Drums in the Deep, or how I sold the first copy of a game I designed, sort of.
A bit before I joined Steemit I happened upon a post on Reddit from a small boardgames review channel on youtube. They were planning a series on prototype games and were asking for submissions.
As designing games has been a hobby of mine for a few years, I had a couple in my backlog, so I took the excuse to polish up and complete one of them on Game Crafter, https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/drums-in-the-deep and then sent them a copy of it that they'd agreed to return when they were done reviewing it.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And...
You get it.
Now, we're mostly all creators here, typically with other real jobs. We all know how tough it can be to actually make the time to produce things, especially when it requires other people to be able to move forward. So I was sympathic.
But we're coming up on a local game convention, and I was hoping to have gotten the game back by then so I could test it. So I shot them a message asking for status and if I could get the game back if they weren't going to be able to do the review.
As I had expected they had had trouble organizing folks to finish the series (mine is the only one that was best with 5 it seems), but really wanted to keep it if possible. They even offered to buy a copy!
So I had them send me a copy at cost, and BAM I'm a professional game designer thank you very much.
Is this a massive distortion of the term? Yes.
Still, I'm still very proud that I was able to produce something that someone would want to pay money for. More importanly, I have the game back to do some more testing with! One major change I can already see needing is new resource chips, these "shards" are way to tiny and flimsy.
So, Drums in the Deep. It's about the last stronghold of the dwarves and the infighting as they try to gather the most honor for themselves before they uncover a horror from the depths and it kills them all.
In practice it's a real time action selection negotiation game where one player is the chairperson (though others can take the title) who both controls a lot of what happens but also takes much of the blame for it as well.
Here's a shot with it set up: 
If anyone wants to check out the rules and give me some feedback it'd be very welcome! Also if you're reading this before the @see-it-feel-it contest here https://steemit.com/fundition/@see-it-feel-it/09a31afa closes (apparently midnight UTC today (Sunday)) please give me a vote!
Oh, and if the review ever gets posted I'll be sure to update you guys about that as well.
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i will take a look at this later, but this is pretty cool, fromie ! you are a GAME DESIGNER !!!
amaze
much awe * ___ *
(disclaimer: i have not played any board games in my life, but have always been interested to find out more about them.)
(disclaimer x 2: i did play mafia/werewolf, but online) (not sure if that counts)
I first really got into boardgames by going to a local meetup. I dunno if the board game culture is really a thing where you are or not, though, it is only just starting to take hold in the states.
Werewolf online sure does count, that was one of the first I played too!
Thanks!
Ahhh, sounds fun !
Also sounds very similar to the Dwarf Fortress videogame, you played it before ?
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No, but I've sure heard of it, heh. Most likely we're both just cribbing from the same source, heh
Dwarves are famous for their ability to ignore the warning signs and use that pickaxe on the strangely snouth shaped rock of that ore vein that kinda looks like an eldritch monstrosity 😆
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Dude this is way cool. Thanks for posting about it. So you didn't sell the rights or anything, right?
Nope, just the copy. And thanks!
This looks pretty sweet. Board games where most of the action takes place off the board are always the most fun - keep pushing it man, I'm sure if one group of people enjoyed playing it, more would too.
I had no idea that we had game designers among us. I really miss the social time of board games and card games, but I typically have a hard time getting my family to focus long enough to play them. Though that may be changing. Both of my daughters just asked me to play D&D--not exactly a board game, but still a social game.
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Yo, that’s not half bad. A step the vast majority of aspiring designers never reach.