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The White Box Essays

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They Say Everyone Has a Game Inside Them

Almost everyone who’s ever played a game has had an idea for how to make it better. To tweak it, improve it, or even build something new from its miniatures, cards, cubes, and concepts. 

We think making games is awesome. We believe it's one of the most challenging, fun, rewarding things you can do. If you’ve ever thought about making a game of your own, we want to help. The White Box Essays is for you.

The White Box Essays contains 25 essays on board and card game design, production, publishing, and marketing. It’s for aspiring professionals, creative young people, and literally anyone who’s ever wanted to build their own game.

If you believe creating games is awesome, The White Box Essays is for you.

Table of Contents

Foreword (by Mike Elliott)
1 Welcome to The White Box
2 Protecting Your Ideas & Why You Don’t Need To
3 Danger! Danger!
4 Story or Mechanics?
5 The Roll of the Die
6 Writing Effective Rules
7 Bits Matter
8 What to Do When You are Worried About Your Game Being Balanced
9 Bang for the Buck
10 Playtesting
11 How To More Than Double Your Game’s Sales
12 Self-Publishing
13 The (Semi-)Magical New Age of Crowdfunding
14 Designing an Effective Game Box
15 The Lies Game Boxes Tell
16 Box Details
17 How to Promote Your Game at a Convention Without Losing Your Shirt
18 What a Sell Sheet Is
19 Six Things You Can Say to End Your Game Pitch
20 How to Network at Conventions
21 How to Get Your Game Into the Marketplace
22 On the Dotted Line
23 Six Board Game Accessibility Fails, and How to Hack Them (by Erin Hawley)
24 Pacing Gameplay: Three-act Structure Just Like God and Aristotle Intended (by Jeff Tidball)
25 The Economics of Game Design and Design of Game Economics (by Jay Little)
In Conclusion
Acknowledgments
About the Author 

Three Filetypes Included

This download of The White Box Essays includes PDF, EPUB, and mobi (Kindle) editions.

The White Box Essays is also available as an audiobook and in a bundle that includes all editions.

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Reviews (0)
Discussions (2)
Customer avatar
Todd J May 22, 2023 11:38 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I had a knee-jerk reaction to seek a refund on this one. A lot of the content is quality, nearly all of it. Not quite as useful for TTRPG development as some have suggested, but still good.

My reaction came, ironically enough, in the section on how to sell more copies when it began preaching about a particular all-too-known position of a certain political leaning. A section that, had I known beforehand, very likely would have prevented my from buying as I'm sure I could find equally qualified advice from a less proselytizing source. Adding to the irony is that this advice came well after an injunction to disqualify rules in your game that are unnecessary.

If you don't care one way or another about political pandering, this is very likely a great resource for you. If you're on a particular end of the political spectrum, you likely think I'm every negative "ist" you have in your vocabulary for even having an opposing opinion on a product I paid for.
Customer avatar
John M April 17, 2018 6:20 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I was lucky enough to be on the same panel with Jeremy at GameStorm 2018 in Portland. While I had been tempted to back the Kickstarter, I kept coming back to "I design and publish RPGs, not board games," so I opted not to. What a fool!
Then I heard I could pick up these essays for $8. Sold!
Most of the advice in these essays applies to any game design, including RPGs. Highly recommended.
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Product Information
Gold seller
Author(s)
Pages
197
ISBN
978-0-9818840-5-9
Publisher Stock #
GPW0004
File Size:
3.64 MB
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

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Original electronic format
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File Last Updated:
December 01, 2017
This title was added to our catalog on December 01, 2017.