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I'm not the OP, but as someone who dabbles in tabletop game design, I find these kind of generators very useful for game prototyping. (The one I've used most in

by joemi 9y ago

I'm not the OP, but as someone who dabbles in tabletop game design, I find these kind of generators very useful for game prototyping. (The one I've used most in the past is called Squib[1] and it's an open source Ruby codebase and very configurable.) It's often a huge pain to write prototype cards by hand, especially when you have to do it multiple times while iterating the design. (Though in some cases a generator won't cut it, and you need to do it by hand anyway.) That said, since this is HN, it'd be nice to have some explanation of the technology behind the generator, too. Hopefully it's forthcoming. [1]: http://squib.rocks/ http://squib.rocks/

michaericalribo 9y ago
This is neat. I'm curious, how does printing work after the prototyping stage? Would you usually find a publisher, who handles it for you? Are there other tools like Squib for making homespun tabletops?
- iamdave 9y ago
  https://www.denexa.com/ https://www.denexa.com/ Not my company, but one ran by a friend I used to game with in the early 2000's, they print some very high quality cards at a good rate.
- joemi 9y ago
  How printing goes after prototyping all depends... Some people shop their prototypes to publishers, some get the game to a more advanced state before shopping it to publishers, others self publish, and still others release it as print&play. There are various companies that'll print small runs/single runs of nicer cards (sometimes indistinguishable from "pro" cards), and some of those companies will even manufacture other components too, like boards and gamepieces. I've printed a few print&play games on sites like printerstudio.com and received some really nice cards. It's a bit pricier than you'd want if you were going to get it manufactured for sale, but for a nice copy or two of something you're never really going to get published, it can be worth it. There are other tools for making homespun tabletop games (some of which have been mentioned in other comments here), but Squib is pretty much the best if you want functionality/customizability and can handle doing stuff in Ruby. If I didn't already know it pretty well, I'd probably use the OP's site, though. The main thing you want when prototyping is to iterate a lot, so the easier one of these programs is to use, the better. OP's site, being web-based, is definitely easy... no need to install, works wherever a web browser does (lots of game design programs are Windows only).

by joemi 9y ago

michaericalribo 9y ago

This is neat. I'm curious, how does printing work after the prototyping stage? Would you usually find a publisher, who handles it for you? Are there other tools like Squib for making homespun tabletops?

iamdave 9y ago
https://www.denexa.com/ https://www.denexa.com/ Not my company, but one ran by a friend I used to game with in the early 2000's, they print some very high quality cards at a good rate.
joemi 9y ago
How printing goes after prototyping all depends... Some people shop their prototypes to publishers, some get the game to a more advanced state before shopping it to publishers, others self publish, and still others release it as print&play. There are various companies that'll print small runs/single runs of nicer cards (sometimes indistinguishable from "pro" cards), and some of those companies will even manufacture other components too, like boards and gamepieces. I've printed a few print&play games on sites like printerstudio.com and received some really nice cards. It's a bit pricier than you'd want if you were going to get it manufactured for sale, but for a nice copy or two of something you're never really going to get published, it can be worth it. There are other tools for making homespun tabletop games (some of which have been mentioned in other comments here), but Squib is pretty much the best if you want functionality/customizability and can handle doing stuff in Ruby. If I didn't already know it pretty well, I'd probably use the OP's site, though. The main thing you want when prototyping is to iterate a lot, so the easier one of these programs is to use, the better. OP's site, being web-based, is definitely easy... no need to install, works wherever a web browser does (lots of game design programs are Windows only).