I am writing this newsletter in a bit of a tiredness-induced haze after the madness of Tabletop Radio… Wait, what? It’s Week 10 already? Oh boy. Welcome to the final official newsletter of term 3! It’s a long ‘un, so buckle in, let's gooooooo
Announcements
Tabletop Pride Enamel Pins
Our super-special limited edition Tabletop Pride enamel badges are now on sale! Head on over to my newly-created Storenvy to order one of these for yourself. All profits are being donated to Stonewall.
Please note: the pins are still being produced by the manufacturer, but we’ll let you know as soon as they arrive and are able to be sent out!
Additionally, if you’re around on campus sometime soon or next year, there is a pick-up option if you don’t want to pay shipping.
Tabletop Extravaganza THIS WEEKEND!
Our traditional term 3 Tabletop Extravaganza will indeed be happening – THIS COMING WEEKEND! We have yet to finalise times, but we’ll be organising games and playing via our Discord server, so if you wanna participate and still aren’t in there (what are you doing??) please come join! Keep an eye on our various social medias (Facebook, Discord) for final details to be released at some point this week…
What's happening this week?
Sadly, it is now the end of Term 3, and so this is the final official week of our regular gaming events run by our exec.
- Monday 5-10pm: Isolation Tabletop (Wargames and Board Games)
- Tuesday 6-10pm: Isolation Draft - Modern Masters 2 (MM2) - free, with a promo prize to the winner - you must sign up here so we know whether we we have enough players to run
- Thursday 5-10pm: Isolation CCGs
However, I’m sure that people will still be up to play games during the holiday – if you’re itching to play something, drop a message in our Discord to see who else is interested!
What happened last week?
A shit tonne, to put it simply. Pride Week was an action-packed week of big events! As I have so much to talk about with respect to these games, in addition to the fact that Finnbar and I have been incredibly busy, Baking with Ares and Finnbar Reviews will not be making a return this week (cry). See you space cowboy...
Draft
We had a fun draft of the society-owned pauper cube (I got to draft it for the first time yay!). Our winner was Sam Caughley, with the MVP Soulherder (card’s busted, white removal stands no chance).
Quiz
We had an amazing turn out for quiz, so much so that you guys tanked Thomas’ streaming server and we had to move over to Twitch after the first round… Welp. We did have a fair few technical difficulties (sorry!), but that’s the beauty of running something for the first time ever.
The quiz contained a “you may cheat on this” crossword round from Callum, a pride-themed music round from me, a board game anagram round from Thomas, a blacksmithing 101 with Jakub, a Nigel round i.e. “get the name of the thing which spells out something that’s not it but something that rhymes with it” by Jon, and Game Guru, a round where you have to spot the rules-mistake by Sol. Plus, of course, a bonus round – this time created by Finnbar, it featured questions from past quiz winners’ least favourite quiz topics. This bonus round included a question for Callum on his worst topic of "music he should know, but doesn't", in which Callum struggled to recognise a bank based on its advertising jingle (it was TSB, and the whistling drove him mad).
Congratulations to our winning team “James May and the Queens”! This was perhaps the closest quiz in history. Sorry that we don’t have any prizes for you this time round, however, I’ve put Finnbar’s promised photoshop effort into this newsletter for you all to admire.
Also, if you quizzed and haven’t donated your entry fee to Stonewall, you can always drop a late donation in if you so wish..
Tabletop Radio
Excuse my language, but holy shit. Tabletop Radio happened! I am absolutely dead after our solid 26 hours of charity fundraising. If you missed any of it but want to watch (or if you want to watch those sweet sweet kazoo solos again), you can find the vods up on our Twitch for the next 14(?) days (and we’re also working on hosting them elsewhere if anyone wants to watch them in the future).
We had a whole bunch of different segments and interludes, the highlights of which include:
- Finnbar's kazoo renditions of Never Gonna Give You Up, the Thomas the Tank Engine Theme, Careless Whisper, Stand by Me, the How to Train Your Dragon song, Call Me Maybe, Through the Fire and Flames, Do You Hear the People Sing?, not the whole of Free Bird, some Daði Freyr, Primo Victoria, Rocking All Over the World... Damn that's a lot of kazoo. Finnbar asked me to write here that "Finnbar will be releasing their first album, Kazooing With You, on the 31st June" - I'm not sure whether or not this is a joke.
- Anakin's amazing origami, which included no less than 2 separate frogs.
- Both a dramatic reading of the My Immortal fanfiction, and a Twilight Shitpost in an "elder who's had enough of the whippersnappers" voice.
- Anakin dancing to the YMCA.
- A kazoo wheel spin with only Anakin present, without a kazoo - instead, he hummed Gourmet Race from Kirby for a while until Finnbar broke him with the comment of "man hums to 14 viewers."
- Jackbox contained such gems as "a guillotine for your nose" and "a drill so you can steal cake from under the table", and us discovering a weird theory for what Saturn's rings were made out of... (you'll have to watch the vod to find this one out, this is a family friendly newsletter).
- Waking up to find themselves "volunteered" to work within the enchanted woods tavern, three brave souls worked together to free themselves and the patrons of the tavern from the tyranny of The Queen's reign. Despite punishment collars and an ensnaring whip, the trio vanquished the pretender, leaving Vicki to reign supreme as the one true Queen of the tavern!
- Carcasonne was played, in which Alex asserted his dominance as board games rep, bringing the victory home. Codenames was also "played" - to quote Anakin: "I swear that's the worst game of codenames I've ever seen. They were like 4 ahead because the opposing code master forgot which side they were on and still lost."
- Table Talk chatted about Monopoly (including the trash editions Ms Monopoly and Monopoly for Millennials), anime, Ghibli films, video games, and music (in which nightcore is dunked on and Callum's favourite genre is revealed as "Scottish People Singing").
- A huge array of beautiful paintings from everyone who tuned in to paint along with the Bob Ross segment! Featuring many happy little trees, much fluffing of clouds, and only one Photoshop crash.
- A gay cat wedding in the Minecraft Tabletopolis Trials.
- Outrageous flirting in Monsters on a Cruise ship, with the "oh my god" counter reaching 18, and the bad jokes counter reaching 7. We even have people shipping our characters (Valeris ftw). Monsters on a Cruise Ship 2: Dating Boogaloo will be coming to a Twitch stream near you soon!
- The G N O M E Z O N E on Pat's Animal Crossing Island.
- 3/3 games won in our Ikoria Draft, with one guy roping us to hell in the last game (shakes fist).
- A very in-depth explanation of "boppage" in Finnbar's TED Talk on DJ Shaq's DJ tracks which you can find on the DJ Shaq Fan Account.
- Some D&D tunes and tune-recs set to one whole chibi sketch in D, D & D&D.
Thank you so, so much to everyone who tuned in to watch, and to everyone who donated! We’re at a whopping £599 worth of donations to our JustGiving page, all going to Stonewall – over 200% of our original £260 goal! Our top donations were from Elliot, Jamie, and The Pocket Workshop – you rock!
Shout outs to everyone who donated:
First to our draft players and quizzers, thanks for turning out! We love you <3
And now to all those who donated during Tabletop Radio:
- Anonymous, who has very deep pockets and has donated multiple times, and who also requested “Never Gonna Give You Up” on kazoo
- Diva Wong
- Anakin
- Jon B, with the top notch Thomas the Tank Engine theme on kazoo request
- Jon C
- “Ya boi Alex”
- benjiman
- Holly (mwah, love you <3)
- benjiman 2 electric boogaloo
- Bisexual Disaster (thanks for being a big supporter and commenter during the stream! You’re awesome!)
- Come To Larp, coming in clutch with the Through the Fire and Flames request (sorry Finnbar)
- James (COME TO LARP)
- Sol
- bisexualdisaster, lower case edition
- The Pocket Workshop with that sweet sweet Dadi Freyr
- Jamie
- Elliot (Come to LARP when we are can do it again.)
- Dan
- Nathan (COME TO LARP at cannon point) (I feel… mildly threatened….)
- Seb of the CCGs
- Orilos
- Cara
- Finnbar with -gasp- a kazoo request for Thomas, which was a very cheeky roundabout way of asking for Flight of the Bumblebee
- George, my roommate
- "benjiman part three: the benjing, wait, that looks like the capital of china" ("I wanted to be in the newsletter again, so here's some charity money")
- Niamh/Naomhan <3
The donations don’t have to stop there!
According to Finnbar, however, “science suggests that there are bigger numbers.” If you didn’t donate over the weekend, you can still do so on our JustGiving page. We’re not doing incentives any more, but I’m always happy to give you a cheeky newsletter shout out if you do donate!
As said in our Discord announcements, there are still super special pins available to purchase, the proceeds of which will be added onto our JustGiving page when they’re sent out.
And, finally, Adventuring with Pride was run from a real RPG supplement which you can purchase for yourself! This isn’t included in the Society’s overall donation amount, but the Pocket Workshop donate 50% of the profits to LGBT+ charities, Stonewall included.
Finally, a big thank you:
Additionally, I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who joined me in organising this massive event. We probably spent a solid month organising this between us, and some of us were doing this around exams! I’d like to offer special thanks to Finnbar, my partner in crime and co-head-organiser (and also kazooist extraordinaire); Thomas, for their tech expertise and support; Anakin, for carrying us through the interlude segments with his charm and amazing frog origami skills; Alex and Jack of The Pocket Workshop for running an incredibly entertaining Adventuring with Pride one-shot for us; to everyone who I haven’t thank yet who helped lead in the organisation and running of segments (Callum, Bob Ross, Nathan, Ellie, Oli and Jakub) and of course to all of those who participated in our segments!!
And so that concludes my final newsletter of this academic year. I look forward to seeing you all again next year (hopefully in person), and welcoming new faces to the society!
Wash your hands, stay inside, and come play some games with us <3
This week's frog of the week is brought to you by a special guest artist, Benji's sister Charlotte McRae. Thank you so much for the adorable frog! :3c
Ares Osborn (Communications and Operations, ready for bed)
@dovahbutt#7544 on Discord
e.osborn@warwick.ac.uk
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