2019 has been a crazy year. Our community, The Outpost, has grown. We launched our podcast. And our team has grown. It’s incredible to be in community with you – it really is. Your creativity feeds ours. We love chatting through our ideas with you and hearing how you would make them better. You really do make us better people – it’s really that and random polls that Tom creates reminding us of the importance of washing our hands after using the restroom, but hey 2020 is our year to grow.

We went through and compiled the most popular blogs from 2019. Maybe you missed a post or two or maybe you can’t wait to re-read whatever crazy antics that excited you the first time. Either way, without further ado, here’re the posts you decided to read more than any of the others.

1. The Start of the Outpost Podcast

We launched a podcast and you opted to first read about it and then subscribe and listen to our voices. Learn more about why we choose to start a podcast and see if you can accurately track whose voice is whose. Okay, admittedly, Lacey’s is the easy one.

2. Vindication Kickstarter Reflections Part 1

This summary seems particularly poignant as we are in the middle of the Unsettled Kickstarter campaign. Here is a notable quote, “We have long felt that the board game Kickstarter world is a gigantic missed opportunity. There is a captive audience of people who love to play games. Why aren’t these campaigns themselves structured as games? Why aren’t there scavenger huts, secret messages to decode, riddles to solve? Campaigns should be a month-long social activity. To have a Kickstarter campaign reduced to a bunch of people flomped in a pile, drooling over the free stuff being thrown at their feet, simply because more people joined the pile, seems like such a waste and an ultimately unsatisfying experience for the community and the creators. Kickstarter is a space to invite people into your passion and creation – why not invite them to contribute as well?”

3. Getting Unsettled, Getting Uncomfortable – Podcast 

The team hashed out teasers for the game in the podcast, but we could leave it at that. We wrote a blog about it as well to try and ensure we communicated as much as we could with you, our people. It’s like remembering to call home. If we forget to do it often enough, our aunts and uncles release the dogs at dawn to track our scent.

Oh come on, it can’t only be us. Surely this happens to you.

4. Vindication Kickstarter Reflections Part 2 

The quote we pulled from this post reinforces how we do so many things at Orange Nebula, “The level of engagement was deeply satisfying for us but much more important was the feedback that it was satisfying for the community. That is how we know we should pursue this type of thing toward its potential.”

You guys really dive in and make our collaborations incredible. You’ve become our friends. Even if you haven’t individually reached out, the fact that you’re here reading this shows you care about similar things to us. It’s honestly breath-taking in the truest sense.

5. Let’s Talk About Trust, Baby. Let’s Talk About You And Me

Trust is how players win Unsettled. In this post, we explore how to take shortcuts to build teams. Check out the post where we explore the Trust Equation and tips to establish teamwork.

6. Boardgame Frontiers Verticality

Where’s the future of board gaming? This post from earlier in the year predicts we will see more vertically inclined games. Did we? Before we cut the corner off of our prophecy card read through this post on the off chance it inspires you to take a creative leap and build a stacking game.

7. What You  Can Learn by Following Creators on Kickstarter

While we currently have a game funding on Kickstarter, it seems like a great time for this post to come in as the seventh most popular blog, but this was straight kismet. We’ve learned about running Kickstarters and about the importance of community building during campaigns. Some lessons we learned by trial and error. Sometimes we saw other teams do super awesome things. Sometimes it’s advice we received by members of the community.

Do you want some particulars? It’s silly to put them here, read the post!

8. A Look at the Art of Vindication

Vindication gave us the ability to collaborate with dozens of artists to create an award-winning game. This post is full of pretty pictures from our heavy hitters in the design space and links to their work – giving you the reader the ability to see more of their incredible work.

9. Join the Dark Side

This was an unexpectedly popular post, where I explored the explosion of the Jedi religion on Earth and toyed with the concept of the Sith religion being under-reported.

10. Importance of Weeping Angels

This was one of my first posts for the Orange Nebula team, I summoned all the neurotic Whovian love within my being and expressed my paranoia of Weeping Angels while providing a context outside of the show’s lore for it to be relevant. Seriously. Let’s walk around without staring at our phones and be mindful of the world around us.