Welcome

Irecently sat in my local gaming cafe (The

FROM AN IDEA TO A GRAND FESTIVAL

There‘s perhaps no better place to start talking about Crowdfunding, than with the creator some of the highest funded games in our industr y. Isaac Childres of Cephalofair Games fills us in on going from small Kickstarter project, to giant BackerKit Festival.

KICKSTARTER FOR BEGINNERS

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website t hat allows creators to put their ideas in front of a massive audience and generate funding through what are essentially pre-orders. This has allowed many independent creators to get their games off the ground and out into the world, including yours truly. With si x successf ul RPG Kickstarter projects under my belt at time of writing, Tabletop Gaming has asked me to w rite about what it’s like running a Kickstarter, and how to run one

THE SEASON OF THE ZINE

Anna Blackwell takes us through the very event that launched their RPG writing career – but what is Zine Quest, and is it any different to Zine Month?

5 ZINE MONTH PROJECTS

With February marking the start of Zine Month and Zine Quest, creators have started sharing their projects, and we’re taking a look at five ahead of time. For full details, be sure to track them down on their relevant crowdfunding site, and mark the calendar to get involved

HEADED TO KICKSTARTER

Kickstarter has long been synonymous with crowdfunding, especially when it comes to board games. Despite recent years and numerous other platforms, it remains the biggest source of tabletop games, and indeed, tabletop games provide a big chunk of the Kickstarter income. It wouldn’t be a crowdfunding issue without talking to them, so we caught up with the Head of Games at Kickstarter, Jon Ritter-Roderick

THE CROWDFUNDIING LANDSCAPE

You may have gone to back a shiny new game, and found that instead of Kickstarter, it’s on a new unfamiliar platform. Sound familiar? As the opportunities to fund elsewhere arise, it’s often easier to follow the game to where it lives, but whether you’ve backed thousands of games or none at all, we’ve taken a look at all the places you might end up, with some pros and cons for each of them

FORGING A NEW PATH

What if you created a trading card game that didn’t just leave you to build your own decks, but could use an algorithm to make billions of different, usable decks, that meant no one knew what you’d get within each pack – but you could play with every single one? Brilliant, you’d probably think. Except when the algorithm had some hiccoughs… Ross Gilbert discusses its return to crowdfunding, and what it means for the game.

WHAT’S IN A GAME? THE SCIENCE OF CROWDFUNDING

Is Crowdfunding good for tabletop games? Even as

WHEN CROWDFUNDING GOES WRONG

There’s no doubt about it -Crowdfunding can be

BEHIND THE SCENES: MAKING BOARD GAMES

Panda Games Manufacturing is one of the biggest names in our hobby for manufacturing, likely being responsible for a good chunk of games on your shelf. Whilst we don’t always take a moment to question the path our games have been on before they reach us, we wanted to find out more about this surprisingly under-discussed area of gaming

FROM PLEDGE TO YOUR DOOR

If you’ve ever wondered how your game got from the factory that made it to your doorstep, it’ll almost always have been the quiet role of a fulfilment company. We sat down with Nigel Matthews, CEO of GamesQuest, about how the company came about, and the passion that comes with it.

10 OF THE BEST CROWDFUNDED GAMES FOR 2024

As we welcome in the new year, we’re also welcoming in the exciting opportunity for even more games. Whilst these represent just a sprinkle of the ocean we anticipate seeing over the coming 12 months, now is the time to brace your shelves, we’re giving you ten upcoming crowdfunding projects for 2024 that we know about so far, a perfect chance to start the wishlist early…

GROWING A NEURO NETWORK

How to make gaming easier for autistic people

ROLE CALL

It’s a new year, and that means plenty of new tabletop RPGs looming on the horizon. Time for another ROLE CALL!

DRAGONMEET 2023

Welcome, Adventurers! Far be it that we must gather in a dusty tavern on the first weekend of December, we’d much rather head to the Novotel Hammersmith in London for the UK’s biggest RPG convention: Dragonmeet. Set over four floors, it boasts two trade halls, a bring-and-buy, open gaming, seminar rooms and additional game space - plus a bar that serves semi-decent coffee without breaking the bank

ENCAPSULATE 2022

A Return to Form

THE DICE BOX PETERBOROUGH

A stone’s throw from the historic Cathedral, and nestled in the heart of Peterborough sits a gaming gem. Beginning as a store in Leamington, before franchising into Peterborough and Worcester, we caught up with Dane Richards, Director of The Dice Box in Peterborough

DISNEY LORCANA: RISE OF THE FLOODBORN

CARDS THAT ARE MAKING WAVES

ON THE CARDS

We look ahead at some of the biggest trading card game news of the month and discover what’s on the cards…

SPAIN

Back in the summer of 2019 we visited

tabletop Glossary

Welcome adventurers, to the tabletop – where deck building has nothing to do with the patio, and worker placement isn’t part of a recruitment agency. If the terminology used to describe the games we know and love can feel like trying to learn a new language, let our glossary demystify the terminology, and have you speaking tabletop in no time at all

I WANNA BE THE VERY BEST... AUCTIONEER

You may recognise Ross Gilbert from his YouTube channels, as the voice behind PTCG Radio and Wossy Plays, where he shares details of ever ything new and fun in the world of Trading Card Games. Recently, he was asked to be the auctioneer for a highly esteemed auction house, and here he tells us more about what that really entailed

GRIDCON 2023

The weekend of the 17th of November 2023

LOBSTER CON 2023

Chris Marling on going from attending to co-organising LoBsterCon, and then back again

ILLITERATI

The printed word in peril

TICKET TO RIDE: BERLIN

Knife fight in a ticket booth

ROBORALLY

When the workers are away, the robots will play

FOREVER HOME

Deser ving of a place in your home

ELAWA

Taking things Tribal

HICKORY DICKORY

The clock struck fun?

FOOTPRINTS

Walk the dinosaur

GENERAL ORDERS: WORLD WAR II

Yet another gargantuan effort to move your board game cabinet six inches closer to Berlin

DAYBREAK

It’s time to save the planet – for real

STARTROPOLIS: SECOND EDITION

The supply module’s connected to the solar panel. The solar panel’s connected to the market center. The market…

AGE OF INNOVATION

A terra-bly good remake

BARCELONA

Streets ahead

KNARR

Are these Vikings here to fight? Knarr mate

EXPLORERS OF THE WOODLANDS

If you go down to the woods today you better be in for some dice

HADRIAN’S WALL

Ganz Schön Very Clever

RALLYMAN: DIRT

Dare the dirt, but don’t drop your dice

DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN: THE BOARD GAME

Not quite the next Divine

3 RING CIRCUS

Keep that bloody clown away from me

THE FOX EXPERIMENT

Dig the new breed

DRAGONKEEPERS

Feisty, Fiery and Absolutely Adorable

ROUND THE TABLE: LSS X TCC

The Professor Joins the Fight

SHADOWRUN: EDGE ZONE

Back to the future

POINT CITY

Hit the city hold the salad

GODS OF METAL: RAGNAROCK

Heavy Metal Heroics

STEALING STORIES FOR THE DEVIL

Where we’re going, we don’t need [insert lie here]

SNAP SHIPS TACTICS

Literally building your battles in space

STAR TREK: AWAY MISSIONS

Set Phasers to Kill

GAMES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Was it really better then than it is now? Wendy takes a stroll down nostalgia lane, back to the 1980’s to see what it really had to offer us

POSTCARDS

Tim Clay introduces us to his family favourite, Postcards, later known as Seaside Frolics