I'm Daniel Piechnick.
I'm a board game designer from Australia, and former national Scrabble champion.
I'm the designer of the award-winning game Radlands,
Published by
Roxley Games. It has sold over 150,000 copies, and been
translated into ten languages. I also have other games approved for
publication.
This site teaches you how to design board games that people will love, or that a publisher would want to publish.
Many board game design websites I see are troves of analysis. These sites just explain how things are. Others give lots of general advice, and best practice. Some go no further than pointless abstractions and theory.
I wrote this site because I see a lack of comprehensive, actionable advice for aspiring board game designers. In this site, I tell you what to do.
Board game design is iterative. You come up with an idea, you create a playable prototype of the game, and then you play it with someone. From that playtest, you learn things, and you modify your game. Then, you play it again. You repeat this process many, many times, until the game is great.
It's important to understand that there is no manual that can teach you exactly how to create a great board game, any more than there's a manual that can teach you exactly how to write a great book.
Board game design sits at the intersection of logic and psychology.
Game design is far too complex to be fully understood or solved. I can give you my best advice, but it's just a raised platform you'll still need to skilfully build upon. Most of your expertise will come from your own practice and reflection, and a huge amount of trial and error.
I've written this site for people who are serious about board game design, as most designers are. This site is purely my opinion, but be warned: it's my brutally honest opinion. I'll tell you exactly what I think, including things polite people won't tell you. Expect to disagree with some of what I say.
Some of what I have to say is directed not at your game, but at you, and at designers in general. I'll also be going into the harsh realities that must be faced by those who wish to be successful in this industry.
Most of my methodology is my own, but a small amount was learned from outside, particularly from the popular fantasy card game Magic: the Gathering (usually abbreviated to just Magic.) Some of my advice lines up with common wisdom. Most doesn't.
This site is not a scattering of thoughts. The 90 or so articles I've written cover my entire design methodology, and amount to a complete course in board game design.
This site was mostly written during 2018. It was published in 2023, after the success of Radlands.
No one has any business telling you how to design games if they're not a successful designer themselves.
The advice on this site is accompanied by examples from published games, from my game Radlands, and from game prototypes on my shelf. This site is also written to be understandable by people who are not board game enthusiasts.
The foundational articles are first, so I suggest reading the articles on this site in numerical order.
If don't know about the booming industry of modern board games, start here. If you already know about this, please continue.
Let's begin.