Boardgames « Thistle Games

Design Games

By Thistle, on August 20th, 2010

Design games set out to help players to go beyond following the rules and gameplay presented by game designers. Most games can offer some level of design gaming in terms of making it easy to adjust or adapt the basic format of a game, e.g. minor changes to the rules when playing a [...]

100 Up

By Thistle, on July 1st, 2010

The blog’s birthday came round a couple of weeks ago, but we were too busy making content to pay much attention.

We’ve now reached our 100th post and we’re still too busy making content to pay much attention.

It does, however, seem worth pausing briefly to ask new visitors [...]

Designer Dice

By Thistle, on May 7th, 2010

The makers of the custom RPG dice mentioned in our recent list of ‘Our Favourite Tabletop RPG Props‘ have replied to our request for images. They’re based in Poland and make a wide range of fantasy and RPG dice, which look great and offer ‘persistent’ props that can be used with every game. [...]

Our Favourite Tabletop RPG Props

By Thistle, on May 1st, 2010

Adding a few props to a tabletop RPG game can be a lot of fun. The props shown here are our personal favourites at present. All except the very latest technologies have been tried out over several years and most are best used sparingly. Props tend to lose their effect if the Gamesmaster [...]

Games For Free

By Thistle, on December 22nd, 2009

There are more so-called ‘free game’ sites out there than you can shake a stick at. Most of these sites are saturated in eye-popping ads and merely offer cut down versions of tiresome platform, puzzle or ‘shoot ‘em up’ titles. Hopefully, the kind of sources and games we’ve tracked down offer a few [...]

Christmas 2009: 16+

By Thistle, on December 8th, 2009

Time to round up our Christmas list with a few suggestions suited to older teenagers or adults. We’re opting for entertainment over anything else and why not!

Batman: The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke builds on the ‘Dark Batman, Dark Gotham’ restyling which saved the franchise following the [...]

Christmas 2009: 11+

By Thistle, on December 3rd, 2009

There’s often a thin line between boardgames and ‘bored games’. Too competitive, too long and too slow are some of the fairly frequent difficulties that can ruin gameplay. The rules also tend to be read like they’re set in stone, and it’s tricky to apply working fixes unless you’re used to the kind [...]

Future Learning: Part 4

By Thistle, on September 24th, 2009

The fourth and final part of our series on gaming and future learning covers a few skills that show exactly why games have a lot to offer in schools and homes:

Teachers and lecturers who don’t adapt to the alternative ‘curriculum’ presented through games and active learning will become increasingly disconnected from [...]

Future Learning: Part 3

By Thistle, on September 14th, 2009

The following future learning opportunities are readily available in a range of games and game formats:

Games offer a ‘testing ground’, where different skills, approaches and risks can be evaluated to build an awareness of consequences, without experiencing the ‘actual’ consequences.

Sims 3 and Sony’s Free Realms can be criticised for [...]

Future Learning: Part 2

By Thistle, on September 12th, 2009

Here’s our first selection of the kind of ‘future learning’ that we would like to see built into games used for fun and learning inside and outside the home. We’re going to highlight some of what we see as ‘key skills’ and present examples of existing games which offer such skills during play.

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