You may (or may not!) have noticed we have a new section on the website now – Products. It’s got details for the Objective Secured iOS scoring app for starters (yes – the android version is coming!) but now has a second product – the Tabletop Tournament Preparation Guide (or TTPG for short).
Let me preface the following with a statement – I make no claims to being the best player of any tabletop game. I do have a solid history of success at events though – with my fair share of event wins across 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th editions of 40k with a fair mix of armies.
What I also have is a bunch of experience in tabletop tournaments – 14 years’ worth at the time of this post. That’s what the ebook talks about – my experiences in getting ready for these events.
It’s been quite a struggle to write the book – I worry it comes across as being a know it all or self-indulgent and even arrogant. I can honestly say it’s about none of those things. It comes off the back of running events over the last 3 months with a swathe of new players coming to their first ever events and asking me a bunch of questions in the lead up.
I realised talking to these players that what I assumed was common knowledge was actually experiences I had learned and evolved over the last decade of event attendance. To my knowledge, there isn’t another item like it available for new event players to help them prepare.
So why help these new players at all? Why not let them learn for themselves?
Sustainability, Competition, Variety and Community.
By reducing the barrier to entry for events (which the vocal minority on the internet perpetuates as this horrid environment to play games in) we help get new players into the events. This builds the community and adds to the sustainability of the events. It brings new variety into the events with these new players forces and ultimately builds competition at events as these players bring new ideas into the mix and develop their skills on the table.
The best thing is – since my experience is across a few game systems, the knowledge is largely transferable. While it definitely has a focus on the 40k style of tabletop games, the ideas and information are applicable for pretty much any game system.
It’s still early days yet for the TTPG but the feedback has been very positive so far with new tournament players and experienced tournament players giving great feedback! This quote is my favourite so far “Having your experience written down to devour – I’m not kidding I’ve read the document almost 5 times already, has really been a boon and I expect it will continue to be”. I also appreciate tourney vets telling me they got stuff out of it or looked at things in a different way – it goes a long way to telling me that there is value in my 30+ page rambles!