“I went to a therapist and she asked me what I’d like to do, I answered I like playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) board games. She said, ‘Okay, do that for 3 months, I’ll write you a letter so you don’t have to go to uni for 3 months’ and I’m like, ‘What?’.”
I was exposed for the first time to designer board games when I got to college. But specifically for D&D and the more deep dive into nerdom, that was purely by accident when I joined during the start of a new D&D campaign and since then I’ve been playing D&D. I became a true tabletop games player since I’ve dived into more than one game genre like board games, card games and miniature games.
There was a point where I listened to everyone who told me to stop playing tabletop games, study harder. I shouldn’t have listened because I literally just completely like crashed, I just couldn’t function anymore, I actually got into depression.
I went to a therapist, talked and she asked me what I’d like to do, I answered I like playing Dungeons & Dragons board games. She said, “Okay, do that for 3 months, I’ll write you a letter so you don’t have to go to uni for 3 months” and I’m like “What?”. So I did that and I felt like a recovering alcoholic or something but it was amazing so I played board games for 3 months and it gave me such a huge confidence boost.
I think the funniest thing was when I got a job during a tabletop games convention. I was relatively amateur, not super well versed but someone during a match noted the way I talked, we chatted and he was like,
“Wait you do graphic design and you do web design as well? Okay, I’ve got a startup and I need to hire some interns,”
Since then, almost every major job I’ve had that actually paid me has been through a tabletop gamer friends. So I think playing games, gets you jobs, that’s the weird takeaway as well.
I work as a social media specialist so I specialise in community building, sharing news and organising events. The craziest thing I’ve done was starting the Tabletop North Tour and went on a 10-day journey across Malaysia. We went to Perak, Penang, Kedah and Perlis to connect with local communities of tabletop gamers since there was a geographical problem, like almost all of the community leaders are in Klang Valley. Some of the local communities weren’t so good at advertising their events so I can sort of like get the word out online whenever they organise events so I could kind of connect these local communities so they feel less alone.
It was a nationwide journey kinda thing that I just wanted to introduce tabletop games to more people because I think we need to talk more about board games, card games and miniature games. It’s kind of like my mission to organise events, to bring people together to come out and play tabletop games together. Of course I have people helping me and we keep the community going and therefore support the tabletop games industry.
