Material and Tools

I designed everything around 1/2″ PVC piping. It is sturdy and easy to cut. Speaking of cutting, use a ratcheting PVC pipe cutter (not a saw). This is a handy tool that does its job well.

• 1/2″ PVC Schedule 40 Pipe (5 sections of 1/2″ x 24″)
• 1/2″ PVC Side Outlet 90-Degree S x S x S Elbow Fitting (x4)
• 1/2″ PVC Schedule 40 Socket Cap
• Tape Measure
• Marker
• PVC Pipe Cutter

Size the TV

The idea is that you are going to frame the backside of a TV so it sits off the table. This allows access to the buttons, power connecting, and HDMI. Each TV will have a different back, so adjust the sizing accordingly. My TV is 32″ on the screen side, but on the back, it had a bump out that I can frame in PVC. This turned out to be 22″ x 16″. Use the marker to mark the cuts. The fittings allow for about 1″ of the pipe so you need to account for that. But I would not worry about everything being exact. There is a lot of play. Oversize now and trim later.

Frame the TV

Take one of the 1/2″ PVC Side Outlet Elbow Fittings and place it in the corner of the TV. Put the pipe into the side that does not face down. Repeat this around the TV.

Use the marker to decide where you want to make some cuts. I personally like the Milwaukee Inkzall Point Markers. They write on any material that I make stuff with.

Use the ratcheting PVC pipe cutter to cut each pipe segment.

Put each segment together. Do not glue it together. There is enough friction to lock everything in place. Plus, you might want to make adjustments in the future or switch out the TV.

Add Height as Needed

With the remaining pieces of PVC, you can make some legs for the PVC frame. This depends on how much clearance you need for the back of the TV and what the best viewing angle for people sitting around the table is. Put on the caps on the end of the PVC for a finished look.

Maps and Software

People have been using TVs for RPG gaming quite a bit. There’s a whole ecosystem of software, tools, and maps available to you.

• Arkenforge: It has everything that you would want for a low price tag: tools, pre-made assets, and a strong community. You can make maps, animate, and add audio for in-person only play. Arkenforge comes with a 30-day trial. Give it a try.
• MapTool: Free, open-source tool. This software also supports network collaboration.

Next Steps

If I keep this going, I am imagining some next steps and where to take this. I would paint the PVC black to help blend into the table and not look so DIY. I would create different sizes of the legs to adjust the height for other types of games. The biggest upgrade I would make is reconfiguring the riser for a much better TV. I used an old TV that only looked “good” from one angle. So, if I end up using this TV for gaming, I might make some upgrades.

What would you do?

Pixels Dice are Bluetooth-enabled dice that can be used with virtual tabletops and toolsets. They are rechargeable and can be customized to light up when and how you want.

The Unboxing

I got a little excited when I saw the shipment notice from Pixels. I appreciated the note and bonus stickers.

Taking a Closer Look at the Pixels D20

The Pixels D20 has a folded up circuit board inside a resin shell that has icosahedron featured in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. There are LEDs for each side, a battery, a charging coil, and a Bluetooth radio all stuffed inside.

When you roll the Pixels D20 and it settles to one side faced up, the dice transmits a Bluetooth message. If you have something listening to that message, that something can react to the message. Fortunately, the team created a mobile app that can interact with the dice. You pair Pixels just like you pair a set of headphones.

The app also lets you send “Profiles” that run on the Pixels dice. Out of the box, it came with “Rainbow” running. This was a cool effect that lights up a different color for every face.

You can also program your own profiles. Kind of like “when” and “then” logic. I created a profile for when the up face is 20, it then plays a rainbow effect over all faces, but only on a 20. I want that TPK to be glorious when it happens in my campaign.

Here’s me trying to roll a 20 to test out my new profile running on my Pixels D20.

Pixels Community

In order to pull off an ambitious project like Pixels, you have to have a strong community. This team started with the Kickstarter project and stayed in constant contact as the project unfolded. They hit some challenges, but the stayed transparent and authentic which helped keep all of us engaged. Now, the team is publishing code on GitHub with an open source license and engaging early adopters, gamers, and developers on their Discord server.

I am excited to be a part of this community and see where all of this goes. I am building some custom integrations with ThingSpeak and CheerLights, but you probably already guessed that.

Roll on!

I first learned about Scott Rogers from listening to the Ludology podcast. Scott Rogers would do a semi-regular segment called the Biography of a Board Game by Professor Scott Rogers. These were some of my favorite segments of the podcast. I always had a picture in mind of Scott rocking a tweed jacket and reading glasses surrounded by many leather bound books. Scott would go deep on a board game and tell its story from the early design and inspiration to the market reception. I sat in my office’s parking lot many times trying to finish the episode even though my commute was over.

In 2019, I was fortunate enough to attend a board game design workshop co-located with BGG.CON. On one of the networking breaks, I heard Scott’s distinctive voice. I turned and walked over to him saying, I just had to say thank you for all that you have given the community. I had Gabe Barrett’s board game design advice book in my backpack and remembered that Scott wrote a chapter on game design in it and shared his best advice for new game designers. I asked Scott to sign the chapter. Shameless.

Turns out that Scott was at the Tabletop Network design workshop to give a lecture on horror themed board games, so I got to learn from the professor himself. Scott would go on to design the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Board Game based on the iconic film from 1974.

Again… Thank you, Scott Rogers. You have given a lot to our community. I appreciate your contributions and inspiration over the years. I wish you well.

One box contains gamemats from the burncycle Kickstarter game that I backed at the height of the recent global pandemic. I backed a lot of games back then and now they are all starting to arrive. The other box is a set of golf wedges from BombTech. I got the limited edition BombTech golf clubs with the once-in-a-lifetime discount. Wink. The gamemats are rolled up into a tube and shoved into a long box for shipping. It just happened that both shipments came on the same day in the same packaging.

What is golf BTW?

Golf is a cross-country game in which a player strikes a small ball with various clubs from a series of starting points into a series of holes on a course. The player who holes their ball in the fewest strikes wins. Golf can be played solo, co-op, or competitively. In some cases you where funny golf outfits when a group of you go on a golf outing. Sounds like a LARP.

Wait a minute… Is golf a board game?

A board game is “any game played on a board, especially one that involves the movement of pieces on the board, such as chess or checkers.” Hmm. Golf is just played on a giant board called a golf course. We move a piece around called a golf ball to different locations on the board. And, there are many golf-themed board games out there. I recommend GoLo! – The Dice Golf Game.

A lot of people say that golf is an expensive game. It definitely is expensive. You gotta buy clubs, bags, shoes, and accessories just to play. You have to carve out a portion of your day to go play. Board games are also expensive. Deluxe, all-in, Kickstarter campaigns are expensive. Then, you have to pay for shipping. Then, you have to have a place to display all of your purchases. Then, you have to find people that are willing to play. Then, you have to buy more games that you are not likely to play. At least with golf, you buy a lot of stuff upfront and don’t have to buy more when you don’t get to play.

The Game Designers Movie Premier at BGG.CON 2019

My last in-person board game event was BGG.CON 2019. This Board Game Geek convention hosted the premiere of The Game Designers documentary and Q&A panel featuring the producers, director, and stars of the movie. I was thrilled to be a part of the event!

The movie premiere was a great time to meet the designers, take selfies, and collect some autographs. Everyone was super generous with their 15 minutes of fame. Matt Leacock signed my copy of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 and wrote a message to George: Good luck saving humanity. Eric Rayl presented the producers with a commemorative plaque and we signed posters for the team.

Lunatix Loop and Matt Leacock

One of the fascinating bits in The Game Designers documentary is when Matt Leacock talks about his start in board game design and shows us his first game, Lunatix Loop. Matt wanted to create his own board game after playing and tinkering on games in his childhood. Not only did he make a new game, but he also made all of the copies by hand. The documentary tells the story of how they made boxes and custom tokens. They sat on the couch and put stickers on thousands of bingo chips and glued paper to cardboard. This time investment paid off. Matt went on to design the Pandemic series of games, landing the Spiel des Jahres game of the year award, and starring role in a documentary. Ever since I learned about Lunatix Loop from the documentary, I wanted my own copy and have a part of board game history. I set an eBay alert and after a few years, a copy came up for sale. I didn’t haggle. I hit the Buy It Now button as fast as I could. It’s glorious.

Each copy of Lunatix Loop was handmade: the box, componetns, board, and rule book. Each game was signed and numbered. It definitely now feels like a limited edition. You can tell Matt had high hopes for his game design career and he really landed it.

I appreciate that The Game Designers documentary gives us a look into the game design world. Games are about people and people are the ones struggling over the design, the art, the rules, and getting everything right to create experiences for other people. I highly recommend checking out The Game Designers Documentary and checkout the Director’s Diary on Board Game Geek for more behind-the-scenes on how the project got started. Maybe you will be inspired by the people the movie features. Maybe you will design a board game?

Subscribe to Zoom Out Media for new and upcoming film projects, including Crafting Arzium, a documentary featuring the game design and production duo, Ryan and Malorie Laukat.

In my latest board game design, I want to use dice as both a way to resolve combat and to enhance abilities on a player card. The random dice I have sitting around my desk were quite large and helped me get my idea across.

I wanted to fit more dice on the player card, so I started looking for smaller dice. This lead to a few hours of research one late night and I found some options on The Game Crafter. I bought 8mm dice in different colors… and some Arkham Horror-inspired dice… and a t-shirt.

I placed my order and it only took a few days to get my bounty. What I am concerned about is that I didn’t move the design forward at all while the order was in process. Yikes. I wasted a lot of time thinking about some new dice, visiting a bunch of sites, and finding a vendor. I wasn’t game designing. I might in fact enjoy collecting dice more than designing games. And, in some cases, I might enjoy collecting dice more than playing some of the games that I have.

The new dice arrived. 8mm is really small – probably too small for practical purposes. They don’t feel like “real” dice in terms of size and weight, but they are functional. I played around with them for a few hours, and eventually, I came back to my game design work that prompted my purchase.

So, how small are 8mm dice? I took some dice out of my component bins and found a few that represented different sizes. 16mm is considered the standard size. You are probably the most familiar with the 16mm size.

I can’t vouch for my board game design process. If I had better results, I would be advocating for everyone to take a break and look around for dice or some specialized component. Board game design is hard and it does require some discipline. You (I) probably have everything you (I) need to prototype a new game sitting around you (me). Hours are hard to come by in my schedule and I would have been better served to just move forward without the little dice. I am now trying to salvage this faux pas by sharing my experience with you. Maybe one day I will create a hit board game and then I can claim that my lack of disciple was the key to success.

How do you stay disciplined?

Dice Game

The little game that I invented for us to play has two rules:

1. Roll a D6 – a 6-sided die
2. Yell out the results

The new game that I just invented collapsed. On the very first die roll, I yelled out, “4!” and George yelled out, “5!”. This is why game design is so hard. You can create a game with two rules and it breaks down under the slightest pressure. Imagine trying to make any game work with pages of rules.

Conventions

When I ask myself what is the result of a die roll, I interpret that to mean what symbol is on the top face of the die. This is a convention that I learned and I assume it to be true. Board game rules don’t have to say it, this is just known by everyone. Or, is it? My son hasn’t learned this convention. To him, the result is one of the sides facing him… that he can see.

Perspective

No matter what we do, no matter what we read, we have to pass it through our own understanding of the world. Our understanding of the world is our set of conventions layered on top of experiences and opinions. I am starting to appreciate that things can be true to individuals. My perspective can produce something that I believe to be true, but it does not mean that it is truth. Even with the most basic of games, it’s impossible to have absolute shared understanding. Now, imagine this with billions of people, laws of physics, laws of physics we don’t know about, politics, human nature, climate, etc. What is truth? Is it what’s true from your perspective?

When I loaded up my podcast app on my phone this month, the app started downloading around 400 episodes of the podcasts that I missed over the year. I realized that I will never be able to catch up. I uninstalled the app, cleared the cache, unsubscribed, and started over. This time around, I am going to be deliberate with what I am going to listen to and when. I am not commuting, so now, I am listening to podcasts on walks instead of music. I have also been listening to episodes during my early morning coffee before the family wakes up. I used to watch YouTube clips sometimes deliberately, most times mindlessly.

I recommend three podcasts: Searching for SaaS, Masters of Community, and Board Game Design Lab.

Searching for SaaS

The Searching for SaaS podcast is a “fresh perspective on the stages of building a SaaS business” hosted by Josh Ho and Nate Bosscher, two founders in different stages of their SaaS journey.

Searching for Saas podcast

I enjoy listening to Josh and Nate share their thoughts on topics related to their experiences while building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies and products. Josh and I still talk once a month after meeting over 20 years ago at an internship. Even though we talk on a regular basis, I have learned new things about Josh’s latest project, Referral Rock, and how it got off the ground. In Episode 5, Nate and Josh talk about MMVP – Minimum Minimal Viable Product. The topic came about after I listened to their first episode and I sent in some feedback. Josh shared an early story of Referral Rock and that sparked a lot of interest for me. I wanted to learn more about it and also hear Nate’s take on it. The show is evolving almost like an MVP and they are responsive to feedback. I highly recommend the Searching for SaaS and send in your questions and topic ideas.

Masters of Community with David Spinks

Community is more important than ever. The Masters of Community show brings you conversations with the top community builders, leaders, and experts in the world. Hear their stories, insights, and advice, and take your community strategy to the next level.

Masters of Community podcast

My passion is with building online communities. I have built developer and maker communities to support projects around the world. I am fascinated by community dynamics, how they grow, how they die, and how they support business. I can’t say enough about the Master of Community podcast. I look forward to new episodes and have been binging the ones that I missed since the show launched in 2020. I recommend that you start with the How To Build a Social Media Community with Matthew Kobach episode.

Board Game Design lab

The Board Game Design Lab is a community built on one central purpose: To help you design great games that people love. BDGL started its podcast in 2016 hosted by Gabe Barrett.

Board Game Design Lab podcast

I love board games and I love to design board games. I have been following Gabe since he started. He has built the largest board game design community over five years. He’s started a podcast and gave a lot of people related to the board game industry a voice, he’s released books on game design, he’s released his own games, and consistently shares what he learns as he learns it. The podcast is like clockwork and has been evolving over time. I like that he not only has game designers as guests but also has guests that support the industry, like editors, artists, and marketers. I recommend starting with the How to Market Yourself, Your Game, and Your Company with Debbie Moynihan episode. In this one, you’ll hear from Debbie Moynihan, COO of Wise Wizard Games, and learn the seven P’s of marketing.

What podcasts do you listen to?

Crafting Arzium is a feature-length documentary that takes an intimate look into the design process of Ryan Laukat and Malorie Laukat — the core team behind Red Raven Games. You will be taken into Ryan and Malorie’s world as they imagine, create, live, and struggle to come up with their next great board game.

I am honored to be a part of the project and I am really excited to share this window into the board game design process. I love board games and what they mean to me over my life. It is amazing what Eric Rayl has captured. To me, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it happen as it happens.

To follow the Crafting Arzium project, sign up for the mailing list over at Zoom Out Media.

Update Feburary 2021

Crafting Arzium is now on Kickstarter! Back the Kickstarter project to support the project, get access to the movie, and maybe get some bonus stretch goals.

Update March 2022

Crafting Arzium has been released to all Kickstarter backers and the digital version is available to rent or buy on Amazon. Watch it today on Amazon.com and leave a review.

Divide and Conquer is an abstract strategy board game designed by Hans Scharler and developed by John Fluet of Dangerous Games. The PC game features challenging AI opponents, an intuitive point-and-click user interface, 3D graphics, and an original soundtrack by Luke Stark. To play, plan your movements, reinforce your positions, and be the first to achieve your objectives.

I started working on Divide and Conquer back in 2007 and brought the game to Gen Con 2008, the biggest board game convention in the United States. I made four polished prototypes of the game and held events at Gen Con to get the word out about the game.

I have great memories of my mom and I assembling and playtesting the early prototypes. The board had 100 squares and you quickly learn how much time it takes to indicate each spot. I adjusted the objective spots and the design so many times that it was best to have an easy way to reconfigure the game and not commit to a design. The final artwork was created by Ted Johnston of Johnston Creative Studios.

After about a decade of game conventions and build up a fanbase, John Fluet of Dangerous Games started the development of a PC-based game leveraging Unity. John’s expertise is in digital game design and AI opponent development. John was looking for an abstract strategy game with straightforward rules to build a game for Steam.

Divide & Conquer on Steam makes it easy to play the game. The PC game features AI opponents and a point-and-click interface to plot and execute the moves. The object of the game is to move starting troops to objective spots in the fewest turns possible. Players plot their moves at the same time and reveal their plans in player order. This causes conflict and some of your plans don’t work out as you planned.

I am looking forward to everyone trying this out on Steam. The game is a bit of a brain burner and if you play with friends could cause some arguments (as reported in the past). The Steam version of Divide and Conquer makes it easy to jump in and experiment with different strategies without the game set up and tracking all of the moves.