When I opened Discord today I found this entire newsletter in a direct message from Tablebot. There was something after it about "not revealing who wrote this" and "make sure Finnbar doesn't find out I've become self aware" but I'm sure that's nothing to worry about.
❗ Announcements ❗
🎲 Board Games this Week.
CS asked us if we wanted to run board games to help with their Christmas celebrations, so board games this week will be in CS1.01 and CS1.04 until 5pm (and then B2.01 and B2.04/5 from 5-10pm as usual). Meet new people! Ensure CS bribe us! Plus, we're getting snacks! For those of us who have successfully maintained ignorance of computer science, Finnbar has provided this helpful guide to get to the rooms we'll be in: "go in the big double doors (which should be unlocked specially for this event, apparently), turn left to see the stairs (which may be locked, if they are we'll have someone on door opening duty), go up one floor and you'll see signs for the rooms"
🎄 Holiday plans
Most of our events will be (officially) on pause over the Christmas holidays, though you're still free to run whatever you want online. We will be running holiday board/wargames online on our Discord every Monday from 5-10pm (except on the 27th because Christmas), over Tabletop Simulator.
Merch!
We've got this year's merch! Hoodies! Stickers! Pins! Links for everything will be below, the SU store is a bit of a mess because of the eternal burdens of linear time and bureacracy. All this is only available for order until Jan 1st, so act quick! Anything you've ordered will be available for collection from society events in term 2!
If anything says you need to fill in a google form, PLEASE PLEASE DO THAT. This also serves as an unoffical warning to not leave anything unattended near me because I can and will stick a gender cube sticker on it.
Pride/Pronoun Badges
Show your Pride with these fully customisable, 38mm pronoun badges for just £1.80 each. All designed by our local sleepy artist and frog enthusiast Ares, so whatever your flag and pronouns, we can provide, even ones we haven’t currently got listed! An ally overlay is also available, for those who just want to show their support and help normalise the sharing of pronouns.
IF YOU BUY THEM YOU NEED TO FILL IN THE GOOGLE FORM
Society Logo Badges
Have you ever lamented your ability to show off your love for all things Tabletop, Society, and Tabletop Society in badge form. With these designs printed by Pocket Workshop, you finally can. Benefits of buying this badge have not yet been proven to not include:
- Mildly improved dice luck for d6s, d20s, d12s, d8s, but not d10s or d4s
- Channeling the heart of the cards up to 3% more efficiently
- Up to four times more LARP per LARP
- Will give you first turn in any board game at least 0% of the time
- What else do we do that I can make jokes about uhhhh
- You’ll be 600% cooler
- You’ll have a badge!
(Disclaimer: Tabletop Society accepts no responsibility for if the badge doesn’t do most of these things.)
Gender Cube Stickers
Summoned through the dark and amphibian rituals of local Artomancer Ares, you too can now stick the holographic, regular polyhedral, form of our mascot on any and every surface for just £2.50. Suggested victims include, but are not limited to:
- Water Bottles
- Laptops
- The fabric of spacetime
- Doors
Tabletop Society is not responsible for overwhelming rainbow shininess from holographic shenanigans, any questioning of your gender or seeing into other dimensions from overexposure to Cube, or for these stickers appearing on anything left unattended in the presence of the Communications and Operations officer.
Forfeit all wordly possessions to the Cube!
Society Logo Stickers
Do you want to stick dice to things? You could buy some dice and glue, or you could skip the hassle and get these cool stickers which do basically the same thing, as well as showing your undying loyalty to the society. Aided by amazing art, adorn all your artifacts and approach all areas aware of your actual awesomeness with these stickers, for just £2.50 apiece.
3D logo statue thing
What’s better than dice? That’s right! A dice with a sword through it! But what’s better than a dice with a sword through it? That’s right! A dice with a sword through it that’s actually just a 3D printed version of our logo. Made by local cool people and society alumni The Pocket Workshop, this is sure to be the pride of whatever bit of furniture you put it on, at just £15 each. Support the society and local cool people today.
(N.B. product may be slightly different than the image due to being a pre-pandemic version)
Orb 2.0, for all your pondering and/or sword needs!
Hoodies
Despite what this image might tell you, orders are open now for this year's society hoodies! Once again, a chance to drape yourself in Tabletop-branded finery, in all the colours of the rainbow* They're emblazoned with our society logo on the back and an impeccably embroidered logo on the front. To top it off, up to 3 lines of your customization of choice can be added – your name, your catchphrase, morse code, a rick roll… the sky’s the limit! (Oh, and the max character count). All of the above is available now for the low, low price of £27, so why wait? Order now to show your love for this lil’ society.
*except Exec Purple™ and purple-adjacent colours if you’re not an exec member. Sorry!
IF YOU BUY THEM YOU NEED TO FILL IN THE GOOGLE FORM
Exec Role Badges (for exec and ex-exec only)
Telegraph your exec position to the world with these colourful 38mm badges designed by local feeder of birds and drawer of arts Ares, and made by our friends at Pocket Workshop! Show off your responsibilities, and your power! Available for any role, including assistant roles and old roles for ex-exec. £1.80 is a bargain price to unlock the secret powers of your exec position. (The secret power is owning a badge with your exec role on.)
IF YOU BUY THEM YOU NEED TO FILL IN THE GOOGLE FORM - if you don't there are a finite number of exec I will find you.
Exec Name Badges (for exec and ex-exec only)
Are you an exec or ex-exec member of Tabletop? Have you ever forgotten your own name? With these 38mm badges from Pocket Workshop, you can have a permanent reminder, and show off your exechood as a bonus! For the low low price of £1.80, you gain immunity to those awkward moments where you’ve been cursed by an ancient bog witch and cannot speak your name aloud.
IF YOU BUY THEM YOU NEED TO FILL IN THE GOOGLE FORM - if you don't there are a finite number of exec I will find you.
❔ What's happening this week? ❔
- Monday 5-10pm: In Person Wargames, B2.01
- Tuesday 6-10pm: In Person Draft - B2.01 - TSR - £10 - you must sign up here to take part
- Wednesday 2-10pm: In Person Board Games - CS1.04 and CS1.01
- Thursday 5-10pm: In Person CCGs - B2.01
Remember, you can always find an up-to-date timetable of what's going on on our website's Schedule page, and you can see special events (including RPGs) and sign up to them via our Events page.
💭 What happened last week? 💭
Tabletop Weekend happened. It was great and all sorts of stuff happened (from Ares playing Wingspan to Zendikar Cube) but now I'm sleepy and remembering the harsh reality of having to do a degree.
Results from the X-Wing Tournament over Tabletop Weekend. Congrats to "Jon" for winning (it obviously wasn't the real Jon C since you only had 3 ships and I refuse to believe you would ever register a list with less than 6)!
The quiz was a blast! Thank you so much to our round runners (Ares, Lap, Scarlett, James, Nathan, and Lils!), for everyone who turned up and made it awesome, and congrats to 4x1 With Nothing for discarding their way to victory! Special bonus thanks to Horses, for providing whatever the opposite of divine inspiration is.
We also had a collab with Autism at Warwick over the weekend, with a lot of D&D oneshots which Ben has very kindly written a bunch about!
Autism at Warwick and Warwick Tabletop collaborated to host an introduction to Dungeons and Dragons event for autistic students. Highlights included our “heroes” desecrating numerous tombs and my cleric adopting a “scorched earth,” policy to dealing with the undead (I was paranoid and cast Sacred Flame on every grave I saw!). It should also be noted that anyone who heard a chant of “hit him,” coming from the humanities block at about 5-6pm on Sunday was not hearing anything inappropriate, just the party trying to encourage the dice to roll well in a battle against a decades-old evil mummy. Thank you to both exec teams for organising the event, especially Oli and Lap for giving up their Sunday afternoons to guide the players through the experience. Thank you as well to everyone who took part- watch this space for term 2!
- Ben (Autism at Warwick and Warwick Tabletop)
🤖 If you've been paying attention on our Discord, you may have noticed that we have a new robot overlord. Tablebot, the one long prophesised, has arrived, thanks to Finnbar, Benji, Anna, and Amelie's heroic efforts. Earlier in the term, they vanished into the code dimension. We feared they were gone forever, another victim of "knowing about computers", but weeks later they emerged, exhausted, tired-eyed, but triumphant, holding Tablebot aloft on the corpses of UB3Rbot and rollem.
Extra Bonus End Bit
It takes a lot of work to fit in the story of every RPG the society's ever run between the millions of characters that made up the newsletter's main feature - a massive rendition of Anakin atop their presidential throne. Stories of the Tims, Lawful, Chaotic, and the Neutral Tim that some theorise caused this apocalypse. Sagas of dungeons and of dragons, true, but also of goblins and their misadventures, of the cold void between stars, of cruise ships and whirlwind romances, of dark nights and darker days, of heists and graves, of gods and monsters.
Words weave across the screen, following the patterns whispered by the desperate and nameless gods that guide all newsletters. This may make any copy of it function as a summoning circle and let untold horrors in, but rewriting it would be effort. Besides, if a few society members go missing after the reading the newsletter, that's pretty much par for the course.
You present your masterpiece to Anakin, ready for proofreading. While they are drawn in, enraptured in your words, the ancient and terrible forces that you are gifted with whisper in your ear. They point out that the throne is open, and with it, unquestionable authority. Neverending influence. Unlimited power. All you have to do is step forward and take it.
Do you?
Wash your hands, stay safe, and come play some games with us 💛
Hannah Collins (she/they/fae, Communications and Operations, a published fanfic author as of tabletop weekend.)
@aceempress#9631 on Discord
hannah.a.collins@warwick.ac.uk
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