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

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

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!!

Tabletop’s Castle Panic Gag Reel

This whole thing makes me laugh a whole lot.

Thanks for watching! Hope you get to play some games with your friends this weekend, because that's what I'm doing on Saturday. Yaay!

It’s a new Tabletop! Castle Panic! Yaaay!

Things I love:

Tower Defense games.
Cooperative games.
My friends Yuri and Tara.
My new friend Andre.

Oh, look what happens when we combine all of these things:

Mental Floss really likes Tabletop, and I talk to Nerdist about Second Watch

Two things for you, free of charge.

1. Mental Floss said really nice things about Tabletop:

So Wil Wheaton has a YouTube show about boardgames, and it’s awesome. It’s called TableTop, and it’s a long-form (about a half hour per episode) look at various good boardgames, including a basic explanation of how to play each — plus an actual play session so you can actually get it. Whether you’re a boardgame nerd or a “normal” person looking for a fun diversion for your next party, this is for you.

I'm crazy about Mental Floss, so this means a lot to me. I think Mental Floss reaches people who don't already know about Tabletop, and I'm hopeful that this will bring some new viewers and eventual new gamers into the world.

Also, I met a woman in Trader Joe's today who watches Tabletop. This is how I recounted it to Twitter:

Girl in store: Do you make that tabletop show? Me: Yes! Her: My husband and I love it! We have a game night because of it! Me: AWESOME!

Then:

Her little girl: Daddy's favorite is the trains! Her: We love Ticket to Ride. Anne: Careful with the board. Me: Voice of experience, here.

Her husband told me via the tweety box that she was there to get snacks for their weekly boardgame night, which exists because they were inspired by Tabletop.

Mission: Accomplished*

2. I talked with Nerdist Incorporated about Falling Skies Second Watch, Tabletop, and the new media revolution:

N: 2nd Watch will be living on the web. In what ways will the show’s format be taking advantage of its portal?

WW: Hopefully, it will let us reach out to and embrace the audience in a more interactive way than we can with television, which is one-way communication.

N: With after-shows like this and Talking Dead, you and Chris are acting as ambassadors to the community on behalf of those shows. Do you think networks are finally seeing the value in personally connecting with the audience? And how does having the trust of an audience weigh on deciding whether or not to take on a job like this?

WW: It’s a huge responsibility to host one of these shows, because we need to know as much about the individual episodes and the cast as the most über of überfans. We’re essentially acting as a bridge between the fans of the show and the people who make it, so we absolutely need to have our shit together. I take the responsibility very seriously, and I know that there’s a certain amount of “this is awesome” implied when I agree to do something like this, which is why I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t absolutely love the show.

The networks are taking baby steps, as younger executives who have grown up with the Internet replace retiring executives who are still trying to fight the Napster battle. One of the key areas (in which) indies are destroying the majors is with fan outreach, no region-locking, no DRM, and things like that. It makes me really, really happy that TNT and AMC are seeing that the old style of one-way, top-down network to audience relationships need to adapt and change to meet what audiences expect right now.

There's a lot more to our interview, which I hope you'll read because I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing my answers down. For you. For science. You monster.

*And not in the fake codpiece way.