Prepping Tabletop Playground, Remembering Burt Meyer, and Thinking about Cheating
/pic9290308.jpg)
▪️ On December 16, 2025, publisher Dire Wolf announced that “a little while ago” it had acquired Tabletop Playground, a virtual tabletop platform developed by Plasticity Studios that’s in early access on Steam.
Steam notes that Tabletop Playground hasn’t been updated for twenty months, but a Dec. 15 update from Plasticity Studios notes that “the lack of public activity doesn’t mean that nothing has happened”, pointing to a waiting list for a closed beta test, as well as what’s changed or updated in this version of the platform.
/pic9290327.jpg)
/pic9290331.jpg)
▪️ Italian publisher Ares Games has imported titles from European publishers to the North American market for years, and in December 2025 it expanded distribution for Galakta Games, Tabula Games, Albi, Nuts! Publishing, and Don’t Panic Games to Europe as well. From the Ares press release:
/pic739328.jpg)
▪️ In late November 2025, designer Burt Meyer and Blue Orange Games co-founder Julien Mayot both passed away.
Meyer was involved in the creation of games and toys such as Mouse Trap, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and Lite-Brite. Here’s an excerpt from an obituary by The Associated Press:
Meyer had a similar role with a design team that reimagined a bulky boxing arcade game for home use. The original concept stalled in development after a featherweight boxer died from a brain injury, making any toy that invoked the tragedy unmarketable, company leaders thought.
Meyer revisited the idea with a simple shift. “This is too good to pass up,” he recalled saying in a 2010 interview. “Let’s take it away from humanity, let’s make it robots. And we won’t have them fall over, we’ll have something funny happen.”
The Toy Book published remembrances of Julien Mayot from others in the game and toy industries.
/pic48024.jpg)
▪️ In the article “Flavors of Cheating” on his Substack, designer Geoff Engelstein discusses a study in which half of the participants who would not have won $5 for getting a result of “heads” in a coin flip lied and claimed they did get “heads”. The cheating is expected, says Engelstein, but what’s interesting is how they cheated:
The second group never even flipped the coin. They just told the researchers that they flipped heads and got their $5.
The third group kept flipping the coins until they got heads. Two, three, four, times – however long it took.
Why would people cheat in these different ways? Engelstein speculates in his post.
▪️ FanRoll Dice is partnering with Virginia’s Mini Museum — which is more of an online store with bits of old stuff for sale than an actual museum — on a crowdfunding campaign for its new “Roll for History” collection:
● Meteorite D20 — Features an authentic fragment from the Campo Del Dielo Meteorite, estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, which crashed into the earth back in 2500 BCE.
/pic9290455.jpg)
● Chainmail D20 — Perfect for any fantasy tabletop setting, this die contains pieces of chainmail from a hauberk that dates to the 15th century – the sunset of chainmail in Europe.
● Dinosaur Fossil Polyhedral Set — The crown jewel of the collection is a complete dice set featuring a unique dinosaur fossil inside each die. Mini Museum and FanRoll will be revealing additional fossils as the launch date draws closer. The first revealed is the Tyrannosaurus Rex D20, a tribute to the “King of the Dinosaurs”.
Sorry, You're not allowed to submit vote !
Tell us how can we improve this post?
