), and I sort of continually worked on this project for six years and right now we're kicking it into high gear. We used to just make boardgames out of our own thought up characters and once we got into Dragon Ball we inevitably started a boardgame on it. It used to be all just paper cut out and drawn with pencil until we started to actually work out the cards on computer and print them out to make the whole game a whole lot more playable. 
(Testprint of the Otherworld part of the map)
So what's it about?
Basically it's the universe of Dragon Ball which is open to do as you please. You're allowed a number of characters (we usually do four a person) that can be either Human/Earthling, Saiyan, Namekian, Android, Buu or Changeling (yeah Freeza's clan, or whatever, we kind of know it's a bad name, but Freeza's clan really doesn't work as well). You can choose a face cards out of 20 different faces to use as your characters. Then you randomly choose three (or whatever you agree on) assignment cards. Be the first to complete those, or to kill or trap all your opponents to win. Whenever you finish an assignment you draw an event card, which is something that happens immediately as a result (this can range from a full moon, to Galactic Patrol inspections, to Beerus blowing up a planet). You can train, learn attacks, gather items to make yourself stronger or to outmanouver your opponent or simply just gather the Dragon Balls (a set of seven from Earth and one from Namek) and the great thing about this game is that you're actually allowed to wish for ANYTHING. Want immortality, sure why not, want to move a planet to the other side of the board, go right ahead, wanna swap two characters places that are on either sides of the board, not a problem. There are a few limitations, but basically using your wishes tactically usually gets you the best chances of winning. But of course if your opponent knows you have a Dragon Ball, he can kill you or force you to give it by threatening to kill one of your other characters. But maybe if you're lucky, you can body change, Mafuba or control the other character through Babidi's crystal ball. Of course I say lucky, but we pride ourselves in that this game uses absolutely zero dice and usually the luck comes from Rock, Paper, Scissors games.
An example of how the face cards look with their coloured holders. The colors of the holders show who's character it is.
What does it look like?
Well, right now we're in the phase of making it look prettier and maybe a little more professional. Those holders up there and the face cards were a relatively new addition. We have different coloured holders (3D printed, based on the base of Korin tower) for different players and every race is going to have 20 different face cards to choose from. As some can probably see, we're using the Dragon Ball Online art. HOWEVER, Dragon Ball online has very little in the realm of different Changeling characters and also for Saiyans, Androids and even Buu's we're coming up very short, so we had to settle on making new artwork to fit the Dragon Ball Online art (which, let's be honest, is bloody stellar looking art). As for what types of faces we're using... we're trying to do a blend between a good load of classic characters and a lot of characters we haven't seen in the series (usually based on either DB Online or DB Heroes, though we tend to stay away from Heroes as much as possible). But every now and then we pop in a few characters we think some people would like to play as:
As you can see, some of the Changelings are designs from Dragon Ball Heroes made to look like it was art from Dragon Ball Online. Changelings were the hardest, because we had to include EVERY single transformation from Freeza in order to get somewhere and to avoid using fanart. We've included a lot of variety in the Namekians, but the Namekians you know and love will all be there. Same goes for humans. Saiyans, Androids and Buu's all have their pictures found, but A LOT still have to be made into Dragon Ball Online style.
On that front, we try to base our designs on designs found either in the series or in other computer games to make it look the best and most familiar it can possibly be. Below are examples of item cards and assignment cards.
As you can see, for the Assignment cards we tried to use a Hyper Dimension story mode kind of style, while the back of the cards has a logo similar to that of "Heya! Son Goku and his Friends Return!".
The Board
We of course also have the world map, which is FINALLY going to be worked out as a visual graphic O__O Seriously we waited SO LONG for this to get all the kinks out (well, also personal lives and a general dread at how big that was going to be as a project). Back in the early days (though this is probably still at least the second version, if not third version of the board) it looked like this:
You might be able to recognise Earth on the left part of the board and Otherworld in the middle. Well on the right is the ever non-canon map of Namek and in between all those three is the Space map where you can visit different planets (only Earth and Namek have an actual Planet map). If you can believe it, we at one point had separate boards for Earth, Namek, Space AND Otherworld, all separately which turned into a MAJOR hassle. (Also back then you could choose from OVER 10 races, including absorption androids, regular androids, Kaioshin, mutants etc). Yeah, this has been through VARIOUS different stages.
Right now we're basing everything off this new map, which is slightly condensed and the spaces fit our newly 3d printed face card holders better.
(Though honestly, the above picture has already been revised). Namek, Earth, Space and Otherworld are still in the same location.
What we're also working on is the actual artwork, which you might recognise as looking like the DS game "Attack of the Saiyans".
I started with Otherworld, since it's in the middle and it's the place we think we're done tweaking about. Keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress. I am thinking of (if I've done all the manga canon stuff) adding the airport and some flying jetplanes because of how ridiculous that would look and Princess Snake's palace. Below a close-up.
And yes, it does say "Wellcome".
Probably some questions you have for us
- What's with all the dubisms like "Saiyan", "Otherworld" and "King Yemma" instead of "Saiya-jin", "Anoyo" and "Enma Daio"?
Well... we both grew up with the dub. I have since moved on from it to the sub mostly, but especially the newer stuff Funimation puts out is MORE than watchable for me and I do enjoy hearing the English voices. My brother however has stuck pretty closely to the dub, but also especially liked (I believe, he might correct me on this :p) Dragon Ball Kai's dub and has watched pretty much all of the show on Dragon Box with the Kikuchi score (and I never once heard him complain about it). So... while we won't go Hercule on you, we will probably stick with King Kai, Otherworld and King Yemma. We try to make this a game that is enjoyable for every type of fan, be it the Japanese version or the English version. You will NOT however be seeing Freeza spelled wrong. We do have our standards.
- Will I get to play this?
Pfff, I honestly don't know. If you print the stuff yourself or sort of order the stuff from us? Obviously it's a fan project and we can't really charge you for any of this, but there was A LOT of work put into this (also we don't know when we get this done, but we hope to do a preview run on a convention in the Netherlands end of the summer holiday, so that would be great at least). In ANY case, we would LOVE for other people to play this!
- How long does a game usually last?
We end up talking about game mechanics a lot during playing, but I'd say a good two hours depending on how many players there are and how many assignment cards you agree on choosing.
- Is it difficult to play?
Well... yes and no. Knowledge of the Dragon Ball world isn't required, but it's VERY handy. For the rest... the hard part is probably keeping all your stats in check and doing the battles, I guess? And knowing where everything is. Most of it makes sense (like, you learn the Kamehameha at Kame House, you learn Body Change at the Ginyu HQ). BUT you do get a handy cheat sheet for stuff like this and we try to make a detailed and clear rulebook
- Can you transform to Super Saiyan?!
Yes. And SSJ2 and 3. You can also transform to Super Namek (even though we are aware that that isn't exactly a transformation, it makes sense from a game standpoint), you can make your humans Mystic (we also know this is a fanterm, but you gotta give it SOME name) and your Changeling can transform into a form 4. Androids and Buu's can absorb (if they manage to win a battle of Rock, Paper, Scissors that is). You do this by training and adding points to one of four stats. If all stats are over a certain number you transform.
- What about Dragon Ball Super?! What about Dragon Ball GT?!
Uhhh yeah, about that... We agreed that right now, we're focusing on the Dragon Ball manga and the tv equivalent of that story (so including filler and including original Dragon Ball) and the two new movies (BoG, RoF), NOT including Super Saiyan God. We RARELY get so far into the game that we ACTUALLY have a Super Saiyan 3, let alone do we RARELY have at least 6 Saiyans in the game ANYWAY so having a SSJG is... well, we could include it, but you'd almost never get to use it. Which I know in itself sounds awesome, but we didn't really see the point. As for the rest of Super... right now we're ignoring it and aren't including anything from it in the game. Super is still ongoing and also... the game is balanced that Super Saiyan 3 is an AMAZING accomplishment (as it should be) and that really works at this point. We might go and add more Super stuff when it's either finished or they've done something very cool that would really make the game more interesting, but right now we're settled on "nothing from Super". That being said... I am going to have to use the design from one of the characters from the new arc as a Changeling face card, due to lack of characters there o.o Please transform dude.
We do btw also use stuff from the various Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z movies, like Broly's control headband, Tapion's Sword, the Dead Zone and stuff like that. They are not canon, but they do add to the variety of the gameplay A LOT.
As for GT. Fuck GT.
- Why did you post this here?
Well... you guys know how to appreciate this I guess? The work that gets put in in the the details and stuff like that. And also I thought you might enjoy it and tell us what you think
I don't mind answering questions about this and while we're trying to finalise the rules, it doesn't hurt to hear ideas. Thank you for reading
We hope to update this post regularly!
It's a void we also felt needed filling 
