For Everyone Who Ever Asked Me When I Was Going to Be On “Tabletop”: NOW.
Posted on May 30, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 29 Comments
Here you go. It’s me, Wil Wheaton, Bobak Ferdowsi and Jason Finn playing Forbidden Island.
And, yeah, it was tons of fun. Just like you always expected it would be.
Plus! Here’s the extended interview of me! Because you just can’t get enough me, can you.
(Actually you can. But never mind that now.)
When I saw this I originally thought – Wait why would Wil be writing “For Everyone Who Ever Asked Me When I Was Going to Be On “Tabletop”. Then I read it again, then I look and realized I had come to WHATEVER not WilWheatondotNet.
I can’t wait to watch this during lunch.
Just think, if you had won you would have gotten to do the WiLambada: The Forbidden (Island) Dance.
I’m suddenly curious about how much work Wil does in matching the guests to the game. Does he say, “Oh, that Scalzi guy…he’s naturally competitive, so I’ll mess with him and put him in a cooperative game” or is it largely luck of the draw–he’d worked out what to say for Forbidden Island, you were going to see him, so he threw you into the mix?
Obviously, this is a question better asked of Wil Wheaton, but I’m here instead of there, so what did it look like from your side of things?
i just watched the video and now have to go out and buy the game. . .
Uhhh, Wil….
You can give up on trying to be Rod Serling any time…
OK, I may have missed something here, but why did you guys start out with the island partly flooded? I just checked the instructions on my copy at home, and it clearly says to lay out the board with all tiles face up. Which, THANK YOU, because no way would we ever win a game without doing that. Was it just to shorten the length of the game to fit the format?
Eris,
Step 1 of the set-up is to lay out the 24 tiles face up. But Step 4 flips some over:
“4. The Island Starts to Sink: Shuffle the Flood deck and place it face down on one side of the island to form the Flood draw pile. Draw the top 6 cards (1 at a time) and place them face up next to the draw pile to form the Flood discard pile. For each card drawn, flip the corresponding Island tile over to its “flooded” (blue and white) side.”
So the game always starts with six flooded tiles.
Very cool!
Stephen McNeil… Well, dang. See, this is exactly why you don’t have the dyslexic be the one to read through the rule book. Or, alternatively, why you DO.
Excellent. I can’t wait to watch it. I always watch Tabletop, but I think this will be the first time I’ve played a game before seeing it on the show.
What, no women geeks playing with you? Was it your aggressiveness John? I can see that having 4 hi powered geeks of your stature would be intimidating, but come on John. Tsk, tsk, tsk
Am I the only one that can’t “click here” to get back to Forbidden Island? The Youtube progress/volume/etc bar pops up when I try to click there.
I’m stuck halfway between Detroit and Puebla MX, killing time waiting for a delayed flight at GWB Houston Airport. But I have Agent to the Stars to read, thanks to B&N. I think I can get through this.
Great – now I have a new game to play with family and on my iPad?
How big is the Scalzi bump?
It was actually really fun to watch. And I was really rooting for you guys to win!
TableTop: Gaming With The Stars. Except who was that Kevin guy?
Sorry, I meant who was that Jason* guy?
@Xopher: He was the drummer for the Presidents of the USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Finn_%28musician%29
I’m glad I just picked up Forbidden Island two weeks ago. The TableTop effect is still preventing from Friendly Local Game Store from having Pandemic in stock. That, and the desperate need they had to reprint after botching part of the first run of the new edition.
In any case, this show has caused me to buy many new games. The co-op ones like FI have made gaming with my kids a much better experience, as I too like feasting on entrails at the table. One of my favorite memories is of my wife’s youngest sister, who was six at the time, throwing dice at my head during a game of Monopoly.
jimbot, although there weren’t any women this episode, there almost always are. One of the things that I like about Tabletop is that the ratio of women to men is pretty good on average.
For me, Pandemic is a slightly better game, but Forbidden Island is really good too. And for $15, FI is a steal at that price.
On the plus side, at least this time he didn’t punch the box.
aproustian, I am just holding John to the same standards that liberals hold conservatives to. John has staked out a position, sold shirts, written essays. Now on the 1st public appearance on Tabletop since taking this position, there are no women in the game. Outrageous! Hypocriit! Now I can discount all of his positions because of this. He is not worthy to be listened to. :)
Oh, jimbot…*weary sigh* I take it your bridge hasn’t been washed away, so you still have shelter?
And I assume that since you’re discounting John’s every position completely, you won’t be reading this blog or, gods forbid, commenting any more. Wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite (note spelling) yourself.
Now I must have this game. Fortunately, Wizard World is this weekend.
Xopher, I guess I should start putting in my [/sarcasm] tags.
[/sarcasm] I guess I can count on your support for Newt? He’s the Churchill of our times.[/end sarcasm]
I have tried to collect and read most of John’s stuff, and am having issues reconciling the views of John (the blogger) vs John (the author) who wrote OMW. They are coming from very different points of view.
One of the things that has been bothering me for the last 20 years is that political correctness has been eroding our rights to free speech and association. I see John as currently one those standard bearers (or flag waving revolutionary) and am hoping to reason with him.
[/sarcasm] I’m hoping that some nerd gaming group will file (and win) a law suit against the current generation of feminists. Then we can go back to being a hated minority like the boy scouts. {/end sarcasm]
If nothing else, if I hang around here long enough without getting kittened or slammed with the mallet, I just might be immortalized in John’s next version of “Your hate mail will be graded”. Hopefully he won’t mark down for spelling and punctuation.
I may possibly have snaffled the last copy of this game from Amazon Canada. *maniacal laughter*
It’ll be nice to have a co-op game to play with my friends on board game night. We suffer from a terrible case of X person always winning Y game.
I’m heading off tonight to the approximately bi-weekly meeting of my gaming group. Which happens to include a higher percentage of females than males, even if you don’t include the 3-year-old (who is already showing signs of having Mad Gaming Skilz). I’ll be sure to suggest Forbidden Island as one of the games we play, before we inevitably get sucked into the black hole of Dominion.
I was pleased, last fall, to be able to tell Steve Jackson that our gaming group still plays Star Traders, but we only start when it’s inadvisedly late, so we tend to finish the game at 5am….
Eep. Forgot to remove the spam notice in my name. Sorry.