Hi, I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is my show, "Not the Flog." At
Geek and Sundry, we call it Wil's boner hour, but that
doesn't make sense, either, because this show is not an
hour long, right?
You're just going to have to sit here the whole time.
The reason Luna is in so many of "TableTop" gag reel
introduction videos is because the only time she shuts up is
when she's like this, right Luna?
See, she won't say anything because she's in my hand.
I am here to talk to you today about math.
There are 52 weeks in a year.
We create 20 new episodes of "TableTop" every year.
That leaves 32 weeks where we don't have
something new to show you.
We have tried very hard to fill those 32 weeks with some
fun stuff-- some outtakes, some extended plays, some
weeks where we just sit in our offices and drink out of the
pool of tears you cry when there's no new "TableTop."
It's a really good time.
But we're trying something new this week.
I wanted to talk a little bit about--
Luna, seriously, shut up--
how we choose the games that we play on "TableTop." And
we're going to do it all here in my dining room, which
doesn't always look like this.
It kind of does.
A few months before we begin production, my producer,
Boyan, and I get together, and we make two very
big lists of games.
We start with between 80 and 100 games and then put those
lists through a series of filters.
The first filter that we have to get past is, do I like it?
If I don't like a game, we don't play it on the show, the
end, because it's my show, and I'm the boss.
And if I'm going to be the boss, then
I'm going to be bossy.
So the second filter that it has to go through is, does
this game look really good?
If we're playing a game that uses cards, the cards have to
be very clear.
If we're using a game that has miniatures, then the
miniatures have to look good.
And the game can't be too visually busy, because it
makes it very hard for our editors to know
what's going on.
They're not gamers.
Although I will say that roughly 90% of our crew
started out season one of "TableTop" as non-gamers and
have actually become gamers since the second day of
production.
There is nothing better than coming to work on "TableTop,"
and on the very first day, the crew gets together and we have
our "we're starting the season" meeting, and the
crew's like, OK, what game are we going to get to play at
lunch this season?
That just makes me really happy.
The third filter that we have to pass through is, does this
game have a high ratio of luck to strategy?
I want you to imagine a graph.
This is the luck axis.
This is the strategy axis.
There are games that I'm crazy about, games like "Power Grid"
and "Puerto Rico." They're going to be down
here on that list--
low luck, but high strategy.
A game like "Zombie Dice" is high luck and
relatively low strategy.
A game like "Settlers of Catan" is up here.
It's high luck, and it's high strategy.
Games that have a high intersection of strategy and
luck on that imaginary graph that I've drawn are the ones
that we like to feature on "TableTop."
Experienced players have an opportunity to plan carefully
and adapt to changing circumstances in the games.
And players who are relatively new to the games are able to
feel comfortable and not feel completely overwhelmed and
think, well, if I make one wrong decision early in the
game, I'm screwed forever.
And that's something that happens in a game like
"Agricula" or "Puerto Rico." If you mess up, you're never
going to get to catch up, and that's
just not fun for anyone.
The final filter that the games have to go through is
about their rules.
I need the rules to be easily explainable
in about five minutes.
And the reason this is important is because
"TableTop" is, for a lot of people, a learning experience.
It's how people-- hi, Ronny--
how people get exposed to board games.
And we need them to be able to have a quick understanding of
it and be able to follow the game as we're playing it.
If a game is just really super, hyper complicated, like
"Fantasy Flight Battlestar Galactica" is one of my
favorite games ever.
But it just takes so long to explain those rules, and that
rule book is intimidating and complicated.
So this year, we took "The Resistance," which uses the
trader mechanic and "Shadows Over Camelot," which is sort
of the grandparent of "Battlestar Galactica," as an
example of that kind of game.
So now that you know how we choose games to play on
"TableTop," I wanted to talk about a couple of games that I
really love, that I really think people who enjoy the
show like playing, but that we can't play on the show for one
reason or another.
We roughly shoot two hours of gameplay, another hour to an
hour and 15 minutes of interviews that get
cut into the game.
And then on all of that is edited to what you finally see
on "TableTop."
So we're taking a ton of footage and cutting it down to
roughly 30 minutes.
This unfortunately means that some of those really amazing,
epic, big-box, legendary, long-play games just aren't
going to work on the show.
I said last season that I've never had as much fun losing a
game as I do losing "Pandemic," but "Arkham
Horror" is another one of those great structured role
playing board games where you play for four or five hours,
and your investigators are going insane, and they're
dying, and you're rarely going to win when the Ancient One
actually makes it into our world.
But it's a really wonderful, really fun game.
Even if I split that up into two episodes of "TableTop" so
that we took that four hours or five hours and put it into
roughly one hour, I think it doesn't do the game justice.
And I don't think it's fair to the designers.
And I just don't think it's really in anyone's best
interest to play those games.
So unfortunately, games like "Eclipse" and "Twilight
Imperium," they're just games that aren't going to work on
our format.
There's a whole other collection of games that were
really created by the success of "Magic the Gathering," and
those are the deck building and drafting games.
I love these games, but unfortunately, what makes
those games really fun is what happens in your head as you're
trying to decide which card you're going to draw, how
you're going to build your deck, and how you're going to
react to what the other players are doing.
Some games that I would love to play on "TableTop." that I
would just love the world to know more about are "Dominion"
and "Ascension." They're super fun, but it just unfortunately
wouldn't work.
So the last kind of game that I absolutely love are the
two-player games.
These are games that play kind of like chess,
but they're not boring.
Oh, I'm going to get hate mail from the chess nerds.
It's OK, I love you guys.
I'm just teasing because I don't understand chess.
But when you have two players, nobody really
talks to each other.
This is what a two-player game looks like.
It's so much fun to play those games, right?
But what we need to do with "TableTop" is have people
talking to each other.
And we need a lot of the action to be up around here.
So some two-player games that I would have loved to put on
"TableTop" this season, but unfortunately couldn't, were
"All Creatures Big and Small," Battle Lore" and "Memoir 44."
These games are so much fun, but they just are not going to
work for our format.
So listen, I hope that this has been informative.
I hope that this has been interesting to you.
I really love making "TableTop." I
look forward to it.
I'm so happy that we are spreading the love of board
games to people around the world.
I love that we're bringing families together and just
giving people an excuse to get together at a table and spend
an evening together with other people in person.
I think that's a really great thing.
And thanks for watching the show and making it successful
enough for us to do it a second time.
And hopefully, we'll be able to get to do it a third time.
Thanks for watching "Not the Flog," and we'll see you next
time on "TableTop." Play more games.