Game Community Blog

A blog of comments and experiences related to the RPG and game community.

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John Parker

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The BGG games pages include tons of community contributed content. Obviously, I am an avid user of the site, but have traditionally participated to a limited degree and have been remiss in tangibly thanking others for their contributions. Let’s take a quick look at the various ways you can contribute to the site information and recognize the efforts of others, using Pandemic as our example..

John Parker

Setup

The BGG website (boardgamegeek.com) is the most comprehensive source of information and collection of commentary about board games anywhere ever… and it feels like it. Asking a simple question about a game on BGG is a bit like asking for the most common use of a word and having someone cart in the all of the unbound pages of the OED in a stack and saying, “Here, find it.” OK. So maybe not that bad, but it can be almost as intimidating to a new user.

Tabletop media has complained, criticized, and suggested improvements continuously for years now, so I don’t need to pile on any more than I already have. This article is not that. We will touch on the general sentiments and suggestions a bit for context, but this is not intended to be piling on.

Instead, let’s consider what a perfect BGG world might look like. Will there be a rush on rainbows and unicorns in that perfect world?

The Low Player Count Podcast  is mostly a discussion about games and the experience playing them at (wait for it) low player counts – solo and two players. This includes games that are specifically designed for 1-2 players, games that are listed for player count ranges that include 1 or 2 players, and games that can be scaled down with variants. While they do some reviews of games as well, their focus is more general about what makes games good and particularly what makes them good at low player counts.

John Parker

It is important for me and for Opie Games to be a supporter of the table top gaming community and I am always looking for opportunities. In January 2015 I created a short list of goals for the year.

John Parker

It is important for me and for Opie Games to be a supporter of the table top gaming community and we are always looking for opportunities. I don’t want to create a long list of goals for 2015, but have a few that are worth noting with some activities or approaches that will help me achieve them:

John Parker

I started 2014 with the intent to get more involved in the card and board gaming community and to try to provide some value to it. Hopefully I have made at least a start in that direction and some minor accomplishments. So, what did I do in 2014 to advance the hobby?

John Parker

The Community Focus tag is used to identify blog posts that either highlight the board gaming and design community or Opie Games interaction in that community. Some posts will appear in the Game Design blog, some in the Game Industry blog, and some in the Gaming blog depending on the community discussed, but all will appear under the Community tag. Here is an example of the content you will find under this heading.

The Dice Tower website, podcast, and anything you can think of to promote the board game hobby is the brain child of Tom Vasel. It is unlikely that you have found Opie Games without already being very familiar with the Dice Tower, but here is a quick breakdown. Eric Summerer has joined Tom as producer of the podcast and there are many contributors to the site and the web presence that is The Dice Tower. Tom and company produce an amazing amount of game related content every week.

John Parker

If you don’t already have a Board Game Geek account, follow the Homepage link and set one up. Spend a few hours (or days) perusing the site and setting up some subscriptions to content that interests you. Then come back here. Board Game Geek was not the first resource featured here solely because I assume you already know everything you need about it.

Scott Alden and Derk Solko started the site in 2000 that has been growing at an increasing rate ever since. For more information, read the Wikipedia Article or visit the site and find out for yourself.