Creating My Very First Tabletop Game

[BlackMagicCraftOfficial]

Making a game is a great way to make a YouTube channel suffer. Not that I'd know anything about that. BUT it's also very satisfying and fun.

[syntheticblackminiatures]

I used to teach tabletop game design as a college course. My biggest bit of advice to my students was to follow the fun, feedback, and embrace change when it works.

[mikebroadwater]

Favorite part of the video: Scott asking people to let him know if he's being wrong on the internet as if we wouldn't do that anyway.

[AdamShelar]

One way to address the melee fighters sticking issue is to have push mechanics, so attacks always knock each other away. Then you could utilize the terrain in interesting ways to deal more damage or add other effects. Good luck with the design process!

[quentingraindorge]

You should check out Unmatched for a tight 1v1 / 2v2 pvp game that seems to tick a lot of the boxes you're looking for! (competitive, quick, one model per person, super low barrier of entry, excellent gameplay, ... )

[benjaminnoble]

This is a board game but its a 1 v 1 fighting game, its called BattleCON: War of Indines. It uses cards to create the attacks and movements of the players fighter, the best part (imo) is you use 2 cards to create different "combos" of attacks. Not sure if this is the route you are looking for or not but maybe it could give some inspiration. Great video cant wait to see what you come up with!

[benstapleton]

A dueling game I absolutely love is Unmatched - each fighter has a unique ability and unique deck with some shared cards between characters. I find it generally captures the *feel* of each fighter really really well!

[Garrth]

I'd highly recommend scrolling through GDC talks - theres a lot of them that can be applied to games in general, not just video games. There was a really good one about lessons learned from working on magic the gathering for 20 years. Also I look forward to anything you do, I've got an idea of my own I've been slowly working on in my free time so it'll be neat to watch/compare to whatever comes out of this

[diSTUD]

Hey Scott, when you said that you wanted to make a dueling game, the first thing that came to MY mind was Flesh and Blood. While I have little to no experience with the game, it's a TCG that it is centered around you picking a character and suiting them up with armor, weapons and other things. it might be similar enough that you can adapt your game similarly. Hope this helps!

[SlavicMoose]

Arena Rex, while not 1 v 1, definitely captures the excitement and smaller scale, individual choices, interaction with the environment, and cohesion you mentioned

[paulbotelho]

Ugh, FINALLY!

THIS was the content I have been looking for, for years.

[trevclaridge]

I had a few immediate ideas, all of which I hope support the four things on your wishlist:

I think it'd be really interesting if your game rules made movement and positioning the key mechanics that all of the others center around. The distance you are to your opponent, and at what angle you are attacking them changes the effects of your attacks/abilities. If I'm 2 inches away and behind them, I do an extra bit of damage, but if they can keep me close to them, their abilities give them the advantage because their attacks are more close quarters centric. A character's abilities might/should also include ways to move either themselves *and/or their opponent*. I could just move backward to get my 2 inch bonus, or I could shove them away (possibly into some terrain that deals damage).

I think another way to make moving someone else's character interesting could be that the actual angles that the characters are facing. Each model has to designate a facing direction, and abilities use that direction for special moves (one of my abilities is a 2 inch cone that hits everything North West, North, and North East of my models "face", and one of theirs is straight North charge of 5 inches). A character can have abilities to rotate their opponent around them or rotate themselves around their opponent. Maybe there is even room for optional rules to use a hex grid. I think these movement and positioning rules might be able to bring the "excellent gameplay".

I've talked a lot about abilities. I think this where we get "competitive" and "fast". I think it'd be really cool if each player could sort of "build" their character before a duel, very much like you might build an army or pick special rules for some games. I think there can be some system for picking from a set of abilities to create specialized builds. Lots of opportunities for interesting combinations and countering the abilities of opponent characters. As I'm describing this, I'm starting to think it sounds a lot like a battle arena style video game with hero builds. Maybe you take some inspiration there and even have a system of alternating ability choosing/banning.

The "fast" part of the above comes with the notion that, during play, it's probably going to become obvious pretty quickly who had the stronger build for that particular duel; one player just had the right set of chosen abilities that effectively and efficiently counter their opponent's. There's two inherent scenarios then: 1) the game ends quickly and the players get to play again, this time choosing a different set of abilities to try a new strategy or 2) the characters end up evenly matched, which is, effectively, going to make another form of fun where tactics and strategy prevail and prolong a close, unpredictable, and interesting duel.

Finally is "low barrier". What if there were no die rolls, no randomness at all? What if all you needed to play was the book, which had all rules, stats, and abilities necessary to play? What if the game was mini agnostic? If the abilities are written so as to be exact, with "perfect information", you allow a certain level of tactical thinking that can be very attractive. Not to mention you put yourself in league with some of the most revered "dueling" games in history: chess, go, . . . checkers, I guess. Wargamers are accustomed to a certainly level of inherent randomness from die rolls, so I don't see this absolutely necessary, but worth considering I think. It would certainly help in keeping the barrier of entry low: all you need is the book, a piece of paper like a RPG character sheet to keep track of your chosen abilities, and maybe a tape measure that a lot of people, even non-wargamers, are going to have at least one of already (include a couple of cut outs or plastic rulers and cones in the back of the book or the box set if you're so inclined).

Anyways, these are my few ideas. Hopefully they reach you. This has really sparked my imagination, and I'd love to hear/talk more about it. I chat with Evan occasionally on the Once in a Six Side discord. Great vid!

[sicktricks]

My other hobby besides miniatures is video game development and design, I have a few recommendations based on my experience designing, implementing, and releasing projects.
1) Do not make your "Dream Game" as your first project. This would be like creating a current Miniac youtube video without having ever painted a mini or edited a video. You can see a lot of game dev youtubers persuing this goal and there are a lot of traps you can fall into when persuing a vision only, which is often what dream games are.
2) Be prolific. Nothing will help you make your next game more than having already made a game or mamy games. Go through the entire process of making a playable experience and getting feedback as quickly as possible. I found a lot of benefit from writing down one game idea a day in a journal, but make sure these are concepts for a game mechanic and not just visions and vibes. see if you can make 30 games in 30 days, or a game a week. Constraints are useful for the iteration process, so consider the smallest possible scope and then see how many unique concepts you can make within that box. Seeing all your shitty ideas on paper can help you see the negative space where the good ideas might be.
3) Start with the most important design decisions first. I see a lot of game dev youtubers building out open world systems and saying they will eventually get around to adding a combat mechanic. Designing a world or characters or factions is fun, but it does not make a game.If you are making a 1v1 game then consider making exactly 2 characters that can fight each other and build a vertical slice of your game from that. If you cannot make a fun experience with 2 characters, the work you put into designing all of the secondary and tertiary systems will not save the project. When analyzing other games, consider what the most essential elements are. You might like the variety in AoS most, but you can take that away and still have a playable experience.

I hope this helps, I would love to see game development done in a way that has a high chance of leading to completed projects, regardless of how perfect they are. Good luck!

[Artmesa]

"The Rule of Canage" is a is podcast dedicated to designing better miniatures games. I highly recommend it.
Also, Guerrilla Miniatures Games had a podcast which was a little more freeform but was conversations with independent game designers. Definitely worth while to check out too.

[supachigga]

I would like to point you towards Sakura Arms, Combo Fighter, Dice Throne, Gosu X, BattleCON, Exceed Fighting System, and Yomi since others have already mentioned Unmatched and Flesh and Blood.

[bogey]

Mage Wars, is a great mage vs mage board game. the mages do summon underlings so it isn't strictly speaking 1v1 but its in the same arena. each mage has a "spell book" that has all their cards. it sort of functions like if you were holding your whole magic the gathering deck in your hand.

[calebtravirca]

Some things you might be interested in for small combat is--

1.) Card games such as yogioh, hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra etc. This could come into play with magic cards, traps, armor, small buffs, condition that last one round, ect.
2.) In some MOBAs like smite, have joust a small 3v3 game with only one lane to worry about. I think something simular like having 3-5 home bases for the enemy to capture could be fun
3.) Not exactly 1v1 but maybe later down the line a tag in system, like in fighting games could be cool
4.) One of my favorite things in unique character games is fun abilities and ultimates like in overwatch, Dota, apex legends, ect.

I love the content and hope you find one idea helpful, I'm making a game too and it is verry fun but can be challenging at times.

[SPACENOMADMALEV]

What a hype video series, I want episode 2 NOW.

[xGamermonkeyx]

Yoooo! I'm very excited for this and especially with the team up with Trent! I love Miscast and love the way he approaches hobby projects with absolute reckless abandon, and I always love seeing other Aussies get a bit more screen time lol!

As far as 1v1 and out-the-box experiences go, I think a really good thing to look at would be Battletech Classic and Alpha Strike. When you first said "Duel" as a focus, the first thing I thought of was Classic Battletech, as it can be played as small at 1v1 and also really importantly has a barrier to entry of "do you have a computer to download the free core rules on?". Even if you're not interested in a grid-based system or sci-fi as a setting, it could be a really good thing to check out and take lessons from.
Alpha Strike is a bit of a different beast, but also one thats extremely worth looking at as a comparison to Battletech. Set in the same universe, using the same minis and with its own free core rules PDF. Differs mostly in that it's designed for larger, more 40K style combat with whole companies of Mechs and combined arms fighting each other as opposed to one single Lance or less. It's also free movement as opposed to hex-grid based like Classic.
I think both have some really interesting lessons and concepts you would find really engaging, and hey they both have a barrier to entry of $0 so why not? I personally think a hex-based Duel game where the faces of your base indicated where you could guard or not, or something has some real potential.

[Miniac]

Please leave your game recommendations, thoughts, game dev resources in the comments!