Chris Backe

Tabletop Publishers Get access to a live list of over 570 game publishers that you can use to guide and speed up your game pitching process.

Try it out for $10/month or a discounted early-bird price of $69/year (will become $99/year in time): tabletoppublishers.com

Questions welcomed!

* Sort, search, and filter your way - want to see who's going to Essen, or which publishers are looking for kid's games? It takes seconds to filter hundreds down to the right fits.
* (COMING SOON - targeting end of August) Track your games and your pitches in an intuitive, simple way

It's the same research I'm using in my own pitches, and I'm out to make it a best-in-class tool.

For you, fellow designer?
* It'll save you many hours of research and dead-ends
* Make a shortlist of the publishers you want to pitch
* Take notes on each publisher as you pitch
🧵

Tabletop Publishers has over 500 publishers, and my goal has been to check every listing at least twice a year. This is manual, time-consuming research - I have yet to discover the AI that can do this - and even after hundreds of hours of research / work on the site, I'm proud of it. 🧵

For those just hearing about it, Tabletop Publishers is a database of board game publishers that are looking for submissions or have worked with outside designers in the past. If they're not open to submissions or just in business for their own games, they're not here - no point in pitching them. 🧵

Tabletop Publishers Get access to a live list of over 570 game publishers that you can use to guide and speed up your game pitching process.

TL;DR: Just finished a bunch of research for Tabletop Publishers!

This is one of those behind-the-scenes things that doesn't make for a great social media sort of the post, but it's something I'm proud of, so let's do this =) 🧵

How do I deal with all of my ideas? Time to bring some order to this chaos.

How do you deal with all of your ideas?

While this is written with board game designers in mind, this is dedicated to any creative type with more ideas than time to explore them.

#gamedesigners #ihaveanidea #toomanyideas

Starfront Scouting Academy (Planet Exploration Roll & Write) Play as planetary scouting students advancing your cosmic exploration skills in this print & play area control game! 🪐🧭

Less than 3 days to go! Presenting Starfront Scouting Academy, an area majority roll-and-write with tons of player interaction. Learn more: www.kickstarter.com/projects/189...

#printandplay #pnpgames

Be an Adventurer! '3HEX' issue 1. - Tesseract Engine | DriveThruRPG A frivoulous and fun solo RPG! Three hexes, three bucks.

What's that, a one-player #RPG you can learn in minutes and chuckle at for hours?

Yep.

Be an Adventurer, they said... it'll be fun, they said...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

50 ways to tweak your game How to dramatically change your game in one easy step.

New post just dropped! For this one, I wanted to put together a list of ways to tweak your game. It's a thought exercise for some, but if you've been looking at your game and feeling stuck, try some of these to get it unstuck!

open.substack.com/pub/entrogam...

#gamedesign #boardgamedesign

YouTube video by Fortress Fine Woodworks This Toy Carved The Nicest Table I've Ever Made.

Seriously cool: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5n...

Tabletop Publishers Get access to a live list of over 570 game publishers that you can use to guide and speed up your game pitching process.

My Tabletop Publishers tech team has released the 1st of 3 parts of our CRM-style pitching tracker. Subscribers can make a shortlist of the publishers they want to pitch. Learn more: tabletoppublishers.com.

We'll be enabling note taking and pitch tracking in the coming weeks - join to see it first!

The 13 games that every game designer must play Yes, that’s a bold statement, and it’ll be interesting to see how it stands up about 5 years from now…

For today’s post, I wanted to unpack a common piece of wisdom and add onto it.

Every game designer ever has heard ‘play more games’. But which ones?

entrogames.substack.com/p/the-13-gam...

#gamedesign #playmoregames #boardgames

Starfront Scouting Academy (Planet Exploration Roll & Write) Play as planetary scouting students advancing your cosmic exploration skills in this print & play area control game! 🪐🧭

And we are LIVE! Presenting Starfront Scouting Academy.

You're all space-exploring students out to do a planetary survey - use your sensors and other tools to scan the planet's sectors.

Learn more:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/189...

YouTube video by Board Game Rundown Starfront Scouting Academy Kickstarter Preview

Mike, Bob, and I had a great time playing Starfront Scouting Academy on their livestream! Go check it out on the Board Game Rundown: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdaY...

#playthrough #kickstarter #printandplay #pnp

Designer Diary: Starfront Scouting Academy A print-and-play game 2+ years and 40+ versions in the making

Designer diary time! Learn how a game went from being about pi (yes, *that* pi) to a more abstract theme to space… all in about 40 versions or so…

open.substack.com/pub/entrogam...

Prototyping 101: The Best Buys at Charity Shops / Thrift Stores Here in the UK, they're 'charity shops', and a number of charities each run their own chains of them.

One piece of advice I've given people has been to use your charity shops / thrift shops to stock up on cool pieces to prototype your board games with... and to give inspiration for new game ideas.

What to look for? Enjoy!

#prototyping #gamedesign #boardgamedesign open.substack.com/pub/entrogam...

#MojoPitch was last week in London - I wrote a blog post about it, along with 5 takeaways if you want to go yourself next year.

Nice! What change was it?

YouTube video by Adamantly Analog: A Board Game Podcast Starfront Scouting Academy (How to Play and Review)

Great review of my upcoming game Starfront Scouting Academy, courtesy of Adamantly Analog: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSd4...

Coming soon: Starfront Scouting Academy (Planet Exploration Roll & Write) Play as planetary scouting students advancing your cosmic exploration skills in this print & play area control game! 🪐🧭

What do you mean you haven't clicked the 'Notify me on launch' of my next game?!

Announcing Starfront Scouting Academy, my next print-and-play game. Just grab a uniquely colored marker per player and 5 dice and you're ready to rock!

Learn more about the game: www.kickstarter.com/projects/189...

YouTube video by Geeks + Tabletop Talking Starfront Scouting Academy with Shiny Pigeon Games - Table Talk

This was a lot of fun! Parker and I talked about Starfront Scouting Academy with our pal Spacehawk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dN8...
#printandplay #gamedesign #pnpgame

Accountability coach for 2025

So, how was the first half of the year for you?

I'm re-opening my accountability calls to help designers make the most of the rest of the year.

These are monthly calls that keep you on track. I don't make your game for you - I help you make your game your way.

entrogames.com/accountability

Yay! Enjoy =)

Ludology: Ludology 342 Games on the Big Screen This episode, Sen and Erica talk to Simon Ennis, professional filmmaker and avid boardgamer, about his most recent release, "The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop", that features game designers, reviewer...

Great episode: ludology.libsyn.com/ludology-342...

Tabletop Publishers Get access to a live list of over 570 game publishers that you can use to guide and speed up your game pitching process.

Stop hunting through forums and ancient web links. We've built the most comprehensive, up-to-date, searchable, sortable, filterable database of board game publishers specifically for game designers. Your next pitch starts here.

tabletoppublishers.com
#BoardGameDesign #gamedesigners

YouTube video by Thatboardgamelife Crowdfunding: Ones to Watch Episode 3

New preview of Starfront Scouting Academy just dropped: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph4C....
Thanks Kim @thatboardgamelife!

Hope everyone going has a great time at Origins!

For those gearing up for Gen Con at the end of July / beginning of August, I've updated Tabletop Publishers for all the publishers going. Sort, search, and filter through publishers in a bunch of different ways.

Learn more: tabletoppublishers.com

YouTube video by Geeks + Tabletop Starfront Scouting Academy - Preview and Play

A great review of my next game to come out: Starfront Scouting Academy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_kx...

Learn more about the game / follow along: www.kickstarter.com/projects/189...

Playtesting Best Practices: Real World and Online Playtesting Best Practices: Real World and Online covers the complete journey of playtesting – the iterative journey to shape and refine tabletop games from raw ideas to balanced and fun games. This s...

It's official: my book about playtesting has been published and is now available! Thanks to Geoffrey Engelstein for his work in giving me the opportunity and to all the folks I've playtested with (and for) along the way. Years of experience, one book =)

Learn more: www.routledge.com/Playtesting-...