When Kenneth Solo, owner of Checkmate Games and Hobbies on Central Avenue, introduces kids to new board games at locations across the Toledo Lucas County Public library system, he keeps a few tricks up his sleeve.

Or, in this case, Pokemon cards in his shirt pocket.

Handing out a Pikachu or an Eevee is a surefire way to get kids’ attention when rounding them up for one of Solo’s library sessions.

“I realized that handing out business cards doesn’t entice anybody whatsoever. But if I hand out a Pokemon card, and I happen to have my business card attached to it, they will absolutely gleefully accept a Pokemon card,” Solo said.

Library outreach is one way the Solo builds awareness for board and tabletop gaming. From how-to sessions for Dungeons & Dragons to weekly Yu-Gi-Oh! Tournaments, Solo’s whiskered mug — complete with signature flat cap — is a nurturing presence for the Toledo gaming community.

“Our motto in here is to try to get people to play with other real, live human beings face-to-face and interact with other real, live human beings and put down their video controllers,” Solo said.

Billed as a one-stop shop, Checkmate Games has everything from board games and role-playing manuals to Yu-Gi-Oh cards and family-friendly puzzles. But the store’s greatest offering is the events it hosts in the game room set off to the side.

Anxiety, loneliness, and depression have a harder time taking root in someone with an active social life, Solo said.

“These experiences teach people. It’s the role-playing game that teaches us how to be adults. Even if we’re already 45, and we’re still having trouble figuring out how social interaction works, it can still be a good lesson.”

Like joining an amateur volleyball team or joining a book club, board games rally strangers together under a common banner. 

Solo didn’t know anyone when he entered the University of Toledo’s freshman class, but it wasn’t long before he joined a group of nerds playing card games.

“We spent so much time playing Nuke War, which is a silly little game about blowing everything up, that occasionally we had skipped class and everything because we were having too much fun playing card games,” Solo said with a wry smile. “But then those same people became friends for the next 40 years and counting.”

The desire to find one’s people is what brings droves to Checkmate’s door asking about a public ready-to-join Dungeons & Dragons group.

“There’s not enough hours in the day for us to run Dungeons & Dragons for as much as there is demand for,” Solo said.

That’s where Checkmate’s bulletin board comes in. Like the archetypal notice boards used in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns to form parties, find bounties, and take on new quests, real-life players can post notes with their contact information letting people know they’re seeking a party.

Board game blowouts

Meanwhile, those nerds playing board games at UT are still around. Solo had joined the Benevolent Adventurers’ Strategic Headquarters — known as BASH — in 1987, just two years after it was founded as an official hub for a sprawling D&D game.

Today, students congregate in BASH’s space to paint miniature figures for the strategy tabletop game Warhammer 40K, watch anime, play Magic: The Gathering, and stay connected with BASH’s roots with ever-revolving games of Dungeons & Dragons. Events range from Monster Bash-themed barbecues where participants dress up and eat hot dogs and burgers to finals week gaming parties and holiday gift exchanges.

“We have just about anything that a student would want to get into gaming and nerd culture-wise right in the basement of the student union,” said BASH President Abi Lewis.

An Engineering and French double major, Lewis joined BASH as a commuter looking for somewhere to spend time between classes. She quickly picked up D&D with guidance from more experienced members; before long she was playing all kinds of board games and teaching new members herself.

“Everyone’s very welcoming, very friendly, so it has a nice vibe that anyone can feel connected to,” she said.

The group’s biggest event is BASHCon, the annual public-facing gaming convention a year after BASH formed, in 1986. Since its inception, students have invited the public to gather for a weekend-long celebration of tabletop and board gaming.

Like local game shops’ weekly events, players can check out everything from Pokemon to Pathfinder, but with ten times the access. BASHCon also features local artists and vendors, who sell games, comic books, and all types of nerdy paraphernalia. Before the coronavirus pandemic, BASHCon pulled in over 2,000 attendees; they’ve built back up to 600 so far.

Entirely student-run, BASH members plan events, source vendors, and organize a small army of volunteers pulled from their ranks. Even as BASHCon wrapped up its 39th iteration this March, the group was already cementing next year’s convention committee.

BASH’s alumni network is always on hand to support each generation of students. Local alum Wes Schaarschmidt spearheaded this until his 2022 passing, and a robust group remains available to help.

“Just yesterday, I met with a past alumni who was a treasurer. She’s now an accountant,” Lewis said. “She always handles money things and always helps us with our money during the con to give us advice.”

When alums aren’t on tap, students can always turn to the University of Toledo library, which keeps an archive of past BASHCon records going back decades.

For students, universities can be a universe unto themselves, but BASHCon preserves a window to the world in Checkmate Games. While the store keeps Solo too busy to help BASHCon as directly as he’d like, students are always welcome.

“I buy my minis there. My boyfriend buys all of his cards there. We have someone who buys all his board games there,” Lewis said. “That is our hub whenever we want to see some of our alumni or some of the older community members in gaming.”

By players, for players

When Checkmate first opened 15 years ago, Solo wasn’t the only one with the idea for a second games and hobby store. Old School Gaming, in Maumee, and Rossford’s now-shuttered Frogtown Hobbies opened around the same time. All saw the need for a new watering hole.

Since then, a slew of local shops have joined Checkmate Games, Old School Gaming, and the stalwart Toledo Game Room. These include the recently opened The Cocked Die, the board game bar Flip the Table, and the combination board game and coffee shop Dragon’s Roost in Holland.

Despite competing for the same crowd, Checkmate is at least on truce terms with Old School Gaming; their larger game room sees gatherings of the Northwest Ohio Designer Meetup, including Checkmate employee and local board game designer Nathan Woll.

The core group — six of them — meets every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Each designer brings a board game prototype, and they take turns testing them out. The next week, they might bring back the same game with some of the kinks ironed out, or they may move onto a new idea entirely.

“All of us are published designers, so it’s helpful to other new designers to come and we can give them tips and say, ‘Hey, we’ve been there. We’ve done this. This is what we’ve accomplished. Here’s some ideas to help you,’” Woll said.

For a boy who grew up eagerly awaiting the day he’d be old enough to join his family’s complex board game adventures during the Christmas holidays, watching others enjoy his work is a deeply gratifying experience. Woll carried the family board game tradition on; his son wants to follow in his dad’s footsteps as a game designer.

“My dad was the person who inspired me to play board games. I just wanted to play board games with my dad,” Woll said. “But my dad passed away of cancer, very, very young, and so when my first game got published, he was not around to see it. ... but I like to think that, you know, he’s there watching.”

Building a board game from scratch is like developing a LEGO set for others to enjoy — except where a LEGO set has one, maybe two, ways to build it, board games have, at minimum, dozens of possible outcomes.

“I start with a concept, and then start working out, okay, what does that look like?” Woll asked. “What do the mechanics look like? What does a turn structure look like?”

In the early stages, designing resembles arts and crafts projects, with Woll taping printed-out clip art to Popsicle sticks. If he thinks a game is viable for pitching to board game publishers, he’ll make a virtual version that can be played remotely.

“It usually involves making just a tiny piece of the game first and trying that out just to see if there’s anything to the idea, and then kind of expanding from that point,” said Sarah Addison. Alongside her husband, Michael, Sarah is one-half of local board game designer company Nerdy Pup Games.

Finding an audience

Woll prefers pitching his games to board game publishers, which take on the burden of finding artists, enlisting manufacturers, and putting out marketing in exchange for a cut of the profits. But with board games at their peak of popularity, it’s a tough time to break into the industry through traditional routes.

“I design very good games. I know I design very good games. I know other designers that design very good games and just haven’t been able to get their games published or signed with a publisher,” Woll said. “Publishers have so many options right now, all of the power is in the hands of the publisher.”

The difficulty in getting a publisher’s blessing is one reason why area locals Michael and Sarah Addison prefer putting their games out themselves — but for the Addisons, the main motivation to self-publish is the full creative and financial freedom it affords.

Without using the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, the Addisons’ game Dungeon Date, a fast-paced card game where players romance, befriend, and slay monsters by building stylish outfits, might never have seen the light of day.

A hybrid romance, fashion, and fantasy game like Dungeon Date “doesn’t necessarily have broad appeal, but it does have pretty strong appeal for some audiences,” Michael said. “You hardly see anything like that from other publishers.”

Now, Dungeon Date is heading into its third printing.

Soon, Michael and Sarah will release Super Squad High, a 1-4 player cooperative superhero game where players balance schoolwork and social lives with crimefighting. Other projects include a mystery role-playing game mixing hard-boiled detectives with Greek mythology and a Pi-day themed educational game centered around a dessert-pie shaped board.

“We really benefit from having those other designers so we can all play-test each other's games and give each other feedback, and then also just play-testing with your friends and family,” Michael said.

Once that’s down, the Addisons join Woll — when he can get the time off from Checkmate Games — and other local designers to play-test their games at BASHCon.

Next year will be the local board game convention’s 40th anniversary, and the students want to go “fairly crazy” by recruiting as many local businesses, vendors, and artists as possible, Lewis said.

“We’re also wanting to get more high school students involved to come in and get involved in different students from all around the area to see what we have going on at UT as for nerd culture,” she said.

First Published March 30, 2025, 1:00 p.m.