Had a question from one of my co-workers yesterday about software for designing board games to use in eLearning. We had discussed game engines at one time, and she was wondering if there were engines for anything other than First-Person Shooters, like Quake. So I did a little research and found some info and links that I thought would be worth sharing.
Most of the software I found is geared toward strategy or role-playing games, but much of it is also adaptable to board games. Qub is an open source development project which seems the most suitable to the task, but it is currently available only on *nix platforms. It is an outgrowth of GUB, which is a Java 2 app and therefore platform-independent (in theory!) Both Qub & GUB are game interfaces only. They are as aware of the rules of the game as your Monopoly board is aware of the rules of that game. What they do is manage the presentation of the game. Since Qub is open-source, there may be a Windows implementation at some point.
Cyberboard is similar in that it creates the game set, but it is a little more polished, containing two modules: the Game Designer & the Game Player. It was created for PBeM (Play by eMail) gaming, so it is really asynchronous, maintaining game-state, history and messages in a small textfile.
Click n Play and GameMaker are icon-based development environments, more suited to maze & action games, but probably adaptable to some kinds of boardgames. If you (or your developers) are at all familiar with programs like Authorware or Toolbook, this kind of development paradigm will be familiar.