Community Board Gaming

[Neatras]

So I've been playing plenty of board games on Tabletop Simulator, a Steam game which produces a virtual 3D tabletop which can recreate thousands of different board games. Considering the biggest disadvantage to board games is that it's restricted to a specific locale, I consider this to be a way of potentially opening up board gaming groups to international scales.

While I would think it funny if say, a dozen or so members grouped up and started playing board games with each other, I'll still open the floor to anyone who has Tabletop Simulator, an interest in playing board games, and a willingness to set stuff up with members of this forum. I'm certainly game.

[Divine Insight]

I'm not into gaming but it does look quite interesting. I never heard of Tabletop Simulator so I looked up the following video. It's pretty interesting, but I can just imagine the TIME that this would require. I don't have that kind of time to spend.

[youtube][/youtube]

This was my first exposure to Tabletop Simulator.

I would suggest that you might want to post a YouTube video that shows the type of games you are interested in. I imagine there are tons of videos on Tabletop Simulator.

[Divine Insight]

By the way, now that I see that people can create their very own games it might be interesting to start a thread where people can come together to create a DC&R game.

I have no clue what it would entail. I imagine it would most likely end up becoming a war game between theists versus atheists.

Christians might actually like the idea of creating a game where the object is to become "saved". In fact, I'd really be surprised if they haven't already created a game like that somewhere online.

Computer technology has come so far in my lifetime. I was born with the transistor in 1949. I saw computers grow from huge mainframes that were totally beyond the reach of the average person to our modern day where almost no one can live without their personal computing device.

Now anyone can "program" a game with absolutely no knowledge of computer programming at all. It's truly amazing how for we've come in less than half a century.

[wiploc]

DC&R?

[Divine Insight]

DC&R?

Debating Christianity & Religion.

Any ideas for the what the board should look like?

Edited to Add:

I suggest we at least have an ogre named Otseng who jumps out and clobbers anyone who violates the game rules.



It will be a game of war between theists and atheists were civility rules supreme.

[Divine Insight]

@ Neatras,

You got me interested in Tabletop Simulator and the idea of creating a brand new game. I don't have time to do it, but I was looking around at various board games and I found a game called Darkest Night that could really be used as a model for creating a pretty cool theist/atheist game. Of course it would better be called "Priests and Scientists".

Of course I would create an entirely new board and cards, but I would use a lot of the same basic ideas used in Darkest Night.

The Heroes would be both Priests and Scientists. They would work together to seek out and destroy an evil ogre similar to the Necromancer. The priest could gain resources by praying, or performing religious ceremonies, while the scientists could gain resources by obtaining new discoveries.

Of course all the cards would need to be written up with appropriate instructions and artwork. I'll bet the game would go over pretty well. The scientists would draw from the science deck and the theists would draw from the theist deck for instructions.

This could actually be useful as a teaching or learning tool for both science and theology.

I don't have time time to create the game, but I can see that with tabletop simulator it would be extremely easy to do.

I'm played out at 68 years old, and I also have too many projects going on in my life as well. Too bad tabletop simulator wasn't available when I was younger I probably would have created a few interesting games.

The youth today are lucky to have a resource like Tabletop Simulator.

By the way, I see the actual physical board game of Darkest Night sells for about $127. But you can download the simulated version for tabletop simulator for only $6.99. That's quite a savings.

Have you thought about designing a brand new game of your own?

[Divine Insight]

Look at this: For only $6.99 and it comes with 5 expansions:

#1 With an Inner Light
#2 On Shifting Winds
#3 From the Abyss
#4 In Tales of Old
#5 From Distant Lands

Darkest Night for Tabletop Simulator



If I had the time I could get into this.

[Bust Nak]

I love board games and play regularly. I don't have tabletop simulator yet and intent to pick it up when it's cheap. Maybe steam winter sale. I prefer heavier "euro games."

I am a big PC gamer too, I enjoy most genres except sports (including motor sport) games. I could do with adding some of you to my steam/blizzard friend list.

Look at this: For only $6.99 and it comes with 5 expansions...

Just in case it isn't clear, you still need to pay $19.99 for the base tabletop simulator on top of that.

[Divine Insight]

I love board games and play regularly. I don't have tabletop simulator yet and intent to pick it up when it's cheap. Maybe steam winter sale. I prefer heavier "euro games."

I am a big PC gamer too, I enjoy most genres except sports (including motor sport) games. I could do with adding some of you to my steam/blizzard friend list.

Look at this: For only $6.99 and it comes with 5 expansions...

Just in case it isn't clear, you still need to pay $19.99 for the base tabletop simulator on top of that.

Yes I understand. Do you think $19.99 is a lot of money for that software? I think that's extremely reasonable. Especially considering all that it will do.

My interest would be to build a game entirely from scratch. It would be my own game, I might even be able to profit from the game by selling it like they are selling Dark Night.

In fact, the potential to make money from having created a new game might pay off. The key is in creating a game that will find a large consumer group.

Thus far I have only looked at the game "Dark Night", so I have limited inspiration for making a new game. However, even from that limited inspiration I already have a whole lot of ideas for how to create a game based on the same underlying idea, but different enough that it wouldn't even remotely appear to have been inspired by "Dark Night".

I originally suggested creating an Theist/Atheist game. Only because I was thinking of this forum and how it might interest people on this forum. My original thought was to make it a war game where the atheists and theists are fighting a war against each other. However, after seeing "Dark Night" I think it would be way more cool to have the atheists and theists working together as cooperating heroes to conquer some non-player evil force like the Necromancer of "Dark Night".

Although my original thought was to create a game that would reflect DC&R (this forum) I quickly realized that a more generic game could be created called "Priests and Scientists", or something along those lines. And the game could be focused on how scientists and theists could work together to overcome the problems in the world.

In fact instead of having a single evil "Necromancer", the game could actually have several different "dark forces" of life that the Priests and Scientists need to work together to overcome.

The scientists could work toward saving the world from natural disasters, while the priests work toward saving the world from corrupt tribes who are terrorizing the world.

Now that I think about it, a game like this might actually be quite useful as a teaching aid to help people realized that we can all work together to save the real world.

The potential for creativity here is unlimited. And with Tabletop Simulator you aren't even restricted to just a single board. The Dark Night was an actual physical board game that is just being simulated on the Tabletop Simulator. But if you create a brand new game of your own there is no limit to how many board layouts you could create.

For $19.99 I think Tabletop Simulator is a darn good bargain. Typically software this powerful and useful is often over $100.

I don't really have time to create a game right now. But it could potentially become a financially rewarding endeavor. After you've created the game, you can sell copies on Amazon and just sit back and collect the profits.

I also have a second idea for a game. It would be called "The Labyrinth Way", based on my own personal Wicca paradigm. I would imagine that it would probably sell well in Wicca circles.

Once you've established a game and have it out there, you could continue to create "expansions" for it. Creating one game could end up becoming a small business venture, keeping you busy creating additional expansions for years to come.

Ideally I would need to look into some other games for more inspirational ideas.

So far Dark Night is the only one I've looked into and it has already inspired me to think of many ways to create a game based on cooperating heroes. I like that idea.

I'll have to look into some other games and see what they are about.

But I don't really want to design a game where people are fighting or trying to kill each other. Even in Dark Night a player can "die", but it's an evil force that killed them, not another player.

Just as a matter of personal preference, I would feel better about designing a game where the goal is cooperation by all players to defeat an inhuman force. So I really like the basic idea behind "Dark Knight".

And by the time I got done redesigning it, it wouldn't be anything like Dark Night at all, save for the fact that it would be a cooperation game, rather than players competing against each other.

I probably could have designed a board already in the time it took me to rant about it in this post.

But yeah, $19.99 isn't bad for a potential business investment. And the $6.99 for the Dark Night game would be to just load it into Tabletop Simulator and see all the parts to it. You could use the general design as a template to create a brand new game.

Creating all your own graphics would most likely be the most time-consuming part of the whole process. Of course, you wouldn't need to create them from scratch. I'm sure you can find other software to help you create your own graphics using basic templates.

If I had the time this would be a great venture for me because I actually enjoy the creative process of designing the actual games.

I think I would need to do my "Labyrinth Way" game first though. The idea would be to start off as simple as possible, and then start adding "enhancements" to build it up to a full-fledged game.

Like the original board could just be a very simple hand-sketched map to begin with. Then you could add complex graphics as you continue to build the game.

I can't stop talking about this! I should just stop typing, buy Tabletop Simulator, and get busy creating a game.

I really do enjoy creating things like this.

~~~~

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 9 by Divine Insight]

It is a very reasonable price but I know I can get it even cheaper when the steam sale kicks in, it's coming soon.

As for your ambition to make a game, it will be very time consuming. Good luck.