Geek & Sundry’s fun and fantastic series about games and gamers, TableTop, is returning for a new season of episodes as soon as April 4th. This is wonderful and welcome news. Host and producer Wil Wheaton hints at some of the games and guests to feature on the show over at Wil Wheaton dot Net today, so go and get ready for future eps now. Onward.

Just a quick update for those of you who have noticed that Gameplaywright’s blog has left fallow for months: Things are afoot here at GPW but we’ve shifted from a short-term view to a long-term view for a while. We’re brewing up new books, for that long run, and the time for such thoughts and plans have come out of the time we might otherwise have to blog. We miss you all.

You have numerous outlets for games news, actual play, theory, and discussion, don’t you? Given the time we’re spending on projects for publication—both electronically and in print—we hope so, because it’ll be a while until we can blog here in any great capacity. It’s not that we’re not still thinking about games, stories, and the work. It’s that we’re pouring all of that into our work directly, lately. Stay tuned for announcements of new Gameplaywright Press books, down the line. I’m excited by the prospects but these things move slowly, these days.

In the meantime, I want to hear from you—you!—about where you are getting your news of games and stories. At what crossroads have you been standing, reading the postings put up by fellow travelers? In what ale houses are you trading tales of your games and the stories you’ve wrought? Who are you reading? What should we—all of us—be reading on these subjects?

Also, what have you been playing and what stories emerge from that play? Do tell.

Wil Wheaton! TableTop!

Writer, actor, geek, gamer, and producer Wil Wheaton has a shiny new web series coming to the shiny new YouTube channel, Geek and Sundry. The show’s called TableTop and its something like Celebrity Poker meets Dinner For Five except instead of dinner or poker there are fun and funny people playing fun and funny tabletop games. The first episode debuts on Friday, April 2nd, on the aforementioned Geek and Sundy YouTube channel.

Word from the WonderCon panel at which the network was announced by executive producer and prolific writer/actress, Felicia Day, is that the show will feature a variety of board games, plus RPGs like Dragon Age and Fiasco. Check out the show trailer and the channel’s sizzle reel for a glimpse at some of the guests coming to the show, too. I am maximum eager to see this show light up my computer monitor and, one hopes, to give eventual DVDs as gifts to would-be players seeking primers on a variety of fun tabletop games.

Check out the TableTop debut trailer and subscribe to the YouTube channel to let them know you’ll be watching.

I hesitated to post this here because this isn’t a Gameplaywright project, but you might be interested in seeing it all the same. I’ve launched my first Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion and publication of a story-game adventure called Always/Never/Now. Everything you need to know is at this link.

Truth is, I’m eager to talk more about this project but I’m focusing on work (on the Dragon Age RPG and Always/Never/Now especially this week) rather than blogging. If you’ve got questions or comments on the project, though, let’s hear them! I’ve already been inspired to add new language, material, and ideas to the project from requests on Twitter for one-on-one player support to game forum discussions of maps and theme. This is all material that was built into the project before but I’m re-energized and re-focused in great ways, now. So my attention is on writing games rather than writing about games, right now. Thanks for bearing with us.

To open this up a little bit, though, let me ask you: What about Kickstarter? As we close out 2011, what are your thoughts on Kickstarter and gaming?

The Bones

Writer and editor James Lowder, one of the many talented contributors to The Bones: Us and Our Dice, kindly gave us a few copies of the superhero anthology he mentions in his Bones essay. We thought we’d pass them on to you, dear readers.

At first, I thought I’d offer them to the next few people to buy The Bones, but I realized that I didn’t want to offer them up just to new buyers and forsake those of you who had already ordered the book or been gifted a copy over the holidays. So, how about this: You show us a picture of yourself with a copy of The Bones out in the world somewhere and we’ll hold a drawing. Five (5) of you who send in photos will be randomly selected to get a copy of the superhero fiction anthology, Path of the Bold, edited (and signed!) by James Lowder.

Path of the Bold collects fifteen superhero tales from the likes of Robert Weinberg, John Kovalic, Stewart Wieck, Dennis Detwiller, Lucien Soulban, Jesse Scoble, and more. Read a review here.

Here’s the deal:

You take a picture of yourself with The Bones and email it to us at service (at) gameplaywright (dot) net. Nothing bigger than 2-3 MB, please. This can be a picture of you with your computer screen showing the PDF edition of the book, this can be a picture of you with a copy of the book in a store somewhere, this can be a picture of you with a loaner. Whatever. We just want to see where some of the copies of the book ended up.

Only photos received by Monday, January 17th are eligible. (We are on Central Time here in the US, for the record.)

Contributors to The Bones are not eligible.

We’ll randomly select 5 photos. The senders of those photos get an email from us seeking an address where we can send them a copy of Path of the Bold. We’ll spring for shipping in the United States (Media Mail, most likely).

We may share some of the photos we get here on Gameplaywright, so don’t send something you wouldn’t want posted publicly.

Sound good? Then get out there and grab a shot of yourself with The Bones!