Friends at the Table recruiter post
Jun. 12th, 2020 07:36 pmI'm making this post because ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiants encouraged me to and I owe her one, having just unabashedly stolen her writeup of the very charming book Unnatural Magic. It's adapted from a wall of text I posted to the WisCon Discord when someone made the mistake of asking about Friends at the Table. I know, I know, I've talked a lot about this podcast here, but this is one single summary and also has a paragraph of new content!
As its standard opening says, Friends at the Table is an actual-play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interactions between good friends. I love all those things about it, and also seeing consciously-collaborative storytelling in real-time. The first season has possibly the most infamous example of that, in which someone made a joke about a pirate being undead, as opposed to mistakenly-left-for-dead, and the GM said "...you know what, that's much more interesting, so, yes." And then built an absolutely enormous backstory to make that character make sense, which turned out to be crucial to how that overall storyline developed.
The cast consists of at most one straight white guy (though, afaik, only one POC), and the show is very emphatically queer. It is certainly not perfect with regard to representation; one season stumbled pretty badly regarding disability, after which they hired a consultant to talk through their next season in the same universe. And while I admire its ambition, sometimes it tends to go bigger than I, personally, think it can handle, which can lead to weird shifts in focus and tone.
Their backlog is massive—literally I listened to nothing else, except a dozen episodes about the Iditarod, for just over a year—and here's what it consists of:
Seasons of Hieron: Autumn in Hieron (S1), Marielda (S2.5), Winter in Hieron (S3), and Spring in Hieron (S5). High fantasy, gods, entropy; continuing cast of PCs. I started with Marielda, which worked very well for me; it's short, their audio quality is good, and the heist format gives good momentum, at least after the opening episodes where they play a worldbuilding game (the Quiet Year). If you like to start with publication order, be aware that Autumn has worse sound quality and also they are still figuring out how much to edit out of the episodes. I may ultimately love Hieron the best because of the time with the characters, but that's not to say that I'm not enjoying the heck out of hearing everyone keep getting better in S6, the current season.
Science fiction universe that I'm not sure has a name: COUNTER/Weight (S2), Twilight Mirage (S4), PARTIZAN (S6, ongoing). Mechs, capitalism, imperialism; seasons separated by long, long periods of time with no continuing PCs. I like COUNTER/Weight much, much better than Twilight Mirage, but it does start slow. (Also the players are not yet fluent in using pronouns other than he or she, which they are now.) PARTIZAN is so far really fabulous but also could go off a cliff at any moment, because it's still in progress.
Bluff City S1: originally a Patreon-only release, and still hosted there, this is an anthology series set in an alternate Atlantic City. I think this would be a good place to start, because I love the way the season builds and connects up, and the variety of the games they play is great. Just be warned that the game Fiasco, which they play for the first set of episodes in the season, tends mechanically toward really dark endings, which I found pretty whiplash-inducing.
Update: skygiants has a much better post about S1 of Bluff City.
Honorable mention for trying-out purposes: The Fall of Magic, a three-part game that they originally did as livestreams for Patreon. This doesn't have the kind of narrative propulsion that they're so good at, but it has a lovely dreamy tone and would be a good intro to the kinds of character and inventiveness that the Friends tend towards.
And now, I am going to go do the dishes and finish this week's PARTIZAN episode.
Update July 26, 2020: Friends at the Table updated their own intro-and-where-to-start post a few days ago, and the full transcript is available at the link, so you can also get their opinions on the best places to start! PARTIZAN has just finished its mid-season arc and remains really fabulous, for what that's worth.
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
