Today I’m printing my own money. Or to be precise, I’m creating money tokens for my upcoming game Gotlandia. I’m not yet aiming at commercial production quality but to take the project further the visual appearance is important. Developing a boardgame happens in iterations and it’s important to get feedback early and often. From new playtesters and people you trust to give open and honest feedback.
I based the money tokens on a drawing of a ‘Gute’ or ‘penning’, a silver coin as minted on Gotland from the mid 12th century. While exchange rates between different coins varied historically, to keep it simple and accessible for a modern audience, I use the same illustration with a printed 1, 5, or 10. Did you know that the modern word for money in Danish and Swedish, ‘penge’, is based on the word penning? I decided to change the name of the currency in the game from Gold to Silver after creating the visual design. ‘Gold’ is very established in board games and I used this in the first versions. In this case I decided to let the historical flavour shine through.
Move fast and have fun
The secret to rapid execution of creative projects is staging. Your motivation is the driving force and it is a limited resource. Sooner or later you will run out of steam and the project ends up in a drawer. To avoid that, set yourself smaller milestones that you can realistically reach while you are in the productive zone. Deliver exactly what is needed for the next stage and avoid getting bogged down in details. Use free and cheap solutions. Avoid recurring expenses. Keep a high pace and have fun.
I use GIMP and Pages on my five year old Mac for visual components and text layout. I grab and edit images from the net for rapid development of concepts knowing that this will need rework for a commercial release if the project gets that far. For example, the background drawing for Wisby is from a collection of historical maps available at Almedalsbiblioteket, the public and university library in Visby, Gotland. These illustrations will serve as basis for art direction at a later stage.
How to create tokens
The coins are printed on a cheap inkjet printer, glued on cardboard and laminated. I cut out by hand. These tokens do not need to be the exact same shape, actually, it adds some historical flavour if some of them have been shaved off on one side. To keep it easy but still stepping up on visual design, I use a backside repeating the name of the game, Gotlandia, in a small font. Aligning front and back side when glued up by hand it is near impossible and not worth the effort at this stage.
Same process for the pirate tokens, I created the first version a few days ago but revisited them and added colour to make them stand out more. Pirates are annoying in the game so I used red and yellow to have them stand out from the blue sea. By the way, the texture for the sea is parchment with hue changed 180 for maximum contrast to the yellow on the border.
Next milestone
The next stage for Gotlandia is to produce three copies of the game for LinCon in Linköping in mid May. I will teach the game and collect feedback from the players. Hopefully also meet some people who can help me take the game to the next stage. I don’t know yet if that will be self publishing via Kickstarter or to go via an established publisher. Partnering up with someone who knows about production, logistics, and sales would bring the game to market much faster.
I re-did the board with the map of Gotlandia yesterday in 300 dpi and I created a colour version of the player boards now I know from my own playtesting what the size and shape need to be. Next up is to create a starting player token. Maybe it will be a Gotland sheep? Or maybe it will be an alderman drawing? Let’s see where my imagination takes me next. My order from spielmaterial.de should arrive soon with cubes for workers, resources, farmsteads, towers, churches and ships so I can show you a picture of a complete game.