Welcome to Nice @ Dice!

If this is your first visit to the Nice @ Dice blog, welcome! Here you will find articles discussing the playing, collecting and designing of all manner of tabletop games. I hope you enjoy! If you read this blog back when it was Catalyst Games, a quick explanation is in order.

[Design Journal] Battle Cup Preview (100th Post!)

Hey, I thought I should do something a little special for my 100th post, so I created a video previewing one of my games in development. I hope you enjoy. I would love to hear any feedback you may have. Thanks for watching!

Gaming Update: March 2015

Hey, it's been a couple of months since I've gotten back into a habit of updating this gaming blog, so I thought I would throw together a new video to recap a bit of the last two months and talk about what's coming next.

Catching Up

Hey! I haven't posted to this blog in over a year and a half. Sorry about the long absence. I thought I would catch you all up on what I've been doing, gaming-wise, and figured I would do it in a video rather than an article. Sorry about the poor audio. Thanks for watching!

Let's See How Far We've Come: 6 Months in Review

As of today, Catalyst Games has been live for 6 months. I’ve really enjoyed writing for this blog and interacting with everyone through the comments, so I thought I would take a moment to reflect on what’s been accomplished so far and where I’d like to go in the future.

A New Project on the Horizon

Hey everyone, Catalyst Games has been going strong for a little over a month now. I've been posting about twice a week, and I think I have enough material to keep that schedule going for a while yet. I'm excited about working on this blog, and how well the ideas have been flowing. I've been very happy to read all of your comments, too. I really appreciate your input and participation here.

So, I'm excited to tell you that I'll be starting a new project on this blog that will really benefit from your involvement. The first actual post pertaining to this project will be going up Thursday morning (4/12/2012). Your timely participation is key to making this project thrive, so please check back in to make your voice heard and have a role in moving this project forward. Thank you again for your participation thus far, and I look forward to having your help with this new project.

New Blog: Welcome!

Welcome to Catalyst Games, my new blog about designing and discussing board games, card games, and roleplaying games. If you’re here, you probably know me, and you probably know that I love playing all kinds of analog games. I also like to tinker around with designing games of my own. I hope to someday publish some of my own creations, but we’ll have to wait to see how that turns out.

The purpose of this blog is to give me a forum for sharing my thoughts on games and game design. In the coming weeks I’m going to publish a number of posts wherein I talk about my approach to gaming, my thoughts on randomness in games, and why I enjoy roleplaying games so much. I will also publish reviews of games that I’ve played, giving special attention to any observations I may have on how these games give insight into the art of game design. From time to time I’ll publish a fully developed character for an RPG I own - as a creative exercise, to explore the game’s system and setting a little, and to offer inspiration to others. I’ll also be posting occasional updates on my own game design projects.

In all of this, I’m hoping to get as much participation from you as possible. An important part of game design is getting feedback and implementing new ideas based on the experiences of your audience. I’ll be paying close attention to any remarks you might post in the comments on this blog.

Thank you for joining the discussion here on Catalyst Games, and happy gaming!

-Nathan