I am going to go to Japan! Indeed, I am going to go to a couple different places in Japan. I am going to ride the Shinkansen and I'm also going to eat something that has been grilled on a stick. I'll get back to you re: what animal it ends up being, I'm told there are a couple options. There are also various hot balls which may be eaten. I'm mostly interested in the food but I am told there is also a country there as well. I'll try to give you as much information about it when I can. Gabe said I shouldn't tell people I was leaving but I think I just fucked that up.
I was saying that we were gonna try engaging with advertising in a way that returned some semblance of humanity to it, and the second salvo is now ready to fire: I met Cephalofair Isaac Childres at PAX Unplugged in The Before Times, and he was incredibly nice to me. We said we should do something together, and now we did.
Isaac designed a game called Gloomhaven, which I think it's fair to say is about as important as a game can be on a few axes. Then, he took all the reputation he has built over the last few years, and deployed his new crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit. This is the sort of thing that will prove out alternatives to Kickstarter, and serving a client like Cephalofair early on is going to make sure the platform is feature rich for others to draft on. We did a few streams for the campaign, and they'll be revealed over the course of the month, but the RPG stream going on now was really fun. Playing an RPG and then getting Gloomhaven combat kinda spoils you. If you aren't familiar, "Gloomhaven Combat" means a fascinating kind of cooperative tactical puzzle, spurred by a growing time pressure. You literally can't compare it to anything else.
In any case, expect a couple more official streams from us on the topic soon - and Eric and I are going to get a chance to paint a couple of the new minis this Wednesday at 1pm PDT on stream. Yes, minis - there are now minis for everything that was once cardboard, if you want them. I've seen the whole campaign, with all its hidden delights, and I can't wait for you to see it also. Overjoyed to work with them - we really just hung out and had fun. A+, would do again, etc.
(CW)TB out.