[HN Gopher] Pimp Your Board Games
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Pimp Your Board Games
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-02-18 09:00 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brainbaking.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brainbaking.com)
| rtpg wrote:
| How I'd love a papercraft-style website just for custom inlays
| that you could print out to minimize game setup time. It's very
| frustrating to me how many games just end up putting everything
| in little plastic baggies.
| aloisdg wrote:
| I do my overlay with paper (origami box), cardboard and clothes
| (for bag). Sometimes I even color them to follow the game art
| direction.
|
| For the boxes (make two if you want a lid):
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC9QGeioZRo
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDwbe02l6g
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPxpJKZXyTI
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd5Z8hmcb10
| ycombinete wrote:
| There are a lot of community guides on Boardgame Geek for doing
| this with foamcore, and cardstock. Search for "boardgame_name
| insert foamcore BGG" and you'll get a hit for most games.
| sbergot wrote:
| I have written such a website for a hobby group :
| https://ludistesorigamistes.camillebetsimonb.fr/
|
| Sadly it is in french, but it has formula to design origami
| custom inlays. There is a whole community about this niche
| topic.
| kwerk wrote:
| I made custom glass tokens [0] for Lord of the Rings card game
| and I'll never play a premium game with plain cardboard again.
|
| I used a guide from Board Game Geek to make the glass token [1]
|
| Using jewelers resin to upgrade cardboard tokens is another
| option: https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/s/xwPU4jmUcS
|
| [0]glass tokens: https://ibb.co/X5gJ604
|
| [1] glass tokens guide:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2087285/diy-glass-tokens-qu...
| cpach wrote:
| Very nice!
| kwerk wrote:
| Thanks! It's been a quality of life improvement
| bombcar wrote:
| When I was playing board games often we had a supply of
| "substitute pieces" that we could use in many games; tokens,
| coins, die, meeples, etc.
|
| It's often pretty easy to abstract out and use your own - the
| hardest is when there are cards and they're not high-quality.
| kwerk wrote:
| I like this idea. I ordered assorted mini dice as travel
| counters and 6mm cubes for action tracking
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on the game, large clickable "goldish" coins are
| awesome.
|
| Some games are better with ones that stack, others with
| ones that kind of heap.
|
| "Pieces of eight" can be ordered from the usual places.
| navbaker wrote:
| I do the same for the three FFG LCGs I play. Chessex makes
| every color combo imaginable, so I was able to match LOTR,
| Arkham, and Marvel colors perfectly!
| hinkley wrote:
| Do you know of a way to make them so they stack? I suppose
| you'd need cylindrical glass bits.
| sgarland wrote:
| Here I've just been buying upgrade kits like a plebian. This is
| next-level devotion.
|
| That said, for organizers, I highly recommend TowerRex [0].
| They're laser-cut and snap together, which is a fun puzzle on its
| own. They're also slightly thicker than others I've tried, so
| they don't need glue. They ship from Ukraine though, so just a
| heads-up that there's a decent lag time to get to North America.
|
| [0]: https://towerrex.com/
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| My favourite organiser supplier is FoldedSpace
| (https://www.foldedspace.net/). They use foamcore for
| lightweight, yet strong organiser modules that you fit together
| and glue yourself. They often accommodate expansions in the
| original box, so can offer some space savings.
| senesk wrote:
| Additional vote for TowerRex. We have a couple of their card
| boxes, and they are perfect for travel with a trading card deck
| plus dice/tokens.
| ndegruchy wrote:
| I've done this with Quacks of Quedelenberg(sp). There are 3D
| printed box stls available online that allow you to completely
| organize the game components. This makes setup and tear down much
| faster.
| sgarland wrote:
| Love Quacks. Still takes a long time to set up (especially with
| the expansions), but yes, with organizers it's less of a pain.
| agscala wrote:
| For the past 5 years, I've been running a board game accessory
| business out of my house: https://burgertokens.com
|
| There's a surprising number of people who love to upgrade their
| board games! It's a great community.
| mieubrisse wrote:
| Might be worth looking into a Spirit Island offering. It's
| _very_ component-heavy, and the community is passionate about
| customization!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If you play a lot, good accessories can make the game much
| faster to install, put away and transport.
|
| I 3d print stuff for this reason for many games.
| kwerk wrote:
| You're popular on Reddit! I just wish you had Lord of the Rings
| LCG :)
| agscala wrote:
| I do have tokens for that game!
|
| https://burgertokens.com/products/lotr-lcg-tokens
| cableshaft wrote:
| I've gotten your deckboxes a few times. They work great,
| especially for games with factions with smaller decks that
| don't need a full Magic-sized deckbox.
|
| Like I've got them for each character's deck in Bullet, and
| each team in Baseball Highlights 2045. I have a few for my
| KeyForge decks as well.
| chongli wrote:
| Pretty cool, though I am a little disappointed there's no Euro-
| style worker placement game where players compete to build the
| best gourmet burger restaurant!
| barbs wrote:
| Not really a Eurogame but Food Chain Magnate's theme is
| pretty close.
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175914/food-chain-
| magnat...
| hinkley wrote:
| Are you using a button press??
|
| I am angry that I didn't think of this.
| agscala wrote:
| No, I sell domed stickers that stick onto both sides of a
| penny. Though I also have a number of other products
| including deckboxes and specialty dice
| hinkley wrote:
| Oooh, I see. That's new.
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Oh that's amazing, I'll need to keep you in mind.
|
| I got a set probably a decade+ back of something that looks
| pretty similar - a guy who was just experimenting at his
| workplace worked up a small-batch production method. Can't
| recall what he called them though to search up. Two epoxy
| bulbs around a penny is an amazing token weight, and they
| stick to each other so you can make stacks up to 5 without
| much trouble.
|
| I wound up with two generic sets (geometric shapes for
| ranked counters, with N points on the shape, plus a set
| that's good for +1, -1, and damage counters) and I've been
| using them ad-hoc for misc games on and off since.
|
| Edit: remembered! it was
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/276266606/pennygems
| geon wrote:
| A set of reversi pieces in your style would be nice.
| irrational wrote:
| If you are not crafty, you can purchase deluxe resources from Top
| Shelf Gamer. For example, here are the ones for Grand Austria
| Hotel:
|
| https://www.topshelfgamer.com/products/deluxe-token-bundle-c...
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| When you're running campaigns for any tabletop RPG, anyone
| responsible for crafting
|
| the experience would love this too (web tool to make your game
| more fun and immersive): https://tabletopy.com
| GV_21 wrote:
| good article.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I do this but to the rules of the board game rather than the
| physical pieces (though these merge in the case of custom maps)
|
| I'll use stratego as an example as it's one of my absolute
| favorites and I'm a total arm-chair general.
|
| The game runs far too slow by default, and also subsequently
| doesn't simulate the notion of a "tempo" in battle. Before the
| players take their turns, a dice is rolled which decides how many
| moves each player makes in their turn. (I believe the game should
| be "fair", so it's locked as being the same number of moves for
| both players that turn.). I'm still trying to figure out if this
| introduces a significant first player advantage or not, and how
| that might be mitigated if it does.
|
| This rule change often makes stratego games playable in 10
| minutes and massively opens up tactical options.
|
| I also think that the default stratego map is too small, and has
| far too generic terrain. I've got some larger custom maps, which
| include even more interesting terrain. Still trying to balance
| this, as larger maps significantly slow the game down.
|
| I'm also experimenting with the idea of using multiple moves to
| "pool" attacks, allowing using multiple moves to let larger
| numbers of units attack a single unit. I think that a powerful
| "general" absolutely should be capable of being overwhelmed by
| many less powerful units.
|
| Speaking of this, changing the whole idea of a units "power-
| level" makes sense to me. Strong units should be "special forces"
| or "elite", while the lower rankings should have buffs (i.e.
| generals are now rated as 2 but buff the ratings of all units
| next to them by +1)
|
| Like I can go on and on forever about rule changes to turn
| stratego into basically the board game battle simulator of my
| dreams.
|
| And yet I go to other peoples houses and see them stop playing
| their board games because of boneheaded default rules which cause
| the games to play too slowly.
| vundercind wrote:
| Huh. If someone had asked me whether Stratego is even trying to
| be any amount of war simulation, even a bad one, I'd have said
| "no". I'd class it as the kind of game where the flavor is just
| there to look at, and maybe as a mnemonic tool, and has little
| meaningful connection to the mechanics.
|
| Basically chess without all the information being public.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Because of the limited information, I claim that Stratego
| would be much harder for machines to be good at. Still likely
| in the realm of "computer will destroy humans" but more like
| a game which would lend itself to rely less on alpha-beta
| pruning and monte-carlo tree search and the like (which are
| still used heavily even in NN evaluation using engines). Also
| means opening books are useless and end-game tablebases far
| larger. Humans may also find it easier to find "pathological"
| cases for AI Stratego models. Too bad no one in the AI
| community really cares about Stratego so not many engines
| exist.
|
| I claim adding the changes and similar changes to what I
| describe in my OP creates a "rougelikeification" of the game,
| starting to add elements of emergence and enough complexity
| to keep me entertained even in a world where increasingly
| large amounts of variations of all things become available to
| us via AI. I imagine that Stratego would be difficult to
| "solve" in a way that chess simply isn't. Of course, simply
| scaling up the size of the chess board and the number of
| pieces would have the same impact in chess...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Agricola life is a nice game and those little pieces are so cute.
|
| Really make you care about those sheeps that you have to butcher.
| pagnol wrote:
| What do you like about the game?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Instead of each player having actions they can make, there is
| a common board of actions, and there is a competition between
| players on them.
|
| There is just a touch of randomness, not too much so that it
| unskilled, but enough so that it's fun.
|
| And it's an interesting game that is above the usual pandemic
| and other basic games, but easy to explain and understand so
| you can play with casual friends, unlike something like stuff
| like ark nova that you can only enjoy with fellow nerds.
|
| In fact, you can play with kids. They can't win, but they are
| happy growing plants and caring for their sheeps.
| SamBam wrote:
| I feel like the OG version of this was people making their own 3D
| Sellers of Catan boards. My wife and I even started making one
| about 20 years ago, and the pieces are still in a box
| somewhere...
|
| (Maybe people were making custom components for boardgames before
| Settlers, I just don't know about it.)
| ot1138 wrote:
| I created an over-the-top Catan game. I started off with a faux
| treasure chest from HomeGoods. Then replaced the generic board
| and tiles with laser cut wood ones. The robber was replaced with
| a hand painted one from Etsy. Everyone has custom dice of their
| own choosing (some made from stainless steel) and custom colors
| for their pieces. I also shelled out for a "Longest turn" card to
| add to the fun.
|
| It's a huge hit.
| sbergot wrote:
| I have written a french website to help designing custom origami
| inlays for boardgames:
| https://ludistesorigamistes.camillebetsimonb.fr/.
|
| There is a whole community about this!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I like organizers, but strongly dislike upgraded components like
| this. I am a wood-component-purist for board games, because I
| identify other player's positions quickly by looking at what they
| have. Elaborate, diverse, and confusing components are very
| difficult to discern. I don't mind metal coins, but why does each
| game need its own metal set? One nice set could work for many
| games.
|
| I think pimped up components work best for couples or multi-
| player solitaire games, which I don't do often.
|
| I will use poker chips over paper money, but this is for
| practical reasons.
| barbs wrote:
| I think one of the understated advantages of board games is the
| ability to easily create, add to or modify them. You can upgrade
| the components to higher quality ones, like the author has done
| here, or add inserts to aid setup and packdown. Then there are
| house rules or fan-made variants to keep things interesting. Then
| there's the print-and-play scene, where people can quickly access
| new game ideas and be playing them within minutes. People will
| also create print-and-play versions of games long out-of-print,
| which I've done a couple of times, although this is somewhat
| legally dubious akin to downloading abandonware. Then you realise
| the ease at which you can create and prototype a boardgame using
| nothing but paper and spare bits of cardboard.
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