The Game Designer's Guide to Creating Licensed Tabletop Games James Sheahan 9781032949772

This book explains the steps in creating a licensed tabletop game and the factors which influence its design using examples, including the designer's first-hand experience of converting the Fallout videogames into Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.

Converting an existing property such as a videogame or film into a tabletop game provides all the challenges of tabletop design whilst adding many more challenges, restrictions, limitations and pressures. This book covers all the necessary topics, such as:

• Gaining a license and working with a licensor
• Identifying boundaries the license creates which defines the design space in which the game must exist
• Studying the IP's setting to understand what the tabletop game can be, how to extract principles and details from that setting, and the important challenges which must be resolved
• Addressing the inevitable changes to the source material which must occur when adapting to the tabletop medium
• Creating the game mechanics - the most fundamental building blocks of all - and imbuing them with the license to portray the IP's characters, action and atmosphere.

The book takes the reader through the process of designing a licensed tabletop game and how a license adds opportunities to be embraced and challenges to be overcome. Using behind-the-scenes knowledge of creating licensed games, the experience, insights and lessons learned from a career in games will assist and inspire readers to bring a licensed world to life.

This book will be ideal reading for games professionals looking to learn best practice for designing games based on existing properties.

James Sheahan is a game designer with over 28 years' experience working on video games, tabletop games, gamification, experiential games, escape rooms, ad campaigns, and more. James has worked across almost all game genres and platforms, original and licensed IP (including Star Wars and Fallout), and many of the largest global brands.