1. The time needed to play should not exceed two hours (45 minutes is ideal), but should also be long enough to allow for recovery from bad luck or mistakes. In addition, game play should not be significantly increased by a larger number of players.
   
   
2. A turn or space should have a single action, with the space itself determining what the action is. Any complexity should be on cards instead of long instructions on the board.
   
   
3. There should not be a noticeable advantage to going first, and momentum changes, lead changes, and/or comebacks should be possible. In other words, all players should be in it to the end.
   
   
4. Winning should be earned, occur when a player crosses a defined "finish line", and should occur more from skill than by damaging an opponent or by luck alone. There should not be a single trump or crash turn that ends the game suddenly and unfairly.
   
   
5. The game should contain a balance between randomness (luck) and player decisions (skill), or in other words, a balance between the expected and unexpected.
   
   
6. Player interaction is important, but players should often be able to "rest" between turns (leave the table, etc.) without being penalized or without missing out on opportunities.
   
   
7. A turn should not need to rely on the events of a previous turn (a player should be able to be distracted from the game between turns and not be lost).
   
   
8. Full disclosure is necessary; the status/progress of all players should be easily viewed and understood.
   
   
9. Exceptions to the primary rules should be simple with as few of them as possible.
   
   
10. Whenever possible, problems encountered during the game design process should not be fixed by adding additional rules (exceptions) to eliminate the problem. Problems, and not symptoms of problems, should be fixed when discovered, preferably by simplifying rules instead of making them more complicated.

These guidelines are exactly that, only guidelines, and won't apply to every possible board game concept. But if you keep these in mind during the design and testing phase of creating a new board game, you'll save yourself a lot of time and headaches before committing to a design and set of rules that you want to manufacture or pitch to game companies.

* The above guidelines were developed by the founder of Willow Tree Games and the founder of VividContext, an internet marketing and strategy company, while they were working together on a board game in 2005.