Board Game Designers Forum

GODS & MINIONS - the customizable dice game of fantasy warfare

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am very happy to announce my first professional game here on BGDF. Some of you already know me, I am a longtime member of this forum, answering and asking questions every once in a while. Although I don't earn my living from game design, I participated in a few board- and computer-game projects to develop and maintain my skills. Besides being a hobby, Gods & Minions is my first approach to create a really professional looking, balanced and playtested product from A to Z. Gods & Minions is the figurehead of twenty years of design experience, it will be self-funded, self-produced, self-marketed and self-published. It's a daunting task, but also a passion that burns like an eternal flame.

ABOUT THE PROJECT
Gods & Minions is the conclusion of both: a gamedesign process and a background world design process that spanned many years. Incarnations of this project have been developed, tested, revealed and castaway many times until today (under different names like "Godsend", "Warchon", "Trial of the Archon", "Ascendallion" and "Errandar"). In its final form, Gods & Minions is:

"A light wargame taking place in a dark fantasy world. Players utilize collectible dice as seen in a few other games before (notably Dragon Dice). The game itself uses mechanics similar to board- and cardgames (especially trading card games), without the artificial rarities found in CCG/TCG's. Winning a match is based on strategy (army building), tactics (gameplay decisions) and luck (dice rolling). Gods & Minions features many mechanics found in traditional boardgames, uses a simplified board, as well as certain warfare abstractions to keep the complexity at a minimum.

Custom dice to represent units where chosen due to various reasons. First of all, traditional wargames are way to expensive to be produced by a single person. In addition, the market of traditional wargames is full to the brim and theese games are very expensive and time consuming to both collect and play. Gods & Minions was designed with the vision of a quick and moderately priced game in mind that is appealling both the casual and advanced gamer.

Being a self-funded project, Gods & Minions is not dependent on a financial sponsor. The idea itself is developed and carried along regardless of renown and success (offered for free download via the internet). But, the long-term goal of getting this game actually produced in all its glory (rulebook, boxes, dice and other components) will sooner or later require the help of a sponsor. A kickstarter campaign is only one option of many - but all funding possibilities have one fact in common: There has to be a strong community to bolster the Gods & Minions project."

A FINAL NOTE
This game currently exists only in theory. The background world as well as the game rules are well developed and tested. But, as there is no sponsor and no marketing budget for this game - there are neither any real components manufactured, nor is this game available in any store. But, this will not prevent me from doing the best I can to make this project become reality. The logical next step will be to start a kickstarter campaign sometime in the future, and this is where you - the interested reader - has a chance to take part:

Being a completely self-propelled project lacking the manpower, resources and budgets of big producers - I am accepting all the help i can acquire for Gods & Minions. I will post job request (on voluntary basis) later on, to get you involved. But the first thing everyone of you can do easily - is to give me a "heads up" by following the project on twitter and/or becoming a facebook fan - yes, its as simple as that!

http://blog.godsandminions.com
http://www.twitter.com/godsandminions
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gods-and-Minions/178141255540191
http://www.bgdf.com/blog/1040