Tabletop gaming, like most hobbies, started as gatherings, clubs, and stores but has transitioned to a large online community. There is a plethora of web sites, YouTube channels, and podcasts to satisfy any gamer. Today I wanted to go over some of the major online resources I use to stay on top of all things related to tabletop games.
The Dice Tower
The Dice Tower is one of the most popular tabletop game sites. They have a wide network of content providers, from the main man himsel, Tom Vasel, to guys like Zee Garcia and a whole host of game enthusiasts. The site is prominent enough to have its seal of approval displayed on actual game boxes. Check any large tabletop game project on Kickstarter and you’re likely to find a Dice Tower review. They also run multiple conventions across the country and even run a cruise.
My main interaction with The Dice Tower is via their YouTube channel. This channel averages at least one video per day, from reviews to round table discussions to live streams. It’s always interesting to watch videos from different time periods and see how the production values have changed. What started as Tom in his own house now has a fantastic studio with sponsored game tables and some of the best graphics around.
I also listen to the flagship Dice Tower podcast along with the weekly news podcast. The weekly news keeps me up to date on the latest releases. The main podcast is entertaining for the top ten lists, especially the alphabet lists (e.g. “Top 10 Games That Start With the Letter ‘A'”) that bring up games you might not normally hear discussed. The amount of games all the people at The Dice Tower play is amazing.
A heartwarming element of The Dice Tower is the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund. The outpouring of offers, bids, and donations is astounding. Penny Arcade has run another charity, Child’s Play, for video games. It’s great to see gamers able and willing to support such worthy causes.
As big as The Dice Tower might be, it doesn’t hold a candle to the grandaddy of all tabletop game sites.
Board Game Geek
I highly doubt I need to introduce Board Game Geek to anyone reading this article. It’s big enough to have its own official award, the Golden Geek, that gets affixed to game boxes even more prominently than the Dice Tower seals. My copy of Splendor features a 2014 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year Award.
In case you are not familiar, Board Game Geek is the largest database of tabletop games on the internet. They have every game you could think of, from tic-tac-toe to Gloomhaven. Each game has a rating, a rank, a weight, categories, versions, images, reviews, forums, and more.
It’s amazing how much of the site is driven by the users themselves. Each game lets you vote on the appropriate age, the best player count, and the weight (how complex the game is, not its physical weight on a scale, which is what I naively thought when I first heard the term). I’m still not sure how the ratings and ranks interact, but it’s great to find a good game and be able to see how it stacks up against other games. You can also enjoy a great component or mechanic and find other games with the same elements.
Geek Dad
I can’t recall how I stumbled upon Geek Dad. But I do know I enjoy their tabletop game coverage. They have a small group of writers that provide excellent reviews and Kickstarter Alerts.
Geek Dad even has its own seal of approval, the Geek Dad Approved. This doesn’t hold as much clout as a Golden Geek or Dice Tower seal. And I’m not sure I’ve seen a review that didn’t get a Geek Dad Approved, but they are a smaller site that isn’t focused solely on games. Their reviews are consistently structured, which makes it easy to find the most relevant portions. The main reviewer also makes sure to include notes about how well games work with younger children similar in age to my own, which really helps inform my own decisions.
Oh, and it was Geek Dad that introduced me to the Tabletop Writers Guild and its Diversity Initiative.
The site also have a weekly Re-Roll article that recaps the biggest news of the past week along with a list of reviews and games. The news helped especially during all the turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. I find this news update invaluable to stay on top of things, and the Kickstarter Alerts tip me off to games I might never have discovered otherwise.
But speaking of Kickstarter…
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is another site that needs no introduction. Obviously this isn’t strictly a tabletop game site but it’s an invaluable part of the hobby at this point. So many games go through Kickstarter before coming to retail. And the Kickstarter exclusive content available on most projects really scratches that geek collector mentality while providing unique elements you can’t get anywhere else.
I’ve never gone wild backing Kickstarter games. The first project I ever backed was to help a friend, John Bintz, fund a card game based on his comic strip, Can’t Catch Me, Olivia. Sadly, I have yet to play the game after many years. Mostly because I backed a bunch of other games at the same time.
Most of those games were from Minion Games: Manhattan Project Chain Reaction, Dragonflame, and Dead Men Tell No Tales. These were interesting games that I was super excited to get. It was a brand new experience for me to get such a well produced product directly from the company. Alas, I never really got to play these games since I started having kids around this time and it was difficult to find a big enough block of time to dedicate to a game. I got Dead Men Tell No Tales all set up for our first game when our son started crying and thus ended game night.
Nightlight was one Kickstarter game I did actually play with my wife. I think it was also my first game to include Kickstarter exclusive content. Still, the exclusive content on other campaigns never grabbed me enough to make me jump on Kickstarter very often. In fact, I didn’t back another project until 2020.
The aforementioned Geek Dad previewed the game, Whatnot Cabinet. I didn’t even need to read the whole article before telling my wife, “a game about collecting random trinkets and arranging them in a closet? How can we not get this game for our daughter?”
One thing I used to enjoy from my video game hobby was reading magazines like Nintendo Power and Game Informer. I couldn’t find anything like that for tabletop games, since everything is online nowadays. But I did discover Casual Game Insider on Kickstarter. And their very first email led me to backing my most anticipated Kickstarter game: Automated Alice, a game based on one of my favorite novels written by Jeff Noon.
I love stumbling upon all sorts of games on Kickstarter, usually from all sorts of various sources. From Reiner Knizia’s Whale Riders to the popular Cartographers Heroes to the indie LG Tactics. Kickstarter is a vital part of the tabletop game culture, allowing the small publishers to stand on somewhat equal footing with the big ones. And the smaller campaign managers are usually responsive to the backers, making it feel like a tight knit group.
And one of the best, most active game companies on Kickstarter is…
Button Shy
Button Shy is a “small board game publisher that is simply doing things its own way”. They are famous for producing wallet games, which are small card games (usually only 18 cards) that fit into a billfold wallet. I heard about them thanks to the Dice Tower praising Circle the Wagons and Sprawlopolis.
The notion of small card games intrigued me. So did the rate of production. Button Shy publishes a new game each month! That’s a very aggressive schedule for such a small company with such self-imposed design restrictions. This led me to my first Patreon subscription to become a member of the Board Game of the Month Club.
Button Shy runs a Kickstarter practically each month. Last month was the Button Shy Game Haul Bag to hold all these wallet games. This month is Agropolis, a sequel to their best selling game Sprawlopolis. I look forward to seeing the new games on the horizon. The steady stream of Button Shy projects keeps me visiting Kickstarter to see all the other new projects.
Button Shy has its own thriving community. They run a Discord server with tons of channels and users. They also run a daily tabletop game, Personal Space, that includes its own Discord server, and is a unique and ambitious project. It feels neat to be a part of such a group of gamers.
Culture Club
Gamer groups have changed as technology and the world change. I’ve gone from after-school clubs to local game stores to online communities. I’ve never met Tom Vasel, a Geek Dad, or the owner of Button Shy Games, but I feel like part of their tribes. Especially in the trying times of 2020, having so many web sites and other ways to interact with board games online has been invaluable.
This article is part of the 2020 Tabletop Writers Diversity Initiative. Use the tags “Tabletop Writers Guild” and “2020 Diversity Initiative” to find more.
