For months, whenever I visit gaming sites I care about, someone is laying into me about Tabletop. Things like, “He doesn’t care about the fans” and “He took everyone’s money and didn’t spend it on the show” and “Nobody who is a real gamer takes this show seriously” or “I hate Tabletop because [thing someone decided I did, whether I actually did it or not.]”
I’m pretty good at not having a fuck to give about things, especially from power gamers who aren’t in my target audience, and who will probably never be happy with what I do. For the first two seasons of Tabletop, “Thank you for your comment. Please direct any further comments to that brick wall, and remember that we made this for free,” was my standard response. The people who loved what we did vastly outnumbered the people who complained about the show and about me and about all the delightful things people complain about. And that’s fine. Not everyone likes everything. My goal was to make more gamers in the world, and we’ve certainly succeeded in that. If we never make any more Tabletop, I’ll always feel very good about that.
There’s this thing that we talk about in production, in acting classes, and on the set. It’s this idea that if you feel good about something you made or worked on, and someone shits on it, who cares? You’re happy with it, you made the thing you wanted to make, and they made comments. You can stand by your choices. But there’s another side of it, and it’s why so many of my fellow creative people are as selective as they can be about the projects they do: when you do something that you don’t feel good about, whatever the reason was that you did it, and someone shits on it, it strikes a nerve. When you should have known better, and you didn’t trust your instincts, it strikes a nerve. When you count on someone to do the thing they were supposed to do, and they didn’t, it strikes a nerve.
So when I am accused, over and over and over again of not caring about Tabletop, not caring enough to get the rules right, not caring about the audience, or feeling complacent because of reasons — it strikes a nerve, because I work incredibly hard to be good to our audience. It strikes a nerve because I care a lot, especially this season, because for over twenty thousand people, it wasn’t free, and the only brick wall I care about has all their names on it. Written by hand, by amazing production assistants.
Yesterday, after being beaten up on r/boardgames yet again, I wanted to address that, and explain how things happened this season that are not up to my standards. It wasn’t my intention to do any of the things I’ve been accused of doing, but enough people I trust and respect have all said the same thing to me, so I clearly didn’t communicate my feelings clearly. I counted on someone who had never let me down, and they profoundly let me down, when it mattered the most. I feel that the backers of the show deserve to know what happened, why it happened, and how it made me feel. What I wanted to say was: this is what happened. This is why that happened. This is how it made me feel. I am angry, and embarrassed, and I kind of don’t even want to do another season of the show.
I didn’t do that well. I stand by telling the truth about what happened, but I wish I’d done it in a better way. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy Tabletop, because a lot of people worked very hard to make it the best show we could make it. In a lot of ways, I believe we have succeeded. In some other ways, we’ve clearly fallen short. I want you to know that I care. I cared during production, and I care now. I realize that this will continue to not be good enough for some people, unnecessary for others, and is unlikely to do anything other than prolong the Internet hatefest I’m presently receiving. But this is one of those things that I need to write for me.
I accept responsibility for my tone, and my words. I don’t apologize for being angry, embarrassed, and disappointed.
I feel like I managed to alienate myself from a community that I love and care about, and I may never be let back in. That hurts a lot, but if it’s a self-inflicted wound, I have nobody to blame but myself. I can’t even blame the dice.
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For whatever it’s worth, I think some people not normally affiliated with the r/boardgames community, but affiliated with other less savory groups, took the chance to attack you yesterday. It also doesn’t help that many people IN the community are pretty badly lacking when it comes to social skills and graces so they can come across as harsh even when they’re not trying to be hateful.
It’s become kind of a mess, and I hope things will settle down in a couple days. You do you: work out the negative in the best way you know how. I think there was some constructive feedback to come out of this affair, and I hope the wheat can be separated from the loads and loads and loads and loads of chaff without too much further pain.
I’m not surprised that the internet reacted the way it did, but it is ridiculously overblown. The guy/gal screwed up repeatedly and you held them accountable.
The internet doesn’t understand that Tabletop isn’t just something you are doing on the side for fun. Season three is a reality because a lot of people funded it and the bar has to be set even higher than before because of such. Clearly you are 100% dedicated to make it the best show it can be and repeated, minor, easily avoidable mistakes are not something you can just ignore.
Have a beer, go play a game, and don’t look at the internet for a week or so.
Please keep doing table top I enjoy it a great deal and it helps me and my girlfriend find things we want to play together.
That is all.
Hey Wil,
As a member of the silent majority, we still love you! I mean, I haven’t heard much about the rest of the silent majority community, but I’m sure they agree.
I’ve never played a single game with anyone from r/boardgames or boardgamegeek, that is NOT my community. My real boardgame community is my friends that I met in the real world. Most of them play boardgames just because I bring them with me. They don’t mind if I get the rules wrong the first time, or the tenth.
Every single new game we play will have several “Oh, actually, it says right here that you can’t put that there if you also put that there.”. We then just figure out if someone had advantage because of it, balance things out and continue with the correct rule.
If someone would start pointing out that I don’t care about our boardgame nights anymore because I didn’t do enough research, I’d never play with them again. I never asked for a dollar out of the thousands I’ve spent on boardgames, or for the countless hours learning the rules.
You had someone who protected you from this vocal internet community by checking they wouldn’t have anything to nitpick. People are probably upset that they were unknowingly bashing someone who probably isn’t the untouchable celebrity. They were bashing someone who felt more like themselves, for something they’ve done so many times themselves. They made you mad at him/her.
Anyway, those people aren’t the ones who are cleaning the shelves from every game on Tabletop. They already have those games. They aren’t the major audience.
As a small suggestion, make a small errata segment in the blooper reel of the things that come up. They are just that, just bloopers that we ALL make.
Thank you for all the hard work, I’ve fallen in love with several games I discovered through Tabletop.
Rules Lawyers suck ass. Gaming is supposed to be about having fun with people you enjoy, not about getting every fucking rule exactly right. Wil, I think you are accomplishing exactly what you are supposed to be accomplishing with Tabletop. Showing people that you can have fun even if you fuck up the rules is also a good thing. Stick to your guns, keep caring, keep entertaining and play more games!!!
I’ve never commented on your blog before, but I feel compelled to do so following this post.
Because of Tabletop (and, by extension, you) my wife and I have discovered games we otherwise might never have seen.
Because of that, I have friends who have played games at my house, who now game regularly with their own families.
And similarly, I have two daughters – the eldest
Ahem… The eldest of which just elbowed me, causing me to hit the send button too soon.
But ALSO she already loves some of the games you’ve played, and she’s not even at nursery yet.
Tabletop, in my corner of the world at least, is a roaring success, and I will never stop being grateful.
I don’t have a long comment like some of the others Wil. Just know that I greatly appreciate all you do and I support your work here and elsewhere. The community is better place thanks to your efforts.
I’m too late to the party to write anything original, but I’ll go ahead and add my voice to the Voice of the Internet anyway.
Wil, thank you for being a weekly fixture at our family dinner, when we all gather around our computer screen to enjoy another episode of Tabletop. The kids ask every few days if there’s a new Tabletop yet, and your show has contributed much to our togetherness as a family.
Thank you for being a real live human being on the Internet. Thank you for sharing your personal struggles and triumphs. Thank you for portraying yourself as the multifaceted, flawed, funny, totally fucking awesome person that you are. You’re a great example and we all admire you, even when you’re fucking up, and especially when you have the balls to apologize.
We are real people. We fuck up too. We try to teach our kids to say sorry by leading by example and apologizing to them when we forget the golden rule and act like dicks. It’s a part of life and we also hope they learn to shake it off and move on.
I hope you can move on, too. As other commenters have written here, the users who post on r/boardgames are just that, the folks who POST on r/boardgames. Haters are not the majority nor do they speak for everyone. Try not to let the bastards grind you down, man. The world and the Internet are full of self-righteous fools.
I also hope you will continue to produce new episodes of Tabletop. Quitting now would be a huge loss for all of us, whereas learning from the past and continuing to improve would be a terrific win. As proud supporters of Season 3 (even though we still can’t find our name on the wall!) we are delighted so far and can’t wait to see what you do next.
Hugs from our family to yours.
It’s never easy to be totally coherent when you’re furious about something. Perhaps the tone wasn’t correct, and perhaps some detail didn’t need to be made public; in the heat of the moment you don’t think about these things and don’t have the wonderful benefits of hindsight and reflection.
It would be nice if some of these negative commenters were aware of the hypocrisy of their outrage, because I can guarantee that pretty much all of them would have lost their cool in a similar way in the past, and will do in the future.
I’m upset that you say you don’t want to do Tabletop any more, but if it’s no longer fun for you to do, I think it would be for the best, if only for your own health and sanity.
As a lover of board games with far too little time to actually play more games, I watch Tabletop to see people have fun and to learn about new games. I wouldn’t notice any rule violations if they weren’t pointed out. I understand why you are frustrated (and I get that people that know the games care about the rules), but it’s no big deal to me.
–Anything worth doing is hard.–
I listen to Wil’s appearances on the Nerdist podcast regularly and that is my take away from them. Nerdist #63: he spoke of going back in time to tell himself that the negative criticism he received from doing TNG would be far outweighed by the positive interactions from fans later in life.
r/boardgames is not a community; they are fetishists. I’ve subscribed for over three years and never posted there because it’s not about the games, it’s about ‘check out my massive collection’ ‘if you could only have three games for the rest of your life…’ ‘these neckbeards are ruining my game night…’ and other discussions around games but not of the games themselves. If games are actually discussed, it’s so deep in threads that it’s just not worth digging that far into.
I subscribed to r/boardgames to gain exposure to new games. Three seasons of TableTop have done a far better job than years of posts from them.
TableTop makes me want to play games. r/boardgames makes me want to find a new hobby.
I never realized that that was how I felt about r/boardgames until the past few days. It seems so clear to me now.
If anything Wil left himself too open to people waiting for an opportunity to strike at him from a place of jealousy.
Hey Wil,
I love Tabletop and the show is a lot of fun. As a lifelong boardgamer in my 40s, I appreciate the focus you have brought to the genre and how it has become a more popular pursuit amongst non-gamers.
After reading the kafuffle on /r/boardgames, I was surprised to read that people thought you threw your producer under the bus. Clearly these people have never worked on a team where you delegate responsibility to someone and trust they will do their job.
I would like to address the people who say that watching the games played with incorrect rules is just fine by them. The problem I have with this is that it ignores the immense amount of time and effort game designers put into their games. It’s not unusual for a designer to spend years meticulously tweaking the rules to achieve appropriate balance for all players.
Games that are demonstrated with incorrect rules means that players don’t get the most out of the game. The rules are there to allow all players to enjoy the game within the mechanics that the designer has devised. Anything less and you end up with players confused, inequality in play, a misunderstood condition or a poor balance.
It is because of this that I completely understand your reaction to discovering that some of your gameplay did not follow the rules. Especially when game makers, who have built careers on their games, see it played wrong. As a result, thousands of people watching Tabletop might now play the game wrong, and throw out some of the hard work done by a game designer.
Letting viewers know that a game was played incorrectly via voiceover or in a quick intro is fine, as the viewer has a chance to discover the correct rules on their own.
So, in short, I support your desire to have a show that is entertaining, informative, and accurate. Also, having team members who take their job seriously is the only way the team wins.
Wil, for what it’s worth, while there have been some issues with some of the episodes this season, none of them distracted me from my enjoyment of the show. I am already looking forward to supporting the fourth season!
Negative feedback is always to be expected. And it is often times misleading, at a very young age, i was given a tidbit of wisdom that I always think of in situations like this.
What was told to me was that “If you are offering a service, and someone has a good experience, they might tell one person about it. But if someone has a negative experience, they will definetly tell 10 people.” The point was to stress that you should aim to provide good service….
But what I also got out of it was that people like to complain. and satisfied customers wont be nearly as vocal. So the arguement could be made, in this situation, that for every 1 vocal unhappy viewer, there are 10 happy viewers.
And I’ve seen alot of comments about “well its your show…you shouldnt blame the producer…you’re the face…” Fuck that! I get it, you delegate responsibilty and you expect it to get handled. I’d be pissed too
Just tossing in one more comment of support. You did what you felt was right, being honest about what happened, and that’s respectable. Mistakes happen, and it sucks that a show went through the production cycle with parts of it you weren’t proud of. It doesn’t change how most people feel about you, or about Tabletop. You’ve given the world a great gift in that show and you should be proud of what you’ve created.
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you directly how wonderful Tabletop is. How it’s changed my life, my game shelves, and my nights with friends forever. How much I look forward to the episodes, and laugh along, and choose to buy games because of the show. How little I care when the rules get a little bit flubbed, because that’s simply something that sometimes happens when humans play games. I mean heck, how many people think putting money in Free Parking is a real rule in Monopoly? Things change, mistakes are discovered and fixed, mature humans move on.
Thank you so, so much for making Tabletop. For all the work you pour in (it shows) and for bringing awesome games I’d never heard of into my life. I hope there is another season. I’d wholeheartedly back it again. Thank you for everything you’ve done.
I know it sucks not to be 100% proud of something you worked on, but so much of it is so, so great. And you’ve truly sparked a movement of people playing more games! If that’s the only thing you ever did in your whole life that would be amazing. So thanks, Wil, for doing this and for being such a good sport when people are shitty about it.
I’m a pretty busy guy these days, what with being a newish dad, and newish homeowner, working full time, and STILL trying to retain something of a personal life.
Board games have been a bit off my radar as of late. Getting someone to watch Donovan so me and my wife can sit down with friends, or trying to find something that entertains a 2 and a half year old kid while mommy and daddy game… that’s a lot of effort I don’t want right now.
But your show has done something to me. It hasn’t done anything for my love of gaming (which is still strong), or my appreciation of gaming (likewise), but it has definitely rekindled my passion for it. I used to be ok with putting the board games in the basement – now, I eagerly yearn for the day to bring them back upstairs.
Thank you, Wil – I know things have been rough, but your show guarantees that my family and I will be sitting at the table, dice in hand, tokens at the ready, for years to come.
Just to let you know, and others know, not everyone on /r/boardgames/ hates you. I would like to think that /r/rboardgames/ and reddit as a whole are not as toxic as all that.
Terry of SAGA even made this post for you:
http://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/3aicil/a_call_out_to_wil/
From the outside, I don’t know anything about the relationship between you and this other producer; I am unable to judge how you handled that situation.
All I know is that plenty of us care about Tabletop as much as you.
Here’s my two cents, for whatever it’s worth.
Yes, the rules were wrong. Yes, that’s happened a lot this season. But you know what? At the end of the day, gaming is all about getting together with your friends and having fun. In every single game you’ve played this season, it is very apparent that everyone is having fun. That’s what games are all about. It’s not about pouring over the rules so you can get every single thing right. It’s not about making sure that everyone plays the right way. It’s about having fun with your friends. Period.
I can honestly say, I got into tabletop gaming because of Tabletop. Every single game on my shelf (which is getting quite overloaded at the moment) hasn’t necessarily been on Tabletop, but is on my shelf BECAUSE of Tabletop. Were it not for this series, I likely wouldn’t be into tabletop gaming right now…And I didn’t get there because of the immense attention that was paid to the rules. I got there because of the fact that, in every episode of the show, it is clear how much fun everyone is having. I’ve butchered the rules of games before, just as I’m sure every gamer has. It’s part of gaming. If people are being douche canoes about it, they can sit on it and spin.
When it comes to your last blog post, I read it as exactly that. An apology post. I didn’t read it as you throwing anyone under the bus (had you been doing that, you would have named names, which you didn’t). I read it as someone who created something genuinely apologizing about something that went wrong. I didn’t feel like you passed blame. In fact, you made it clear that regardless of who was responsible for the oversights, you took blame for the mistakes.
At hte end of the day, all that happened was people who were already “haters” (which I now hate myself for using that term) got another excuse to bitch about you or about the show. Had it not been the blog post, it would have been about the rules being wrong. Had it not been about the rules being wrong, it would have been about that tweet you sent (you know which one). Had it not been about the tweet you sent, it would have been about something else you did. Those people are unable to see past their intense dislike, for whatever reason, and would bitch about the water being wet if you tweeted a picture of a lake.
In other words…Don’t sweat it. You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have.
we cool
Wil
I was a PC playing, sitting in the dark kind of gamer. I never really joined a group or guild online because I was shy enough that I didn't want to even voice chat. Tabletop opened my eyes to a world of board games that I never knew existed and helped me get out of my shell and meet new people. I searched out my local FLGS ( redundant ? ) and started playing regularly.Mistakes were made, Your human. ( Or are you an OwlBear in disguise ? )
Keep doing what you're doing, mistakes and all. The internet is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, you should be careful
"Play More Games !"
I believe, wholeheartedly, that anyone who is going to be playing a game in a video for demonstration purposes has a responsibility to learn the rules correctly. It is not the responsibility of a producer, or a designer, or a publisher, or anyone else EXCEPT THE PEOPLE PLAYING THE GAME ON CAMERA.
wallowing in self-pity about a self-inflected wound born from frustration with someone else still doesn’t address that point.
Exactly. Sure, it’s fine to have a producer around as a backup regarding rules, and I can even understand not all the guests know every little rule. But if even Wil can’t be bothered to learn the rules, it’s clear he doesn’t give a sh-t about the games he plays on the show.
Wow, really? Cuz I thought the point of gaming was being social and having fun.
Rich that is your belief and it is your right to feel that way, with a whole heart or some fraction of a heart. Feel free to start your own show, make your own videos and post them all over the internet. You could even build a name and learn every rule of every game you play. I am sorry to inform you that TableTop isn’t your show. TableTop already has a host and producers. If you don’t like what they are doing, PLEASE stop watching. I would also suggest you don’t support them. Those few of us that do enjoy TableTop will continue to do both and I doubt we will miss you.
This isn’t a shoot in your house in your spare time kind of affair like the rest of youtube game videos. An entire season is shot in a very short period of time on a set. A producer for this kind of arrangement is critical to make sure the rules are being played correctly especially if it is there only or primary job. It LITERALLY is that producers job of which they got paid to do. Wil obviously knew how to play most of the game but if they did something wrong during such a grueling shoot that producer needed to correct the error or oversight.
People like yourself keep commenting without any kind of understanding or even an attempt to understand what is involved in this kind of production. This isn’t a dice Tower production where they put on a funky mic and flip on a single camera. There is a lot more involved. It is nutty to compare the two kinds of production which you clearly are trying to do.
Wil, I want to remind you of something I’m sure you already know. Tabletop provides an incredible amount of value to the gaming community. When I can’t get out and play with a group of folks, it gives me joy to be able to watch a mix of people I’m familiar with play fun games and have a great time. I get to feel like I’m part of that in a way. I know this has been a tough time for you. I selfishly hope that you continue making more seasons of Tabletop because I enjoy watching all of you play, and I enjoy the table banter that so closely reminds me of good times I’ve had playing board games with others. I encourage you not to lose the passion that you have for this show because of this adversity.
Wiil, my only ‘complaint’ about tabletop is there isn’t enough of it. But you could release 1 a day and i’d still probably want to watch more.
I hope you ignore the complainers (haters gunna hate), because there are a LOT of us who LOVE what you do. Me included. Keep up the GOOD work.
Wil, I agree that a lot of the anger against you comes from entitlement and it is unjustified. On the other hand, I think a lot of gamers give a lot of shits about how our hobby is perceived, and when they (we?) feel it is misrepresented, we get concerned. I hope you can view the anger that way, we all care about the hobby, rather than that nothing you do will be good enough for us. We’re all still watching. Make more TableTop.
I walk into most toy/gaming stores, and there’s a whole shelf labelled “as seen on Tabletop.” People who haven’t previously known games, or who only dabbled with things like Monopoly or Connect Four, are walking into stores after watching Tabletop, looking to try out what they’ve seen. Stores know that, so they make it easy for these hatchling gamers to find what they are looking for.
I’m a video gamer, and until Tabletop I barely dabbled in board games (again, my knowledge pretty much ended with Monopoly). Through the show, I’ve discovered this whole new world. Better yet, it’s something I can share with my family. We have now instituted a “gaming night” where we just have fun and play board games together, many of them from Tabletop. I watch the show with my son and we pick the games that look fun, the games that look age appropriate for him so that he can enjoy himself as well. And sometimes, my spouse and I will play the more complicated games on our date night.
That’s not an insignificant change to our lives, and it’s one that wouldn’t have happened without the show. My son is a complete pro at counting, and has blasted well beyond age appropriate in his addition and subtraction skills through the games we play. He is starting to recognize letter configurations from the cards we use with some games. It’s a way for us to spend time together, to bond. And it’s a whole experience that you have gifted us.
The haters are the vocal ones. They are the ones who are going to take time out of their day to go online and complain. But sitting quietly behind them are the much larger hordes of people who are incredibly grateful for this gift that you have given us.
I had no idea that hardcore gamers shit on you. Forget about them, forget about comments in general. Look at the view counts of your videos, multiply that by 99%, and that’s how many people loved it. Stop apologizing, do not feed the trolls.
Tossing another comment of support your way. I am one of the silent majority, who appreciates that you were honest and upfront about what happened. In fact, the fact that you WERE honest and upfront about it (instead of letting the rules raging boil to a fever pitch as it has in a few instances in the past) may help to diffuse the situation in a few days.
Also, I don’t read through r/boardgames and frankly I won’t after this. Nor do I read the community threads on BGG, I just use their pages for the various board games I’m looking into as a resource for at least marginal amounts of (its intention as far as I can see).
Also, thank you for TableTop. As a result of TableTop, I have been playing more boardgames, and playing more games in general. I would not be playing in Pathfinder Society Organized Play every 2nd Saturday if it wasn’t for TableTop showing me how much fun playing games on a table could be. So thank you for that.
So I made the mistake of actually reading some of the /r/boardgames threads. OMG what a cesspool of complete entitled fuckwads. I saw some gems in there, but man it took forever, and the further I read I just kept getting more and more depressed about humanity.
It;s pretty unfortunate that things happened the way they did, but I wanted to at least throw some encouragement your way. Tabletop has been fantastic, and as a fan of the show I have no idea what you mean when you say something happened that people are outraged over. I look forward to Tabletop every other week and Titansgrave has been fantastic. Your episode of Tabletop where you played Dragon Age inspired me to start an RPG group with my friends, and a year and a half later I’m still gaming socially with friends every week. Thanks so much for the awesomeness that is the work you do, and know that at least one fan (and judging from the overview of comments I scrolled past to write this, many others) will still support your work and really enjoy it!
Dear Wil,
I like both you and your show, and I can very much understand that you of all people love it more than anyone. WhatWhile I do agree that not everything this season has gone as smoothly as it could have, I don’t get how you – as the person who played Wesley fucking Crusher – still care so much about what some people on the internet say about your show that is obviously pretty popular? What I like about you is your kind of juvenile – you might call it boy-ish – approach to boardgames. Your enthusiasm, your neglect for appropriateness or what you’d like to call it. But man – yeah, here’s the but – that kind of behavior has no place on the corporate side of things, plain and simple – especially not in a public statement.
And judging from what you wrote here, you still don’t see that. You still trie to rationalize what you did, instead of just acknowledging: “I’ve gotten too emotional about this, which made me act unprofessionally. I’m sorry for that, and I’m trying to make every aspect of the story better – now and in the future.” Period. No buts. That’s not some cliché “acting like a man” or some such shit, it’s just owning up to your mistakes honestly. But nope, instead your post gets all emotional, actually in a way defending what you did.
We get it, Wil. You care about the show a lot, and a lot of us do too. You probably care about it so much that – contrary to what you wrote in your entry – you’re pretty much reading every response in this thread. And it’s great that you do, else we wouldn’t have your show. But that’s about all the slack you can count on to be cut for you. After the last episode “the damage”, if you even want to call it that, was already done, there was nothing one could do about it, except move forward and take the appropriate measures within you company. Whining to the public and basically humiliating someone who had absolutely no form of recourse is just frankly pathetic and beneath you. It’s looking for a scapegoat when the responsibility ultimately lies with you. You delegated a job that you oversaw for the last season and it didn’t work out so well. Yeah, that happens like all the time, I’m pretty sure a lot of people lost a lot of money over errors in judgement like that. So you’re not a special snowflake in this, regardless of how much you love what you do. What I find even more baffling is the fact that you didn’t even know what made your producer fuck up so horribly. There’s always the possibility that someone who acts that unprofessionally is in a rough patch, and I know you’re smart enough to imagine what effect a post like that could have on a person like that. I mean, you actually didn’t know. You didn’t give a single thought to a consequence like that. You should at least own up to some of the responsibility you have for your employees even if they do fuck up like this.
So, yeah… but here’s another but: We all make mistakes, all the time. Just like you did. Twice if you’re being honest with yourself. Maybe you want to reconsider how you treat this employee of yours, find out how things did go wrong. Maybe you’ve already made your decision final. Either way, I hope you actually learned something through all of this, beyond what you wrote in this blog. No number of small mistakes like in the last show are going to make me stop supporting Tabletop. Unprofessionality and insincerity will, though.
Best wishes
Fox
Wil. PLEASE DO NOT give up on Table Top!! Don’t let the dicks of the internet get to you. People use the internet as an excuse to be complete fraking assholes!! PEOPLE. It’s not an excuse!! If your an ass on the internet your an ass. Because they used a keyboard to carry out there asshatness is NOT absolution. Gaming is awesome. But there are serious asshats out there in gaming, fortunately not the majority. They simply are merely the loud and vocal minority!!! And I wish they would get out of gaming because to be blunt they completely lost touch with what gaming is all about or were never in touch with it outside of ego. Those are the people that hurt gaming more than ANYONE. And with their collective chips on their shoulders, all they do push people out of gaming and keep it so most people only are aware of Monopoly and a handful of other games.
There is zero exposure to the wider world of games to new gamers. There ARE gamers that actually want to keep gaming small and cultish. Tom Vasel addressed this in one of his board game breakfast episodes. I seen this for a while but in some circles It is a thing. The arrogant gamer is an enemy of gaming.
I am a game store owner and game enthusiast for over 40 years. I opened my first store a few months before your first episode of your first season. From the start I had people coming in for things like Smallworld and many other games DIRECTLY because they saw it on your show. Not only that they DID come into or back into gaming BECAUSE of your show. Stores across the world, including mine, stock based on your show. Hell I have Roll for it which will be on a future episode for no other reason because it will be on your show. I would have never even been aware of it or looked into it otherwise. I have Table Top streaming in my store and I can’t tell you how many people come in have a smile on their face and recognize the show and the games and good times that brought into their lives be it with friends or with their families.
Your show may have made errors, your producer may have made errors, you may have made errors. EVERY gamer and game group screws up the rules. That is as much as part of gaming as anything else. Game reviewers that review games make errors. Game publishers make errors and can’t always get their own rules right. If not no game would ever have an errata. Your show has down far more good than bad. Any of the bad is insignificant except to the most uptight rules lawyer that COMPLETELY lost sight of what gaming is about. These kids of people makes me pause and think that maybe the wedgy giving high school jocks actually might have had justification after all.
Table Top is VERY important to gaming!!! PLEASE keep on mission and stay on target, STAY ON TARGET! And disregard the chatter of all the would be red leaders of the internet that lost sight of the target that gaming is all about.
To Paraphrase Captain Picard
“Shut up Internet!”
Wil, I supported your campaign because I enjoyed the past series and wanted to reward you for the pleasure you gave us in getting us back into games. I know you would always give anything you do your best shot. Who the heck would think any other way? You are out there for all to see and your caring (A lot!) is an obviously big part of your character.
As an author, I take comfort after a crappy review in looking at the reviews of the really big authors on Amazon or Goodreads. They might have thousands of five star raves, but they still get at least a few hundred virulent one star reviews to go with them. If they can’t please everyone with all their skills and popularity, I can let go of having to please everyone. It isn’t going to happen for anyone, not anyone.
I’ve been saving the 0 and 1 episodes of the RPG show to watch with my geeky hubby who has been too busy up to now. Am so looking forward to watching! Keep doing what you do and caring like you do, Wil. You have plenty of five star fans out there, and we far outnumber the vocal killjoys!
Watched 0 and 1 together today and looking forward to watching 2 next weekend. Good stuff! Hubby an RPGer from way back. I’ve never played. We both enjoyed it!
You’re alright, Wheaton.
Just wanted to say that TableTop is the reason I started gaming again. I have purchased many of the games featured on the show, and have had countless hours of fun with my friends learning and playing them. We mess up the rules all the time, which makes playing the game more fun, in my opinion. Nothing quite like performing a heroic action and then realizing two moves later that it was illegal and then trying to figure how to take back multiple moves to reset the game.
I love the show, and I hope it continues so that I can see more fun games that I never knew existed.
Hi Wil.
This is the way I see it:
I hate when people just pretend to be nice and behave like hurting someone’s feeling is always the bad thing to do. Based on my experience, I’m guessing you built up frustration over time until the lid exploded. If the assumption is correct, I honestly don’t see where the problem is. If you had issues with someone of the production team, chances are that everyone else from said team knows of such issues and understands where your anger comes from.
I think that taking one for the team is always good practice, but when one becomes two, five or ten, it is also good practice to draw a line and point fingers. I therefore understand your outburst, accept any kind of apology you think we, as an audience, deserve (none, as far as I am concerned ;)) and encourage you to leave this all behind. You are doing a great job!
I will keep watching Tabletop and hope you’ll keep working on it for more seasons. I the meantime, play more games!
Cheers from Italy!
I am a lifelong gamer, and I enjoy Tabletop. It has been a really useful tool for helping find games that our weekly casual gaming sessions can play … once they come back in stock…dang Tabletop effect! <==and the fact that the Tabletop effect is a thing, speaks volumes to the success of Tabletop.
That said, the discussion about the producer was unprofessional (which is excusable as it’s your blog, not a Tabletop blog), but also, to me and many others, broke Wheaton’s Law. It was distinctly uncool behaviour, and was not something that makes us feel like we’re backing the good guy. This is sad, because, even when you’re in projects I have no interest in, I’ve always translated that as “yay the good guys!”
With regards to rules – gaming groups mess up rules all the time. The Owlbear correction is pretty great, and would be handy – occasionally – IRL. Case in point, I backed Stuff’n’Nonsense, got it, misread multiple rules, and our gaming group played many fun games, wrong. I later learned the actual rules…and we now play with a bunch of fun, dynamic house-rules instead. I’ve been a gamer too long to be a slave to rules-lawyering.
Anyways, enough of this nonsense; get back to work playing more games!
Wil, you bring the experience of gaming with great friends to those of us that don’t have a good gaming group. Playing boardgames by one’s self isn’t much fun, and whenever we can’t play games with others, we now have the option of turning on Tabletop. You made that happen, you and your amazing crew. You have brought boardgames to people that can’t afford them in money, time, or people to play with. You have also given us the chance to test drive games that we either wouldn’t have considered or wouldn’t have liked. I don’t have words to explain how profoundly you have influenced (in such a positive way) some of the most introverted and alienated people and given us the courage to use games as a vehicle to interact with other humans in a real and personal way. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
I am reader of /r/boardgames and a fan of tabletop. I saw your post on reddit and the tone of it sounded like it was all this 1 guys fault and I felt as if you blamed everything on him (at least for the most part). I think many readers jsut felt that was a bit of a cop out because your the face of the show, and are supposed to be a gamer and the thought was you personally would know the rules as your recomending the games to people.
I personally don’t mind that there’s mistakes, everyone makes them, you own up to them when you can and don’t intentionally do them. While that post did erk me a bit and I did not like to see that tone and blame; I still will watch the show and have not lost any faith in you at all to do great things in the future.
I also have hopes for more seasons of tabletop and looking forward to see more of titans grave!
Wil, the only reason I’ve ever cared about anything that has to do with gaming is you, so I’m not going to pretend that I’ve invested any time researching whatever controversy you find yourself embroiled in and preparing a well informed defense of everything Wil. However, I attended PAX in ’07 for one reason, to see you deliver your keynote speech. I think that speech-and the reaction to your words-should be your happy place. We all need triumphs in our lives to counterbalance the shit storms we must weather. You’ve had to deal very publicly with some major shit storms, but the triumph of that keynote address trumps any shit they can ever fling at you. I’ve just had major surgery and I’m pretty hopped up on some sort of goofballs, but I’ve got one more thing to say, and I’ll say it without reservation, qualifiers, or disclaimers. I love you, Wil.
Wil, I am sure most of us understand how you feel. For those of us who feel things deeper and differently than most all that negativity weighs like a ton of bricks. This blog not only offers some solace and support for you in a place where you can express how you feel in a way that you need to, but also a place of solace for us. For us to know that we all struggle with the same struggles and don’t walk through this life alone.
I am not a gamer. I secretly wish I was but it is a little too overwhelming for me. I sent in money to support your Tabletop endeavor, not even knowing what Tabletop was. I didn’t do it to get my name on a brick (although that is really awesome and I would love to see a pic of it) but I did it because of all the feedback I read on how Tabletop had changed families lives and human relationships. You created a place where emotions didn’t seem so scary to people and to kids who needed to talk things through so that they can create their own safe space. Something I wish I had growing up, maybe things would have been different.
You have provided the glue to keep the cores of society from letting the rest of the unfair world from winning. That is how you are changing the world and that is why I supported Tabletop. There are those who will always knock you down, but there are also those who will catch and support you when you need it. We all learn from each other and take it one day at a time.
You are doing great things Wil Wheaton.
gentle hugs. be well.
You know what my friends and I have picked up 6 new games because of Tabletop! We are from the Midwest and usually find new card games by accident. I have really enjoyed playing new non card games introduced by you and your awesome posse of friends!! Gotta say though, we picked up the family edition of cards against humanity!! Loved that episode, but I could never see us being bold enough to play the regular edition!! blush. Hope to see more awesome seasons!! We need new intros to games we’d otherwise never know about!! Push those haters aside and keep playing!! I doubt they always by the rules anyways. Game on!
Thanks to you, your team, and the show, my husband & I love table top games. It’s something I’ve been interested in playing, but always too nervous. Thanks to you, my husband and I bought 5 games, all in one go, that we watched you and your friends play on Tabletop. Dead of Winter has become a fast favorite. International Table Top Day has resulted in a monthly table top day in our community.
It’s because of your passion and your enthusiasm for games that we’ve branched out. We’ve even joined a D&D Encounters group because your love of rpgs and the first episode of Titansgrave. THANK YOU!!
Please don’t feel discouraged because of the vocal minority. They are always so much louder than those of us that support you.
Just want you to know I love Tabletop.
I get excited when games I own come on. I want to go buy games after episodes with ones I don’t own. But honestly, the games are secondary for me.
I love the show because you and your friends are genuinely entertaining people, and you look like you have so much fun when you get together – and really, isn’t that what boardgames are about?
Other YouTube shows are always recommending to me for learning about games our learning their rules. Those shows are all boring. Yes, they teach the game well, but they’re hardly more than moving, talking rule books. You understand that games are fundamentally about the people you play them with. That’s why I’d watch an episode of Tabletop even if it was only about Wil & company sitting around eating and discussing ham sandwiches.
So thank you for Tabletop; keep up the good work.
Hey Wil! I just wanted to let you know that you and your team did a wonderful job every season. We purchased so many games thanks to you, your guests and the games you played . I know people hate on you for the messing up the rules but my wife and I didn’t care. All that matters was if we enjoyed the episode, was the game fun, and should we add it to our library. Rules are meant to be broken, so who cares what some people think. You’re not making a how to video, you are entertaining the masses while playing games with friends. That is what will always matter! anyways Happy Gaming! Looking forward to seeing more Table Top!
Dude. Just point me at the crowd sourcing for the next season of Table Top and take my money already. So mistakes were made – so what? You had the decency to own up to it, you apologised, what could any more reasonable person want?
I’m sure I’m not alone in my opinion that I got MORE than my money’s worth for this season.
I haven’t seen the show, but anyone who plays games ends up playing with the wrong rules from time to time, especially if it is a new to you game or it has been a while since the last playing. As long as everyone in the game is playing by the same rules, no harm, no foul. Did everyone have fun? Was it a train wreck or a minor blip? Who cares, get it right next time. Are people are trying to learn the ruleset from this program, maybe an overdub with a correct rules explanation is in order. If not, people will eventually get it right and have fun along the way. We are all in it for the comrodarie and enjoyment anyway. It seems to me that your heart is in the right place in trying to bring others to the hobby. Let anyone who gets bent out of shape about such small stuff take a long leap off a short pier.
Its certainly been a great series, my friends and I get together to watch it. We may not buy every game, we have bought a few based on what we saw and even if we found something different in the rules to what we saw on the show that was never a reason to consider the show had got it wrong.
I always thought Tabletop was like watching a group of friends you meet on camp playing the game and thinking “looks cool” they might have made a mistake in the rules, but you don’t blame them for that.
If anything this gives me a choice, if the game is more fun with the rule interpreted as it was on Tabletop then that’s the rule we will use.
I hope you can get through this an can make another season of the show, I can understand if you don’t want to after what happened but the show will certainly be missed by me, my son and our friends that come over to watch and play boardgames.
+1
Exactly! Forget the rules; rules are there to encourage fun through fairness and structure. They are a means to an end and so long as everyone is having fun, they don’t matter!
This is why I love RPG’s. The rules are useful and keep the story going, but as soon as they become a hindrance to fun, they’re gone. Hell, many RPG systems even encourage you to divert the rules whenever you feel it’s necessary!
I had fun watching Tabletop, and it looked like you guys all had fun playing it. Stop letting haters ruin something that you care about. I think it’d be a terrible shame if Tabletop ended after this season. I’d strongly encourage you to utilize crowd funding if you decide to do another season and let the fans decide if they want another season or not. I suspect they will.
Wil: I’ve never commented on your blog until now, and have only watched an ep or two of your show (FIASCO mostly), but seriously? Fuck those guys. They’re talking nonsense. The people who aren’t commenting are not “on the sideline”, they’re in your corner.
Whether you go forward or not is totally up to you (or take a break for a few months before proceeding), but just know that for the 10% of the “hate machine” tip of the iceberg, the 90% silent below the surface are in your corner.
I have watched every episode and the very few games i have in my colelction i bought because of this channel. I love seeing new episodes coming up. I dont really have an opinion about what happened just wanted to say i really like the show and i really like you, Will and all your guests.
Thanks for introducing me to the wonderful board gaming world.