Before We Begin
Like video games, the creation of board games can't really be boiled down to a specific set of steps you need to follow. You could give a general overview, but without going into the specifics, it's hard to explain game development of any kind.
To help you understand the concepts, I am going to use this article to walk you through the process I took while developing one of my ideas. This is by no means a complete game, but it should still help me illustrate a lot of my points by having a concrete example for you to learn from.
The key here is that you will get to see both the theory and the actual thought process I'm using as I develop this idea further. Hopefully by the end of the article you'll understand how my idea went from concept to prototype, and how I could turn it into a finished project.
With all this in mind, let's get started.