Tabletop Simulator

Check out Turn Base (implement and play board games using a DSL): https://turn-base.com/

Here's an original game implemented using this system: https://turn-base.com/games/lobby/22/ (Buy cards to summon and move chess pieces in a chess game) You'll need to grab a friend to play (no AI). Ping me in discord if the game doesn't make sense.

Check out https://screentop.gg/. It's web-based and 2D, so it sounds like it fits your use-case.

The creator also has a discord server where he actively answers questions if you get stuck or have feature requests.

There's a beginner tutorial here: https://screentop.gg/learn/beginner-tutorial

Not a fan. Please do NOT simulate this type of gaming when the platform experience is vastly different: human hands versus a touchpad (mouse). Why do I need a 3d view?

We played a TTS game where we needed to pay coins, make change, and take resources each turn. We tried to stack the coins and they would not stack. We tried to take multiple resources and it would not let us, so we took them one-by-one. A painful experience.

We use BoardGameArena, Yucata, and Boiteajeux. All which have interface problems, but vastly superior for speed.

One of my pet projects is to make an open source, self-hosting, modular tabletop gaming platform, so this way ANYONE can write a 'module' and share it, and leave the hosting up to the individuals.

For people in the board game industry, Tabletop Simulator has become invaluable during the pandemic. A ton of designers have figured out how to use TTS enough to get their prototypes working in here and then have online virtual playtest nights using it. Also publishers can also use it to playtest games, or to see a virtual pitch.

TTS is actually very powerful once you dig into it. I was annoyed by it at first, but once I sat down and watched some videos, sat in on other people's playtests and gotten ideas for things I can do in my own prototypes, I've discovered just how powerful it is. I haven't dug into the scripting aspect of it yet, but I will before too much longer.

I'm actually going to use it for pitching one of my games to publishers during an event next weekend (a simple abstract game called Cake Walk, I actually have it up on the Steam Workshop so anyone can try it). It's at the link below if you own TTS and you're curious.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=22173...

I know there's also Tabletopia, which is free up front, but that requires you to pay a monthly fee if you want to set up more than one game, and if you're a designer like me, I've got like 10 active prototypes at any given time. It's still good for people running Kickstarters to let people try out their game during a campaign though.

If any of you own this and like the idea of playtesting games in progress, there's a group that happens pretty much every day of the week. Most meet via Discord, since it's more stable for audio and will stay up even when switching servers. Here's a list below if anyone is interested. I've mostly stuck with the Chicago group, but you might see me in the others at some point:

https://cardboardedison.com/playtest-groups

> One of my pet projects is to make an open source, self-hosting, modular tabletop gaming platform, so this way ANYONE can write a 'module' and share it, and leave the hosting up to the individuals.

Me, too. I think the fact that game components are physical objects that are rested upon each other limits what can be expressed in a game enough that you could possibly boil them down to a markup language. Then have a single player "host" the game by running a server, and everyone else can connect to that player securely, with access granted only to what the rules would allow them to "view."

I have a fantasy about peer-to-peer boardgaming, with everybody's hand and whatever is hidden behind their player screen on their phone, tablet or laptop. Something that would work as well with everybody in the room together (have a widescreen logged in as an observer of the board) as it does with players on opposite sides of the world.