Checkout the campaign page here. And sneak a peek at the website here.

What Is Tabletop Recorder

The best way I can put what Tabletop Recorder is, is it’s that it’s like the AI note taking technology you see for work meetings. But, it’s specifically tailored to working with RPG’s. You give it an audio file of your D&D or other RPG campaign and it is going to spit out the session notes and give you an interface where you can query what has happened.

The creators of Tabletop Recorder reached out to me to see if I wanted to give it a try before the campaign went live. And I love to see tech integrated well into something, and with my podcast equipment, it made it easy to record, though, it’d also be easy to record on a phone as well. So I got to play around with it and get early access, which I’m much appreciative for, and use it for a couple D&D sessions and a couple of dummy sessions.

Let’s talk quickly about how it works. Right now the system is record an audio file, upload that audio file and it processes it giving you some outputs and letting you query against it. There are plans depending on how the crowdfunding campaign does to let you record to the website, or with enough time and money possibly native apps for iOS and Android. But right now it’s record a file, upload, and let it do it’s thing. But let’s talk about how well it does it’s thing.

How Well Does It Work at Transcribing?

The starting thing that I wanted to know was how it worked when it came to catching everything for a full campaign. The campaign that I’m running has time travel and is reaching end game so there are a lot of already established NPC’s, locations, and lore within the game. It’s not a simple setting and series of events at this point. In fact, the players had just managed to screw up the timeline really badly with some created paradoxes via time travel.

And it does a good job with the transcription. It actually gives you four different ways that you can look at your session. There is the full transcription which is a transcription as you would expect. But there is also the long, medium, and short recaps. I think that all of them are solid and they all serve a different purpose. But for really getting all the information, the transcript and the long are going to be your best bet. The medium is great for that quick recap of what happened, and the short is a slightly too long description that I’d use for a podcast if I recorded for a podcast as well.

Short Description

The short, to it’s credit does try and be a narrative telling of what happened. And it does a pretty solid job of that. I might use it for kind of a quick check on what happened previously as I plan a next session, but it’s going to be light on details.

Cleaning It Up

And if you think it missed something, or you want to correct something you can. For example, you’ll see it below, we have a PC named Barai in our game. It learned it as Bry, so it classified Barai as an NPC. But I can go in and edit that to help it learn and connect things. And I can do that really easily. One feature that I’d love to see in their editor is a bit more of a robust find and replace feature. But I clicked edit, copy and pasted to Notepad and did it there, which is easy.

What Else Does It Do?

The other big feature is that you get a Q&A tool. This tool is going to query either a specific session or a specific campaign for you. And you get back details about what happened in a session, or in a moment. Let me give a few examples of what I’ve used it for.

Asking for NPC’s

If I want a list of NPC’s, I can ask it for a list of NPC’s. And it is going to give me that list with a little description, or I can ask for a list without a description just so I can get as many NPC names as I can. I can do that for the whole campaign if I want, and it’ll give me a solid list.

Character names won’t make any sense, but it does a very good job. I will call out that Kip and Barai are both player characters, but you can go in and tweak that.

Asking for Plot

That is a relatively easy request. So let’s give it a more open prompt. And this is a prompt that I think a lot of Dungeon Masters would like. What is the players plan?

That isn’t even everything. But it does a solid job of splitting things out. And it is going back not only across the latest session, but the multiple sessions to pull out details. I can select only the last session if I wanted to get exactly where we are out. Or I can go across everything, I like I did, and review where the players are at to help me plan my next session.

And More

And you can query more as well. These are just two examples that I think highlight a very practical side of using it. But more than that, also a very useful side in terms of gathering narrative points. But you can really ask to your hearts content with it and create queries to get the answers you need.

Who is Tabletop Recorder For?

Before we get to if I’d use it or not, let’s talk about who it’s going to benefit the most. To me this is a Dungeon Master tool. Yes, I think there are things that the players will like about it too, but the strength is going to be for a dungeon master.

Why is that? Do players want to know everything in the campaign, sure. It can replace note taking. But that’s the big benefit for the players. For the Dungeon Master it is going to be a tool that helps with that note taking but also planning sessions and keeping track of all those loose ends. And I think even worldbuilding it’s going to be a dynamic tool for the Dungeon Master.

So, while everyone will get a benefit from it, there are some people it’ll benefit more. And some will depend on how you can access it. If everyone needs a subscription to access it, I don’t know that it’s worth it. But if there’s a dungeon master level to pledge and access and then lesser licenses, or links that can be shared to the campaign, it’ll be a good tool for everyone. It’ll depend on the access model to determine how much value it will hold.

Would I Use Tabletop Recorder?

So first, off, this is a preview. I was not paid for the preview, but I did get early access to the system. So, I give my honest opinion on it, but it is a preview. I want you to take what I say with a grain of salt.

I want to use this in my next campaign. It is something that I already found useful. But I think for a new campaign it is going to be very useful for me. Your mileage might vary depending on how you run your game. But for how I play Dungeons and Dragons, in my case, it is great. Let’s talk about why.

Note Taking

I am not the best at taking notes. I play theater of the mind and improv a ton in my games. That means that we go in unexpected directions a lot. And we tend to be a narrative heavy campaign and interaction heavy campaign versus a combat heavy campaign. In two sessions, I already like the ability to recap things and help me remember what happened last session. Whether it being me querying specific things or reading the short or medium recap to remember what is going on.

This is a great replacement for note taking for me. And it’s unobtrusive. I just stick my microphone in the middle of the table, hit record and we start playing. And, I think we did a good job of actually playing a real session. By that I mean tangents happened. We got sidetracked, we made references to things, and it was still useful for me.

Worldbuilding

This is an element that I think is going to be useful, but I haven’t done yet. I mainly think of it for a new campaign, but to prime for a session as well it would be good. What am I talking about?

So, I start a new game and I jot down some notes for a new world. They could offer me a way to enter them into the system, which I wouldn’t mind. But I can also record those notes, who are NPC’s that the players are going to meet. What is the end goal situation of the campaign and things like that. I can prime the system to know NPC names and all of that jazz. Then I can use a tablet, laptop, or phone, behind the DM’s screen to look those things up. It already has my planning notes in there for me.

Now not everything should go in there. If I plan to have a combat, don’t add those to the system ahead of time. That’s part of the active story. But I easy can see myself using it to prep a new campaign with some town names, NPC names, and history of the world so I can easily query it in the moment.

Final Thoughts

Tabletop Recorder is a luxury RPG add-on. Let’s be clear about that. Is it something that you need for your campaign, no. Is it something that is going to make your life easier, yes. To me that is what a good product for an RPG should be. If it claims it’s needed, I get really suspicious. But let me say, I find this nice already. I see the value already for keeping my planning time shorter and note taking easier.

You might not find that value. You might already have a way that you like to prepare for your campaign. But if that is a burden on you, I think that Tabletop Recorder is worth looking into. And for me, I see the value of it. It all comes down to how much it costs though, because there is a value of time versus the value of money that you need to make a decision on. But this is true with everything from the new version of Dungeons and Dragons to miniatures to the snacks you have while you game.

For me, I think it could very well be worth it though. I value that time that I can quickly prepare in versus the time that I spend flipping through the light notes that I have. And from what I’ve seen the technology is working well. And as a software engineer and a manager who has looked at Teams tools and Microsoft Co-Pilot, this is a nice system that is specifically for what I’d want for D&D.

So one last plug to checkout the Tabletop Recorder campaign coming soon to see if it’s for you.

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The Game – Lands of Galzyr

Let’s tackle maybe the more controversial part of Lands of Galzyr. Or really the controversial part of any board game, the app or website. And let me say, I’m not here to sway your mind on if you want technology at the table. I understand that some people want it to be complete analog and a way to decouple from a phone, tablet, or computer completely. I want that as well, sometimes.

But let’s instead tackle if Lands of Galzyr is that possible without a computer. Is it reasonable to assume that you could, with a book, get in all of this text and all of these options? It’s possible, yes, but it is reasonable? I tend to think the answer to that question is no. And while you might think you’d be fine reading that much, you still do, would you be fine at the speed it would work?

The Downside of Physical

For some games, like Roll Player Adventures, there is some story. And each part of that story might branch, but it might branch a little. I make two choices and those are my branching paths. In Lands of Galzyr, I have seen a check occur and that branches into 3 paths, or 5 paths and that can lead to additional story as well. So, the branching in Lands of Galzyr is much more extensive.

What does that mean for game play? Well, it means that if it were just a book, and it could be, that you’d be finding different passages very often. And you would need to understand how it branches, which is why the app can handle it so well. What an app or website can do that a book can’t is provide the logic to instantly pull up the next section. The story is loaded into the memory of your device and you can access that very quickly.

On the flip side, all puns intended, you’d be flipping through pages trying to find the next passage constantly. And that branching structure would become very hard to follow. I think, and you might disagree, Lands of Galzyr would be considerably less favorably reviewed if it didn’t have the website. Mainly because I play an hour and a half game, and that would become two and a half hours or more with a book.

Upcoming Streams

So, next Wednesday at 8 PM central time, I will be back streaming more Lands of Galzyr. And I should have the game sleeved and a playmat instead of the board by that point in time. I am excited to get that to add to the game. Just know that it is totally not needed if you get the game, but I wanted to add in that little extra bit.

Before that on Monday, I am going to be streaming a new game. For those of you who don’t like roll and write games, I’m sorry. It is likely going to be 18 Holes Course Architect that I am playing. 18 Holes Course Architect is a game about building a golf course, and of course, done through a roll and write. It does make me want to play the regular 18 Holes board game as well. But I don’t own that one, yet.

And as always, if you want to know when I go live, you can subscribe and click the notification bell.

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Nerdy Resolutions

Make It To GenCon This Year

I rolled my ticket over, obviously, in 2020. And then I did so again in 2021, just it would have been hard to make it work with the different time. And I missed it. I don’t know what I would have thought about being masked all day, I say that not having an issue wearing a mask but for wearing a mask for a long period of time because of allergies.

We’ll see what it is like this year, but I plan on going. I missed the excitement of walking around the show room floor and playing random demos. Some of them were great, some of them were bad. But for the most part glad to have tried them. And then the random other games, and demoes that we got into. I doubt another North American Ice Cool Championship will happen, but there are always fun events.

Watch 5 New To Me Anime

Now, this is kind of in progress already. We have started watching My Senpai is Annoying, and it is great. But this is more of a challenge just to keep up with anime. 2020 had so much anime watched. Why, I worked from home a lot, so I watched a lot. 2021 had some watched, I came up with five, but not all of them were as great. I want to checkout more new anime and generally I like to binge stuff in the winter, so we’ll see what I get one.

Read The Keeper Of the Lost Cities Series

This one is also in progress. I picked up the first book, on a whim, because the premise looked cool. It is a middle grade series, but I am liking it better than Harry Potter thus far, and I really enjoyed Harry Potter. But this series just flows better. This is a 10 book series, I think, and they aren’t short books. I’d say that they are comparable in length to say book 3-4 of Harry Potter. But my goal is to finish all of them, which will take a little while, plus I want to start reading more comics again as well, but books first.

Listen To All Of Wheel of Time

Another in progress one, but with the show, which I still need to finish, I wanted to listen to all the books again. I enjoyed the series on my first listen through, and I’ve read the first in paperback a few times. The series is really long, but I enjoy it, and I want to get through it again because of the show. Plus, when I listened to it before, I didn’t get the last books. So while I “know” how it finishes, I’d actually like to see how Brandon Sanderson wraps Robert Jordan’s epic series.

Nerdologists Resolutions

So, honestly, I don’t plan on changing up much on the site for 2022. You might notice a bit more of a focus onto the board game side, but it’s been leaning very heavily that way. My main goal with Nerdologists in 2022 is to get it out there more. I have advertised before on Facebook, but I also want to try and find other ways to get the Nerdologists name/brand out there to help the site grow. To be determined as to how that will work though.

10 Minute Marvel Resolutions

This is basically going to be the same as last year. My goal is going to be putting out 50+ episodes this year. Now, I did do two double length episodes this past year. I can see that happening again if a show and a movie overlap when they come out so there is a lot to talk about. But otherwise, I hope not to miss any weeks like I did this year when I saw sick, granted, that’s a good excuse to miss.

Malts and Meeples Resolutions

Malts and Meeples is probably where I want to focus the most on growth. It is a blast streaming, and we already know what I want to get through a game of Sleeping Gods. I am going to play it this weekend so that I can be ready for Wednesday. But beyond that, I want to start doing more with the channel. In particular, while I wasn’t sure I wanted to do reviews, I think that is an area that I am going to start jumping into. I talk about board games so much on the website, I think doing a video review or two would be good as well. Don’t expect a highly edited project, but I want to figure out a nice format that I like to do.

But that is going to be it for me. What resolutions are you doing that are nerdy, if you have any? I try and keep mine small and attainable. Though, some of them are a bit vague for the site and podcast coming up. Let me know yours in the comments below.

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What is Patreon?

Patreon is a platform where you can support your favorite content creators as long as they have a Patreon account. Generally this means you get access to things early or other perks in exchange for that. It’s meant to be a way to help those creators make some money off of their product that they are putting out.

You pledge at a certain level per month, in my case it’s $3, $5, $10, or $50 per month. Patreon takes a cut of that before it gets sent over to the creator.

Why Do Patreon?

So this is going to be two parts, first will be why I’m setting up a Patreon and the second part will be why I hope you’ll consider supporting me on there.

Why I Set Up Patreon

I’m not sure if it’s been obvious, but hopefully you’ve noticed that there are zero adds on Nerdologists.com. Now, I’ll advertise my own stuff, 10 Minute Marvel and Malts and Meeples, but there are no banner ads, videos that just start playing trying to get you to buy anything. And that’s been intentional. I’m not sure how many ads I’d get, but with 150,000 page views a year, I could probably find some, but I haven’t wanted to. I, like all of you, don’t love browsing websites where I spend more time X-ing out of ads that pop up in front of me.

But with that, since I don’t have ads, that means that I’m not getting in any revenue from the site. I set up an affiliate link before for Amazon, and I might do that again as well, so that people can go through that link and I’ll get a little bit of the money if enough purchases are made. But even with that, it’s not that much money and I would be fighting for your purchases with a lot of other people as well. Patreon, I will be fighting as well, but if you enjoy my content, you can know that it’s going directly to me, not going somewhere else as well. So this isn’t a cash grab for me, I am not looking to get rich off of this, or anything like that, I will break down what I’m hoping to use the money for coming up.

Why Support Me On Patreon

Well, hopefully you’ll do it because you like my content, but beyond that there are a few other reasons to do it, and those are the different rewards you can get for pledging at the different levels. I’m going to go through the different things you can get and hopefully some of them sound interesting to you.

Nerdling

At the $3 Level you get bonus content and a shout out on the Nerdologists Patreon page on this site, the page is yet to be built. So what is bonus content. Well, every month I’ll throw out a theme or a few specific things, so maybe it’ll be deck builders, Isekai anime, horror movies, and Harry Dresden, you’ll get a chance to vote on the subject and then I’ll do a bonus article for Patrons only over on the Patreon page.

Nerd Squire

At the $5 level you get the two things at the $3 level, but also some bonus video content and a monthly coloring page. The coloring page will tie into what you pick for that month and Kristen, my wife, has volunteered to help with that to create the coloring pages. Those will be delivered as a downloadable PDF. As for the video content, it would be a few times a year basically an ask me anything probably with a play along for some board game, probably a roll and write game.

Nerd Royalty

$10 level will get you everything from $3 and $5, plus some bonus Dungeons and Dragons content that will come out yearly, think a fully developed one shot, or for this year it’ll be a mad lib style character creation aid for new players or people who just need a bit of push to get the creativity going. Plus you’ll get your shout out not only on the website but also on an ending screen for Malts and Meeples.

Nerd Emperor

Finally, we have a $50 level. It gets everything mentioned before, but also access to a monthly D&D one shot, and I could be convinced to try another system I already have, for yourself and the others at that level, or if no one else is at the level, yourself and two of your friends. At this level, I wanted to add in more interaction and a whole lot more. I honestly doubt people will go to this level, but I can dream and if you want to play some D&D with me, this might be a way to do it.

What Will I Do With the Money?

So of course, what are you giving money for. Am I just going to use this for pay bills and things like that, no. I want to use the money from Patreon for other things to help add more content to the channel. That might mean upgrading my sound equipment, getting someone to build custom logos for Malts and Meeples and 10 Minute Marvel, buying more board games to show off on Malts and Meeples or to do reviews on, that I might not get otherwise.

I do have some thoughts for goals for fun stuff to do with the money for the Patrons themselves. I have a goal for 100 Patrons, it’s a pipe dream, but if I hit it, I want to do a big board game giveaway to people who are members of the Patreon. And at 25 Patrons, I want to start doing more content that is driven by the Patrons over on Malts and Meeples.

Thank you for even considering my Patreon. I know that there are a lot of sources vying for people’s money. I even have trouble allocating much to Patreon and focus more on direct buying from game publishers when I can. Thank you all for reading this post, and I hope that some of you will consider helping support the website, YouTube channel and podcast.

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