It’s my 44th Birthday. Time for a check-in.

Today, I complete my 44th trip around the Sun. It’s only taken me a little over 16,000 days, so my pace is pretty solid.

Most birthdays since I turned 30 have just been another X in the box, more or less, but this one is the first since I made a deliberate choice to reboot my life, so now I can clearly and honestly assess how that’s been going (which I guess is what I’ve done every month since I started, but whatever. It sounds profound so there.)

One year ago today, I was at GenCon, having the worst birthday and worst GenCon of my life. I should have been having fun, playing games, and celebrating Tabletop, but I spent the entire convention meeting with game publishers who had been lied to by the same person (who I thought was a trusted friend) who had been lying to me for three years, using me and his position as a trusted part of Tabletop to advance his own goals. While I was trying to deal with the emotional effects of being so totally and utterly betrayed, I also had to try my best to set it aside and save not just my show, but dozens of relationships that I didn’t even know had been severely damaged. I sat down with people who didn’t know me, who I didn’t know, and had to listen to them tell me about all the lies they’d been told about me, about my show, and about my personal values. It was horrible. I had a terrible time, and by the time the day was over, I just wanted to drink beer until I couldn’t feel feelings.

What a difference a year makes. Instead of trying not to cry all day, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet of my home. Instead of struggling to find some enthusiasm to make more Tabletop, I’m creating and writing the stories I’ve been wanting to tell for months. Instead of cleaning up someone else’s mess, I’m spending the day with the people I love.

Being betrayed by someone I loved like family was one of the most painful and devastating things I’ve ever experienced. But I can take something good out of it: it forced me to look at what I was doing with my life, how I was coping with the way I was feeling, and why I had allowed all of it to happen in the first place.

It forced me to get serious about dealing with all that unhappiness, and ask myself what is important to me? What do I want to do with my life? What can I do to take control of my life? How can I be responsible for my happiness?

It’s an ongoing process. Some days are harder than others. I make mistakes, but I learn from them. Months later, I still have profound realizations about my life, my art, and where they intersect all the time, thanks to the clarity and focus my life reboot has given me.

I never would have expected my 44th birthday to be a Big One™, but here we are. Let’s check-in and see how my seven things are working out.

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Wrapping up Tabletop Season 4

It was a really good season. I had the most fun I’ve had since the first season, primarily because I reclaimed much of the stuff that had either been taken from me, or I’d given away.

We played games that we wouldn’t have been able to play in previous season, like Fury of Dracula and Eldritch Horror, and rather than try to go for lots of games that are heavy on strategy, I recalled my primary focus in the first two seasons, and looked for games that were accessible and varied, so that more people in the world will want to play more games. I played games that I never would have considered, because they have a lot of luck involved, but are still fun because they’re fast.

I stopped worrying about what The Audience was going to think, because I realized that I had allowed my fucked up brain to turn The Audience into The People On The Internet Who Hate Whatever I Do Anyway So I’ll Show Them. Recognizing that (with clarity I wouldn’t have had without my reboot) gave me permission to make the show that I wanted to make, the way I wanted to make it.

And I can’t overstate how good it was to clean house and get rid of the toxic garbage that was dragging me and the show down. If I’d only done that, this would have been the best season, ever, from a personal standpoint.

I also won a game this year, so that’s a thing.

I’m tired, but it’s a good tired that feels earned instead of imposed, if that makes sense.

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Tabletop Season 4 Day 11: Lanterns

Lanterns was the first game I officially locked into our schedule for this season. It was the first game I was able to announce, months ago, when I played it with Ivan Van Norman and Becca Scott (#BeccaCheats) on their show Game the Game.

Then, as it happened, Ivan and Becca (#beccaistheworst) were the first guests I was able to announce, because we decided to have a rematch on Tabletop. We also invited the former G&S Twitch Overlord, Zac Eubanks, to fill out the game.

Lanterns has enough strategy to make it satisfying for experienced gamers, but it’s also so easy to teach, learn, and play, it’s perfect for players as young as 8 years-old. It’s also great bridge to more complex games, regardless of your age.

I’ve experienced a lot of shitty and cruel stuff in the popular online boardgame forums, but I discovered this game because someone in r/boardgames was talking about how great it was. If my memory is correct, the same post brought another game we’re playing this season, Harbour, to my attention. I mention this because it’s so easy to just ragequit and want to burn the whole internet down when shitty people are shitty. We tend to focus on the garbage, because the garbage smells the worst and if it isn’t thrown away, can totally take over a place, but we need to remember that there are a lot of good, kind, enthusiastic people out there in the world who want to share the things they love with us, and who want to build and cultivate a positive community. I’m doing everything I can to make Tabletop part of the positive and awesome gaming community that has meant so much to me for over thirty years of my life. After last season, I didn’t know if that was possible, but this year I feel like it’s come back to what I always wanted it to be. It was a good idea to take out the trash, it turns out.

Tabletop Season 4 Days 8-10

Me, cosplaying as an adult who knows exactly what you're up to. — Me, cosplaying as an adult who knows exactly what you’re up to.

Remember when I said I may not have time to do this every day? Well, here we are.

This season continues to be the most fun and the most satisfying since our first season, for a lot of reasons that will need their own post at some point in the future. The tl;dr is if I still feel the way I feel right now when production is over, I will probably want to do at least one more season of the show.

So let’s catch up on what we’ve played the last few days…

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Tabletop Season 4 Day 7: Misspent Youth

We’re doing a lot of things we’ve never done before this year: 2-player games, massively epic games that will take more than a single episode to resolve, and some other neat things that I like. But we’re also doing some things that I love from previous seasons, like playing a rules-light indie RPG that lets us tell a compelling story without a lot of crunchy rules.

Today, Matt Fraction, Amy Dallen, Kelly Sue DeConnick and I played an absolutely phenomenal game called Misspent Youth. Here’s my introduction to get you excited about it:

MISSPENT YOUTH is an indie RPG about friendship, rebellion, and kicking ass, designed by Robert Bohl.

I want this pair of episodes to give you an experience similar to our sister show, TITANSGRAVE. That means that the focus will be on the characters and their narrative. I don’t want to overwhelm you with a lot of mechanics and crunchy system details that remind you we’re playing a game. I want this to be about the story.

But there are a few things you need to know before we get started:

In Misspent Youth, one of us will be THE AUTHORITY. That player will represent the force that’s making life miserable for the other players, who will be the YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS. THE AUTHORITY is our version of a GAME MASTER, in as much as THE AUTHORITY player will handle adversaries, challenge the other players, and work really hard to ruin their day. Unlike a traditional RPG where the GAME MASTER needs to be a neutral arbiter of rules and a narrative facilitator, THE AUTHORITY in Misspent Youth openly works in opposition to the other players, and both sides are going to fight like hell against each other to achieve their goals.

The YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS, or YOs, play a group of kids, from about 12 to 18 years-old, who are fighting back against THE AUTHORITY. At its core, Misspent Youth is about the struggle between the two sides.

Before we get into the story, we will all work together to set up the world we’re going to play in. It’s usually a dystopian sci-fi world, like The Hunger Games, Logan’s Run, or the 2016 presidential election in America, but it could just as easily be something more grounded in reality, like the world of Pump Up The Volume, Repo Man, or even Dazed and Confused.

Each session of a game is divided into seven different narrative sections. At the heart of each section is something called THE STRUGGLE. THE STRUGGLE is the primary conflict resolution mechanic of Misspent Youth, and it’s the only time we’ll use dice in the game. One side will win each struggle, and both sides will deal with the consequences. We’ll explain the specifics of The Struggle when it happens.

Misspent Youth is unlike any other RPG I’ve ever played, but I can see the influences of groundbreaking RPGs like FATE, Fiasco, and even Dread in its DNA. This is a game that lets us focus on the story, and makes it possible for old guys like me to imagine that we’re still young and fighting every day for something more important than a parking space. And I’m incredibly excited to be playing today with some phenomenally creative people.

Dig out your Rage Against The Machine records, and lace up your steel-toed boots, because we are about to visit our MISSPENT YOUTH.

Excited? I hoped you would be. If you want to get to playing this right fucking now, you can do a couple of different things: you can order a gorgeous PDF copy from Drivethru RPG dot Com, you can pre-order a printed version (which I own and love because it looks and feels and reads like a graphic novel), or you can freely download the eyebleed version that creator Robert Bohl has put online for your enjoyment.

If you end up playing it (and I really hope that you do), I hope you’ll share some details about the world you created with the other players, because I feel like there are a lot of stories to be told using this setting, sort of like you can with FATE or Fiasco, and those of us who have played the game will really love to see what other players come up with. And, because someone will ask: yes, I’ll release details about the world we created when this episode airs.