I have a guest post over on the Stonemaier Games “Kickstarter Lessons” blog today, all about the various ways of making prototype cards for board and card games.

The summary from the end of the post:

“For me, card prototyping is now a three- (or four-) step process:

Step 0: If the game can easily be tested with normal playing cards, start there to work out very rough mechanics. Not applicable to all designs.

Step 1: Excel spreadsheet, printed, cut up, inserted into sleeves with Magic cards. This is where the bulk of my design work happens.

Step 2: Print directly on cards when I want nice-looking prototypes to send to blind playtesters demonstrate at conventions or pitch to publishers.

Step 3: Go with DriveThruCards to print final review copies or actual print runs of my games.”

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t say THANK YOU to all of you who jumped on the Kickstarter campaign for my card game, Otters, on day 1… leaving the project funded just nine and a half hours after launch! Thank you all so much.

Next stop: Stretch goals!

Michael Iachini

@ClayCrucible on Twitter