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+--- Thread: DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) (/showthread.php?tid=18)
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
I think the board gets built before the players step off the dock. Originally I was thinking it would be built tile-by-tile as they move, but that doesn't really make sense, you would be able to see down the road or whatever unless its silent hill fog or something. So I think the game master or the players just build the map with tiles before they leave the dock. building the map doesn't use up rounds. I do think maybe buildings don't get built until the players open the door though. then the whole building gets built, and then they can go in.
I thought for a while that maybe there didn't need to be a game master but I think there does, unless I also make some enemy behavior rules that the players can just do themselves, but that gets complicated with line of sight and other things. Also, I want there to periodically be set piece maps, which maybe use a different set of tiles altogether, or more likely: separate tiles that augment the normal map tiles that you don't normally use when making a normal town. These set piece maps would have pre-constructed maps, and that's where the story elements would take place that sort of propel you through the game. these special set piece tiles would contain the normal token spaces of the normal maps, but also contain special lore spaces where like, documents, or audio logs, or whatever would have a chance to spawn, that the players can use to learn what happened to the world and why there are monsters everywhere, and maybe do something about it?
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
And maybe one of the cargo items that might have a chance to spawn on a normal map is like GPS coordinates or something, which would lead you to these special set piece maps. And the players could choose when to go there, so you don't end up going to a special set piece map with like, no weapons or whatever. I thought about it maybe being like, every 5 maps, there is a story set piece map, but because the towns are randomly generated, you could get a really shit set of towns where its like 1 building or whatever, and you would end up at a (presumably) harder set piece story map with no gear, which would be a bummer and a waste of time. So its better if the players can choose when to progress the story. And they can just keep doing generated maps until they feel like they're geared up enough to go to a special set piece thing.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
Not finding food (which is a random chance whenever you place loot) could result in a game ending, but I think the players will maybe start with 3 food tokens on the ship, so you could do three shitty maps with no food before you starve to death and the game ends. I don't think finding survivors causes the food cost to go up, that would be a pain, even though it would be more realistic.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
So anyway lets detail out some equipment.
Equipment
Equipment gets slotted onto the ship board. I think you will have space on your ship for every possible upgrade, so you don't need to swap stuff in and out. Equipment spawning in should be rare, like maybe a 2 in 20 chance. Equipment only spawns on interior (building) tiles.
- Cargo Upgrade - Adds additional space on your boat. I dunno how this works, are you tying a cooler to the side of your boat? Installing shelves? Maybe its a rarer drop, and it adds a 4x4 grid, so its like you're towing a small skiff or something behind your boat. I imagine this looking like the ram expansion upgrade for the steve jackson game "Hacker." Alternatively, you might find a "boat [name] blueprint" that allows you to use the foundry to build a completely different boat that has more cargo slots instead of upgrading your current boat. Im not sure yet. ANOTHER, maybe better route is to have one of the special set piece tiles be a dock which has a chance to spawn another (better) boat? That would limit the potential boat upgrades to specifically story maps and might be a cool thing.
- Foundry - Allows you to spend resource tokens to upgrade or construct melee weapons and armor.
- Weapon Bench - Allows you to spend resource tokens to upgrade or construct firearms.
- Engine Upgrade - You get to the next map faster, so you gain +5 rounds on the horde timer.
- Radar - Gives you an early warning when the horde is on the way. gain +5 rounds on the horde timer.
- Mortar - Once installed, it allows you to spend (a lot of) resources to make shells, which can be used to clear a tile of monsters while exploring.
- Kennel - dogs can sniff out resources, gain +1 chance of resources spawning.
- Telescope - construct the map before you disembark the ship in the boat and arrive at the dock tile. Choose whether or not to skip the map altogether. Still costs 1 food token "travel" to the next map.
- Radio - adds a +1 chance of survivors spawning.
- Fishing Gear - grants a small chance of not spending a food token between maps.
- Medical Bay - spend resources to heal 5 (10?) HP.
- Blueprints - Might be armor or weapon, but you draw a blueprint card when you bring this token back to the ship.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
Im wondering now if you have to find blueprints for weapons and armor before you can construct them. That could be another type of resource spawn. Im also wondering if you can just find weapons and armor as you explore. That could be another type of equipment spawn.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
Blueprints could be a set of cards, so a "blueprint" token would allow you to draw a blueprint card. The card would contain a picture of the item as well as the required resources you have to spend at the foundry or weapon bench to craft it. A blueprint token would be an equipment spawn, so you would get that instead of a medical bay or radio or whatever.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-18-2026
Resources
Resources spawn in on both road and building tiles. I'm thinking resources have a 4 in 20 chance of spawning. The resource pile would be face down and washed so you would draw a token and put it on the tile if you roll a 4 or less, and it would be random. A shell for the mortar would be maybe 1 chemical, 1 metal, and 2 plastic. So that's like 4 tokens you would have to spend for one shell. But it cleans a whole tile so that's a big deal. A melee weapon might be just 1 metal token, and a firearm might be 1 metal and 1 chemical, since you're making ammo too, which im not going to bother keeping track of. Blueprints are permanent so once you pick up a shotgun blueprint you can make shotguns for everyone assuming you have the resources.
- Glass
- Chemicals
- Metal
- Food
- Rope
- Plastic
- Cloth
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Digital Prophet - 03-19-2026
Okay since the closing of Print & Play I now am having to redo all my math which is something I hate since math sucks.
At https://www.thegamecrafter.com, I can get twelve 3.5X3.5" 320gsm cards for $3.00. 320gsm is basically the same thickness as a magic card, according to the website. I think that would work okay for my game board. Alternatively, I could go with real "boards" made of out chipboard, which is 0.06" thick which is pretty thick. I can get eight 3.5X3.5" boards for $7.25. Considerably more expensive, heavier, and harder to store, but also much more resilient than the cards.
So lets start from scratch on the number of tiles I will need, since I also think I want them to be single sided instead of double sided. The example map up there uses 45 tiles to construct that map, but I would want more than that. I think I want maybe 60 normal map tiles and then 20 or so special set piece tiles. so that would be a total of 80ish tiles, whichever way I went.
if I get cards, which is what im leaning toward, just for storage purposes if nothing else, that would come to $21.00. If I got chipboard tiles, that would come to around $73.00. I think I'll move forward with the cards.
So we're at $21.00 for 84 tiles (60 normal map tiles and 24 special set piece tiles) in card form, 3.5" by 3.5" and single sided, so they can be washed face down and drawn randomly.
I will also need tokens. I'm not sure how many at the moment, but quite a few. I can get 150 0.75" square tokens for $11.76, but im limited to 10 different tokens per sheet. so basically I would get 15 "food" tokens, 15 "Glass" tokens, 15 "chemicals" tokens, etc. So I can get 10 different types of tokens per sheet of 150. I have 7 resources listed in the post just above this one, so I can have two more resource types and get one sheet of resource tokens. Is 15 of each resource enough? probably? The players will be spending them between maps.
With my sort of brainstormed rules, each road tile can have 1 potential resource token spawn on it, and each interior building tile can have 2 resource tokens potentially spawn on it. if you rolled the maximum spawn on the map example up there, you could conceivably get 72 resource tokens from that map. The odds of that happening are nearly impossible, but that's the maximum. So with 150 tokens, that would cover two average maps, assuming players hoarded resources for some reason. that seems okay to me. Especially since each spawn is a percentage chance so you'll never get the maximum spawn-in for resources. So yeah I think that's probably fine.
So that's $11.76 for 150 chipboard resource tokens. and I'll need to come up with 2 more resource types. Oh, maybe Fuel? hm.
I will also need something for monsters and player tokens, unless I want to get some custom shit from heroforge. The problem is that the way this company works, you can have a limited number of designs per sheet of tokens. That's okay for monsters, but not great for character tokens.
DP's Projects: The Ferry (board game) - Jim Rockford - 03-19-2026
If you need prototype stuff, you can hunt on ebay for plastic parts like doors, containers, resource tokens, whatever. They are usually 3d printed and come in bulk. I got a lot of my gaslands car parts that way.