Patrick: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another bonus episode of the Indie Board Game Designers podcast. This is the fourth installment of the Simple Elegance series, which is all about myself and Cody preparing for the Simple Elegance contest on The Game Crafter.

Patrick: As of the time of this recording, we have 27 days left, which both Cody and myself are thinking, “That is not a lot of time.” We're going to talk about final playtesting, and we're probably going to have at least one more episode. In that next episode, we are probably going to talk about preparing our game on The Game Crafter to submit it to the contest on time. So if you haven't listened to the series before, I recommend you start at the beginning and listen to Simple Elegance one, two, and three. Then listen to this one, which is the fourth installment. Anyway, Cody, how are you doing?

Continue reading “#74 – Simple Elegance: Variable Player Powers”

Patrick Rauland: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers podcast, where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking to Josh Mills, who designed Big Easy Busking. Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh Mills: Thank you for having me, I'm ready to hear some more music.

Continue reading “#73 – Joshua J Mills”

Patrick Rauland: Hello everybody, welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers podcast, where sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking to Travis Hill, who runs the Low Player Count podcast. He's a rulebook editor, and he's also helping me with the rules for Fry Thief. He's fantastic at that, and he also designed Reunification which is a 3-5 player storytelling RPG which was on Kickstarter, and Penny Rails, which is going up for preorder via Button Shy Games by the time this episode airs. Travis, that's a lot of stuff. Welcome to the show.

Travis D. Hill: Thanks, Patrick. It's good to be here.

Continue reading “#72 – Travis D Hill”

Hello every body and welcome to another bonus episode of the show. There will be a regular episode later this week.

My name is Patrick Rauland and today marks the one year anniversary of the show. I want to talk about the content of the show and the funding.

Content

So content first – a year ago I published episode zero called Why – which I’ll include in the show notes. In that episode I said:

“The point of this podcast to inspire and inform aspiring board game designers.” 

I’m guess I’m curious how well you think I’ve done that. 

  • Are you inspired?
  • Did you learn something?

If you did I’d love to hear what you learned, what inspired you, or what you’re working on.

If you aren’t inspired and you didn’t learn something I’d like to hear that too.
So I’ve put together a survey for you at indieboardgamedesigners.com/survey

It’s only a couple questions long. If you can fill that out I’d really appreciate it. It will help me put out the best content possible.

Funding

Next I want to talk about funding. I wanted to make this podcast for a year to really understand what I’m doing and what the costs are. There are three main costs:

  • Hosting the podcast & website
  • Transcripts for each episode
  • And of course my time

So far I’ve paid for everything myself which I think is fine for the first year of a new venture. But I would like some support. The transcripts especially cost more than I thought. So I thought of a few ways to fund things.

  1. Podcast extras – I could have additional segments, or behind the scenes, or listener questions, or something like that.
  2. Private community – I could interact with a small group of people. We could work on games together. Maybe prepare for a contest or prepare to pitch games. It could also be marketing focused and I could help people launch a Kickstarter.
  3. Write a book – I’ve learned a lot over the past 70 episodes and I think I could put together a book on some game design principles.
  4. Online conference – I’ve developed relationships with a lot of designers & publishers. I could host an online conference to help educate and inspire even more.
  5. Sponsors – I could add sponsors to my show. Although I really dislike that model since then you don’t know if I’m saying something because of the quality or because they’re a sponsor.
  6. Donations – I could have a Patreon just for donations. I already have a Patreon setup since they recently changed their pricing and I wanted to be grandfathered in.

Each of these have pros and cons. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is there a way I can educate and inspire you more and a way to raise some funds to pay for the costs of the show?

Let me know in that survey. Again that’s indieboardgamedesigners.com/survey

Wrap Up

I’ve loved the last year. I’ve learned so much and got to meet so many incredible people in the board game world. Not just guests on the show but people in real life. I met a couple listeners at conventions and it’s a blast. I actually met a fan two days ago in my local play test group and it was super fun.

I look forward to sharing more awesome chats with you, promoting indie game designers, and hopefully educating and inspiring.

Until next time everyone. Happy designing.

Patrick: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another bonus episode of the Indie Board Game Designer podcast. Normally I talk to and interview guest game designers, and we talk about their experience in game design, but this is the third installment of the Simple Elegance series which is all about myself and another person preparing for the Simple Elegance contest on the Game Crafter.

So, this is a bonus episode. In this episode, we're going to be talking about new prototypes and some of the iterations we made on our games. If you haven't already heard the first two episodes (1 & 2), you should probably go back and listen to those, just so you know what we're talking about. But yeah, that's what we're going to be talking about. Cody, how are you doing?

Cody: Hey, Patrick. I'm doing well. I haven't been kicked off the podcast yet, so that's a win.

Patrick: I don't know what you'd have to do to be kicked off. There's very few things that would warrant being kicked off, but maybe that can be a new game.

Cody: “How to get kicked off Patrick's podcast,” I'll start prototyping it.

Continue reading “#70 – Simple Elegance: Moar Prototypes”

Patrick Rauland: Hello everybody, welcome to the Indy Board Game Designer. I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking with Helana Hope and Jessey Wright about their game Kingdom Rush: Rift of Time. I should also mention Sen-Foong Lim is also a designer for the game, but it was a bit tricky to get three guests on the call so I will have to have Sen on the show for a future episode. But for right now, Jessey Wright and Helana, welcome to the show.

Jessey Wright: Thank you.

Helana Hope: Thank you so much.

Continue reading “#69 – Helana Hope & Jessey Wright”

Patrick Rauland: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Indie Board Game Designers Podcast where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking to Jim Fitzpatrick who designed Mission to Planet Hexx. He's one of those people that goes to all of the cons and knows all the people, so I hope to learn some new things from him. Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim Fitzpatrick: It's great to be here. Hi.

Continue reading “#68 – Jim Fitzpatrick”

Patrick Rauland: Hello everyone and welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers Podcast, where I sit down with a different, independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game designing and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking with Joe Hopkins who designed Endangered, which as we're speaking is on Kickstarter, this episode will come out right after the Kickstarter ends, there will be some late pledging. But you can check it out on Kickstarter and find the late pledging link. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Hopkins: Thanks for having me.

Continue reading “#67 – Joe Hopkins”

Patrick Rauland: Hello everyone. And welcome to the Indie Board Game Designer's podcast, where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland and today I'll be talking to Clinton Morris, who designed Hunt the Ravager, which will be on Kickstarter when this episode airs. Clinton, welcome to the show.

Clinton Morris: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Continue reading “#66 – Clinton Morris”

Rauland: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Indy board game designers podcast, where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience in game design and the lessons they've learned along the way.

Rauland: My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking to another awesome human, because his name is Patrick Braun, who designed Silent Army. So, second Patrick, welcome to the show.

Braun: Hey Patrick. Thanks for the invitation. It's great to be here.

Continue reading “#65 – Patrick Braun”