Books&Links
Parent about history about designing about themes about l&f about players about pawns about tiles about randomizing about card effects about fighting about dice effects about counters about moving about winning about MM about collectables about prototyping about variations Game Theory Books&Links Games_UC

 

Parent

Links to game developers sites

Rick Heli bookmarks: large amount of book links 

The Inventor's site: large list of link for inventors (all kinds of...).

Allen Varney: game designer 

Greg Costikyan: game designer

http://www.rpgwarehouse.net: here you find all kind of characters, tile and face sets you might need for your look&feel of the game, http://gw.consolenation.com and http://rpginfinity.rpgmaker.net/ are simular sites.

http://www.best.com/~heli/game/list/design.html: here find a good source for all kind of things you need when designing a board: tips, manufacturors of stuff, publishers, etc.

http://www.best.com/~heli/game/list/design.html is a great source for game designing stuff (cards, tiles, publishers, etc.)

http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/design.htm: interesting page on publishing your game

http://www.crossover.com/~costik/nowords.html is a interesting essay on games, published in 1994 in a Brittish roleplaying journal. Actually check Greg Costikyan' page here

http://beta.communities.msn.co.uk/DiceManiacsClubakaTheRandomFandom for everything you always wanted to know about dice

http://www.tabletoptactics.com/: a site on mechanics and statistics for wargames.

http://www.cs.queensu.ca/~dalamb/Games/design/gameDesignSites.html: portal for gamedesigners, mainly designed for computer games, but interesting.

http://boardgames.about.com/games/boardgames/msub6.htm: general tips, including publishing tips

http://www.theinspiracy.com/inspirac.htm: mainly based on computer game development

http://www.gamecabinet.com/editorials/Narrative.html: interesting overview of various games

http://world.std.com/~Ted7/games.html: overview of wargame systems

http://204.217.246.195/~costik/: game designer for SPI (cool links)

Game Manufacturing Association

International Game Developers Networks

Chris Crawfor's links: some cool links!

http://www.players-society.com/terragenesis/ for pop-up terrain info

http://perso.easynet.fr/~philimar/ for cool maps you want to design for your games (see also the 'building blocks' part for an example)

http://www.paperparadise.com for paper / terrain info

http://www.boardgamesstudies.org/: academic studies on board games

rec.games.design: newsgroup on game-design

http://www.pagat.com/class/index.html: very good site on (standards) card games.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/8461/stratfrm.html on computer wargames but with interesting notes for boardgaming development.

So you think you are the only game-inventor in this world?

http://www.gamesplayuk.co.uk/products.htm: some new games here, check the many spin-off variants (wow, someone just invented another Chess-variant).

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Fortress/7537/mygames.htm: some ideas from Richard Hutnik

Links to various game mechanics
(the following links are just here to encourage you to search for 'game mechanics' on the web)

Game Mechanics, Kyriotate Game Mechanics, Game Concepts: Game Mechanics, GAME : Greatly Abbreviated Mechanics, Etc., Pulp Era: Game Mechanics & Combat, Rules and Game Mechanics, Dino Hunt Game Mechanics, Galactic Civilizations: Game Mechanics

if you have followed all the links above, you must have gotten lost...

Glossary

CCG / Collectable Card Game

D&D / Dragons & Dungeons

NPC / Non-Playing Character: a game character that is not played by one of the player (or at least cannot win the game by itself)

RPG / Role Playing Game

TCG / Trading Card Game (see CCG)

 

Literature

Crawford, Chr.: "The Art of Computer Games Design", Washington Stare University Vancouver, 1982, 1997 (edited by Prof. Sue Peabody).
Overview and analysis of games, in the light of Computer Games development. Free Download

Hanke, Prof. Dr. AFG & Reuver, Drs. HA, "Sociale Systemen en Lerende Systemen", HE Stenfert Kroese BV (ISBN 9020706802)
Overview on cooperative and non-cooperative gaming systems, based on economic models. Introduction to strategy models. If you are into politics, this book is a must!

Tirole, Jean: "Theory of Industrial Organization", MIT press (TIRTH, 0-262-20071-6, 1988), Chapter 11 "Noncooperative Game Theory", (math knowledge req.)
Introduction to analyzing strategic interaction between players (in the field of industrial organization, but very usefull as an introduction to the  general gaming theory)

Ross, Sheldon M: "Introduction to Propability Models", Academic Press Inc. (ISBN 0-12-598460-X), (math knowledge req.)
Introduction to various aspects of  statistical calculation (Bayes, Poisson, Renewal, (semi-) Markov Chains, queueing theory)

Ruys, Prof. Dr. PHM & Vuijk, Drs. P.: "Sociale Keuze Theory", Katholieke Universiteit Brabant (345.84.430, 1984) (math knowledge req.)
Introduction to choice behaviour of economic agent ((a-)symmetric, (ir-)reflexive, transitive relationships, preference theory, etc.).

Links to (Ec.) Gaming Theory

http://www.gametheorysociety.org/

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/