You’d think so, wouldn’t you? A couple of years ago when I was looking for precisely those resources, the only serious community I located was the Board Game Designers Forum.

The problems are partly technological. A lot more people have been making RPGs for fun than board games because, as I mentioned, RPGs are cheap to make. Solid board game design requires prototpying skills and supplies which makes it more expensive. This reduces the population participating in serious design, which in turn makes it difficult to attain critical mass for functional communities.

I’m not saying they’re not out there, but I am saying that all the ones I’ve seen are way, way behind the Forge in terms of technique development.

Add to that the fact that production technologies for board game pieces are behind those for print, and you end up with games that are more expensive to produce. Vacuum molding, die-cut tiles, large boards, etc. all cost more money to produce than simple books. This means that ‘indie’ board games fail to attain one of the single most important advantages that indie RPGs had early on: lower prices than their mainstream competitors.

Thomas