As of September of 2024, GamersDungeon.net turns 10 years old and I felt like, that in itself deserves an article at the very least. After all, running a blog for a decade while making me feel old, also makes me feel mature and professional. I know I’m absolutely not, in fact, I’m a fumbling idiot for the most part but still, hitting the 10 year mark feels great.
I thought the way I would celebrate is by going through the posting history to talk about some of my favorite articles as well as those I hate. Sort of a flashback, a look at GamersDungeon.net over the last decade.
The first article I ever wrote for this blog was about D&D, in a way this blog was founded on talking about D&D and I have done so quite continually throughout the blogs life. This article was triggered by the big event at the time, the release of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and as I was excited by having a new edition in my hot little hand, I was very generous with my words.
Since this article I have written quite a few articles about 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, either being mentioned as part of a larger theory article or directly addressing the edition itself. Over the years I have gone back and forth about my feelings about 5th edition but sitting here now with the 2024 edition released, I can say these definitive words about 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.
It’s ok. I still prefer the classic playstyles of 1st edition D&D, the Dungeon Crawl, The Dungeon Survival, that deadly game where players aren’t heroes because they have powers, they are heroes because of the risks they take for the greater good against all odds.
Still, I do enjoy 5th edition D&D. It’s an easy game to the table and looking at this article, though I was a bit generous, I still believe 10 years later that the general assessment remains true. 5th edition is as close as the franchise has gotten over the years to returning to the original, classic formula of 1st edition. It’s a bit high powered and has plenty of exceptions, but all and all, it’s a fine game.
My first Top 10 of all time list was published in 2015 and I have to say, looking at it today, I still think most of these games are great, but it does feel a bit strange to see some of these titles today. There are some exceptions like Star Wars X-Wing and Twilight Imperium, both of which I consider top notch games still today.
Star Wars X-Wing in the number one spot feels great, I still love this game, I still have my collection and believe it or not it still comes out on occasion. It’s a fast moving fun dice chucker and while it’s no longer on my list today, I proudly stand by this one.
Twilight Imperium is still on my top 20 list today (no. 7 spot) and this game has remained on the list the entire decade. I love Twilight Imperium and true love lasts forever!
The rest of the list gets a bit shaky. Fury of Dracula in the no. 4 spot is the eye sore here, I’m not sure what I was thinking but I probably haven’t played this game since 2015. Formula D also feels a bit odd. I do like it but its a very niche game, quite random and way too long for what is effectively a kind of push your luck dice chucker. Dominion is the really painful one, I culled that one from my collection many moons ago and just the thought of playing it gives me the shivers.
This however is exactly why I update my best of list each year, these lists don’t age well.
In September of 2015 I created my rating system that I would use from this point forward when receiving games and I have to say, even today, I still think its one of the best and most fair way to review games.
I think it’s actually the most brilliant thing I have ever done on this site to be honest, I love this system and I actually wish it was more standardized. I really dislike the arbitrary way in which boardgames are reviewed. It’s like, I give it a 7 out of 10… how? why? My rating system really quantifies things and gives categories of judgement weight based on the intended design so that way a game intended to be a short, fun dice chucker doesn’t get judged the same way a big, complex strategy game would. These are different games that require a different review approach and I really think my rating system captures that.
I’m very proud of it.
The What Makes It tick was an article series that I never really fully explored. I did some decent work here but what I discovered is that these sort of articles aged really poorly, especially when applied to a constantly evolving game like miniature games.
I didn’t write very many as a result, but I do think they were pretty good for the 5 minutes they were actually valid.
I have done a lot of reviews over the years and most of them I stand by, but there are a few that I cringe when I read them, the most famous of these blunders was my review of 7 Wonders Duel.
Man I feel like a fool for this one. I crapped all over this game and I was wrong about all of it. 7 Wonders Duel is a fantastic game, I still play it today nearly 10 years later quite regularly with my daughter, its actually one of my favorite games that I play with her and I’m pretty sure its one of her favorite board games of all time.
If there is a review I would love to re-write its this one.
Every year my friends and I disappear for 4 days to a place called Hassela, where we lock ourselves in a house in the country and do absolutely nothing but play boardgames all day, eat good food, drink good drink and be merry. It’s the gaming highlight of every year and we have been doing it now for nearly a decade. In fact, we will be celebrating our 10th year anniversary for this event.
Writing these articles is pure joy and it’s also probably the most diverse list of games you will ever see bunched up together in a single article. Great for when you want to find something new to try.
In April 2018 I met a guy online that created the Lord of the Rings LCG companion, a website dedicated to Lord of the Rings. He was looking for a webspace to put the companion, I was a super fan of the game and basically I decided to host the sub-site and have been doing so ever since.
This site has been and continues to be updated and maintained, I have gladly paid to keep it up and running and will do so as long as the creator who by the way, I have almost no contact with, keeps it current. It’s been a fantastic resource provided to the community, I use it myself all the time and I love the idea that I keep it alive, there is something felathrapic about it.
Theory articles have become a kind of staple of my site over the last few years, but it all started back in 2018. In fact, I do far more of these types of articles these days than I do boardgame reviews.
Part of the reason is that I’m not really all that interested in keeping up with the latest and greatest when it comes to boardgames. I choose my games rather abstractly based on current interest, I really don’t pay that much attention to new releases.
RPG’s however are a staple of my gaming life and I find myself playing, thinking about and writing about them all the time.
It also helps that these are the most commonly read articles. A single theory article can get more hits in a day, than most articles will get in a decade. They are very popular and generate a lot of traffic and while I’m not making money on this blog, I do like to see it getting traffic, it feels good.
I’m a huge battletech fan and writing this three part Battletech guide was one of the most fun articles I have ever written and it was one I was very heavily invested in.
I think all together there was over 100 hours worth of research and work that went into this three part series and personally I think its the single most relevant information you will ever find on the subject of Battletech anywhere on the internet and I’m quite proud of that.
This article series is a deep dive into Battletech that explains every resource, how it all fits together and all the options, variations and nuances of the game. It’s pure gold in my opinion, a effort well worth it for me.
While the 7 Wonder Duel review is something I’m not very proud of, my original review of Great Western Trails triggered me to do a “re-review” article, the only of its kind on this blog to correct some of those errors in judgement.
To some extent it was a kind of response to certain readers, who complained about some of these reviews and rightfully so as a few of these reviews were pretty terrible. I was glad I wrote this article but I had to swallow my pride when doing so.
Blood Rage is the first and only game in 10 years to receive a perfect 5 out of 5 score using my rating system and frankly, I still believe today that it’s the only game that deserves it.
I think this actually speaks to the objectivity of the rating system itself as well of the quality of Blood Rage as a board game because, believe it or not, this one doesn’t even crack my top 20 list.
There is no question in my mind in every category from components, gameplay, theme and replayability this game nails the landing with perfection. It is, genuinely in my opinion the only game I have ever played to which I could not find a single thing to complain about. It really is, the perfect game.
Now personally I think its a fun game and I always enjoy playing it, but it doesn’t really fit my style of game. For me, a game doesn’t need to be perfectly designed and published, to make the list. In fact, I usually prefer my games with some nuanced flaws, it gives them character.
I really do try my absolute best to be as objective on this blog as I can, especially when it comes to reviews, but in the case of Napoleon’s Imperium it was simply impossible.
This heartwarming story about a game developer publishing his first game, based on a life time spent designing it, with a fascinating and inspiring long road to that publications was enough to shake the foundations of objectivity. I however had the pleasure to meet and befriend the designer Andrew Roland and that really sealed the deal for me, throwing any sense of objectivity out the window.
All I can say is that I love this story, it is without question in my mind, one of the most fascinating and inspiring tales I have come across as a writer and I loved writing this article and this review.
For what it’s worth, after writing the article which did include some criticism, Andrew contacted me and not only thanked me for writing the review, but told me that this was the most accurate and most insightful review of the game he had ever read.
I’m not surprise at that comment as I spent the better part of 40 hours agonizing over every word of this article.
I was very proud of that and I was happy to help Andrew promote his game because I have never met anyone more deserving of success.
Empire of the Sun by famed historical war game designer Mark Herman was a very coincidental and rather rash purchase on my part, but would end up completely changing the way I think about and what sorts of games I love. It was one of my first foray’s into serious historical war gaming and I have not been the same since.
This absolute masterpiece was one of the most difficult games to learn and dissect, without question one of the toughest reviews I have ever written. I have never worked harder to get words onto a page than the ones put together for Empire of The Sun.
I really hope I did the game justice, as it is one of my favorite games of all time, a lifestyle game I plan to play until the day I die.
Probably one of the strangest articles and projects I ever took on was trying to create my own arcade system. I only wrote two articles for this one, something I hope to remedy one day when I actually finish the project, but I can tell you that I do in fact have a working prototype at home.
In fact my daughter and I play our homemade arcade every week like clockwork, we absolutely love and I really hope to finish this article and this project over the next couple of years because I had a ton of fun building and playing with it. It’s a unique experience that I would encourage any nostalgic gamer to pursue, if I can do it, anyone can do it.. I’m a fumbling idiot!
When I wrote this article, I can tell you that the 5th edition D&D community was not kind. For a gaming community that claims to be all about tolerance and inclusivity, their true colors really shined through when I dared to write an article suggesting that there are other RPG’s out there that might replace 5th edition D&D as “THE” role-playing game.
In fact, I will call it out here and now just for the record. The 5th edition D&D community is predominantly populated by gatekeepers completely intolerant to anything other than their version of D&D. They are hostile, rude and bigoted, their defense is of course that everyone else is the bad guy and they are just innocent snowflakes. I don’t want to throw the entire community under the bus here, because of course this is a generalizations, I have met plenty of nice people but as a community a bigger group of assholes has never existed, the whole lot of them can fuck off.
A Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game played a huge role in my gaming life during the pandemic era thanks mainly to Table Top Simulator which allowed us to play this miniature game online. I think I must have played 100 matches over the course of two years and I got to know this game really well. Well enough to trigger a rebirth of the What Makes It Tick articles.
As was the case before, these articles did not age well as the game is constantly being adjusted, adapted and updated. Suffice to say, while I enjoyed writing them, they are all very much obsolete at this point.
It never occured to me to write a top 10 list of gaming experience, but when I did I found it a rather refreshing way to look at a top 10 list. As I was not bound by the quality of the game, but rather the play experience at a given moment, it allowed me to write an article free of trying to justify what is and isn’t good about a game in a sort of review style. Instead I was just writing about how things went and that was really fun.
I definitely will do more of these in the future.
Q&A – Time to answer some questions
I don’t interact with my readers very much, I don’t have a comment section and usually while I read every email anyone sends to me, I rarely respond. There is a reason for this. My blog is my space, it’s a white board for my thoughts, ideas and opinion and these things are not up for debate. Generally I don’t care what people think, what other people think is not what this blog is about, its a very narcissistic thing, it’s my opinion that matters here and it’s a one way, take it or leave, train.
That said, I figure after 10 years, perhaps this one time I will break the silence and answer some direct questions. I will not reveal any personal information here and I will paraphrase the questions for brevity.
Q1: Why don’t you have a comment section? What are you afraid of?
Already answered to a degree in the intro but to be plain and blunt about it, I don’t really give a fuck what you think and I’m not going to provide you with a space for it on my blog. I know there are a lot of snowflakes out there that think there opinion must be heard and to those I say, write your own fucking blog!
To answer the second part, I’m not afraid of anything, I just don’t care to hear or debate people’s opinions about my opinions. I see no value in it, some people agree with me, some people don’t. We can make that assumption without me having to moderate assholes who take advantage of an anonymous space to vent their bullshit.
Q2: Editorials and repost request
I get a metric ton of requests from people wanting me to re-link or publish articles on their behalf on this blog, which I can understand, I have a fairly sizeable audience for a small gaming blog.
Here is the thing. I’m not a professional, I’m not even a writer, I’m just a gamer with a blog that use it as an outlet to express my opinions and ideas. It’s really that simple, one voice in a larger chorus.
I have never felt comfortable exposing this space to other publications and authors, to me, it doesn’t make sense. Every word on this blog I have written, errors, run-on sentences, terrible opinions and stupid articles mixed in with some good content (I hope) is mine. The point is for it to be mine so I have no interest in sharing the space with anyone. I know there is money in it, but I have plenty of money, I don’t need to make more on my hobby.
Q3: Your wrong and I demand you correct it
There are certain communities out there like miniature gaming communities, original D&D communities and 5th edition communities who actually believe that I have some sort of obligation to them when I write. They insist that if I don’t word things the way they think I should that they have the write to not only tell me about it, but in some cases even do actionable stuff like send me fake cease and desist letters (yeah that actually happened).
I get it, people are passionate but I can’t stress enough how few fucks I give about people’s opinions about my opinions. I’m not saying I’m always right, but what I think is what I think, if you disagree, your barking up the wrong tree telling me about it, I really don’t care and I’m not going to alter my articles. I know that frustrates people, I can’t tell you guys enough how much it means to people that I listen and respond, which is exactly why I never do.
Q4: Review My Game
I get a lot of requests to review people’s games, even from large publishers who are willing to send me free copies if I do so. I’m not going to claim I have never done this, I have made exceptions but I generally avoid this sort of thing.
Writing articles and reviews for this blog is not my job, it’s my hobby, I do it for fun when I fancy to do so. I do not keep schedules, perform “task assignments” or anything else of the sort. In fact, I rarely ever do “new release” type stuff. I write and talk about things I’m doing in that moment and that can be just about anything.
So probably the answer is no, I’m not saying “stop sending me requests”, I’m just saying that in most cases I’m probably not going to respond.
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