My Top Ten Picks for TableTop Guest-Players

So, my favorite show over on Geek and Sundry is Wil Wheaton’s TableTop.  If you haven’t seen it or at least heard of it, you are either not enough of a nerd to be reading my blog or you have been hiding under the preverbal rock.  Either way, it is a webseries in which Wil Wheaton level Celebrates play nerdy table top games (usually Euro style board games, but dice, card, roll playing, and Ameritrash games as well).  Here’s a sample episode (this episode runs about 25 minutes):

This list is my picks for Guest-Players who need to appear on the show. 

10.       Lisa Foiles – a quasi-famous former TV star turned internet phenomenon (like Wil Wheaton).  Lisa is probably best remembered for appearing on Nickelodeon’s All That, but is now better known as a video game journalist and web-star – previously hosting The Game Station’s Remag and currently hosting Top Five with Lisa Foiles.  Plus, we already know she’ll win, cause she’s a redhead, and redheads always win on TableTop. 

9.         Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer – probably not the biggest celebs to ever appear on TableTop (Jeri Ryan is at least as big, right? And Seth Green?).  This duo of BSG stars are no stranger to YouTube nerdom appearances.  Katee appears in Team Unicorn’s “Geek and Gamer Girls” music video and Tricia is in The Nerd Machine’s miniseries Trailer Park Heroes. 

8.         Adrianne Curry – this is either a stroke of genius or a recipe for disaster.  Should be fun to watch either way.  Not only is Adrianne a self admitted nerd and video gamer, but she also has a show Super Fans on Stan Lee’s World of Heroes YouTube channel and let’s face it, you can’t have more nerd cred than Stan Lee.  She is, however, a bit scandalous…and naughty…and nsfw.

7.         Joss Whedon – a god in the greater nerd pantheon, Whedon is responsible for Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and Marvel’s The Avengers.  He’s also responsible for Felicia Day (who first rose to nerd prominence in Buffy, Dr. Horrible, and Dollhouse) and he’s already made an appearance on Geek and Sundry starring in “Scary Smash,” the inaugural episode of Written By a Kid. 

6.         Dr. Drea Letamendi (@ArkhamAsylumDoc) – Fangirl, cosplayer, psychologist.  Drea is, in fact, Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon’s shrink in Gail Simone’s Batgirl.  Drea is also an expert on the psychology of “fandom.”

5.         Jim Parsons  – there is this one show, you may have heard of it.  It’s called something like The Big Bang Theory maybe, does that sound right?  Anyway, there’s this one character on the show named Dr. Sheldon Cooper and this Sheldon has an arch-nemesis named Wil Wheaton (played by Wil Wheaton, the host of TableTop).  Their rivalry is often expressed in friendly games of competition, such as bowling and the fictional trading card game Mystic Warlords of Ka’a.  Bringing Parsons onto TableTop – a show were Wil almost always looses – would finally allow Sheldon to pull one over on his mortal enemy.  Or maybe he’ll just yell “Wheeeeatoooon!”  Either way. 

4.         Liz Katz – or as my mom calls her: the naughty aerobics instructor (look for Super-Hero Boot Camp on YouTube to make that make more since).  Liz is a hard to classify girl.  She’s smart and funny and nerdy.  But she’s hot and dingy and hot, too.  Some of her videos are a little lame (I’m looking at you “I Don’t Wanna Be a Turtle”), but overall she’s pretty entertaining, if a little ADHD at times (to check her out better, head over to YouTube and take a look at her channel or watch my playlist “The Best of LizKatz.”

3.         Katie Wilson – let’s let Katie speak for herself:

A fan movement to get Katie onto TableTop is in the works and hopefully this one at least can come true.   On a side note: Chad and Angie from Screen Team Show would be another similarly ideal group to appear on the show, either in the same episode as Katie or in a separate one. 

2.         Nathan Fillion – ok, probably way out of Geek and Sundry’s budget, but we can always hope.  I mean, come on!  The Geek God himself on the Geek show!  Possibly in a themed episode with John Barrowman and Anne Wheaton.  And if you don’t know why you should definitely google image search “Nathan Fillion Wil Wheaton.”  It was the first two pics when I tried. 

1.         Me – I think that one is pretty self explanatory. 

So that’s my list.  Who would you like to see on TableTop?  Leave a comment or let me know on my twitter @nerdisnewcool.

Until next time,

Nerd Is The New Cool, signing off.

My Gaming Nerd Bucket List

OK, for starters bucket list was so an exaggeration, I probably just said that to get your attention.  I don’t plan on dying any time soon and I want this list checked off in the near future.  But what is this list you ask?

Simple, it’s a collection of the Tabletop Games that I want to spend some time playing – either playing games I’ve never played or doing something more with games I have, I’ll go into more detail about that in the individual entrees. 

So what are the games?  Well, I’m glad you asked. 

1.      Dungeons and Dragons – The premium Fantasy role-playing game (RPG).  It’s the RPG that other RPG’s dream about one day being.  I’ve played a little, both running through 1 player choose-your-own-adventure type games and DMing (that’s Dungeon Master-ing, for the unfamiliar – *waves* “hi mom”) a few short games with friends.  Now what I want to do is run a long campaign in the Points of Light/Nentir Vale setting or play in a campaign in a different setting – probably Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk – or do both.

2.      GURPS – Short for Generic Universe Role-Playing System is an RPG with no setting, it can be used to play medieval fantasy, science fiction, horror, adventure, crime, western, or whatever setting/genre the players choose, including time travel settings to bring the various options together.  I have never played GURPS but I’d kinda like to give it a try, either as player or as Game Master (GM). 

3.      Call of Cthulhu – There is a lot of ground covered by GURPS, including the ability to create player characters (PCs) and nonplayer characters (NPCs) that are compatible with the Cthulhu Mythos.  Thus eliminating the need for this Gaming System, yet it is still on here.  Why?  Because I still want to play it.  I am sure, after I play it a few times – and play GURPS a few times – unless I decide I really like this system much better than GURPS, I will start playing Weird Horror Campaigns using the GURPS system with this as a resource.  But I still want to try this first. 

4.      Cthulhu Live – A Live Action RPG or LARP, Cthulhu Live is sorta kinda not really but maybe like Call of Cthulhu.  It is set in the Lovecraft/Cthulhu mythos, often but not always in the Lovecraft 20s/30s era.  But rather than the pen and paper or miniature RPGs like CoC, DnD, and GURPS, Cthulhu Live is acted out.  Players dress the part go to locations and act out their characters rather than talking them out.  Using one of my local colleges or universities as a backdrop for Miskatonic University would be one interesting way to act out a scenario, but others could be found as well. 

5.      Fiasco – Ok, one last RPG.  Fiasco is sort of a pen and paper RPG.  No campaigns, just a quick story that takes about the same amount of time to play as a movie takes to watch.  In terms of content, they compare this game to Coen Brothers’ movies.  A game all about “powerful ambition and poor impulse control,” Fiasco is a GM-less RPG set at the “intersection of greed, fear, and lust.”  Basically, it’s bad things happen to bad people, everybody loses, and most everybody dies.  Not only do I want to play this, I want to write my own Playsets for it.  

6.      Munchkin – A card game that is similar to and making fun of RPGs – especially D&D –  made by the same folks who also make GURPS – D&D’s most important rival system.  In Munchkin, you play cards that give you races and classes, items, special abilities, etc. and fight monsters looking for treasure, in Munchkin it’s all about winning.  There are a number of spinoffs to Munchkin – I have the original game and spinoff Star Munchkin, which spends a lot of time mocking sci-fi franchises such as Star Wars and Star Trek (among others) and the RPGs based on them.  My wife and I both love Munchkin, and I would like to play a massive Epic Munchkin blender game with lots of sets and expansions mixed together.  (Note: Epic Munchkin is played to level 20 instead of level 10, and blender is when two or more versions are mixed together).  

7.      Catan – I love Catan.  My wife is “meh” about it and my parents aren’t big fans either – though they have only got to play it once and we weren’t able to play to a conclusion due to time constraints, so I may be able to recover them. I have the basic Settlers of Catan, the 5-6 Player expansion to Settlers, and Traders and Barbarians.  I want to get Seafarers, Cities and Knights, and the corresponding 5-6 Player expansions I need. Once I have everything I wanna play a couple of big games with several of the variants and scenarios mixed together, playing to 20 victory points instead of 10.  It would take potentially a long time to finish, but I like games that take a long time – unlike my wife, who will cringe when she reads this part.  

8.      Invasion from Outer Space – The Martian Game – I love Last Night on Earth – my wife doesn’t love it as much as me, but she likes it so we’re cool there.  But what does this have to do with Invasion from Outer Space?  I’m glad you asked.  The Three-Sided Game: Earth Overrun!  That’s right, if you own both Last Night on Earth – The Zombie Game and Invasion from Outer Space – The Martian Game, you can combine them and play a Humans vs. Martians vs. Zombies game.  The official instructions say you should play with either the IFOS Circus/Carnival pieces or the LNOE Small Town pieces but I say boo.  Place them together, forming a larger playing area, with two Human players (one playing the IFOS heroes, the other playing the LNOE heroes), one Martian player and one Zombie player.  Additional players could take up sides as is deemed most fair.  

9.      Power Grid – ok, this one isn’t so much for me as it is for my father.  He doesn’t know much about it, but he found it on Amazon and thought it looked interesting.  So I want to get a copy and play with him, mostly to get him to shut up about it.  

10.  Tabletop – yeah I know pipe dream.  But I want to be on Tabletop.   If anyone from Geek and Sundry is reading this, I would love to be on to play any of the above games or any other game you need players for. 

So there you have it, the ten games I’d most like to spend some time with in the near future.  What games do you like to play?  Leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter @nerdisnewcool. 

Also, a good resource for games is www.boardgamegeek.com.  Also, be sure to check out Tabletop starring Wil Wheaton Thursdays on youtube for game play videos. 

Until next time,

Nerd is the New Cool, signing off