Hey, we are the dicecovery collective. This blog is kind of a diary and outlet for us, about our experiences with board games and in the hobby itself. Our only ambition is to build a small community, and we love having you here.
Whilst we have some shared motivations, we also have some very individual reasons for starting this project together, and wanted to start our blog with this first post sharing them with you.
A few years back I thought about starting a board game blog, but with the social distancing due to the pandemic leading to only sparse game nights, I quickly discarded this idea. During the last year, I gave this idea some thought again, started creating a concept, asked a friend for help with the design, and set up a blog. During this process, I realized I did not want to do it alone. Instead, I set out to create a blog-collective as well as start a community on discord. This was a pretty big difference to my initial idea of just setting up a diary and flying under the radar (well, I still don’t want to make a big splash with this).
My reason for this shift is very personal and dear to my heart. Two years ago, my little brother died. He was often times pretty isolated and bullied a lot, and I remember that he told me that he is trying to find people to connect and play games with in his area but was struggling to make it happen. It was a surprise for me when a dozen friends came to his funeral (on a weekday, some of the living over 600km away). It was his World of Warcraft guild, people who cared about him, and who he connected to without ever meeting them in person. This made me realize again how important it can be to have a community, no matter if you are able to meet at a table or on a discord channel.
I am really looking forward to creating this blog and space together with people that I barely know so far, but that I trust that have a shared goal in creating a community where everyone can feel welcome. Bringing people together on game night is a beautiful experience, but I am excited to create a space where I can talk even more about board games and share my thoughts, opinions, and excitement. I am really grateful for the people co-founding this together.
When Torsten originally approached the LGBT+ group I am a part of on Board Game Geek and asked if anyone was interested in helping start this project with him, I did something I don’t normally do and said yes immediately. I’m a writer by trade, and I play games every week at least once, sometimes much more often. Since I haven’t had a fun writing project to be a part of since I ended my own blog several years ago, I thought it would be a great opportunity to meld my hobby and my trade to help create something worth sharing.
Torsten was a complete stranger showing up out of the blue to find someone to help with his vision. While the internet can be a scary place, this just felt right. I’m glad I said yes, because getting to know him and the other writers here so far has been food for my soul. I look forward to getting to work with and get to know everyone here and all of you who visit. Welcome to dicecovery!
When I started my blog on BGG last year, I named it the Games Commune. Clearly I was already yearning for some sort of collective endeavor. So when Torsten showed up with his infectious drive and patient willingness to hear out my concerns and fears, there was something inside of me that pushed me to say yes. I want to have deep and meaningful conversations about games, about the stories we tell when we play, design, or even just talk about games, and there is no better place to have those conversations than in a community that just feels right. As a transfemme boricua with a passion for decolonizing our world and creating fairer, more sustainable futures, a lot of board game spaces could feel uncomfortable, or just not my space, but with the gentle insistent focus on inclusion and accessibility that Torsten infuses into this endeavour, we can make a space where we all feel we have a place at the games table.
Board gaming is a sacred space for me. I’m primarily a solo gamer, so my time with games is largely internal and private. But I’m active in a few online spaces that inherently connect me with other solo gamers, so I feel the pull of discussion and heady consideration of the time and space we give to both game content and one another. I’ve always been curious about creating a place to share my love of gaming with others in a more formal sense. This collective is a chance to do that while also taking the time to consider the impact of that place on the world at large. Where better to explore the intricacies of how we spend our capital, both financial and temporal, than among like-minded folks who consider the bigger picture embedded in our play? As a queer woman in a straight man’s world, I can’t help but think that spaces like these are how we begin to make change in the hobby and beyond, just by forming the words. (And also, I love games and any excuse to talk more about them!)
I have been a part of one gaming community or another for over 40 years. I even worked professionally in the game industry for a dozen years or so. It is my belief that games bring people of all types together! I am always overjoyed when I can put a new game in front of new people and share some time with them… laughing… yelling… and creating memories.
I think this collective is just another (fantastic) way to come together and share gaming experiences with each other. We can discuss the things that we like… moan about the things we don’t… and encourage each other when other parts of our lives are heavy and sometimes overwhelming. Here, we all love games… and here we can all come together as a community… and revel in our common passion!
