powergridI hate April Fool’s Day.

I hate having to scrutinize every page I read on the Internet today to see if it’s sincere or some sort of satire. I wrote an awesome opinion piece about Natsume’s Book of Friends today, but it’ll have to wait until Wednesday because I don’t want anyone to wonder, even briefly, if I’m joking.

So let’s talk about another, geekier holiday, that happened over the weekend. Not Easter—I’m talking about International TableTop Day.

I’ve been hanging out with roughly the same friend group since high school, and there’s always been more of us than there were video game controllers. So when a friend told us about Wil Wheaton’s show TableTop on Geek & Sundry, John and I were hooked. We knew we wanted to put something together for the first annual TableTop day to show our support—especially since my cousin just started a new job working at Geek & Sundry.

Celebrating the show’s newly coined holiday was just a more festive (and cupcake-y) way of how we usually spend our weekends gaming with friends. We spent the bulk of it playing a three hour round of Powergrid, during which I had plenty of time to practice my macro photography.

powergrid2

If you haven’t heard of it, Powergrid is an economics themed game that happens to be one of the most highly ranked games on Board Game Geek. Wil Wheaton has said he’s a fan of it, though it won’t be featured on TableTop “for a whole host of reasons.”

Meanwhile, four of my friends played Pandemic, which IS featured on TableTop.

It makes perfect sense to me that tabletop games are just now having a resurgence. Every year, as video game consoles become more advanced, they inadvertently expose just how distancing they can be. The PlayStation 4 will  even let you play somebody’s game for them remotely to help them through a difficult area. So long to backseat gaming while sitting on the same couch.

Did you celebrate TableTop Day?

4 Comments.

  • Wow…I haven’t played tabletop games in a while…usually because I love chess but I usually can’t find anyone to play with. My dad and his friends used to get together and play their own modified versions of Axes and Allies, making their own maps and everything. I’m glad to see that tabletop games are making a comeback, and maybe I can participate in this holiday next year. Thanks for sharing!

    (And yes, I hate April Fool’s Day too.)

    • @Kat, you should definitely get back into it! It’s so easy to find the games that are featured on TableTop now because of Amazon (and the handy “As seen on Geek & Sundry! stickers in the Target toys section). Also, a lot of local game stores did events for TableTop day so I should have been more social and gone out to one of those events.

      P.S. Love your new WordPress blog!

  • I <3 Powergrid!