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M. Allen Hall's avatar

Very nice discussion of the relevant issues here. I absolutely agree that a 3PL can turn a good game into a great game by building a community around it. I think the biggest issue for board games, as you mention, is the custom components. Imagine Scythe had a 3PL, and you wanted to make a new faction for that game. Well, at minimum you will need to produce a cardboard player mat with the abilities on it, and possibly a custom set of mech minis to go with it. Anything less than that (i.e. just publishing the info and expecting people to use it with the components they have) would not feel like a sellable product. It would feel like fan fiction, similar to what people already post on BGA (as you mention in your footnotes). Or, say you want to publish a new faction/color/boss for Hero Realms. Well, that’s at least a custom deck of cards, which is not a small purchase. Could people do these? Of course. But would this build a community of dozens or hundreds of creators? Probably not.

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Dimitri K.'s avatar

I think there might be a scene in the boardgame community which could have potential to follow the TTRPG community's footsteps when it comes to promote a culture of hacking and remixing - the Print-and-Play one. They are already used to working with easily accessible materials, and the DYI spirit is much more entrenched already than in the rest of the boardgame community.

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