Friends at the Table

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Fandom
Name: Friends at the Table
Abbreviation(s): FATT, FatT, F@TT
Creator: Austin Walker, Ali Acampora, Art Martinez-Tebbel, Jack de Quidt, Keith J. Carberry, Nick Scratch, Andrew Lee Swan, Sylvi Bullet, Janine Hawkins
Date(s): September 12, 2014 to Present
Medium: Podcast
Country of Origin: Canada, UK, USA
External Links: website, Twitter, Patreon, webstore
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Friends at the Table is a long-running weekly TTRPG actual play podcast focused on "critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends."[1] Its GM and host is Austin Walker. Seasons alternate between different settings and continuities, which has resulted in the creation of overlapping sub-fandoms.

Friends at the Table's smallish but dedicated fandom is active on Twitter, Tumblr, Cohost, and Discord, where fans post episode reactions, discuss plot and character developments, share fanart, and arrange fests and challenges. The fic-writing side of the fandom, while somewhat less active than the fanart side, typically posts fic to Archive of Our Own. An active contingent of fangame developers creates short fangames, often using Twine or bitsy, and an array of other types of fanworks can be found, including but not limited to vids, fan songs, and fan crafts.

Canon

Seasons and Continuities

See List of Friends at the Table Seasons for a full list.

The podcast is currently in its eighth full season, not counting three mini-seasons or the multiple bonus seasons created exclusively for Patreon supporters. Generally speaking, Friends at the Table alternates between continuities each season, and fans of one season/continuity may not necessarily be fans of another; in this way, it encompasses a number of overlapping sub-fandoms.

So far, seasons of the show have taken place in four different continuities:

Games

Unlike many other actual plays with fannish followings, such as Critical Role and Dimension 20, Friends at the Table does not play Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, games vary from season to season and usually also within seasons. Among others, the podcast's main seasons have included actual plays of Dungeon World and other Powered by the Apocalypse games; numerous Forged in the Dark games; GMless games like Ben Robbins' Kingdom and Follow; and worldbuilding games like Avery Alder's The Quiet Year, Everest Pipkin's The Ground Itself, and Turtlebun's Questlandia. Patreon seasons like Bluff City and Live at the Table have featured dozens of different games.[2]

The variety of games featured on Friends at the Table is a draw of the canon for many fans, and many have also been inspired by the canon to play or create independent games themselves. Friends at the Table fan Riley Rethal, for example, created the game Dusk to Midnight,[3] which was later played in an episode of Friends at the Table.[4]

Player Characters

See List of Friends at the Table Player Characters for a full list organized by season and player.

Much of Friends at the Table fandom revolves around the player characters (PCs) in each respective season/continuity. With anywhere from four to seven players in any season, and several seasons involving temporary PCs during holiday specials or players moving on to a new primary PC part of the way through, this makes for a large and diverse cast of characters.

Queerness and Queer Characters

Most of the cast of Friends at the Table is queer, and several cast members are also trans or otherwise not cis. Because of this, queerness has always been central to the stories that Friends at the Table tells. In most seasons there is a baseline assumption that all characters are or could be queer, and most canon romantic relationships (whether PC/PC, PC/NPC, or NPC/NPC) are explicitly queer. Homophobia and transphobia are usually not depicted in canon, although they have occasionally been present (whether depicted onscreen or mentioned as a general feature of the wider setting) in the horror season Sangfielle and some of the grittier arcs of Bluff City.

In earlier seasons of the show (most prominently COUNTER/Weight), some of the cast members struggled to use the correct pronouns for nonbinary characters, a fact which the cast has since acknowledged as a failing of those seasons. Regardless, the queerness of Friends at the Table has been and continues to be a big draw of the show for many fans.

Fandom Overview

History

While the results are certainly not scientific, two separate Tumblr polls that ran in 2023 - one in February, and one in November - found that well over a third of respondents began listening to the show in 2017 or 2018.[5][6] It's possible that some of the influx of listeners around this time came from fans of The Adventure Zone or other McElroy shows: Griffin McElroy recommended Friends at the Tables several times towards the end of TAZ: Balance, both on Twitter[7] and in several of his podcasts.[8][9]

In 2022, a number of Friends at the Table fans followed the cast of the show from Twitter to Cohost, creating accounts on the new social media platform and either cross-posting or exclusively posting their fanworks and fandom posts there.

Ships

Popular pairings and moresomes are listed below according to the continuity in which they appear. No one ship genre tends to dominate the fandom, although F/F, M/M and nonbinary ships are more popular than M/F.

Seasons of Hieron

The Divine Cycle

Balence fanart by seafleece. Balence, a pairing of two nonbinary characters, is one of the most popular ships in the fandom.

Sangfielle

Bluff City

Fan Reviews and Responses

Friends at the Table fans often point to the show's focus on storytelling as a selling point, emphasizing the cast's ability to balance serious explorations of characters, plot, and worldbuilding with jokes and humour. For example, when asked about Friends at the Table's tone, the consistency/quality of its seasons, and how it compares to The Adventure Zone, two fans on Reddit said:

1.) I love the balance FatT strikes between seriousness and humor. They are very storytelling-oriented, and never let humor detract from the story they are telling. However, they are friends and they act like it, joking around with each other fairly frequently, and they are genuinely funny in their own right. Worldbuilding is one of their 3 main focuses and they do a great job of it. Their other two focuses are "smart characterization and fun interaction between good friends", so they place high priority on both roleplay and banter

2.) I would say that the quality of episodes increases throughout the beginning of Counter/Weight, and then stays pretty consistent up through the present

3.) My background: I'm in love with The Adventure Zone, and tried up to the start of the second "book" of Glass Cannon, but found it less funny and more straight gameplay-oriented than I had hoped.

Friends at the Table is much more story focused than Glass Cannon was, and about as story oriented as The Adventure Zone during 11th Hour. FatT doesn't have me laughing as much as TAZ usually does, but FatT does have me as enraptured by its story as TAZ did during these last few episodes. A good comparison to draw between the two is that while the McElroys are primarily concerned with doing the funniest thing, the Friends are primarily concerned with doing the most interesting thing. That isn't to say that TAZ isn't interesting, or that FatT isn't funny, though.

I very much love Friends at the Table. I've tried a smattering of different RPG podcasts, and FatT and TAZ are my top two favorites.

comment by ellingeng123 on Reddit[10]

There is a good mix of serious and funny, not so much of either one though to make the tone shifts completely unexpected.

I would say that overall FatT gets better with age. I've been listening since early in Counter/Weight (and did go back to listen to season 1 when I got caught up with C/W, it's good if you can get past the audio issues) and I feel that the quality of the RP as well as the GMing get better as the series continues. The music is consistently incredible as well.

I have only listened to tAZ of the four pods you referenced here. Breaking it down I would say tAZ is funnier on a minute to minute basis, while FatT is more of a balance between serious and funny. TAZ is far more loose with the rules. Also FatT does not play D&D, they have played several games in the PbtA family of systems, so if you're looking for more D&D this may not be the right pod for you.

With all that said, I absolutely love both podcasts, they are my two favorites to listen to, both have pulled me into their characters/worlds extremely effectively and I would recommend them to anyone who has an interest in Actual Play podcasts.

comment by Jdick516 on Reddit[11]

However, Friends at the Table's canon is dense with lore and its medium and format pose a significant barrier to entry for many people, a fact of which both the cast and the fandom are well aware. The inaccessibility of Friends at the Table has become something of a joke in the fandom, with fans occasionally making self-deprecating posts about their own deep investment in a canon that they cannot successfully rec to most people:

friends at the table fans are absolutely the most insufferable type of fan. no question about it. we KNOW we're insufferable too, and very loud about it. the niche we have carved ourselves is too great. a PODCAST (hard media for people to get into) about playing ROLEPLAYING GAMES (weirdo nerd interest to get into) and not even the mainstream ttrpgs but the indie ones that 75% of the already niche weirdo subculture don't know about, and every season is about insane gay people and grappling with huge philosophical concepts and the world changing and also freaky weird shit like a guy who is all bees and mechs that keep you alive for a hundred years. and yet its the best media you could ever consume and you desperately need other people to talk to about it otherwise the little bugs in your brain will DIE.

Tumblr post by knittedbond[12]

Fests and Challenges

Secret Samol 2018 banner by ootron

Secret Samol

Main article: Secret Samol

Secret Samol, or SecSam for short, is an annual Friends at the Table fanworks exchange organized by imperialhare and a handful of other moderators, with the exact moderator lineup changing from year to year. It runs in the winter, typically through December and January, and was in its seventh year in 2022.[13]

#15DaysofFatT

Main article: 15DaysofFatT

Since 2016, Katie Diek and hellavarawr have organized #15DaysofFatT, an annual prompt-based fanworks challenge.[14]

FatT Pinup Week

Main article: FatT Pinup Week

FatT Pinup Week is a fanweek run by Arp on Twitter, Tumblr, and Cohost. It first ran in the summer of 2023.

Fanworks

Fanart

Fanfic

Fangames

A number of Friends at the Table fans have made short fangames, ranging from interactive fanfiction to a Pokémon-style RPG. Many of these games were made as Secret Samol gifts for other fans. Emma Conner and Mousewife Games are two prolific fangame developers in the fandom.

Cover art for The Adversary and the Never-Dies Machine

Some examples include:

Fanzines

Cover art for Who's That Big Man?

Five Friends at the Table fanzines have been created so far. In June 2020, with permission from each zine's respective organizer(s), the cast of Friends at the Table collected PDFs of all of the zines and included them in a charity fundraiser sale on Itch[15] benefiting four US-based non-profits fighting for racial justice and police/prison abolition.[16]

The zines are:

Fanvids

Because Friends at the Table is a non-visual medium, fanvids tend to take the form of either animatics or constructed reality vids. The latter are often labelled as AMVs and/or created using footage from classic anime in homage to Friends at the Table's anime influences.

Examples of animatics:

Examples of constructed reality vids:

Other Fanworks

Resources

FatTWiki logo

Thanks to Friends at the Table's sprawling canon and huge archives, the fandom has initiated a number of projects to create resources and reference materials for fans. These resources are sometimes also used by the cast in the making of the show.

Examples include:

External Links

References

  1. ^ Beginning of any given episode of Friends at the Table
  2. ^ FatTWiki's Bluff City (season) and Live at the Table pages include lists of games played in each arc of the respective series.
  3. ^ dusk to midnight by Riley Rethal. Itch.io. (archive link)
  4. ^ The Road to PARTIZAN 05: Ech0 & Dusk to Midnight (Nov 1, 2019). Friends at the Table. Accessed Jun 10, 2024. (archive link)
  5. ^ Post with poll by knittedbond (Feb 28, 2023). "unsure if anyone's done this yet, i really do want to know tho. calling all friends at the table fans: what year did you start listening to friends at the table?" 392 total responses; 26% of respondents voted 2017 and 16.6% voted 2018. Tumblr. (archive link)
  6. ^ Post with poll by peacereturnedtothevalley (Nov 16, 2023): "Friends at the Table fans when did you start listening to the show" 549 total responses; 21.1% of all respondents voted 2017, and 13.7% voted 2018. This poll also had a "see answers" option, which received 16.9% of the votes, so by my haphazard math about 42% of respondents who did not select "see results" voted for 2017 or 2018. Tumblr. Retrieved November 28, 2023. (archive link)
  7. ^ This is based on my (hazy) memory of the time when the Balance finale aired; Griffin McElroy no longer has a Twitter account and I can't figure out another way to verify that he did tweet it. --Malcontent
  8. ^ @divinefealty (Jul 14, 2022): thinking about how a world exists where griffin mcelroy doesn't mention friends at the table explicitly by name in a ttazz in like 2017, and suddenly the hyperfixation I've had for the past four years just isn't there (Tweet). "ttazz" refers to The The Adventure Zone Zone, the name for bonus episodes in which the cast of TAZ talked about the show. (archive link)
  9. ^ @humanmorph (Mar 19, 2021): thx to griffin mcelroy for mentioning friends at the table on wonderful! a few years back and even bigger thx to twitter mutual finn for convincing me to give it another try after i had tried and given it up before (Tweet) Wonderful! is another of Griffin's podcasts. (archive link)
  10. ^ "1.) I love the balance FatT strikes between seriousness and humor." by ellingeng123 on the Reddit thread "Potential new listener to Friends at the Table...what's the tone and style of the podcast?" Posted on September 12, 2017. Accessed on April 8, 2018.
  11. ^ "There is a good mix of serious and funny, not so much of either one though to make the tone shifts completely unexpected." by Jdick516 on the Reddit thread "Potential new listener to Friends at the Table...what's the tone and style of the podcast?" Posted on September 12, 2017. Accessed on April 8, 2018.
  12. ^ Post by knittedbond on Tumblr referencing the voting war that ensued when Samsam went up against Softboots in the Ultimate Divorced Battle. Posted on May 20, 2023. Accessed on Oct 20, 2023. (archive link)
  13. ^ Twitter bio of Secret Samol account. (Accessed May 7, 2023.) (archive link)
  14. ^ Post on official 15daysoffatt Tumblr: "Since 2016, FatT fans have answered over 70 prompts" (May 9, 2023). Accessed Nov 8, 2023. (archive link)
  15. ^ @Friends_Table (Jun 5, 2020). Today we're starting a sale to raise funds for a number of groups working towards justice and equality. We've gathered every @Friends_Table fanzine and (for the first time) digital PDFs of all of our formerly Patreon-exclusive postcards! (Tweet) (archive link)
  16. ^ @Friends_Table (Jun 5, 2020). The groups we're supporting are: @reclaimtheblock @byp100 @bailproject @MarshallProj Find out more info about them on their respective accounts! (Tweet) (archive link)
  17. ^ The Weight by @clemkesh feat. @nvrlernd2-reid (Jan 28, 2024). Tumblr. Accessed Jan 30, 2024. (archive link)
  18. ^ Honesty and Integrity by @nvrlernd2-reid (Jan 28, 2024). Tumblr. Accessed Jan 30, 2024. (archive links: post, song mp3)
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