Tablepop: Recent Episodes
Mitchell Tierney and Jason Kotzur-Yang
Tablepop focuses on the ideas and stories behind the games we love. Author Mitchell Tierney and professional dilettante Jason Kotzur-Yang stand at the intersection of pop culture and tabletop gaming, and tell you what they see. Each episode we pick a theme, like kaiju or Star Wars, and explore games that tackle the theme and make authoritative judgements on how well they do it.
This Tablepop episode is a big hot mess of Alienses goodness. We start with the films and move onto Alien: Legendary Encounter, followed by Space Hulk, and finish up discussing our concerns about the future of the franchise! Game begin, man, game begin.
Also, there’s a freely available abandonware Aliens game that you can print out and play from Boardgamegeek.
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This week/month/quarter, we present part 2 of our dungeon series, this time focusing on board and card games that scratch the dungeon delving itch. First of all, we get deep into some nostalgia with HeroQuest! and DungeonQuest, then onto the licensed, approved WOTC Dungeons & Dragons board games. We have a good laugh at Munchkin's expense, and then get cutthroat in a cavern. We continue being kick-ass Dungeon Fighters by throwing dice (literally) and then Jason says horrible things about Defenders of the Realms because Comic Sans (also it's not his style). Finally, we go deep (or shallow) with Waterdeep and finish off with some nice, little fillers, namely Dungeon Roll and Dungeon of Mandom. Also, I try to convince Mitch to leave the house and come to Board Games and Burgers or Tabletop and Tacos. We still haven't played Descent!
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In this episode, Mitch and Jason get a little kinky... oh no, wait. Wrong dungeon! What follows is some meanderous rambling as we discuss our experience with D&D, including personal history, pop culture, Vin Diesel, Jason's secret desire to be a quaint hobbit and more. There's no show times for this one, as it's pretty fluid, but listen along for talk about Dungeons and Dragons in popular culture, and appraisals of 4th and 5th edition and Pathfinder. A few links for clarification and general clickery. (Also, apologies to Mitch and all the Kickstarters mentioned too. This took me longer than usual to get up, so none of the timely information is timely anymore!)
Mazes and Monsters is the D&D moral panic movie starring Tom Hanks, and the actuality is possibly somewhere between what I said in the episode and what the movie alleges. My knowledge all comes from Wikipedia, so if you're interested, I'd recommend you start there instead of listening to me.
The Dungeons and Dragons movie does not star Corey Feldman, it stars the guy who played Jimmy Olsen in the Adventures of Lois & Clark.
The legendary Summoner skit, which is a re-enactment of a Dead Alewives skit, a comedy group which counted Dan Harmon among their members.
The Tabletop episode with Lords of Waterdeep and Owlbears.
Batman alignment and miscelaneous alignment charts.
You can also check out the incomplete chronicles of the 4th edition campaign I undertook with a group of friends. I put it together to teach myself some web skills but never get round to filling out all the story. Steve, our barbarian, was played by Ian Glidden, the illustrator for Ragnarol and co-creator of Sausage-Cat (check out the link and buy some t-shirts, don't worry about the Japanese, he ships to Australia).
If you are interested in getting into Pathfinder (feature creep be damned), there's a new YouTube show that'll take you through the paces. I gave the guys running it Kickstarter money a while ago but am a little bit passed the intro stuff, so please get my money's worth for me.
This episode tackles the great sprawling board game universe of Star Wars. 13:45 Mitch's quote quiz. 18:20 Storytime with old man Mitch. 22:00 Wicket the Ewok Game. 25:40 Jason's pocket history of Star Wars board games. 28:50 X-Wing Miniatures. Pew pew. 54:45 The Star Wars - a brief comic interlude. 58:00 Star Wars: the non-hypothetical Card Game. 1:01:15 lamentations of the death of the EU and even more games on the way!
This episode, we jack in and log on to Matrix and tackle the cyberpunk genre. Jason makes Mitchell do a quiz, and we talk about some of the defining cultural artifacts of the great genre of the 80s and 90s. At 34:45: we actually start talking about games, starting with One Zero One. 40:10 Jason doesn't have enough friends to play Android but Android: Infiltration is a bit easier to access (41:20) and then we go jack deep with Android: Netrunner (58:00).
Links * One Zero One on Kickstarter * Run Last Click podcast
A special mini-episode of Tablepop, where we talk about a special thing each. Mitch talks about his experience as a Magic: The Gathering initiate (1:00-16:30) and Jason talks about the ideas behind his game Hedron (16:35 - end), now on Kickstarter. Please forgive, Jason's poor explanation of Star Trek races and our failure to work out what the plural of appendix is.
Giant robots with people inside them. 7:00 When a mummy Mech and a Daddy mech love each other very much... 27:00 Hawken: the Real-Time Card Game 37:30 Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack Links mentioned: Fragged Empire, Mobile Frame Zero, Robot Jox trailer and I did find an indie Mecha vs Kaiju RPG (it's based on the FATE system, which is around a 5 on the complicated scale)
Hawken Real-Time Card Game
Mobile Frame Zero
Godzilla SPOILERS warning, also SWEARS! Also also Jason lied when he said Hedron would be available to play at GO Lounge (he is a bad man) but it's still free on the internet! 9:00 is where the actual spoiler start. 20:15 is where the games start. 46:20 wraps up with what Mitch and Jason are doing and producing. Mitch's new book Everdark Realms: The Darkening can be found at www.ouroborusbooks.com; Jason's game Hedron can be found at www.endgamegames.com/hedron
This episode we tackle the zombie hordes. There's less inflections at the end of sentences this week, but lots of things and stuff. We also get a little carried away, and double the episode length. We'll get better!
9:00 Zombie pop culture. 34:15 Zombies on tables. 1:22:30 Australian Kickstarters Culture discussed * Romero and the Dead series * The Living Dead series * The Last Man on Earth * Marvel Zombies * The Walking Dead
Games discussed * Oh No Zombies! * Zombie Dice * Zombie Survival * Zombies!!! * The Walking Dead: The Board Game
Kickstarters discussed * Monster Town - will be available for preorder in July * Rise to Power
First podcast! Thanks for bearing with us while we find our feet and our tongues. Please ignore the glaring factual errors and enjoy the show. For corrections and apologies, see the references and apologies below the pictures.
References and relevant linkage Building success: how thinking 'inside the brick' saved Lego. Okay, this one is more stolen from, then mentioned but is some nice well-written, actually researched reading, and where a lot of my non made up factoids come from.
Study: Lego faces have been getting 'angrier' over last 20 years. I said this was a diagram, and that’s a straight out lie.
Weekend Box Office: 'LEGO Movie' Opens To $69 Million This link is probably annoying, so to summarise: $69 million, which is the best opening for a Warner Bros. animated, beating Happy Feet. You can see on Box Office Mojo that it’s currently winning 2014 by a lot.
The Lego Movie’s Australian connection with Animal Logic. Not actually referenced at all, but about Animal Logic, which is referenced.
Random derby reference clarification. A derby widow is the significant other of someone who plays roller derby, so named because they are essentially left alone and crying while their partner skates all the time.
Lego Games at Outer Rim Trading Co. An Australian site with pretty good prices. Tell them I sent you. They’ll have no idea what you’re talking about.
Lego Cuusoo. Sadly some of our favourite ones, don’t make it through the process, but are still awesome. * Super Mario * Sherlock, mostly for LOLs * Legend of Zelda. There are a few of these, but this one is best because Ocarina of Time is the best game ever.
Blocumentary: Adult Fans of Lego. AFOLs are only like bronies if you think bronies are awesome.
Lego Pick-A-Brick lets you choose the pieces you want, not the ones you deserve. I believe I said that these shipped from the US but they may actually ship from the Czech republic.
Star War Lego Prank. It was the Millenium Falcon, not the Star Destroyer or the Death Star.
Frame Zero. The current Kickstarter and the original Mech System Lego's 'sexist' Friends range for girls spurs 35% profit rise. There should be some more recent articles on this, but this came up first, and I’ve already linked to a lot of things...
Then-And-Now Photos Of The Girl From That Iconic LEGO Ad Show Just How Much Has Changed. The tagline was What it is is beautiful. Apologies Did you know I sound like a squeaky mouse man and end a lot of my sentences with inflections when nervous? Well, now we both do (sorry). Listening to myself is akin to torture so I’d like to assure that every ummm, you know, mmm hmmm, so and unnecessary double yeah was like a dagger into my heart. I’m going to say this makes me appear to be a good listener, but makes for terrible ear viewing. I’m also sorry for saying denouement and pronouncing it the way I did (very unAustralian). Mitchell is probably sorry he used the word hoes, and I’m sorry I didn’t flip the table on him, but there was expensive equipment on it.
I am aware that AT&T is an American phone company, and AT-AT’s are the iconic walking laser dogs from Star Wars. It’s one of those things I say that I know is wrong but I continue to say anyway. I apologise for this, as well. Stay in Touch Mitch’s twitter is @mitchellsbooks and Jason’s is @endgamegames. If you’re reading this is on End Game Games, you send find more contact links in the left column or at the bottom of page if you’re using a handheld device.