seenontabletop:

When I first heard about International Tabletop Day, I was very excited. Every day I typed the postcode of my nearest city into the page and was thrilled when I found an event listed. Growing up in regional Australia meant that I wasn’t exposed to gamer culture growing up - as an adult living in a city means there are opportunities to find other like-minded people and to share the joy of gaming with friends and family.

But when the date drew near I realised that International Tabletop Day was on Holy Saturday. I couldn’t attend the big function I was so excited about. The Easter Holidays have always been spent at my parent’s house in a small coastal town. And this Easter was going to be a particularly difficult one. My father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in December, just before Christmas He was only in his early 60’s, and seemed healthy. His death has devastated our family, especially my mother. She has really struggled to come to terms with his death. There have been a lot of challenges in the past few months, especially with my younger sister leaving for a semester studying abroad in America just three weeks after Dad’s funeral. So this Easter would not only be spent without Dad, but without my sister as well.

The rest of the family all headed down to Mum’s house for Easter. I wondered what could be done to make it less of a gloomy occasion. Inspiration struck - International Tabletop Day could still be marked. After dinner everyone sat around the dining room table and played Fluxx. It was suitably chaotic (I was the only person who had played Fluxx before) but soon everyone was laughing and groaning when the rules got more and more complex. Even though Mum had never played the game before, she won every game but two. I hadn’t seen her laugh so much or so hard since before Dad died. It helped bring everyone together for something joyous, a fitting was to pass the Vigil before the joys of Easter Day.

So thank you, International Tabletop Day, for helping make our first Easter without Dad that little bit easier.

I’ll be right back. I have something in both of my eyes.

seenontabletop:

Homemade brains tokens for Zombie Dice inspired by Tabletop

seenontabletop:

My brother is the Keeper of the Miniatures for our Pathfinder Game. He forgot them at one session. Luckily, I have four boys. Lego Minifigures and a plastic bug took care of that problem!

it8bit:

Classic Ads: Mr. Do!

Mr. Do! is an arcade game created by Universal in 1982. Remotely similar in gameplay to Namco’s popular Dig Dug title, Mr. Do! was also popular and saw release on a variety of home video game consoles and systems. It went on to sell 30,000 units in the United States. [Wiki]

When I open my beercade, it’s totally going to have a Mr. Do! machine in it.

seenontabletop:

Great way to celebrate New Year’s in Alaska! Defeated the mythos in Arkham Horror with four expansions, five players, eighteen points. Take that, Cthuga!

Fun as a long game that is still a one shot to play with family and friends as they visit for the holidays. I first played this visiting family overseas - and it was worth taking up some of the tour time!

I love this game so much. If it didn’t take 3 hours (when it’s quick, more like 5 in reality) to play, we’d put it on Tabletop.

seenontabletop:

When I first found out from Wil’s twitter that he was going to start a web show about gaming, I was incredibly happy. I watched them religiously and shortly after the casual games episode (Tsuro, Zombie Dice, and Get Bit) aired I had begun dating my girlfriend. She wasn’t really a gamer in the same sense that the show pushed for, she was a bit more of a video game geek who didn’t like to show her colors too often.

When I would hang out with her at one of our apartments, I would sometimes be watching the newest episode of Tabletop, which she became interested in. She is a long time TNG fan and thought that a show hosted by Wil would be worth watching. I think I got her hooked when we watched the episode with Ticket to Ride and Munchkin. The gaming bug was starting to bite and I even bought her the book “Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress” to help infect her more with tabletop gaming.

I’m just going to say that it worked. We now are a part of a fairly large gaming group that meets on Fridays. We started off playing Pathfinder and Munchkin, though we used my old, beat up copy of Munchkin (a third print copy that has seen at least ten years of wear and tear), and we also played other games, like Pandemic, Fluxx, Gloom, Say Anything, and Settlers of Catan.

I’m happy to say that the gaming bug has definitely settled into my girlfriend, and we can’t wait for new episodes of Tabletop to expand our gaming catalog.

seenontabletop:

Our first Pandemic expansion pack play-through - And WIN!  It was a great relief to pull it off with our final cure in the second-to-last turn of the game.  It really helped that we were able to cure and eradicate our virulent strain (Zombie plague) at the beginning, as otherwise the epidemic cards would have done us in for sure!

Can’t wait to try our luck again next time!

Love that the virulent strain was zombie plague.

seenontabletop:

Everyone in the family got a game, plus Santa brought us the game Origins. Now if we could just get snowed in.

seenontabletop:

Got this for Christmas! Yay Wil Wheaton!

seenontabletop:

Thanks to Tabletop, me and my sweetie bought Ticket to Ride (Europe) and Munchkin (Apocalypse) for ourselves as Christmas presents, and spent today in bed playing them. I was never much of a board game player until Tabletop.

“I was never much of a board game player until Tabletop.”

My primary ulterior motive with Tabletop is to make more people want to be gamers.

Nailed it.