Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion designing board games

Anyone have titles of books on board game design at the upper elementary,middle school, or high school level (reading level that is)?

My 4th grade son is going through a bazillion phases right now. One is art...he is busy learning how to draw cartoon, video game characters. Guitar...he is composing on my guitar that I gave him and trying to learn how to play it a bit on his own with youtube, a book, and dvd set we gave him (plus they are learning a bit of guitar in school music class). Drama...he is involved in a drama production.

But the current thing that has caught his fancy is making up his own board games...he designed his own take on Charades as a board game (spending hours doing it). I would love to get him a book about it. Right now he is so ANTI-non-fiction. (His teacher makes them get one fiction chapter book, one non-fiction book and one Spanish book). He whines about hating non-fiction. I suggested that he take one of the things he is really into right now and get a book from that section (music or guitars, art, puppies or dogs- especially training, drama). I was thinking he might really enjoy a book about learning how to design a board game. I searched amazon but the books really look more for adults. If I had a kindle device and not the kindle app on my iPad...I would get one of them because it is free from the lending library...that one looks really interesting if he just reads the parts that would be interesting to him but not worth it to pay only to read 2 chapters.

Anyway...anyone have a list of board game design titles?

ETA...and yes he is exhausting. LOL

The Boy Scouts have a merit badge in game design, and I think the merit badge handbook is available online. It goes through principles very nicely, and is short.

Cool he is a Cub Scout so he will like that! Probably will be exactly what he needs for right now. Thank you.

I hate to be so stingy...but $4.50 pamphlet cost $7.00 to ship. I will. See if my dh can go to a scouting store and pick one up. He was just at one to pick up ribbons and trophies for pine wood derby.

Oh and one thing I saw on the merit badge had a list of books as resources for someone working on this badge....that helps.

Because it gets into some of the challenges and design thoughts behind the process, I like -
Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish by Lewis Pulsipher

I haven't read it, but I've read good references for -
Kobold Guide to Board Game Design

A smaller community site: bgdf.com
(board game designer forums) has a great backlog of discussions on the topic.

Also, boardgamegeek.com has a designer forum, but it has poor signal to noise.

But some of the best material out there is in podcasts...
http://boardgameuniversity.libsyn.com/

Sweetie, I don't know if this is the whole booklet, but it appears to be at least the essence:

http://www.slideshare.net/dmullich/game-design-merit-badge

Thanks to both of you...I am headed in the right direction...I love helping my little guy's latest passions.

Books

Bell, R.C. Board and Table Games From Many Civilizations, revised ed. Dover Publications, 1979.
Botermans, Jack. The Book of Games: Strategy, Tactics & History. Sterling Publishing, 2008.
Brathwaite, Brenda, and Ian Schreiber. Challenges for Game Designers. Charles River Media, 2009.
Koster, Raph. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press, 2005.
Morehead, Albert H., Geoffrey Mott- Smith, and Philip D. Morehead.Hoyle's Rules of Games, third revised and updated ed. Signet, 2001.
Sackson, Sid. Card Games Around the World. Dover Publications, 1994.
Schell, Jesse. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.

This is a list I found...will look at these too.

I'll mention game design has been a hobby of mine on and off for many years, and have been heavy into board game design since this past summer. Both the Theory of Fun and the lenses book are on my "to buy" list, but I get the impression they are both a bit more philosophical.

It was one website that fired me up from dabbling to being more intent: thegamecrafter.com

This is a "print on demand" game resource. By supplying all the digital art and choosing components, you can get a real game printed from them and even let others order a game and get a percent return. Before print on demand, the process to get a game made would either be a heavy setup charge and a minimum order of 500 or more games or getting a publisher interested.

Oh he is just nine years old and is dabbling at this point. I would first get these books from the library or inter library loan if they don't have them.

He really needs to learn just basic things. I think you both have put me on the right track...I'll weed through it all and pass it along to him.