Board Game Map Tiles

[mjortman]

I'm working on a board game that more than likely will end up just a game to play with friends, but that I'm potentially considering trying to sell. That's why this is in the [Paid?] category - I don't have much of a budget to spend on this if it's just for personal use. If it goes commercial, then I'd be more than happy to work something out with an artist, whether that's a percentage of sales, or a flat fee up-front upon ordering a batch of the game to be made. I don't know what's "typical" here (or if every situation is different), but that's kind of where I stand right now.

The game is an adventure game, and while I came up with the concept of the tiles and eventually drew some sketches of them, I ran across another adventure game, called Return of the Heroes. I was a bit disappointed to find that I had a very similar idea to what they did with regard to the map tiles, without having seen their tiles, but I still think this is the way that I want to go. Here is a picture showing all (I think) of the tiles in that game, and giving an idea of what I'm after:


They are fairly simplistic. My idea is to have 6 tiles originally, each themed with a different environment:
- Forest
- Mountains
- Plains
- Swamp
- Caverns
- Hills

I've had thoughts about expanding past these, either for private or commercial use, but these 6 are where I want to start for now.

I have some thoughts on how the trails will look on each map tile, and like in Return of the Heroes, the trails must meet in the middle of each of the 4 sides (these would be square tiles), so that the order in which they are set on the table is interchangeable. Most of the tiles have one city and 3 other locations on them, all connected in some fashion. I have rough sketches of these that I can provide. My main issue is the background of each tile; I have zero artistic ability, sadly, and have been unable to find any friends who have a talent (or desire) to help with this.

The idea for now is just to have these printed off, preferably by a game creation site, where you can have it mounted on a board. I think that the dimensions would be something like 10"-12" on each side; I don't have an exact measurement in mind.

As I said, in all honesty I fully expect this to be a private printing, just to play with my friends locally. Should it play well amongst them, I might consider taking it to GenCon (I'm local here in Indy, and have been going for about 5 years now), to have it playtested on a larger scale there. Should it do well there, I might try a KickStarter or to find a publisher. In the case of any of these more commercial uses, I would want to set up some kind agreement with the artist, whether that be giving me reproduction rights, or agreeing to some flat portion or percentage of each sale; I am very open in that regard to what is deemed fair by the artist and community here in general. I'm just not sure how this sort of thing is normally handled.

Hopefully I've provided enough information to at least give some idea of what I'm after. If anybody is at all interested, please feel free to email me at mjortman @ hotmail . com (removing the spaces) for more information, or to discuss the project. Thanks in advance!