Community, events, and meta-commentary about gaming and the indie gaming “scene”.
I recently attended BurningCon, a convention devoted to the games published by BWHQ in Queens, NY: The Burning Wheel, Burning Empires, Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard are the big ones. BWHQ haven’t released as many titles as some publishers but their work continues to be some of the most influential in both my own gaming life… Continue reading Returning To My Roots: BurningCon 2023
Thomas Manuel interviewed me for his Yes Indie'd podcast recently and the show just hit the air. Good interview, and we got into a lot of fun stuff about the nature and purpose of critique, my approach to community building, and being in games a very, very long time. https://yesindiedpod.buzzsprout.com/315560/12857066-reading-indie-games-at-the-club-w-paul-beakley
There’s a new game shop in town, just opened yesterday. It took over a space that had also been a much beloved local game store for, like, two decades (after moving into the space from one much closer to our university). I dropped in today to check it out, feel out the new management, see… Continue reading FLGS
Richard Williams of Dragonmeet, a UK-based big gaming con, reached out to me for a submission to his "What's Hot In Indie RPGs" seminar. That con wrapped up last week, so here's what I submitted! Annotated with links where appropriate. The past year has been my necessary, inevitable, unwanted introduction to playing tabletop games online.… Continue reading What’s Hot In Indie Gaming (Dragonmeet 2021)
Now that most of my local players are fully vaccinated, we’re slowly dipping our toes back into in-person play. And it is so weird and fraught. I can’t stop thinking about all the stuff I learned to make roleplaying happen during the pandemic: video play, character keepers, Miro, screen sharing, dice rollers. I’ve developed a… Continue reading The Slow, Weird Return To In-Person Play
