Actor Thomas Middleditch talks GURPS on Late Night with Seth Myers

A star is born!

I woke up this morning to the latest Daily Illuminator from Steve Jackson Games. Scott Haring, an editor at SJGames, announced that GURPS was a guest on Late Night with Seth Myers. Well, the guest was actually Thomas Middleditch, an actor currently starring in HBO's Silicon Valley series, as well as a nice resume of other projects. The thirty-three year old actor and citizen of Canuckistan brought up his favorite RPG and waxed poetic about it. He even began to talk about his latest campaign. You can see the interview here.

This is not the first time Middleditch has mentioned GURPS in the media. It featured in a 2014 interview in Rolling Stone with  Middleditch, and had a brief mention in coverage of Silicon Valley's showrunner in Wired Magazine, Mike Judge (famous for Beavis and Butthead, and one my top ten favorite movies ever, Office Space). It seems like Middleditch is not afraid to mention his hobby.

GURPS Geek!

Middleditch joins other famous people who have revealed themselves as former role-players: Vin Diesel has talked about it on a few talk shows as well as wrote the forward to TSR's book Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons; Steven Colbert has mentioned D&D several times in interviews and in bits on the Colbert Report.  Many other stars have mentioned it as well, but no where to the extent of these guys. 

This interview on Late Night was different though, and more important for two reasons. One, Middleditch is still an active role play gamer at thirty-three, whereas Diesel and Colbert gave it up long ago. Yes folks, grown ups play games. Second, he highlighted GURPS, This is good because I get the impression that general people think the only RPG is D&D (maybe Vampire, but not for good reasons. Thanks a lot sensationalist media always looking for a scapegoat).

Do I think this coverage will suddenly make RPGs more mainstream? No, but it does feel good to see someone from our community stand up for role play games on a big stage. It also might make us a little less wary of telling people about our wonderful hobby.