Wow

Hey friends, Austin here!

Last night, we hit our $10,000 goal, and I'm not going to mince words: I'm fucking floored right now. We all are. 

Hitting that goal means a few things: First, it means that starting in the next few weeks, we're going to start live streaming a new one-shot every month. This is something we're all super excited about. 

A few months ago we tested this out with a game of Lazers and Feelings as part of a live stream marathon, and the result was something that felt spontaneous and loose, and we had a huge amount of fun. You'll hear an archive of that session soon, and going forward each of these live streams will be archived for patrons!

As part of this goal, you'll be helping us to decide what games to one-shot. We'll post a poll soon, but first we wanna get ideas! So please comment here, message us on our Twitter (@friends_table), or email us at friendsatthetable@gmail.com and let us know what games you'd like us to try out!

Hitting that goal also means that we've hit a pretty rad milestone: Your support has let us DOUBLE the amount of episodes that we're putting out month to month. On top of our four free episodes every month, we're now also doing a bonus clapcast, the new live streams, Tips at the Table (which we're aiming to record the first ep of tomorrow), and an episode of Bluff City. 

(Speaking of Bluff City, we recorded the first episode last night and all I can say is that SONNY VERANDA DID NOTHING WRONG. I promise this will make more sense soon.)

There's a one more thing that hitting that $10,000 goal means: It's time for us to reveal those higher level goals. So, here they are:

At $20,000 we'll release two episodes of Bluff City a month! Based on the recording we did last night, we're all excited to do more of this, and with more support we can make that time!

At $30,000 we'll do a Friends at the Table live show once a year! This goal is definitely a stretch so we wanted to make it something really special, and being able to get all of us in the same place and to play a game live for our fans is something we'd love to do down the line! Let's see if we get here!

And of course, as you already know, our next goal is $15,000, where once a month, Ill start doing solo streams as I'm prepping for an upcoming session. Watch as I create NPCs and locations, talk through my mechanical and thematic goals for upcoming sessions, and more!

I can't say enough how much this means to all of us. When we first decided to do this three years ago, we didn’t really have much guidance. A few of us had done some other podcasting. A couple of us had never played any tabletop RPGs before. Most of us didn’t even have real microphones. We didn’t know what we were doing, but what we did know was that we wanted to tell stories and play games together. So we took the time, blocked out some time, and gave it our all.

Thankfully, not long after that you were telling us that you wanted us to keep telling stories too. You were sharing your favorite moments from the show with us; you were creating fan art, fanfic, and even fan music; whether through conversation, argument, or begging, you convinced your friends to come listen, and then those friends convince their friends. And week after week, you’ve tuned in to listen to us ramble and roast each other and collaborate and even cry. 

Your loyalty and your support means to us everything to us. I said it in the Patreon and I meant it: No matter how good of a job we ever do, the only way we grow—the only way we’ve ever grown—has been through word of mouth. Thank you so much for being not just our fans, not just our friends, but our advocates. 

I can’t wait for you to hear Bluff City, to listen to us goof off during a live stream, and for us to answer your questions in our advice show, Who knows if or when we’ll hit $15,000, but I’m already coming up with ways to share my game and story prep with you in interesting and fun ways. And hey, if things go extraordinarily well, I’m looking forward to seeing some of you at a live show one day.

For now, I promise that we’ll keep doing what we do best: Critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends.

Keep it wavy,

Austin