Design as in designing rules? Graphics?

Designing the rules, the pieces, the gameplay. What it looks like isn't all that important at this point

Absolutely agreed. Just clarifying what you meant.

Bump for feedback, abge made me curious.

What's the easiest way to make a tree diagram? With what program?

pencil and paper is good. Or you could buy the deluxe edition of autocad.

Never mind, Word has this brilliant feature called SmartArt which I just pressed for the first time.

Thanks anyway, though.

damn that felt like a sale

Just practising.

4-page upload done.

Having read your documents, the main goal of your game, as I understand it, is to minimize "luck". I assume by "luck" you mean "benefiting from chance. I would consider games like Chess and Go to be ones with minimal luck due to the virtual non-existence of chance in the game. This is opposed to games like Candy Land or Snakes and Ladders which are 100% chance. Poker is an excellent of example with both high chance and skill. One may get "lucky" but a skilled player will always end up on top in the long run.

So far, we are on the same page, but after that it gets a bit dicey. It seems you very much want to have a very elaborate, rules-heavy game. You'll note that most games of pure skill (Chess, Go, Diplomacy) are abstract and have very few rules. Minutes to learn, lifetime to master and all that. Games like Axis & Allies, while very intricate rely much more on chance. You seem to want to have it both ways, which I think will be very tricky. There are, of course, games that do this, such as tactical-scale combat simulators. PanzerBlitz comes to mind and yet you'll note that no one plays PanzerBlitz anymore. There is a reason for this. Unless you really, really love tactical simulations, they just aren't fun to play.

I also have an issue with the juxtaposition of using dice while trying to eliminate luck. Really, the entire point of dice is resolution by chance. Yes, it introduces luck, but it is also what makes some games so exciting. Holding back and army 5x your size in New Zealand in RISK! is awesome. You're trying to use dice while mitigating the effect they have on the game. At some point, rolling dice is just a waste of time if it doesn't impact anything. Imagine D&D with all average rolls and yet you still need to roll a d4 for everything. It would suck.

You're also making some things needlessly complicated. When I saw your flow chart for placing resources I wanted to cry (and I'm a Rail Baron!). This isn't Mouse Trap where the game is making the board. Considering something along the lines of Settlers of Catan. A dynamic starting board is awesome, but don't make it too painful.

Finally, I think your process is all over the place. From what I can tell, you barely have an idea of what the game will be, so why contact manufacturers? Design a game that is awesome and then figure out how to produce it. Design should dictate manufacturing, not the other way around. If your game is good enough, you don't need metal-forged pieces. No one's ever refused to play Diplomacy because the pieces happened to be cardboard.

I'll admit, you had a lot more than what I expected, but I don't think you have as much as you think you do. It seems to me you've bitten off a huge project here. Boardgame design isn't easy, which is why most people play games that are older than they are. None of this is meant to discourage you, only to give you some pause to consider the scale of project you've undertaken. If you want to succeed, I think you need to reevaluate what the main goals of your project are and how your decisions are helping you meet those goals. I also think you'd be better served developing the game in discrete parts (to some extent) and actually figuring out some details, because once you cut out all the obiwan out of your docs, you really only have about 1 page of actual game details so far.

Hopefully that was of some help and please keep us updated on the progress.

Skimming through the documents you have posted to your website, it appears most of the content you have up there could essentially be described as design diaries. Which is to say, you're describing the thought process that is going into the design of the game. Which makes a lot of sense for a school project, but is less useful for the purposes of critique. To make it easier for people to critique it, it would be good to have a design document which is just barebones rules and structure, all in one place so its easy to look over and read. Think of it like the rulebook for the game. But a super minimalist rulebook. Without most of the writing that holds it together.

Once you have that you can iterate on it and test/play with rules and write up entries on how things work. Why you're making changes etc. But without a clear package of rules, its hard to critique.

To clarify; a document of this sort should do three things ideally. It should give your reader an idea of how the game is set up; what a normal turn looks like; and how the game is won.

Fine idea, I should indeed probably start on the actual rulebook soon.
Don't worry, not ignoring abge, talking with him right now!

I just decided I'll discuss with my teacher how much thoughts I need to include when my holiday is over. The essence of the project is the boardgame, not the report, after all..

Maybe I can employ fellow students for production of figures :-)

You definitely need to get this shortened down into an agreeable format

Yeah yeah I got it :-)

I'm working on it, but other things are keeping me busy at the moment.
Heads-up: my site might go down for a while this weekend. Don't expect any updates before then.

Good luck, i personally see almost no games as being luck free as one could very easily get lucky with how an opponent moves, or if they don't notice something.

@tvrocks

"Not noticing something" isn't really luck; it's skill. If you miss a move in Chess, it's a stretch to call it "bad luck"; it's "bad skill".

@tvrocks: Thanks but I shouldn't need it, that's the point :-)

@abgemacht: there are almost no games that are completely free of luck as luck will almost always play a role in the game. Creating a very elaborate plan in, for example, chess can make it less likely for an opponent to notice something, it is completely up to luck in the end thouh on if they do. I have won games of chess before by relying on small traps to end with a vheckmate, however, that is not because of the skill on my part, it is because my opponents messed up, until someone reaches the pimnacle of a game, and is extremely skilled at it, luck will play a part. Luck also plays a part in other games suh as diplomacy. (Starting positions, whether someone personally prefersa certain alliance, whether or not they win in the wifom game.) i do agree wih you that luck will often not play the dominant role, it will almost always play a certain role though.

Being fortunate that your opponent shows a lack of skill is a distinctly different type of luck and it makes perfect sense to not call that luck because at the end, it's all skill or a lack of skill. You're just lucky to be more skillful than your opponent for the moment..

Deciding that all things are because an opponent shows a "lack of skill" is a very limited way to look at it. In chess, just like in diplomacy, there may be hundreds of possibke moves and, even thiugh one may be the optimal play, one should not always pick that move as an opponent may actually be moving to counter it. It is not a matter of skill on whether or not an opponent gets it right, it is just lucky for them that someone chose one good move over another.

Debatable. Having played quite some chess, I was looking for those moves that mess up their system often, and it worked well, but figuring what's going to make your opponent do the wrong move is important as well. I often see with semi-pros that they're so focused on the most complicated things that they can miss a simple checkmate on the side if you keep them busy enough figuring out a complex situation elsewhere.
It's figuring out the way they think and adapting your moves to what doesn't work for them.

But my point was merely that there is a distinction and it should be obvious that I'm only talking about chances inherent to the game rather than the players.

Something that's almost related to this conversation: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/crowdfunding-is-driving-a-196-million-board-game-renaissance/

Interesting. I was already considering getting investors so I can get a decently sized first print. Crowdfunding is another option to consider.

Or the same option, but I was thinking few and large investors earlier.

That was probably clear but anyway.