Category: Games

Make your own Zombie Dice Brain Counters

Posted on By Wil

One of the most frequently asked questions about Tabletop is: "How do I get those awesome brains you used as counters in Zombie Dice?"

They were made by our AMAZING art director and prop master, Nick, (who made the show look incredible, and still came in under his budget) out of some kind of foam that apparently kills you if you eat it, so I can't exactly tell people to go and do the same thing we did.

…but look at what Mel From Hell showed me on Twitter just now!

image from i.imgur.com
This was made with Sculpey, and is awesome. So now you know how to make your own cool Zombie Dice brain counters. 

Get Excited and Make Something!

Amber Benson, Meghan Camarena, and Michelle Boyd join me for GLOOM on #Tabletop

Posted on By Wil

This week's new episode of Tabletop is online for your happy funtime enjoyment:

If the embed isn't working, or you want to see this in glorious SUPER MEGA HD, I've got you covered, because I love you.

A few notes:

* We have no control over the ads that run during Tabletop, so it's likely that you saw some bullshit Crossroads GPS political ad that's full of manipulative lies. I wish I could get YouTube to stop running these things on our show, but I have absolutely no say (nor does anyone at G&S) in the advertising. I do not endorse any of the ideas, products, or services that are advertised alongside Tabletop any more than the cast of Modern Family endorses the ideas, products, or services that run during their show. I wish I had control over this, but I don't. I'm told that if you don't want to see "sensitive" ads (which includes gross political ads) you can opt-out of "sensitive" ads in your preferences.

* It wasn't until we were editing this episode that I saw that Amber made an (unintentional) illegal play at the start of the game. Oops. Ultimately, it didn't really affect scoring, and it certainly didn't affect our enjoyment of the game, so it isn't the biggest deal to me, but I know that sort of thing is important to some viewers.

* It's been brought to my attention that some of the other players got away with a couple of technically illegal moves during the game. Again, for serious players, that's an important thing that shouldn't happen; for us, it didn't affect the fun we had while we were playing the game, but if we were to play a second round, I would make sure that everyone read the cards carefully so it didn't happen again.

* This leads into the final point: When we were putting these episodes together, we decided that nothing was more important than everyone having fun. We knew that we were going to make mistakes (we made more on Gloom than we did on any other game, mostly because everyone was having too much fun telling the silly story, and I was the only person at the table who had played Gloom more than once) and we knew that there was a certain type of person in the audience who was going to savage us for making those mistakes. We knew that, in that person's eyes, we were worse than Hitler for making rules errors or playing with a less-than-optimum strategy, and we decided that we aren't making this show for that person.

Okay, I think that covers it. Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the show!

Live action Interactive Fiction games

Posted on By Wil

Remember those old text adventure games from the 80s, like Zork and Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Planetfall and Lurking Horror? I loved them, and I loved how they engaged my imagination while they encouraged me to solve puzzles.

When I was at Origins, I saw this game called JUNGLE ADVENTURE, which uses a system called Parsely. It's essentially a live version of the old text adventure games. A GM plays the part of the computer, reading descriptions and giving responses to a group of any number of players who are trying to solve the adventure.

I haven't played it at a con, yet, but I've read stories from people who played it in a room of a hundred or more people, with delightful and hilarious results.

I've had such a good time reading JUNGLE ADVENTURE and SPACE STATION, I went to RPGnow and bought ACTION CASTLE, the very first game that was released using this game engine. (Note: I didn't realize, until I started writing this post, that mementomori sells the games directly, so I've linked to those pages here; shut up and give them your money!)

I'm not entirely sure it would work on Tabletop, but I'm going to try it with my friends at our next game day. 

I'm just going to throw this out there: I bet it would be really easy to design your own games using this system… get excited and make something, Internet!!