#Board/Tabletop Games

[bugbeast]

Self promo for my newest card game, Jewel Thief; but you can play it for free! First, though, let's cover the basics...

TL;DR - Its a 4+ player competetive card-matching game with four rule variants; buy it here or look for the orange text in this post to learn how to play it with a regular deck

"What is Jewel Thief?"

It's a card matching game with a villain; one player tries to match jewels in a 36 card grid while their opponent, the titular Jewel Thief, periodically steals cards from the board. You can check out its page on The Game Crafter for more information, but it'll spoil the rest of this post

"What makes it special?"

The game's turn structure would theorettically allow you, perhaps via some kind of infinite cloning machine, to play a round of Jewel Thief til the heat death of the universe. While I wouldnt recommend that, its lack of a player cap (and ease of set-up; seriously, all you do is put cards on a table) makes it a good party game choice.

But that's not all!

There are three extra rule variants that drastically alter the gameplay while keeping card matching and stealing as main mechanics. I believe the cards are versatile enough to allow for many custom games, too

"Okay, but why should I buy a silly game from some bug nerd?"

First off, ouch. Second off, that's the best part; you dont have to buy it to play it! Jewel Thief can be played with a standard 52 card deck. Here's how:

Step 1. Remove the 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Jokers

Step 2. Download the free rules from the shop page

Step 3. Play the game, matching cards based on their values. You'll need to designate a value as the Diamond jewel for game 4

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That's it for my little self-promo. If you dont buy the game, I hope you'll at least give it a try and consider supporting my future projects.

I also post art and photography, which you can find under the bugbeast art and bugbeast photos tags. I hope you check them out

Thank you for your time <3

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Edit (Mar. 25, 2024) : Thank you to everyone who liked and reblogged this; if you play the game I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments and/or reblogs (even if you hated it). Feel free to share any custom games or house rules you come up with, too. I'd love to try them!

Edit (Aug. 10, 2024) : Final edit most likely; gonna blaze this one more time for good luck then maybe start work on a postmortem for the project, maybe give a little backstory for anyone who cares. Life is a little rough right now, but fate willing, I'll be able to work on/post about my future projects, including the future of Jewel Thief itself

[prokopetz]

To be completely fair to the Dungeons & Dragons fandom, groups actively making themselves miserable by adopting house rules that emphasise aspects of play they dislike, then blaming it on the game isn't something that's specific to Dungeons & Dragons, nor even to tabletop RPGs. Think of all the casual board-gaming groups who play Monopoly with a bunch of house rules that are practically calculated to make the game take three times as long to finish (e.g., removing property auctions, cash on Free Parking, etc.), then constantly complain that it takes forever to play.

[retrogamingblog2]

Legend of Zelda Dice Sets made by HardlightForge

[joelchaimholtzman]

In celebration of the upcoming Avatar series I made three illustrations depicting key characters. Here is Sokka, the boomerang wielding warrior from the Southern Water Tribe.

Please let me know what you think and if you are going to watch the show!

All the best,

Joel

[kristinagehrmann]

Cover illustration I made for "Minos: Dawn of Faith", a boardgame expansion pack, to be published by Board&Dice next year! 😊 Here I've imagined a religious ceremony in ancient Minoan culture.

[gallifreyanz]

Now up on Kickstarter!

[littleulvar]

box art I created for the upcoming Kinfire Council game ✨ (with KS launch coming soon)

[canopiancatboy]

A Locust, with my rethought out bases. I've been playing Helldivers lately and there are some really pretty pastel palette planets around and decided to emulate one of those

I still don't have a coherent color schemes for my mercs beyond mostly light neutrals with large color panels and decals, but I hate settling on these things, I always change my mind

Anyways happy early Halloween

[thesixthstar]

Hey don't mind me but I playtested a really fun game at a local board game convention a little while back and I just found out they finally launched their kickstarter and I'd like to shill for it a little because its mad fun and I backed the kickstarter and I want it to succeed so I'll actually get the game lol.

Its basically a quick-and-light timed cooperative game for up to 4 people thats emulating a movie car chase. Its got a bunch of different "scenarios" for different movies/genres, but the basic premise is each player is in a different seat in the car (driver, shotgun, back-left, back-right) and you have a bunch of items and weapons and a limited amount of time to decide among all the players how and where to use those items, and in what order each round, to beat the Bad Guys(TM) that are chasing you.

Tumblr isn't letting me embed the Kickstarter link but it'll let me hyperlink it lmao

[tenebris-lux]

Mina decking a vampire in the game Fury of Dracula.

[simonbreeze]

Crusaders are almost done.

Was looking forward to painting these guys, but Fine Cast, WT*! That stuff is awful! Not only is it terrible to assemble the minis made from this.... 💩 But painting on the surface is more work as well. Happy to see the back of painting these. Annoyingly, the next 4 minis are Fine Cast as well 😤😮‍💨😢😭

[prokopetz]

I'm spinning this off of the main thread about tracing the origin of the term "d66" because it's not strictly germane to the topic – none of these examples actually use the term "d66" to describe their dice-rolling methods – but I'm going to post it anyway as a matter of general interest: following a conversation with Tumblr user @notclevr, it appears that before tabletop wargames (and, nearly concurrently, tabletop RPGs) got their hands on the mechanic, the principal (though by no means exclusive) users of the old "roll a six-sided die twice, reading one die as the 'tens' place and the other die as the 'ones' place" trick may have been tabletop American baseball simulators.

The most notable example of the type – and the only well-known example still in publication today – is J Richard Seitz' APBA Baseball, first published in either 1950 or 1951 (accounts vary). In this game, a d66 roll is cross-referenced with a card representing the active player and a "board" representing the current situation on the field:

For example, with Carlton Fisk at bat, a d66 roll of 31 would yield a result of "8". Assuming for the sake of argument that the situation on the field is a runner on first and a grade C pitcher, consulting the "Runner on First Base" board, this corresponds to an outcome of "SINGLE—line drive to left; runner to third".

(This example is, strictly speaking, incorrect, as Carlton Fisk didn't have his major league debut until 1969 and I'm using the wrong lookup tables for any year in which he played, but you get the idea!)

Interestingly, APBA Baseball is not the first game to use this setup. It's heavily derived from Clifford Van Beek's National Pastime, a game whose patent was registered in 1925, though it wasn't actually published until 1930. Even at a glance, the similarities are substantial:

Indeed, though National Pastime's lookup tables are much simpler than APBA Baseball's, where they overlap they're often word for word identical. It's generally accepted that Seitz plagiarised National Pastime without credit when creating APBA Baseball (ironically, given his own famously combative stance toward alleged imitators!), though he was within his rights to do so, as National Pastime had fallen into the public domain by the time APBA Baseball was published.

We can go back even further, though. As far as I've been able to determine, the earliest known tabletop baseball simulator to use d66 lookup tables for resolving plays is Edward K McGill's Our National Ball Game, first published in 1886:

A copy of the game's 1887 US patent application can be downloaded here. This one uses an unusual 21-entry variant of the standard d66 lookup table in which the order of the rolled digits is insignificant, with doubles being half as likely as non-doubles rolls; it's unclear whether McGill was aware of this when he laid out the table. Unlike later incarnations of the genre, there are no individual player statistics, with all at-bats being resolved via the same table.

[missz3lda]

IF ANY YALL LIKE DND/TTRPGS

you should maybe have a look at my friends' one shots they've made 🥹🥰 they're all free to download/pay if you want and they're all super fun. My favourite is Cowboys and Critters 🐸

Please tell me how it goes!!

[joelchaimholtzman]

nd here is the final painting for my Avatar: The Last Airbender series! Avatar Aang himself, master of the Four Elements and savior of the world.

The cartoon was significant for me when I was growing up. Now that the live action is releasing tommorow, after 20 years since the original I felt that its the time to create my tribute.

This was the first one of the three (Katara, Sokka) that I made, and the piece I spent the least amount of time on. I also had plans for more characters but time constraints wont allow me to work on them just yet! Perhaps in the future.

I hope you like it!

All the best,

JCH

[tinylongwing]

Here's another piece of artwork I did for the upcoming game Nature by NorthStar Games. These Bar-headed Geese are some of the world's highest fliers, able to cruise over the tops of the Himalayas!