About & Values
Shaun Martindale, trading as Turtle Table Games, has been a professional writer, content creator, marketer and maths nerd for 15 years, and a gamer and more general all-round-nerd all his life. TTG is based in the Lake District in the north of England, and the wider group has decades of experience, playing, writing and running TTRPG games.
Turtle Table Games is the culmination of those years of playing games, making up games, writing poetry, short stories and table-top roleplay content.
- He published his first book, a poetry anthology, Clouds will Clear in 2020.
- 2021 saw his first success with Kickstarter, securing over 400% his target to create a campaign setting book of his homebrew world, Erd’àna.
- 2023 saw the second success with Kickstarter and the launch of the brand new TTRPG, Wandering’s Call, a project undertaken with good friend and fellow TTRPG nerd, Robin Storm (illustrated by the phenomenal artist Amy Jane Hardy – also a good friend and fellow nerd and crafting enthusiast).
- With continuing success, Shaun thought to bring all the creative endeavours under one roof, and Turtle Table Games was born.
Why Turtle Table Games? Well, Shaun has been known as Turtle or Turtle DM online for many, many years – so long in fact, he can’t really remember why he chose that name! Turtles are extremely cool and interesting. That’s really all the reason needed!
We do not endorse or recommend turtles be used as tables without gaining their express, written permission first.
Our Values
Making games is our passion and our love – but so is doing the right thing. Here are our 6 main values that we try to embody when creating our products and content.
Be inclusive and kind to all.
TTRPGs are for everyone. People who do not share our values of fairness and inclusion are not a welcome part of our community.
Creativity, quality and honesty above all else.
Businesses who care, and who foster community, do well. We’d rather be known for good or not be known at all. We will never use AI art or AI generated content, ensuring players get the best content made by talented and creative people.
A book worth writing is worth writing well.
Quality will always be prioritised over quantity. We want to be proud of what we make and sell. We’d rather be late and get things right than rush anything out.
Tackle any difficult themes with understanding, sympathy and knowledge.
If we don’t know the details or history about something, we find someone who does, or someone that is more experienced. Difficult themes can be fun, but informed consent is vital and is to be highlighted and promoted by us.
Always be prepared for dialogue to improve ourselves and our products.
Communication, in both directions, is important to us. We own the lore and we own the game, but we do not own anyone’s enjoyment or opinion of our products. If there is something we could do better to improve enjoyment, safety or comfort of our players, we want to know.
Promote fair pricing while not underselling ourselves or others.
We’re a business that needs to make money, but we take our responsibility to our customers to provide fair and appropriate pricing seriously, to ensure our customers get a great value product. We commit to paying our supplies and artists a fair price, as good art is worth paying for.