MILLENNIUM Game Play Rules

These are only 4 out of 12 pages from the Millennium Game Play Booklet. Most modern board games offer only a sheet or two of white paper for its instructions and game rules. Nothing wrong with that and it's the way I'd like to go but GameCrafter offers their booklets in full glossy color in various sizes. A 12 page 5 x8 booklet runs for about $3.00 each when all is said and done and they have a nice look.

Understandably, GameCrafter.com needs to make a profit one way or another and this seems to be a good way for them to do that. They also have custom wooden dice, which I just saw several days ago. They are very nice and have a big price tag to go with them.

See for yourself on their website. I would like a pair of these dice but starting at $2.95 it's a bit steep right now so I opted for a couple of the 10's dice since my board does have almost the same numbers. They are 59 cents each.

TheGameCrafter.com is quite fair with their pricing despite what some people say. Imagine that you can get a prototype for about $50 on demand as opposed to paying thousands of dollars in tooling costs with a traditional manufacturer and a minimum run of 5000 for example.

We're not exactly picking our poison here. It just depends on how you look at things and when we put things in perspective and weigh all our options. Game Crafter is a great deal.

My prototype is getting there and it's just a matter of time when I can finally order it and see for myself how it all plays out. It seems that just as I claim to be finished with Millennium, I come up with more ways to change it.

No regrets though. I welcome all the changes and the improvements that come with it. The game is getting better all the time. I think I'm finally matching the game mechanics with the theme of the game a bit better and so it makes more sense to add more tokens and take away some of the cards in this case.

I'd been struggling with a that for some time now and I finally decided to not rely so heavily on card mechanics because it just doesn't do my game any good. I think it's far better to use tokens for most moves on the board instead of flipping cards to see where you might land.

Players have more control of their strategy this way and the game seems to have more focus too. So I'll be spending my weekend getting all if not most of that done and seeing how that all works in a mock-up of the game board.

No one ever said this would be easy. And anyone can slap a game together, box it and try to sell it. That might work for a minute until word gets around about how lousy the games plays. All of a sudden that particular game is dead in the water because its game mechanics are weak.

That's a huge waste of everyone's time and money and just what I'm trying to avoid. I'm also trying not to mimic so many of the game mechanics already out there. Truth be told, beyond a handful of classic games, I don't exactly get around too many board games.

While that seems a disadvantage, I think it serves me well because I don't want Millennium to play like any other game. Of course it will inevitably have similar game mechanics to other games but I'm trying to put my own intuitive spin on it. I really don't like many of the modern games today and a lot of it has to do with too many complex rules and weak game mechanics to go with it.

In short, that's a good recipe for disaster.

With Millennium, I'm looking to break the mold of so many bad games out there and put out a game that is inspiring, challenging, and yes, fun to play.

If you're wondering where I can find any fun in a Post Apocalyptic game, have no fear, my life plays out like the Apocalypse every day and I manage to laugh my way through it all.

Don't try this at home. I'm an experienced professional. (This is what I must tell myself.) God only knows what I've gotten myself into.

Hey, my motto in life is simple. If it ain't rocket science, I can figure it out. Stay tuned for an awesome game. I hope to have it on the market by November 2017.

Sure that seems laughable and maybe even impossible, but that's what keeps me going.

Hey, we only live once and we should always strive to do it right the first time around.

And if we fail, that's what second chances are for.

Play on, folks.