Board game design Facebook groups

Facebook remains one of the biggest gathering places for board game designers, largely because of a few long-running groups with tens of thousands of members. The most prominent is the Board Game Design Lab community group, which grew out of Gabe Barrett's Board Game Design Lab podcast. It is active, beginner-friendly, and full of designers at every stage from first idea to published.

Other useful groups cover adjacent territory: groups for card and board game designers generally, groups focused on crowdfunding tabletop games, and regional designer groups that organize local meetups. Publishers and artists also participate, so the groups double as a place to see calls for submissions and find collaborators.

To get value from a Facebook group, ask specific questions. "What do you think of my game?" gets vague encouragement. "Here are two versions of my scoring rule, which reads more clearly?" gets real answers. Posting a photo of your prototype or a single card design reliably draws more engagement than a wall of rules text. Search the group before asking, because common questions like "how do I protect my idea" have been answered hundreds of times.

The weakness of Facebook groups is depth. Threads move fast and disappear, so they are better for quick reads, polls, and encouragement than for the detailed rules discussion you get on BoardGameGeek forums. Use them as a front door to the community, not the whole house.