Tabletop game shows

I love playing board games but there are moments when I’m not with a group to play with. In those moments, I need to extend my playgroup to imaginary parasocial playgroups and watch others play in Youtube.

While I occasionally enjoy learning about new games through review videos, my bread and butter is talkshow-esque board game shows where — like in real life — gaming is only part of the fun.

Tabletop with Wil Wheaton

Geek & Sundry’s Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop is one of the first breakout hits of the genre. It’s been a decade since it finished but the episodes are still wonderful and all available on Youtube.

Each episode, Wil is joined by creative people, mostly actors, and they play a different game while teaching how the game works. The main focus is on the banter and fun between the players and I sometimes just listen to the episodes without watching the video — they are that good.

No Rolls Barred

No Rolls Barred is a British tabletop gaming show that started during the pandemic as a way to showcase how you can play board games in lockdown with online tools and after the pandemic ramped up its production values to an in-person show.

The group mainly consists of actors and Youtube personalities and the format is very similar to Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop in that you get to learn a new game while enjoying the personalities and chemistry of the people. Where it differs from Tabletop is that the crew is mostly the same. Each episode has a subset of the crew playing and there are occasional guests but mainly you get to also learn about the players and find your own favourites.

Overboard by Polygon

Overboard is a board game show by video game media Polygon. While gameplay production is similar to Tabletop and NRB, it’s very different in style. It has more focus on the gameplay itself rather than the characters. Which is weird because the crew is the real highlight of anything Polygon does, this included.

Where the previous two are shows focused on board games, Overboard is more of an occasional video type amongts many others that Polygon puts out and feels more like an office gaming night.

Game Night by BoardGameGeek

The last one on the list is completely different from the other three — other than it’s a group of people sitting around a table playing board games. BoardGameGeek’s Game Night is a show where people teach you how to play various games. It’s not full of actors creating a show around their personalities but a high quality series that follows the pattern of How to Play — See people play — Short discussion of the game.

For pure board game content, it’s by far the best and I really enjoy learning new games and seeing them being played on the show.

It’s been going on for 13 seasons already so there’s a massive backlog of videos to watch if you’re new to the show.