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Tabletop Season Four Day One: Fury of Dracula

Tabletop Season Four Day OneI’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.

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Here’s The Game Lineup for Tabletop Season Four

Agressive BreedingWe looked at eleven million games, and playtested ninety-six thousand games, for season four of Tabletop.

The exact order that we’re releasing episodes and the exact timeline for the release isn’t set yet, and it isn’t up to me, but here are the games we’ve settled on for Tabletop Season Four:

  • Lanterns
  • Fury of Dracula
  • Mysterium
  • Code Names (with six players for maximum funtimes)
  • FATE Core RPG
  • Dragon Farkle
  • Flashpoint
  • Harbour
  • Eldritch Horror
  • Star Realms
  • Monarch
  • Star Trek – 5 Year Mission
  • Champions of Midgard
  • Steam Park
  • Tiny Epic Galaxies
  • Welcome To The Dungeon
  • Misspent Youth RPG

This season, I wanted to play games that were accessible to families, indie games, more RPGs, and at least one or two games that broke the rules I usually use to choose games. We start filming in a few days, and the season will be released starting in June or July. And because I know it’s going to end up being a FAQ: Titansgrave’s second season is in development right now. We’re aiming to film it in a couple of months, and release it in Autumn.

I hope there’s at least one thing here that you’re looking forward to, and PLAY MORE GAMES!!

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My speech to the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival

I'm going to try SCIENCEOn April 17, I was given the great honor and privilege to speak before the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC.

These are my prepared remarks. I mostly stuck to them, and didn’t improvise as much as I usually do, because I was more nervous than usual at this conference. I knew that I had to speak to children, their parents, and their teachers. I hoped that I would inspire them all to keep doing awesome things, and to do more awesome things. I also hoped that some of my remarks would be heard beyond the walls of the conference, because I’m doing my best to make a positive difference in the world.

Please keep in mind that these remarks are written to be read and performed by me, so they are probably not as strong when read as I hope they are when they are heard.

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