This years 4th annual International Tabletop Day (ITD) created by Geek and Sundry has removed the ability for non-retail gaming groups to register their events, only allowing official retail outlets to participate. We'd like Geek and Sundry to reconsider this change and ensure that non-retail gaming groups and ad hoc meet ups are allowed to participate in International Tabletop Day in 2017.

We believe International Tabletop Day was created to celebrate all things gaming. Non-retail gaming groups run by passionate individuals help to bring gamers together everywhere as not everyone has the luxury of having a retail gaming store nearby which accomodates gaming. Allowing non-retail gaming groups to register their events helped to give them much needed visibility within their local community to help connect nearby gamers or allow people interested to give tabletop gaming a try.

In 2016 Geek and Sundry announced some changes where the event was much more focused around getting people to retail outlets (which we believe is a positive thing to aim for). What they didn't announce is that they dropped the ability for non-retail gaming groups to register their events, denying people the ability to find gaming meetups near to them apart from retail outlets. This is a disappointment to the many gaming groups which got behind International Tabletop Day in past years in a big way and helped to promote and support the event.

Gaming groups have nothing against supporting retail outlets in International Tabletop Day. Generally speaking gaming groups only help to further strengthen the hobby by enabling existing gamers to remain active and bringing new people into the hobby which flows into supporting nearby retail outlets.

We love International Tabletop Day and we understand and agree with the desire to support retail outlets, but please stay true to the original intention of celebrating all things gaming and support non-retail gaming groups which are a big part of the gaming culture as well.

Thank you.