Some of the greatest surprises and delights over the last 11 years at Stonemaier Games have come from various forms of creative fan engagement. Even dating back to Viticulture’s Kickstarter project in 2012, I was amazed that some backers wanted to playtest the game and offer feedback during the campaign.
One of those early backers was Morten Monrad Pedersen. He shared with me that there was a growing community of solo gamers and that he had dabbled in creating solo modes for games. When I started working on Tuscany (the expansion to Viticulture) in 2013, I asked Morten if he would like to create an official solo mode for Viticulture. Automa Factory was born, and we’ve had the great honor of including solo modes from Morten and his team in our games ever since (if you’ve seen the word “automa” used in a game, this is where it came from–it refers to any solo game where you feel like you’re playing against an intelligent automated opponent).
This began a long history of Stonemaier Games publishing fan-created content for our games, complete with credits, compensation, and collaboration:
Viticulture/Tuscany solo mode (and Viticulture World)- Scythe (The Wind Gambit, The Rise of Fenris, and Encounters)
- My Little Scythe
- Tapestry (Arts & Architecture)
- Rolling Realms (some of the promo realms)
- Wingspan (fan-art pack)
While it varies from one fan creation* to the next, the process typically looks like this:
- A fan creates a prototype of a promo or expansion, playtests it with their friends, and shares the files on the game’s Facebook group or BoardGameGeek forum. This is how we discover fan creations and see what others think in the ensuing discussion. It’s only in rare cases that we actively pursue fan creations (e.g., Scythe Encounters and the Wingspan Fan-Art Pack).
- If we’re currently interested in more content for the corresponding game, if we aren’t already working on something similar, and if the game designer likes the fan creation enough to want to invest their time in it, we contact the fan designer.
- Depending on the complexity of the fan creation and how much it ends up informing the final version of the product, we collaborate a little or a lot with the fan creator. We also spend quite a bit of time further designing and developing the product so it fits seamlessly into the game. Ultimately we credit the fan creator (i.e., on the game box as a co-designer) and compensate them appropriately (i.e., an ongoing royalty for expansions).
*Note that this topic is about gameplay content. For component upgrades and accessories, the process and guidelines are explained here.
The results of this process are (a) a few published products and (b) many, many creations that don’t make it past the first step. This disparity isn’t for lack of appreciation; we really do love that some of our games spark creativity in our fans.
My hope is that fan creators are motivated by a desire to share something new with others who love the game, as that’s a motivation for which you have full control of the outcome (opposed to the hope that Stonemaier Games will officially publish the fan creation). It’s also a great way to dabble in game design (in fact, one of the first things I designed as an adult was a fan expansion for Catan. It wasn’t very good).
As a publisher, we can support fan content by providing open-source card templates, offering clear guidelines (it’s okay to share digital files for free; it is not okay to sell fan expansions for someone else’s intellectual property), fostering communities and forums where fan content can be shared, celebrating the content, and actually digging into the content itself.
If you see a clever fan creation for a game you love, please do not pressure the designer or publisher to publish it (or shame them for not publishing it). Instead, comment on your appreciation of the content and offer your feedback (especially if you’ve played the game with the content). As noted in step 2 above, there are many factors in play for a publisher when considering new content of any kind, and we appreciate the creativity whether or not we pursue it for publication.
Have you ever created gameplay content for a game you love?
Also read:
- Third-Party Accessories and Stonemaier Games
- Three Weddings and a Baby (card templates)
- 15 Ways Publishers Can Support Their Own Games
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21 Comments on “A Fan Designed an Expansion for Your Game: What Should You Do?”
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I remember a friend who designed new buildings for Puerto Rico and new cards of advance for Civilization (Avalon Hill). I designed a campaign system for Warhammer myself, but none of us tried to reach the publishers. This was ages ago…
I’m a publisher myself since 2001, and we are releasing a boardgame soon that has been designed by a fan, based in our universe, Infinity. He designed the rules and we did all the graphic design, art, miniatures… the experience has been very good, even if it took us ages to take the decission and finally make it a reality.
Now the games are sailing from China to our warehouse :D
That’s wonderful, Fernando! Congratulations on the new game!
Jamey,
I’ve developed many gameplay ideas over the years and the easy ones were not fit for gamer consumption. Over time, I’ve honed the skills required, coupled with playing 100s of games. It has been during this fascinating journey that I’ve worked with and for myriad designers and publishers, including Stonemaier Games. I absolutely love the process and the people involved in our industry.
In the early days, it was pushing back Axis & Allies to 1939 and later adding cards to games to enhance the solo play.
Cheers,
Joe
I love fan stuff. To see someone who loves something so much they want to make fan content is such a compliment. It boggles the mind sometimes.
I made a game for a BGG “Solo PnP” contest 11 years ago called Barbarian Vince. It was a one-deck only game, it did pretty well, got a 3rd place paragraph game award. The game itself was a “fan” creation of mine, technically, since it was supposed to be an affectionate parody of “Barbarian Prince”, another super old school paragraph solo game which was fun for me 40 years ago.
Since then, I had a fan make all new artwork for the game; I had versions in like 5 different languages get made from fans; I had like 3 fan expansions and one was a major fan reworking of the whole game in a different setting. All of them are awesome. A couple of weeks ago I heard from a designer in China working on a Chinese language version. It’s mind boggling what the internet sometimes turns out.
I’ve had a couple of bits of fan content made for Ninja Dice but seeing all the content off a home-brew PnP for a contest ages ago is amazing to me. Every time someone reaches out and pokes me about it on BGG I can’t tell you how great it feels.
My question is about first right of refusal and if that’s in your contract with your designer or not – and if it is – how does this impact that.
To clarify – do your contracts with the designer of the base game indicate that they have first right of refusal to design any follow up, spin-off, or expansion to the game? So if the publisher wants to do an expansion they have to ask the original designer first.
So now that you have these fan made expansions – how does that fit into this? Is the original designers involved in the decision? Are they compensated as well for expansions even if they didn’t design it?
Jay: Great question. Yes, our designers have first right of refusal. Though we take it beyond that: If there’s a situation where we really like a fan design but the designer isn’t excited about it, we’ll yield to the designer and not proceed.
We don’t actually have any fan-made expansions. Rather, there are fans who have posted modules for our games, and in rare cases I’ve elected to work with those fans to co-design the expansion. That’s what happened in The Wind Gambit, for example. I’ve been the original game designer for all such collaborations, but if there is a future case when a non-me designer was interested in working with a fan co-designer on an expansion, both co-designers would receive a royalty on revenue. If, say, the designer had no interest in working on the expansion but they gave their blessing for us to work with the fan creator, the designer’s role would be “developer” and they would receive a small royalty (since the expansion is based on their design).
There are a couple of other fan made expansions for Top 100 games. I designed Terra Mystica: Merchants of the Seas, and there is Caverna: The Forgotten Folk. It was a wonderful experience.
I’m glad to hear that, James! I designed a fan realm for Terra Mystica, the Atlanteans.
Jamey, thanks for posting this! I have often wondered how fan-created content catches your attention.
I’ve created several expansions and variants, but I’ve also felt trepidation about them because I don’t want it to come across like I’m encroaching on their creative territory. I try to credit the original works’ creators, of course. But I also hope I don’t give anyone the wrong ideas, because I post my content not only on BGG but also on my blog, “House Rules”: https://thesequoyahs.wix.com/houserules
(I also hope you don’t mind me including this link; feel free to suppress this post if it’s unwelcome.)
I’m proud of what I’ve made — but I didn’t do it for income. I don’t make money from traffic to my blog site, from downloadable content, or anything. Unlike itch.io, there’s no way for users to even volunteer payment.
So, all that to say, does it seem OK to you as a publisher for someone like me to offer this created content for free on their personal site (and not just on BGG and/or the game’s Facebook group)?
Adam: Thanks for your comment! And yes, absolutely–fan designers do this all the time in our Facebook groups. They share the digital content for people to print at home for free, they label the content “fan made” (not just the file names, but printed on the content itself), and they give credit where credit is due. We generally discourage the use of icons found in our games, but for fan content we don’t mind. This is all in the guidelines we post publicly; if other publishers don’t have guidelines, you could ask their permission first.
That’s great to hear! And it makes sense that you wouldn’t want anyone using icons designed by your artists for your games for any random purposes. Also, I appreciate you considering these things enough to post guidelines for them. I would love to see other publishers do the same thing — and maybe some of them have. And yes, if it’s unclear I can ask for permission like you suggest.
I made some promo content for a game I really liked, and luckily so did the publisher ;-)
Thanks, Ben! :) I’m playing with the Micro Dojo realm on a liveplay this week!
Can you talk more about the royalty for fan-created content? What is the fair amount to compensate someone for something like this? Just curious
Thanks for your question. It isn’t really about fan-created content at that point; it’s about co-designer content. If I co-design an expansion with someone, typically their royalties are 4-5% (I don’t take a royalty for myself).
Here’s more information about designer contracts and royalties: https://stonemaiergames.com/game-designer-contracts-and-stonemaier-games/
I’ve toyed with making a Texas fan expansion for Power Grid (aka Power Grid: ERCOT). At the time I started there wasn’t one on BGG, which was surprising to me since Texas has its own power grid covering most of the state. I came up with the cities to be included, how to divide them up, and a mechanism for El Paso (not on the Texas power grid), but stalled when it came to setting costs for connections between the cities. It provided me with a small taste of what it takes to make a full expansion or game.
This one is right in the middle of my wheelhouse. The number of things I have created for games I love (and whole games) continues to grow. In relation to Stonemaier, my wife and I created “Charterstone: The Eternal City” — and expansion to be used after completing the wonderful legacy campaign that is the game “Charterstone.”
We loved that game, and we had a blast creating the expansion. If you are interested, please head on over to BGG and check it out.
As Jamey says above, this was not created in some plan to get Stonemaier to publish it; it was created because we wanted to keep playing “Charterstone” and we wanted to share our ideas with the world. Nothing more. We have an 8.0 rating for that work and a couple of fans of the expansion… so, we’re happy!
Several years back, I purchased the rights to a favorite role-playing game (“The Arcanum” from Bard Games). I cleaned that up, re-organized it, and released the “30th Anniversary Edition” of that game back in 2019 under my own imprint, “ZiLa Games.”
My wife and I have also created content for “Floor Plan” — we want to tweak it a bit more before we share that one.
And so on… Well before she and I were together, the amount of material I had written for beloved games and for my own creations was voluminous and occupied a lot of storage space. Some of that is no longer with us after we downsized our home and moved to Maryland. But I am still cooking up ideas for new games and expansions for others. So is she.
Who knows what you are going to find from us in the future?
Thank you, David! I love what you created with the Eternal City–it’s very clever. I think it’s great that you and your wife have had fun making fan creations together.
Thanks. My daughter and I dove into one of her favorites — Machi Koro. We had everything for that game, including the Legacy edition. We re-worked some things, adjusted some others, and created what we call Machi Koro: Ultimate Edition.
Anymore, that is the only way we play.
I reached out to the publishers and have never gotten permission from them to post those rules anywhere. Without their blessing, this will remain something that only we enjoy. :(
Oh well. It was a great time with my daughter. Can’t ask for more than that.
Did the publishers share why they wouldn’t give permission?
Nope. Just never replied.