Project Turnstone 1

— crewmember cards by Emily and me

And now for something completely different…

I’m co-designing a board game—working title Project Turnstone—with my partner Emily, and she’s co-writing this blog post about our process!

You may have noticed Emily’s name come up in my Dolmenwood session reports—she plays Marib Twiggler, the Mossling friar. Not only do we play in a regular role-playing game campaign together, we also play a lot of board games, both as a couple and with family and friends. We connected over our mutual love of board games on one of our earliest dates, and it’s great to share a hobby with a partner! Some of our favorite board games include:

• Splendor
• Everdell
• Arkham Horror (the card game)
• Wingspan
• The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Brainstorming

I pitched an initial concept to Emily during a drive to the coast. I suggested an auction-driven game with elements of card drafting and/or set collection. We quickly arrived at the idea of bidding on ships and hiring crew members who would then be assigned to missions. A sci-fi/space theme felt like a natural fit.

We developed the theme and mechanics in tandem, discussing how mechanics would tie into the emergent narrative. For example, we knew that completing missions would require meeting certain criteria. The crewmembers, we decided, would each have specific skillsets, and would work together to complete missions with their combined skills.

We took some inspiration from Splendor, but we both generally enjoy deck-building and engine-building games that provide opportunities for unlocking synergies, such as Dominion, Everdell, Star Realms, and Wingspan.

We discussed the possibility of crewmembers belonging to different species and factions and how that could create opportunities for synergies and combos. However, we didn’t get very specific until we began working on the cards…

Prototyping

We adopted a loose approach to making the first prototype, adding species and inventing mechanics on the fly as we drew the crewmember cards. Our initial ideas about the theme informed the process, but illustrating the crewmembers and writing card text also shaped our understanding of the style and tone of the game. We embraced an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink attitude, incorporating a variety of ideas without much self-censorship, knowing that we’d learn what worked and what didn’t through playtesting.

— a few of our ship cards

Please note: we absolutely do not recommend hand-illustrating dozens and dozens of cards if your goal is to complete a working prototype in a timely manner. We simply enjoyed drawing cards together, and doing so also happened to give us a better feel for the game. Because we had so much fun making the cards, we weren’t concerned about wasted effort. And besides, we felt confident that the game would be playable and that we could adjust various rules without remaking every card. We also had a bottle of whiteout ready.

Playtesting

Our first playtest of Project Turnstone was a full playthrough with a total of four players, and the game exceeded even our somewhat rosy expectations of playability! We had a strong enough grasp of the rules for play to proceed smoothly, and we made the occasional judgement call as needed.

The flaws that did surface felt less like game-ruining issues and more like clear opportunities for improvement. Takeaways from the first playtest included:

• The missions felt too easy to complete and the ships too easy to crew. We needed more difficult missions and ships with stricter crew requirements.
• The first playthrough also suffered from a lack of missions, meaning that only the players with the fastest ships had opportunities to complete unique missions. We decided that we needed greater mission availability.
• Harriet absolutely needed a nerf. No further comments from Rowan, who designed the card and exploited its imbalanced ability during the first game.

We implemented several changes before our second playtest, during which Emily and I both played the role of two “players” and openly discussed their likely moves. Our changes had clear positive effects, and the game felt much better to play. We also formalized a few rules about edge cases. However, one consequence of creating more challenging missions was that players could more easily become stuck with an available mission that none of them could complete.

We only made a couple of minor changes between our third playtest: another with four players total, including two friends we see regularly for board game nights. Overall we had a great third playtest! We felt encouraged by the fact that the game was not only playable but clearly enjoyable before major iteration. We did identify one mechanic that introduced much more complexity than value.

Our friends provided excellent, specific feedback. We were grateful for the opportunity to hear the perspective of other experienced board gamers whose tastes differ from but also overlap with our own. Teaching and then playing through the game with people totally unfamiliar with it also highlighted the systems most in need of streamlining. We came away from the third playtest with a great list of notes and new ideas!

That’s All For Now

Our progress has been glacial; nearly a year has passed between our first playtest and the publication of this post. We’re busy, we own a lot of other board games that we enjoy playing, and we’re in no rush to try to publish our game. Besides, thanks to the tarrif situtation here in the US, publishing a game doesn’t seem feasible now anyway.

Designing a game together has been a blast, and we’d definitely recommend other couples or friends embark on a creative project together. Creating a working prototype has also been surprisingly cheap and easy. The vast majority of our time went towards illustrating cards, which is a totally optional step in making a prototype. With nothing more than blank playing cards, permanent markers, poker chips, and a few dice, we were able to create an original game that works and that we’ve genuinely enjoyed playing with friends and family!

We’ll continue working on Project Turnstone, but don’t expect an update anytime soon!