Tim's Board Game   08-11-2025

So just how long does it take to make a board game? If you are me the answer seems to be a long time.


About

So about 30 years ago I thought I would try my hand at making a board game. I knew I wanted a dungeon crawl with a fantasy theme, but not much more than that. I did a fair amount of work on this over the years with quite a few stops and starts. Somehow I've managed to keep most of the design notes so here is a look at how to get from point A to point B in only 30 years.


Version 1

1995

I think the idea was more of a tile laying game for some kind of dungeon crawl. At this point the idea was have a bunch of tiles with random monsters, traps, and treasure.


Version 2

1995-2000

Next I converted this to more of a board game. I had an idea to use multiple boards that you would swap out. I was thinking it would be fun if you would could swap out the entire town board for the dungeon board when you went into the dungeon it would be very cool. Given that this was a home brew game I didn't have to worry about money or the number of components. It's also very apparent from these images that I did this first round design while working for the NCDOT with the official NCDOT graph paper and MicroStation.


Versions 3 and 4

2000-2012

Lots and lots of iterations here with the big change being to commit to a single board with cards for the dungeon encounters.

So the board game would be the city with three Adventures: Dungeon, Tombs, Undercity. Each of these will have a deck of cards that you draw one at a time until you reach the bottom level.

Somewhere here I also thought up the main game mechanic of using multiple d12 dice for to hit and multiple d6 dice for damage. Your To Hit chance would be based off of your weapon skill and damage would be determined by your weapon type. This would go back and forth a few times, but it's back as of my most recent revision in 2025.

Everything at this point is done with the MicroStation CAD software. While it's not made for this it's what I had access to since I used it at work.

After that it was a bunch of trial and error with adding and removing items. At one point I had way to many moving parts but I think they were gradually removed over time. I think there was a test game that was finally abandoned at the 3 hour mark, so I knew changes were required.

I did have a character sheet at this time, but this one was meant to be printed out and marked up for each playthrough.


Version 5

2014

The first playable (or at least finish-able) version! Only took 19 years.

Lots of simplifications for this version. Here it was all about simplifying to speed up game play. The number of skills is down to 4 and there are no weapons. I also had the idea for a better character sheet with paper glued to foam core with stick pins.

While interesting it still took far too long to play and finish. Everything is still designed and printed in MicroStation which was getting to be a bother. I knew for the next version I had to move everything to Photoshop. I also knew how much work that would require so I put this off for a long time. So it would sit for another 10 years.


Version 6

11-1-2024

I always knew I wanted to get back to this, but I also knew there were so many changes I wanted to make that it was going to be a lot of work. Thankfully I had a bit of time over the holidays in 2024.

The big change was to convert everything to Photoshop from MicroStation. While MicroStation worked far better than expected for many, many years, it was just to limiting. At this point I had been using Photoshop for many more years and it was just so much easier for this type of work. I did try and keep at least a little of the original artwork just for the nostalgia.

Simplify
Simplified to 3 skills: Melee (To Hit), Missile (To Hit), Magic
Make Easier to Understand
Damage based on Weapon and To Hit by Skill is just easier to remember and teach
Make Dungeons more unique with themes for each
Caves (DARK), Tombs (UNDEAD), Fairy Woods (FAIRY)
Give the player a reason to choose one adventure over another.
Start with an Inherited Item that is strong against Dark, Undead, or Fairy
Remove frustration
Movement is now a player choice from 0-7 spaces
Give the player more choices
Training and Weapons are purchased with Glory but you need 100 Glory to Win

The last change is probably the most important. Do I spend the glory points I need to win the game for training or weapons that I need to get stronger? The stronger monsters give you more glory, but you need better skills and weapons to take them on. So should you press your luck?

In the 3 test games we played the winner did come down to the person that pressed their luck a bit more and it did make the ending much more enjoyable. It's also still a rather long game taking 2.5-3.0 hours for 2 people playing fast. I just don't think this is ever going to be 4 player game because of this. I'm pretty happy with the way everything works and plays so I'm going to call this one done.



8-13-2025