An Unexpected Journey (April 2023 newsletter) (Patreon)

Hey folks! So something big happened this month, and it had quite the effect on my schedule, so instead of talking about the various games I played over the past few weeks (there honestly weren't that many), I want to talk about this one event. So as you might have heard if you watched my Rahdo video about it, I was invited to go to Manchester, England and visit Steamforged Games' office to demo their new game Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. This is a standalone expansion to their other Monster Hunter game, and from what I've heard, makes a few tweaks and adds on some cool stuff. I had never played the video game or the other board game, but I was excited about it nonetheless. Not the least of which is because they paid for the flights, so I basically got a free (3 day) trip to England out of it.

This is not England. This is actually Ireland. See, I had a really long layover in Dublin, so I decided to pop out and visit the town. It was about the only sightseeing I got to do because while I was in Manchester I was pretty much working the whole time. Anyway, Dublin was gorgeous and I'd love to go back some time where I have more than 4 hours to explore the city.

The first day in Manchester was a presentation about the game, a demo, and then the other content creators and I went back to their nearby offices and basically just hung out with them and played games. Also got intimidated by their life sized Dark Souls statue. Or is that Elden Ring? I'm not sure. Anyway, they're all super nice, and while I haven't played most of their stuff, I actually really liked MHW Iceborne. Would recommend if you're looking for a campaign boss battler (and maybe want something simpler than Oathsworn).

Now the second day was the big one. We got put into groups for a big gameplay video (that should go online in a week or two) before filming the content for our own channels. I got to play with the designer as well as Ashton from Shelfside and Jesse from Quackalope. The other content creators there were Danielle Standring, Alex from Board Game Co, Professor Meg, and Devon from Devon Talks Tabletop. I had met Dani, Alex, and Jesse before, but not the others, and when we weren't filming, we all got along super well, even if we did get in each others' way on occasion.

All in all it was a fantastic trip and I would absolutely do it again, but there was a downside. See, they didn't give me a lot of notice. I had heard about the possibility of going a couple months ago, but it wasn't until literally 3 or 4 days before I actually left that I got confirmation. Unfortunately that means that my schedule got a little bit pushed back. I was hoping to have the Food Chain Magnate video out by the end of May, but since I'm also going to go to Japan for 10 days in May, that's looking pretty unlikely. Now I'm thinking mid/late June, after which I have two commissioned videos I'll have to do before the next Patreon sponsored one. I apologize for the delay, it's really not something I like doing, but with this and the upcoming Above Board stuff (going live May 7th, I'm pretty sure), I just had to give myself a little more room. Thank you all for understanding and hopefully this was a fun little behind the scenes look.