[UPDATED: CONFIRMED!] Wheaton's Game: Putting Together The Clues!

So, with Wil Wheaton's statement that the game being played in his new Tabletop RPG show is NOT Green Ronin's Dragon Age, it's time to start putting together the clues. Here's everything we know so far. I figured that if I've spent 15 years doing this exact thing to compile information about D&D books, hopefully the process work for a web show, too! Note: I think I've fixed the issue preventing Chrome users from reading the article.

[UPDATE: I've had it confirmed by me by a whole bunch of people who already know that the game is, indeed, Fantasy AGE, in a fantasy/sci-fi blended setting created by Wil Wheaton, and that an announcement is imminent!]

• In 2014, Wheaton's Tabletop boardgame show wins an ENnie for its two RPG episodes which feature Green Ronin's Chris Pramas running Dragon Age for Wil Wheaton and the other stars of the episode.
• Wheaton states that "we're not using D&D. I really like the people at Wizards, but dealing with Hasbro is a giant pain in the ass".
• Green Ronin's Chris Pramas announces in January that this year they will be involved in what might be the biggest RPG news story of the year. "Our goal is to release Fantasy AGE in May. Then at the end of July we will release the game’s first setting book. This is our big GenCon release and part of something super exciting … that I can’t talk about yet. This will be the focus of our GenCon presence this year and perhaps the biggest RPG story of the year. Watch for an announcement in a few months."
• In January 2015, Green Ronin announces Fantasy AGE. "This will be strictly a rule book with no attached setting. The core of the game will be well-familiar to Dragon Age fans but there are some differences, the biggest of which is the magic system."
• A few days ago, just as the Tabletop RPG show starts fiming, Chris Pramas flew from Seattle to Burbank California, for reasons he says he can't discuss. These reasons are, however, exciting. "So much I can't tweet right now." The Green Ronin Twitter account posts "The Age of AGE is upon us."
• The announcement video features Wil Wheaton sitting next to a Dragon Age GM screen, with his coffee mug resting on one of the Dragon Age Set 2 reference cards.
• Wheaton states, just a couple of days ago, "It isn't Dragon Age. I brought my own GM screen from home because of reasons."
• He also posted "Ryan is the co-creator of the world and main storyline in the Tabletop RPG show, and he and I have been writing together for months, now, almost every single day, and yesterday we finally finished the hardest part of our work. Yesterday, we handed everything off to the lead RPG designer, and exhaled for the first time in weeks." Is this world being published?
• Wil Wheaton posts on his blog "I’m not quite ready to announce the details of the world we created for our RPG show, but I am ready to show this little glimpse of it, and I encourage you to make of it what you will…" (picture below)
• Wheaton also posts photos of Yuri Lowenthal and Laura Bailey leveling up their characters. "Look at @yurilowenthal and @laurabaileyvo leveling up their characters! They are all grows up."
• Various photos of players with dice show 3d6, one of which is a different colour, which pretty much seals the deal.

So, putting all that together, what do we have? It sounds a LOT like the game is Green Ronin's Fantasy AGE (not Dragon Age) or Blue Rose with a homebrewed world created by Wil Wheaton and his son and published by Green Ronin. If it's not, this is one heck of a clever misdirection!

​

 

[Animus]

I am going to watch. At worst, this will be a series that has mildly entertaining moments but is more or less ho hum and nets GR a few sales. At best, the Tabletop effect could bring a lot more people into playing RPGs, and could earn a lot of money for a company that deserves it like Green Ronin. I see no bad side in this.

 

[Von Ether]

FFG is going strong with their Star Wars game. They could go for the matching set and pick up Star Trek. A lot of Trekkies would be very happy to have a really solid Trek game for once.

That would be true, but unless it happens then it's not a possible story yet.

For example, if Mike Krahulik (Gabe of Penny Arcade) decided to release a Thornwatch campaign setting, that'd likely trump this.

I'd so buy Thornwatch, but I'd have to disagree while admitting it's mostly subjective when it comes to geek news after you go below the ST/SW/DnD benchmark. P.A./Thornwatch isn't even on the radar where I live, but Tabletop is huge. I bet if my FLGS could sell beer, they could so do a Tabletop sports bar event thing.

But for a bit of comparison, P.A. hasn't had shelf hangers in Target game aisle. And while PAX has 70,000 attendees, TT gets over 400,000 views and sometimes even half a million views where your game is the focus of a 30 minute show without the competition of video games, panels and other competitors vying for your attention in a 3-day whirlwind.

So while some are not impressed with WW's CV, he is currently a force for good in the gaming community.

The only thing Wil's missing is a connection to a bigger property, like Star Wars or Star ... nevermind.

 

[Von Ether]

http://geekandsundry.com/rpg-show-title/

At least Savage Worlds and Fate got a shout out.

So I was mostly right, I just went high brow with Wolfe/Vance instead of Thundarr.

Still, a gonzo post apoc setting that uses science fantasy or magick-tech to do things. I'm there.

 

[Jester David]

I'd so buy Thornwatch, but I'd have to disagree while admitting it's mostly subjective when it comes to geek news after you go below the ST/SW/DnD benchmark. P.A./Thornwatch isn't even on the radar where I live, but Tabletop is huge. I bet if my FLGS could sell beer, they could so do a Tabletop sports bar event thing.

But for a bit of comparison, P.A. hasn't had shelf hangers in Target game aisle. And while PAX has 70,000 attendees, TT gets over 400,000 views and sometimes even half a million views where your game is the focus of a 30 minute show without the competition of video games, panels and other competitors vying for your attention in a 3-day whirlwind.

70k paid attendants compared to 400k free views. And the D&D live games also get close to 400,000 views.

Wil Wheaton has some "name" value but he's not that huge. His net worth is put at $500k. Felicia Day is twice that. And Mike Krahulik is ten times that.
Wheaton is a Trivial Pursuit celeb. His name isn't commonplace to anyone but us geeks.

Now, I do think this will be cool. The D&D videos are great and fun but don't have the same narrative or continuity as a regular game. So this will be a great way of showing potential people what an actual RPG is like. A more representative look at gaming. And it'll be great for Green Ronin and the AGE system, which likely wouldn't have attracted as much attention without the DragonAge name attached.
But, man, is this a bad year to be launching a new RPG system. There's no shortage of awesome games already out there, and 5e D&D is going to be a hard act to follow.

 

[Von Ether]

70k paid attendants compared to 400k free views. And the D&D live games also get close to 400,000 views.

Wil Wheaton has some "name" value but he's not that huge. His net worth is put at $500k. Felicia Day is twice that. And Mike Krahulik is ten times that.
Wheaton is a Trivial Pursuit celeb. His name isn't commonplace to anyone but us geeks.

Now, I do think this will be cool. The D&D videos are great and fun but don't have the same narrative or continuity as a regular game. So this will be a great way of showing potential people what an actual RPG is like. A more representative look at gaming. And it'll be great for Green Ronin and the AGE system, which likely wouldn't have attracted as much attention without the DragonAge name attached.
But, man, is this a bad year to be launching a new RPG system. There's no shortage of awesome games already out there, and 5e D&D is going to be a hard act to follow.

Two or three live cast events a year on a name brand product with an auditorium of tweeters putting out the word, there had better be 400,000 views. In some circles, that's an expected outcome or even sub-par.

But TT get's 400,000 to 700,000 views on products with no name brand draw or using a live, highly-connected audience. That level of penetration is amazeballs. And the TT has like 10 or more episodes per year with those consistent results.

Free views to me means money to be spent on gaming, which I have done, as compared to attendees who have tight budgets after hotel rooms, food and other competing items. And many times, those tight budgets are earmarked for the "it" thing they are there for. If you aren't on the it list, you are non-existent. As I have also personally done.

As for net worth, Pax helps, but that can also be a lot of T-shirts and poster that have nothing to do with promoting games.

And in my book if you have a dude that can be on more than one Trivial Pursuit card (Standard, Hollywood and ST editions), that trumps some who isn't.

We could slice this pie in all sorts of theoretical ways by the end of the day, so I am going to agree to disagree and move on.

 

[Jester David]

Two or three live cast events a year on a name brand product with an auditorium of tweeters putting out the word, there had better be 400,000 views. In some circles, that's an expected outcome or even sub-par.

But TT get's 400,000 to 700,000 views on products with no name brand draw or using a live, highly-connected audience. That level of penetration is amazeballs. And the TT has like 10 or more episodes per year with those consistent results.

Well, there's going to be some audience overlap, as Wheaton was on both. And the Penny Arcade guys were on Tabletop at least once. So I don't think you can say the levels of penetration varies much between the two.

But Tabletop is the product. People are watching for that show. Not all of the 400k are interested or the audience of any game. The 400k+ (sometimes much higher) who watched the D&D podcasts all did so because they were interested.
And we've yet to see numbers for the RPG show to see if it's higher or lower.

And the DragonAge episode of Tabletop (Jan 2013, with some pretty staggering viewer numbers) didn't help DragoAge stay in the ICv2 charts, and it vanished in late 2012 never to be seen again.

Free views to me means money to be spent on gaming, which I have done, as compared to attendees who have tight budgets after hotel rooms, food and other competing items. And many times, those tight budgets are earmarked for the "it" thing they are there for. If you aren't on the it list, you are non-existent. As I have also personally done.

Well, 400k are willing to watch Tabletop for free, but when they asked for money, only 20k actually backed the Indiegogo. Far more people are willing to pay to go to a PAX, let alone the PAXes combined.

And in my book if you have a dude that can be on more than one Trivial Pursuit card (Standard, Hollywood and ST editions), that trumps some who isn't.

It's still the equivalent of stunt casting. Wheaton has similar name value to the guy who played Harry Kim on Voyager. If it wasn't for Big Bang Theory, his name would be followed by a "who?"
You know who would have been a bigger name to get? Anybody. They could have hired a Wayan brother and it'd be as big of news. (Although I'm much more comfortable with the quality with Wil in charge.)


I guess expectations are part of the problem. When Green Ronin was being cagey about the setting for their system, I wondered if they had licenced something from WotC and were going to announce Dark Sun or Dragonlance or something. Of if they'd tapped Keith Baker or Ed Greenwood to make the world. (Or both.)
But, really, I doubt any of those could compete with DragonAge. This news just means sales of the AGE system won't be lower than sales for the DA RPG. In the same way Margaret Weis Productions does excellent sales for its various Cortex system games (Firefly, Leverage, Marvel) but the actual generic Cortex system is forgotten. DA has pretty much passed D&D as a big name in modern fantasy, being close to Tolkien and Game of Thrones. More people are familiar with Thedas than some D&D worlds. Sales for D&D books are measured in hundreds of thousands, while sales for DA games are measured in millions. After all, the biggest RPG news of 2014 was not the release of 5e but the release of Inquisition...

 

[Von Ether]

Well, 400k are willing to watch Tabletop for free, but when they asked for money, only 20k actually backed the Indiegogo. Far more people are willing to pay to go to a PAX, let alone the PAXes combined.

If being part of an AAA video game title wasn't enough to float it, I doubt anything TT did could have helped. As for Pax, it's generates off one day, like $31 M? But Mike's net is $5M.

Wil raises $1.4 M, but takes home $500,000 without needing hotels, vendors and the like.

We could throw around numbers all day and shift the goal posts back and forth.
Maybe PAX is your annual awesome holiday, or you've never liked Wil as that bratty kid on TNG, that's cool but I gotta jet and, again, we can agree to disagree and move on. But have the last word -- if you must.

 

[Staffan]

What does anyone's "net worth" have to do with anything?