Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design

If you wanted to design your own board game, where would you start? Would you base it on an existing game you already know and like? Would you create a new mechanic in order to facilitate gameplay? Would it require luck or skill? How would the pieces move?

A thousand and one questions immediately leap to mind. But although there are plenty of resources out there for the aspiring game designer, there has never been a one-stop-shop for the actual bits and pieces that make up the rules of board gaming.

That is, until now.

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design is the industry’s first true lexicon, an encyclopedic look at board game mechanics. From piece movement and card manipulation to offering clues, forging contracts, and communicating with other players, a staggering number of techniques employed by board game designers are chronicled within these pages, as well as examples of effective and not-always-effective implementation from well-known board games.

You immediately feel like you’re in good hands when you read this book. The designers come off as incredibly knowledgable about games themselves as well as enthusiastic fans of board games, meaning that you’re getting not only mechanical effectiveness but aesthetic input on how to build a game to fit your concept or narrative.

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design is a mind-blowing undertaking, one that belongs on the desk of every game designer, no matter how experienced.