Creating Physical and Virtual Board Game Resources

Over the last few years I’ve found myself intensely interested in boardgames again. In this post I’ll share some of the tools and resources I’ve created to hopefully help make some boardgames and TTRPGs run a little smoother.

Upgrading Maul of America

This past Thursday at my weekly “Learn to Play” event (at my friendly local game store Fever Dream in Fort Payne, AL) I brought an old game I reclaimed on eBay a few years ago - Maul of America.

It’s a “beer and pretzels” type game - not very deep and a little goofy. But everybody had a good time playing it! No major complaints from the players. My main issue is that it’s almost 30 years old and the “cards” that came with the game are basically slightly thick paper with perforated edges that you can sometimes see through. Some of them are torn in ways that it makes it easy to know what card you’re likely picking up.

As a wannabe boardgame developer, one of the most exciting projects I’ve found on the internet is Squib. This Ruby gem lets you create your own game cards and can be coerced into some non-card based output as well. So I made a new Squib project and, coupled with a bunch of icons I found on Game-icons.net, whipped up a new set of cards for the game.

The hardest part was typing in all the card information into a CSV file and having to cut and trim them all. There are 3 types of cards so I slide them into colored sleeves to help distinguish them. I’m looking forward to our next session of this game and seeing what folks think of the updated cards.

You can find the code for this Squib project at github.com/spilth/maul-of-america.

Mobile Friendly Rulebooks

I also have the Maul of America Rules availble on my site so that folks can easily reference them on their phone during the game. I wanted something that looks good on both desktop and mobile, supports dark mode (I sometimes like to review rules before going to bed) and easily shareable. There are QR codes at the bottom of each page so other people at the table can just scan my phone and have the rules on theirs.

I’ve done this for a few games I own:

Abduction on Tabletop Simulator

Speaking of Abduction, I recently went through the process of scanning, trimming and collating all the cards and standees from the game to bring it into Tablestop Simulator. This is another old favorite that you can’t find anymore and another one that folks seem to enjoy playing. But now you can play Abduction on Tabletop Simulator!

Dynamic Death Roads Rulebook

Another thing I’ve run into with expansions and even the core rules of a game is that the rules change based on the number of players, which expansions you’re using or how you’ve set up the game.

I took a stab at doing this for Death Roads: All Stars - you select the game mode, how many players and which optional rules you want to use and it updates the rulebook accordingly. It still needs a bit of work but unfortunatelly it seems to be a bit of a dead game. I have a tendency to fall for those!

You can check out the full dynamic rulebook at https://deathroads.spilth.org

Wrath & Glory Condition Cards

A few months ago I ran a “one shot” game of Wrath & Glory which ironically took several sessions over several months but I digress. Wrath & Glory is a TTRPG set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000. Since it was a one-shot and I was the only person that had the core book, I thought it would be useful if the players had cards for the different “Conditions” their characters could succumb to during battle. They’d know what it was called, the effect it had and how long it lasted. Squib to the rescue again!

They’re a little less exciting without images but they need a lot of room for text. The code is at github.com/spilth/wrath-and-glory-condition-cards.

Car Wars Sixth Edition Binders

I’ve owned a few editions of Car Wars but it wasn’t until the sixth edition that I really started playing it, and sadly still not as much as I’d like to. I also bought all the expansions with all the cards so folks could build their own custom cars and have lots of options. I wanted a way to store the cards so they were easy to find and just as easy to put back.

What I ended up doing was putting all the cards in binder sleeves and then making sheets of paper that go under each sleeve so you can see that a card is missing and also see the details of it.

It’s not as pretty as the others but I had to keep them pretty stark since the card sleeves are wider than the pieces of paper underneath them. And of course the code for this Squib project is available as well: https://github.com/spilth/car-wars-binders

I’ve also got a few Car Wars Charts I’ve made available for reference when setting up and running matches.

Joyride Track List

Apparently I really like making tables and doing data entry, because my Joyride Track List is another example of that. I bought the Turbo edition of the game and there are a lot of different tracks to choose from. Some of them are better suited for certain player counts than others. They’ve also released a bunch of bonus tracks that are not included in the base game. I wanted a way to see them all, filter them and preview them so I built a little tool to do just that.

Foam Core Storage

Finally, something I’ve gotten into recently is making custom board game inserts using foam core. This can be really useful when you have a few expansions to a game but you want to store them all in the original box. It’s also helpful when whatever the publisher provided just isn’t good enough.

I use foam core, Elmer’s Glue, an X-Acto knife and sewing pins to assemble the inserts. I don’t actually plan them too much and, as of yet, it always seems to work out pretty well.

I’ve made them for Car Wars, Zone Wars and Race for the Galaxy.

That’s It For Now

I was originally planning to just talk about one boardgame upgrade I made but I got on a roll and ended up catalogging a bunch of tools and projects I’ve made over the last few years to hopefully improve people’s boardgame experiences. And even if you don’t have these particular games, some of the code might help you make something for your own favorites.