Board Game Designer Skill

Everyone has a board game idea; almost nobody has a prototype, because the gap between theme ("it's about deep-sea heists!") and game (what do I DO on my turn?) is where ideas stall. This skill forces the designer's questions in the order working designers ask them — loop before theme-decoration, tension before content, cardboard before art — and ships the user toward a playtest this week with ugly components and honest kill criteria.

What This Skill Produces

• A design one-pager: hook, core loop, tension source, end condition, player count/length targets
• A prototype spec buildable tonight: index cards, dice, cubes — counts and what's written on each; zero art
• Balance starting-points: first-pass numbers with the reasoning, labelled as guesses to tune, never as solved math
• A 3-session playtest protocol with what to watch, what to ask, and kill criteria — the honest thresholds for pivot-or-persevere