We played a co-op game that’s as unforgiving and intense as any I have ever played: Flashpoint. In this game, we are firefighters, trying to save people from a burning building. The thing is, fire is relentless and unpredictable, and the people who live in this house are hazardous materials collectors. So … yeah. It’s intense.

I played with Clare Grant, Seth Green, and Kelly Hu. We had AMAZING and beautiful painted minis for this one, including the Hazmat Specialist, who Seth and I agreed is pretty much Cobra Commander:

It was a really fun, and incredibly intense game. I’m excited to see how it comes together in the editing suite.

Did I choose a dice game that’s pretty much entirely about luck? Yes, I did. Am I nuts? Maybe a little bit, yeah. This game is just silly and occasionally stupid, and always fun. Justifying why you lost thousands of soldiers and only scratched the dragon, or why you had a thousand soldiers ready to join your army but then lost all of them seconds later is a big part of why I like this game.

I played with Derek Mio, Neil Grayston, and Brandon Routh.

I wanted to mix up what we usually play on the show, and since we did so many heavier games last year, this is a great way to provide some balance and casual silliness to the lineup. A game like this also helps us learn how to make our own fun when we play, because the dice aren’t always going to do what we want, so if you’re just being competitive or getting super serious about strategy, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Because Dragon Farkle is 100% about luck and being silly, I don’t mind the randomness of the dice. There is just no strategy involved at all, here, so you either accept that and let the dice fall where they may, or you play something else. There are other games that have a lot of strategy in them, or other mechanics that should reward clever thinking, but then they put dice into the mix and if you don’t get lucky, all that strategy and clever thinking is wasted. Games like that are annoying to me, and make me feel disempowered. But Dragon Farkle? You roll the dice, press your luck, make a bunch of dumb noises, and then get on with it.

I shouldn’t like this game, but I have fun every time I play it. Maybe you will, too.

So this one time, Dixit and Clue got stuck in an elevator, and … well, Mysterium happened … and I’m really glad that it did. It’s one of those games that plays pretty quickly, and whether I win or lose, I want to play again right away.

This game has been on my list since I first saw it at GenCon last year, because it’s just perfect for our show. Also, the artwork that is such an important part of this game is so beautiful, I’d like to buy a whole lot of it and hang it on my walls in Castle Wheaton.

I played with David Kwong, Laura Bailey, and Shannon Woodward.

I freaking LOVE this game, and I think the episode we shot today is going to do a great job showing people exactly why. And here’s a super neat not-so-secret: if you own Dixit, you can use your Dixit cards with Mysterium, for an instant expansion.

I’m probably not going to have the time or energy to do this for every day of production, but I do right now, so …

Today, we started production on season four of Tabletop. It feels strange to me, like I’ve been doing it forever, and like I just started it for the very first time. There’s a lot about last season that was a pretty big bummer for me, but all of those things were addressed and corrected in the off season, and if today is any indication, this will be the most fun I’ve had doing a season of the show since the first one.

We made a number of production and personnel changes, but the production change that’s most important to me is that we’re only doing one game a day for most of this season. We’ve always shot two games per day, and it felt like a race against time before we even got into the set to start shooting. A schedule that’s less aggressive means that we can play a couple of bigger, more complex games that take longer, and it also means that when we play a most games, we aren’t racing against the clock to start the next one like we’ve done in the past. I’m hopeful that by the time we get to the last few days of production, I’ll be as happy, focused, relaxed, and satisfied as I am right now, instead of the usual exhaustion and mental numbness.

But today? Today was awesome. I played Fury of Dracula (third edition) with Amy Okuda, Grant Imahara, and Ify Nwadiwe. We had so much fun! It was as intense as you’d want this game to be, and we played enough to probably make two dramatic and entertaining episodes. I know someone’s going to ask what roles we played, but I’m not going to say right now, because reasons.

Fury of Dracula was one of the games that helped make me a Gamer in the 80s, and it’s a game that I would have loved to play on the show. So when Fantasy Flight reprinted it and updated to this new edition, it was one of the first games I put on the list.

If you’re curious about it, and don’t want to wait months to see us play it, I highly recommend the Shut up and Sit Down How To Play video (which I watched myself, while I was learning this edition), because it’s informative and entertaining. For those of you wondering, we played with the advanced rules today.

Also, if you’re into Dracula and RPGs, you may like Dracula Unredacted, which is what happens when Night’s Black Agents and Dracula collide.

Dracula is not a novel. It’s the censored version of Bram Stoker’s after-action report of the failed British Intelligence attempt to recruit a vampire in 1894. Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan have restored the deleted sections, inserting annotations and clues left by three generations of MI6 analysts.

I mean, seriously. Even if you’re not going to play it, it’s a hell of an enjoyable read.

And since we’re talking vampires for a moment, some of my very favorite vampire movies, in no particular order:

• Near Dark
• The Lost Boys
• Nosferatu
• What We Do In The Shadows
• Fright Night

I’m proud of the work we did today, and hopefully tonight I will actually sleep all night, instead of waking up again and again from panic attacks and nightmares like I have for the last week, while I was stressed as fuck about getting production off the ground, and could only think about the stuff that made me unhappy from last time. It’s good to have something positive and awesome to build on, so my brain will hopefully focus on that now.