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Making Your Own Board/Card Games?
wrinkledshirt writes "I've been growing interested in creating my own set of board games, and I was wondering if people knew of good resources for how to go about doing this? I'd love to know information on good places to get cards printed, manuals printed, plastic pieces manufactured, boards created, that sort of thing. Many companies online offer to do all of these things for you, but I'm considering doing it all separately in order to cut costs. Since I've never done this before, I'm also wondering about sources that'll give you good ideas to consider as well as gameplay pitfalls to avoid. I know google is my friend, but I'm also wondering about people's experiences in trying to do this stuff on their own...?"
I came up with the idea (long ago), of a three player chess game based on a board of hexagons instead of squares. I even tried to market it through one of those invention marketing companies (waste of good money.) Then I joined the Air Force and got stationed, of all places, at the Pentagon. One of the first things I did was hop on the Metrorail to Crystal City and do a patent search of chess games based on hexagons instead of squares... I found at least twenty design patents for such games. And since the WWW has come into existence I've found at least 20 more such games. So much for my idea. =P
Turns out, creating a chess game based on hexagons instead of squares that has the same "flavor" as regular chess is no easy task at all. I am still trying to find the right combination of boards/piece arrangements.