Friends at the Table

Friends at the Table is an actual play podcast about critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends.

The friends have gone through several different campaigns over the years: Here's a quick newcomers guide, but I'll also give my own rundown.

First off was Autumn in Hieron, set in a fantasy world that was once very familiar, but has been dramatically altered by a bunch of bad shit collectively known as "The Erasure". Our heroes investigate mysterious towers left behind from before and get caught up in the mechanations of gods. Also zombie pirates. The first few episodes are a bit rough, but it really hits its stride once the characters split off into "Boat Party" and "Ice Party". (but there's also some recap episodes for those that want to jump ahead to later Seasons of Hieron stories)

Next up is COUNTER/Weight. This season is a sci-fi noir campaign centered around The Chime, a small investigation firm trying to make it on Counterweight, a devastated world that serves as a kind of middle ground for tensions between the megacorps of OriCon (who use mecha knows as "Riggers") and democratic Diaspora (who are served by living super-robots known as Divines). The recent creation of the lush and green sister planet "Weight" threatens to bring these factions to blows over control of it. This season is a complete story and my personal favorite. There are some slow bits, but the ending ties everything together fantastically.

Marielda is a kind of interlude season. Set far in the past of the world of Seasons of Hieron, pre-erasure, it covers the daring exploits of The Six, a group of scoundrels who live in the city of Marielda and steal information. This season is a whole lot of fun. It's short, mostly self contained, and kind of a beautiful trainwreck watching their various heists goes ways nobody expected. Also, some of the best music.

Winter in Hieron continues where Autumn in Hieron left off, and I wouldn't listen to it without going through Marielda first. With the world having gone from bad to worse thanks to unending snowstorms and a curse of undead, the new "Mountain Party" and "Forest Party" travel to new (and weird, Dwarves in this universe are wild) corners of the world and learn more about a force causing the end of everything, as well as those scrambling to fix it. This one's pretty good, and it's great to see the players and their characters evolve, but definitely not something to jump into first.

Twilight Mirage is the current season. It's set in the same world as COUNTER/Weight, but so absurdly far into the future that connections are very minimal, so it doesn't require listening to it. The story follows the Divine Fleet, a utopia in decline. This group of spaceships traveling through the galaxy is hidden by the digital nebula, the Twilight Mirage, and protected by a number of robot Divines. But the Divines have been slowly dying off over the years, and the agents Beloved Dust must deal with attacks on the fleet, while simultaneously the crew of the Myriad scout out the planet Quire as a possible new home. This season is very long, but there's a definite dividing point between "Season 1" and "Season 2", even if it isn't labeled clearly. I haven't quite caught up myself, but I've been enjoying it.

I assume the next Seasons of Hieron will start after TM is finished.

Anyway, now that that's all written up I'm going to go think about the ending of COUNTER/Weight and cry again.

edited 22nd Jun '18 3:08:00 PM by Moth13

Finally caught up with Twilight Mirage. Just in time for the endgame to start popping off it seems. Latest episode. I can't decide who was the biggest moron, Fourteen Fifteen or Grand Magnificent. Fourteen going for essentially suicide by Advent seemed kind of out of nowhere, while I absolutely believe Grand would do what he did. But giving Advent Independence is just... don't. (in-universe, out of universe I am thrilled to see how bad that makes things). Also the reveal of where the Iconoclasts were this whole time was slick as hell.