Hey every, thanks for stopping by. We've recently seen a ton of new projects added to itch.io under the "Physical games" category. I'm really excited to see all these new people using itch.io. Although we've traditionally been used for digital games, I'm excited to continue to add functionality to support other kinds of creators. 

If you haven't already seen, I created a topic asking for help building a new taxonomy for classifying and discovering TT and other real world games on itch.io. You can participate here: https://itch.io/t/384953/physical-games-classification-project

I haven't had a chance to update our taxonomy yet, but it should be coming in the near future!

We also did an editorial piece on our blog highlighting some of our favorites: https://itch.io/blog/68369/analog-games-are-on-itchio-here-are-some-of-our-favor... We want to do more of this so look forward to more posts. Please do talk about interesting projects on itch.io here since it helps us discover things to cover.

Help build this community

As you may have noticed, this community currently only has one subcategory: General discussion. I'd like to expand it but I need your help coming up with more subcategories. So if yo have any ideas tell me.

Additionally, we'd love to bring on some community moderators. itch.io admins will be reviewing things to make sure nothing bad is going on, but having someone who is closer to the TTG community keeping on eye on things would help the community grow. If you have any suggestions get in touch with me on Twitter or Discord.

Thanks

A tip for all the new people who have joined: I highly recommend clicking "Subscribe to new topics" on the categories you're interested in. (Or the highest level one, since it applies to all subcategories as well).

It's very easy for new communities to lose traction because people forget to come back and check for new posts! Subscribing will make you get email notifications of new topics, which will remind you that there's stuff going on and people worth responding to. (Note that you can also subscribe to individual topics to see new posts in them)

hey, this is amazing. thank you <3

It also might be nice to have a tabletop specific "Recommend a Game", and "Help Wanted/ Offered"; along with the category "GMless/GMfull."

Solo games and duet games seem popular on Itch.io and I know people often want to discuss those specifically, but I'm not sure if they should have their own category. Same with microgames.

There's also a lot of design work going into designing safety tools  to use at and around the table and community initiatives. A subcategory to house discussions on these kinds of meta-design topics would also be great.

Play by post?

I've got a few ideas, though this list is far from exhaustive and a few topics are probably obvious.

Introductions (for ... introductions)
Table Talk (discussion from a player / enthusiast / GM perspective)

- Recommendations
- Looking for groups / players
- Questions / Advice
- Rules Discussions

Design Discussion (discussion for people making / hacking / designing games)

- General theory discussion
- Advice and critique
- Shameless Self Promotion
-  Hacking discussion (for hacks of other systems: PBTA, Forged in the Dark, etc.)
- Cons and such (I hear cons are important ... I never get to go to them, but I guess people should have a space to talk and maybe plan meetups)
- Playtesting (looking for playtesters, best practices, playtest notes, etc.)
- Shop talk (for discussion of marketing, sales, boring and awful business crap)
- Opportunities (tips on PAID work for people with game design and game design adjacent skillsets).

Art and Stuff

Again, these are just a few ideas. Honestly, I am not sure if this many topics would be necessary to start off. When the community is still small and new, spreading things out too much may not be the best idea? But I do think general discussion, player discussion, and designer discussion sub-forums may be a good place to start.

Others have touched on it but it feels like a lot of what's nice about tabletop games on itch, v other spaces is the amount of experimental/weird/short games (for want of a better term). A place on here to share, find and talk about those sorts of games would be fantastic. 

I'd like to see a subcategory for the physical production of games, from prototyping and graphic design to where/how to get it printed or do it yourself.

Happy to share my knowledge in these areas or help out in any way possible.

We hella forgot LARP. 

LARPs definitely need their own subcategory. 

I will also put my name up for mod duty.

This is exciting! I can't wait to see what the community does with this space.

The list of categories that have been put forth so far have great suggestions but I feel like there's a more elegant way to lay it out. PBTA and FITD are popular but there are a lot of people designing for Fate, D&D, and other popular systems too. A general "Hacks" category feels inadequate to fit all of those, but individual sections for every game would be a cluttered mess.  I'm not sure what the answer is.

Glad to see the physical games getting expanded on here. They may be obvious but having a subtopic for the top couple of popular systems designers make stuff in - D&D, Fate, etc - is probably a good idea, in addition to the others suggested.

I'd also be happy to put myself forward as a mod.

Thanks Leaf!!