Hi,
Glad I passed the Turing test and can qualify as a human being and not a robot.
My name is Tyson I am a big fan of board game design and I've considered joining for a while, but the endorsement of Gabe Barret from Board Game Design Lab helped convince me it was a place worth joining. I have been working on a few different designs for a couple of years now and am always looking for ways to improve. Mostly I've worked on my own, but I have a design partner now and we have (attempted) to start our own company to publish our games and hopefully help others who may be interested in game design.
One service we are providing is called Game Smiths, which is a prototype and PnP playtesting service. Our goal is to provide high quality video playthroughs of prototype and PnP games and then provide detailed feedback to the designers. We try to accomplish this in a two part video that the designer(s) can watch us learn and play the game and then we provide a debrief of our experience. We have been doing this for a short time so we are still working out all the kinks, but we are looking to help other aspiring designers get different perspectives on their games through playtesting. As far as I can tell, game design isn't always easy, but it has so far been very enjoyable for me, so I hope to be able to contribute in some meaningful way. I'm hoping that the BGDF is a place to help other designers and learn how to improve my own designs. I look forward to engaging with the community!
Tyson
I am in Colorado. We just got done with a local convention called Mr. B Con/Conclave of Gamers and had a great time. That was the first convention we had attended. We are next going to (hopefully) go this weekend to Tacticon and we may be going to Denver Dream Hack next month. We are primarily staying local for now, but will be expanding that slowly. Where are you from?