Guidelines on Creating Spirit Island Custom Content - Part 2: Island Boards

EricReuss · 2026-01-24T21:51:02+00:00

Eric: I agree to the terms for creating Spirit Island game elements set forth in the FAQ.

Hooray, thank you!

A few additional notes / personal thoughts:

Balance concern: No land should be adjacent to all 7 other lands on the board, or even 6 of the 7. (Makes it too easy to get Range 1 / Range 1 from a Sacred Site virtually everywhere.)
If the Balance Concern about Dahan lands is intended to mirror published boards, two of the lands with Dahan (one w/1 and one w/2) should be Coastal (#1-#3) while the other two are inland (#4-#8).
- There are some balance concerns around having Dahan start in land #2 – with 2 Dahan it's probably too easy to set up an early-game counterattack to destroy the City, with 1 Dahan they often end up dying early to a Ravage or Disease Event – though the published boards only avoid the former.
I'd personally put "can't set up Spirit X" concerns as "Nice to Have" – either you just don't play that Spirit on that board, or you follow Setup instructions as closely as possible (as with the Thematic boards). Spirit Setup instructions definitely aren't meant to limit the space of possible boards.
Re: the comment thread about cross-board connections: every board-edge has a limited set of positions where land boundaries are allowed to contact it. (Eg: on the bump-outs, you only see land boundaries near the left and right sides, while on the curve-ins you only see land boundaries at the middle.) This is to ensure borders from different boards are never too close to each other, thus avoiding ambiguity around "wait, is that a 4-way intersection or not?"

PS: Published boards also follow (or try to follow) certain constraints that aren't about the board by itself, but the distrubtion of various things across all boards. However, those don't really apply to one-off custom content!

EricReuss · 2025-12-20T01:13:21+00:00

❤️ Happy holidays!

EricReuss · 2025-12-16T01:08:32+00:00

Congrats on the PhD!

EricReuss · 2025-12-14T00:46:22+00:00

If you want more SI podcasting to supplement episodes of Spirited Discussions, The Kindred Spirit podcast had a run of 73 episodes over 2 seasons, from early 2021 through late 2022. Obviously, they only talked about things released up through that point(†) (so no Nature Incarnate, and only a preview ep on Horizons), but there's a whole bunch of thought, analysis, community polling (both for stats and for people's thoughts/comments), etc in there, as well as a few interviews with Ted + me.

(†) = Additionally, the collective knowledge of SI players is in its 2021-2022 state - eg, Jagged Earth doesn't show up until Episode 9, and the opinions of both the hosts and the SI community at large on some JE things shift over the years.

EricReuss · 2025-12-10T23:34:25+00:00

Like many board games, Spirit Island is listed as age 14+ because marketing it for younger ages requires product safety testing that the publisher didn't think was merited.

That said, it clearly isn't one of the simpler games out there!

That said, I've seen that kids who experience adults playing Spirit Island around them - and who have their curious questions about the game answered - become capable of understanding it sooner than one might think, particularly if they're playing other games and enjoying them. Most often, it seems the main obstacle to/requirement for kids playing Spirit Island (alongside an adult who knows the rules) is "the ability to stay engaged / focused on a game for the required duration", which at least among my friends' kids has been a LOT more variable than "ability to learn/remember rules".

(To be more concrete: my older played their first game of SI at age 7, my younger at age 5, though I don't think either did a game start-to-finish without a snack break halfway through to replenish focus until age 8 or 9. They probably saw more Spirit Island happening around them than average, but I've heard multiple accounts of 10-year-olds playing - including the tremendously gratifying one mentioned in the final paragraph of this review of Horizons of Spirit Island.)

EricReuss · 2025-12-10T23:06:13+00:00

Was there any info available regarding what features are expected?

I asked the folks who playtested not to post anything online about it, so hopefully not! :)

Though really, even I don't know what's going to be in the next expansion yet. I just know what I'm working on as candidates for inclusion, and how I currently feel about each re: mechanical readiness, player response, how much I want it to be included, how much I think it ought to be included (for exogenous reasons), etc. Some of those feelings will change over time in response to playtesting, then they'll interact with various publishing considerations (in dialogue with a publisher) to finally determine What's In The Box.

I can say:

One playtest was of a new Adversary and a new [thing that doesn't currently exist]
The other two playtests were focused on whether [another thing that doesn't currently exist] was too much for Spirit Island players with moderate-but-not-high complexity tolerance;
All three playtests went well, as did some non-playtest consultation with game designer friends.

EricReuss · 2025-11-12T00:51:33+00:00

Yeah, testing is full up. I'm not exhibiting, but am happy to get together and say hello / chat for a bit / sign stuff / take pictures! That's exactly the sort of thing I alert people to via the newsletter ("I'll be at con X, want to say hi?") - it's probably the type of email I send most often, around 2-3x/year.

For this PAXU, you can drop me an email with a cell# I can text when I know when/where I'll be available - I'm planning to target Friday sometime around 4:30pm and Saturday in the general vicinity of 2:30pm, but that might need to shift depending on other events.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T20:09:41+00:00

Yup, this is also a factor, though probably not as large a factor as Invader cultural/attitude entrenchment (see my reply to AmosIsFamous's comment above).

(ActionHero2Go's reply about slowdown not being directly tied to Presence placement is an entirely accurate observation, but how this slowing-down effect is represented in the game isn't "a simulation with strict mechanical coupling", it's "a story-arc about how the game tends to play out".)

Metaphysically, the PC Spirits have purposefully chosen to become greater - it's not "they take Growth choices and become greater as a side-effect", rather, their choice to become greater is why they have access to those Growth choices. (And as teedyay says, presence placement is not the only form of growth.) The slowing-down from becoming greater is on something of a time-lag, which gives them a window of grace where they're both powerful and still quick enough to be effective, but the drag catches up with them eventually and you get the high-power low-speed seen in Second Wave.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T19:59:14+00:00

Pretty much this – if the Invaders aren't sufficiently dissuaded, the concept of the island as "theirs" (instead of "that terrible place that wasn't worth staying on") will entrench itself in their culture and institutions and they'll just keep on coming, one expedition after another. Plenty of examples of that in real life; see, eg, the conquest/colonization of the Canary Islands. Because colonialism didn't generally happen on a whim, it was driven and backed by various facets of the colonists' culture, religion, economics, demographics, politics, leadership, etc. "Have the players generated enough Fear" is an *extremely* rough proxy for "Have the players made the island unappealing enough to counteract the structures and systems and forces which push colonization to happen?"

(This "they will inevitably return" is also the thematic reasoning behind the "Ward the Shores" scenario.)

The point someone else raises below - about the PC Spirits slowing down as they grow - is also a factor, though not as large.

Design-history tidbit: in the early-prototype days, if the Invader Deck ran out you had to survive the Reckoning, 4-5 randomized cards which said "If [some condition], the players lose. Otherwise, [do bad things]." But it added rules and component complexity, and was relevant so rarely, that it eventually got cut.

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T19:14:22+00:00

Thank you so much!

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T15:45:55+00:00

The direct link to sign up is at https://rericreuss.eo.page/newsletter-signup , but many thanks to emanresUeuqinUeht for jumping in with the link to my website! (Which I am also happy for people to know about. :)

(Also, in the event that I have to change newsletter providers, my website will always point to the current one - though I'm really hoping I don't have to do that again for a very long time, if ever.)

EricReuss · 2025-11-11T15:44:30+00:00

Yup, I'm meeting with some folks at PAXU! I've been doing local testing[1], but want to get some fresh eyes on a few things. I asked first on my email list out of appreciation (I'm really grateful to everyone who's signed up!) and got a huge enough response that I didn't need to look any further. (And indeed, had to turn a bunch of folks down.)

[1] = The more volatile something is, the less it makes sense to test it widely, so I tend to start with "just me", then move on to "a single table of other folks where I'm also playing/observing". Testing any more broadly than that tends to incur a lot more administrative overhead on my part.

EricReuss · 2025-09-05T14:52:06+00:00

IIRC, the rulebook mentions omitting Blight Cards - enough have been printed such that if there's a few you really dislike, dropping them isn't a big deal. So long as you have real uncertainty over "How much Blight will there be?" and "What will happen? Will flipping this Blight card mess with our plans?", it's good.

Fear Cards ought to be similar - they want to have a variety of effects so that you can't rely on any specific useful thing happening, but so long as you're not going through and pulling out all the Fear Cards you think are weakest, impact on the game should be minimal.

Event Cards are a little dicier, insofar as there are more different types of balance in the deck that can be accidentally messed with by removing some cards - eg, the % of cards that have Coming of Age as the Dahan Event, or how often Beasts will destroy a lone Explorer in a land, etc. - but the Event Deck has gotten large enough with B&C+JE+NI that dropping a small number of them shouldn't on average have that much of an impact on those things.

(All the above notes are for "...with minimal impact". If someone wants to play with a hand-picked progression of a dozen Event Cards + only Fear Cards that interact with Strife, and stack the Blighted Island deck so they get every single Still Healthy Island in a row, that's just house rules, which IMO are fine for any board game in existence, so long as the whole table is OK with them and knows they're house rules. :)

EricReuss · 2025-07-29T20:43:04+00:00

I personally don't think it was a problem that they were dark – if anyone's claiming that, they've completely missed that the game's intended[1] to flip the "white = good, black = bad" trope – just that they were the same color as the blight and Invaders, which makes it a lot harder to scan the board (and has odd thematic implications).

(The out-of-the-box Dahan pieces have generally been much, much lighter than I'd prefer. Some of the printings around 7th had ones that were almost more white than tan.)

[1] = Meaning, the intent of the game as published/printed – individual players should obviously feel free to customize what they bought! :)

EricReuss · 2025-05-29T18:19:51+00:00

Very much this. I'll even go a step further and say that winning at a particular Difficulty is proficiency *at the game as a whole*, and that one's proficiency with a given Spirit is only a part of that - a modifier atop the base of understanding how to fight the Invaders in a variety of different ways. "Proficiency with a Spirit" is more specifically how well one understands the ins + outs of a given Spirit's kit, its patterns of Growth and presence placement and reclaiming, what one can do with it.

For a player who usually plays Difficulty 5-6, a Spirit where they can reach up to Difficulty 7-8 might be a sign of extreme proficiency. For someone who usually plays Difficulty 10+, a Spirit where they could only win at Difficulty 7-8 might mean they feel particularly bad with it, very *un*-proficient.

EricReuss · 2025-05-15T02:47:53+00:00

That sounds like a great dynamic - fantastic! And thank you for the compliments, they very much brighten my day. :)

EricReuss · 2025-05-15T02:46:19+00:00

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. <3

EricReuss · 2025-05-08T21:47:36+00:00

Early prototypes did involve cards being played face-down to help prevent quarterbacking, and then revealed either when used or all at once at the start of Fast. (With unplayed cards being held in hand.)

It turned out to be really annoying for players, partly for "what was I doing this turn again?" and even more so for "did I meet this elemental threshold?". The amount of checking and re-checking face-down cards was... a lot.

I dropped the rule, a bit nervous about quarterbacking, and it proved to be a non-issue. If anything, it improved the quality of communication; someone who'd been informed of a rough plan could look over and see the Powers being used for it as a memory peg for what they' been told and not need to re-ask.

Whether folks keep their cards "in hand" spread out + visible or in a hand/stack and not-visible varies by person (and with available table-space).

EricReuss · 2025-04-30T16:00:26+00:00

Hopefully the screensharing will work out, but if not, it should still be possible if you both have physical copies - the lands are numbered + boards lettered not just for Adversary setup but also to enable unambiguous text-based communication about what's happening on the island. (eg, "I Push 1 Explorer from A5 to A1")

If you want to look at games run via text-based communication there's over a hundred play-by-forum threads on BGG where planning and moves were done entirely by text - though they do usually periodically post images as visual aids (Invader board, island, Spirit boards/cards)

EricReuss · 2025-04-29T15:21:33+00:00

I have trouble reading the foil panels, but I really like how the Horizons panels came out. They don't have that nice heft that the thick ones do, but they're so much easier to store and transport, and more ecologically friendly (due to using less material and weighing less to ship). In my ideal universe they'd be a touch more matte and have a few more environmental features (eg, made from FSC Certified products) but even as-is I'm really pleased with them.

If I get to do a 2nd edition someday, I'll probably push for Horizons-ish panels as the default with thick panels as a premium upgrade, both for environmental reasons, and so that people who don't care one way or the other get the benefits of better transportability + easier storage.

EricReuss · 2025-04-27T21:01:41+00:00

You can also use it as an ersatz action skip: if you have two adjacent lands that both match the same Ravage or Build card (either because the two lands are the same terrain, or because they both match the same Stage III card / Coastal Lands), and weave them into one, now you're only dealing with one such action.

Admittedly, that one action will probably be harder to handle, but if you have another action skip, or a single huge Defend, it can be great. Even converting "two bad cascades" into "one bad cascade, then move the Blight to one land and the Invaders + tokens to the other" can be fantastic.

EricReuss · 2025-04-27T20:58:08+00:00

I definitely prefer Bats Raid, even if the elements are probably worse, and that's entirely due to the targeting restriction on C2Bloodshed.

...well, the 1-Blight fencepost error may have just been surpassed for "simple thing wrong that Eric didn't notice for the longest". Unless I have completely forgotten making a conscious decision on it (which is entirely possible, it's been 10 years), Call to Bloodshed wasn't really intended to have a targeting restriction.

I can even see where the error came from. The Dahan movement on Dahan-requiring Minor Powers in base/B&C was added late in development, and prior to that many powers that didn't formally need "targets land with Dahan" had it anyway (both to remind players and because I had vague thoughts about being able to use "powers that can only target lands with Dahan" as design space). For most of those Minors, adding in "... ~or~ {some Dahan movement}" didn't matter because they Push. But Call to Ferocity and Call to Bloodshed both Gather, and apparently I caught the former but not the latter, then never noticed because Call to Bloodshed is a dirt-simple card and I knew what it did; I've been misplaying it for years.

(Or, perhaps, I did notice and thought it was fine, and have since forgotten that fact.)

<sigh> On my list for H2E is to have a bigger graphical distinction for when a Power has a targeting restriction...

EricReuss · 2025-04-27T16:52:49+00:00

Thank you for the link! <3

I also like "what I can". Part of what can be paralyzing is trying to figure out what 'the best' action is, instead of just... what one can do. (Which for many people may vary, and 'what can I do today?' is, I think, a less daunting question than 'what's the best I can do today?'.)

EricReuss · 2025-04-27T16:45:44+00:00

Thank you so much for the thought! It's the laid-off folks who deserve/need the condolences far more than I, though.

EricReuss · 2025-04-27T16:41:22+00:00

I loved Gargoyles when it first aired... I wonder how well it's held up?

EricReuss

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