Community

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.

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.

Board Game Hour is a little difficult to describe within my limited categories for resources. It is a weekly meet-up on Twitter to discuss board games and board game design. The meet-up is hosted on Nurph and moderated by the Minister of Board Games himself, Nate Brett. The “Hour” of interest is every Monday at: 7pm GMT (which I mention first since the Minister is in the UK). This translates to 2pm EST, 1pm CST, 12pm MST (which works great for me so I can join on my lunch hour), and 11am PST. Note: The time gets a little wonky at the time changes since the UK observes Daylight Savings Time differently than the US.

The League of GameMakers is a growing group of designer/writers across the spectrum of game design. The authors are authentic and active in the comments and their articles interesting. There is a good dialog about game design concepts and some very helpful information on this site.

The easiest statement about what Opie Games has planned for 2015 is, “more of what we did in 2014.” Obviously, generally I would like to do everything better, too. A few, more exact, 2015 objectives are:

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:

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?

In a recent post on the League of GameMakers, Michael Domeny challenged his cohorts and readers to the “League of GameFakers” Game Title Challenge. The rules are as follows:

1. Take the title of a board game.
2. Remove any one letter.
3. Replace it with a different letter to form a new title.
4. Write a description and pitch your game in the comments below!

The gang at League of Gamemakers and their readers had many clever contributions that are worth reading. This was my entry:

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.