Purple Pawn started as an idea to inclusively cover all tabletop gaming news. It came about for several reasons:

1: I had already been doing this, informally, for several months on my blog, and I thought it was ridiculous that no one else was doing this. Despite the hoopla surrounding video games, far more people around the world still play non-digital games, and there didn’t seem to be a single site for them. BGN covered Euros. The Gaming Report covered RPGs and some hobby games. A lot of sites covered a single game or genre, such as Chess or Magic or Poker.

2: It seemed odd that every genre had its own site: Eurogamers, American gamers, war gamers, CCG players, RPG players, Chess, Scrabble, etc. More unites us than divides us: namely, we all enjoy a social experience that can’t be found in video games, and we are generally too lazy to play sports understand the importance of a challenging mental activity.

3: Games are important. The site would not be just another industry site for geeks looking forward to the next game release. It would be “Boing Boing crossed with 1UP”.

On the “Boing Boing” side, the site would cover everything and anything that looked cool, old or new, in or out of print. It would cover life through the prism of games. In other words, every article, even if it looks like it’s about a new game, is actually about the state of gaming: this is what we humans create / publish / are doing with games, and, by implication, this is what it says about us. I want the site to be accessible to everyone, because everyone plays games: whether you’re a kid or grandpa, man or woman, African, Arab, Asian, or American, hippie or CEO, rich or poor, you play games, even if its only rock paper scissors or working your way toward free airline miles. That’s what I want to convey.

On the “1UP” side, I also want to cover all that geek stuff: the industry, the new and upcoming releases, the interviews and analysis. We do some of that, here. Unfortunately, despite a few awesome contributors, we need more of them to do this properly; 3 or 4 part time contributors can’t do it justice. We are still woefully lacking in coverage of miniatures, war games, and what’s happening the world of poker, CCGs, and classic games. We don’t cover every game by every publisher, even though the list of companies we track is one of the best in the world.

If you would like to contribute, please email me. Purple Pawn is aching to grow to its full potential, and it needs your help!

The Winner

Thank you all for your kind words, comments, and links for our one millionth post contest. The winner of the contest is J.R. for this comment.

Thanks for reading and sharing our site. To paraphrase Bryan Lee O’Malley: we are here to make you think about games, and have fun, and stuff.