<br>So I started to wander to the kitchen and stuff as much from the buffet inside my stomach as possible and drink one bottle of beer every time.<br><br>...<br><br>To be honest I enjoyed that evening way more than anyone present would ever imagine.

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• SE

  @SethAbercromby · 6 months ago

  The problem with discarding player elimination altogether is that it often creates an &quot;everyone loses&quot; game state where either a player is already singled out to win the game but has to walk through the arbitrary win conditions to end the game, or it trudges along in an unclear way until one such player is found. The threat of elimination is in itself a driving mechanism, it enables politics and sets clearly defined stakes. It also creates some leverage that players can potentially pull to threaten a player that is walking away with a victory otherwise.<br><br>Some groups are a poor fit for longer games that include elimination sure, but treating that as a sin is like assuming every group has to work with social deduction games. Find the games and the groups that fit together. If your friends turn murderhobo the second an elimination condition is available, then a game like that is a poor fit, but when your group enjoys the politics around threat and elimination, then those games are a ton of fun.

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• TM

  @tmantheawesome22 · 6 months ago

  I think Rules should go: pieces and their names, intro, what you need to win, how to get that (what a turn looks like usually), and how the game ends. In that order, especially the how to win being first

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• CH

  @chuckm1961 · 6 months ago

  The “deadly sin” of “spreadsheet” is selling a whole lot of product, and making a whole lot of people love gaming. &nbsp;I did not buy Earth expecting to feel a spiritual connection to soil; I bought it because it’s a pretty game that lets me engage in the kind of optimization puzzles that I love, while looking at pretty pictures.

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• ÞR

  @Þrymskviða · 6 months ago (edited)

  Whilst I’m not a huge fan of player elimination (in SLOW games! Totally fine in fast ones), I would often rather be just out than left behind in a game like Monopoly.<br><br>Games that don’t have a win condition, only a “everyone else loses” condition.

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