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Contact the DesignerA debating game for people who can't let it go.
YODM — short for Your Opinion Doesn't Matter — is a thought-provoking game built in a debate format. Three or more players draw a question, take a side, and have thirty seconds to make the case. On a For It or Against It card you do not choose your side at all: you roll a die and defend whatever it gives you. First to five rounds wins, or you keep going until somebody storms off.
The debate is the format. The questions are the point — real ones, the kind people already argue about at a kitchen table — and because the die can hand you the position you do not hold, you end up thinking past your own answer and making somebody else's. The tagline is the whole design: your opinion doesn't matter, your argument might.
It was designed by Lamont Kirton in Brooklyn over nine years, from a 2010 argument about pizza to a finished box in 2019, and it is published by his own company, Our Rose LLC.
Checked against the game itself.
- Full title
- YODM — Your Opinion Doesn't Matter: The Ultimate Debating Game
- Designer
- Lamont Kirton
- Publisher
- Our Rose LLC, Brooklyn, New York
- Designed
- 2010 – 2019
- Released
- 2019
- In the box
- 92 debate cards across 7 categories, a 30-second sand timer, and the For It or Against It die
- Players
- Three or more
- Age
- 21 and over
- Content
- Adult throughout — sex and relationships, politics, race and class. Several questions are deliberately heavy. It is not a family game, and it is not trying to be.
- Turn length
- 30 seconds
- How you win
- First to five rounds
- Price
- $30 for one, $50 for two, $65 for three
- Digital packs
- $8 each, or $18 for all three (printable PDFs)
- Where to buy
- yodm.com/shop
The 7 categories
- Social Matters15
- Sex & Lies15
- For It or Against It15
- Politics14
- Entertainment13
- Sports10
- The Ism's10
Free to publish.
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Every one is a photograph of the physical game, taken in person by a professional photographer who was paid for the shoot. Nothing here is AI-generated.
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Four ways in.
Nine years on a kitchen table
It began with a pizza argument in Brooklyn in 2010 — everyone had a spot, nobody was backing down. The first version was a square board, index cards and sticky notes. It had video questions. Challenges ran two minutes. It was a drinking game until players were finished before the round was. Nine years of cutting got it to a box that shipped in 2019.
A game built to disagree without disrespecting
The name sounds dismissive and means the opposite: there is no right answer, so stop trying to win and listen to why someone sees it differently. Lamont has spent sixteen-plus years in youth development teaching exactly that.
The die takes the side away from you
Fifteen of the cards are For It or Against It. You do not pick your position — you roll, and you argue whichever side it lands on. People end up defending things they do not believe, out loud, for thirty seconds, in front of their friends. To do that at all you have to understand the other point of view well enough to make its case, which is the closest thing to a lesson the game has.
Nobody counts the Black designers in tabletop
The games industry has no figure for how many tabletop designers are Black. Video games at least tried to count: the IGDA's 2021 survey put Black developers at about 5% of the North American game industry workforce — and that is a video game number, not a tabletop one. There is no tabletop equivalent to cite, which is the story.
Lamont Kirton
Short bio · 30 words
Lamont Kirton is a game designer from Brooklyn, New York. He spent nine years building YODM, the debating card game, alongside more than sixteen years of work in youth development.
Long bio · 88 words
Lamont Kirton is a game designer from Brooklyn, New York, and the founder of Our Rose LLC. He has spent sixteen-plus years in youth development, thirty-plus years playing chess, and time coaching basketball, and he has written a book on mentorship. YODM grew out of that work: a party game whose real subject is how to disagree without disrespecting — make your move, but respect the board. He designed it over nine years of prototypes tested at cookouts, family gatherings and game nights, and released it in 2019.
Boilerplate
YODM — Your Opinion Doesn't Matter — is a 92-card debating game for three or more adults, published by Our Rose LLC in Brooklyn, New York. Draw a question, take a side, and make your case in thirty seconds. yodm.com
Ask and a copy goes in the mail.
Physical review copies go out to writers, podcasts and video channels covering tabletop and party games, at no cost and with no conditions attached. The game is best judged the way it is played — a table of people who know each other, arguing.
Interviews, a pre-recorded segment, a written piece in the designer's own words, or a quote for a roundup: all available. He works nights, so a recorded slot is usually easier to arrange than a live one.
Messages through the form reach Lamont directly. For the rules in full see how to play, for the whole story see about, and for fifty real cards out of the deck see debate questions.