Back from my trip up North to spend a few days with the immediate family, the first time we've been all in the same place in over 3 years, wow. Emotional to leave them to come back home, but I did get some gaming done while I was there. Work had some "not-so-great" surprises for me when I got back and in order to ensure the job is put first, the podcast will revert back to a bi-weekly affair (full reasons explained in the show).

So in this episode after I talk about general channel updates I will discuss the games I've had success with in teaching the family before as well as how the games I took along this time round went down.

I'll also talk about how gaming with your non-gamer family can be a very different experience to playing with gamers and how you may need to adjust your settings a little to cope with them pushing your buttons. . .

IT'S SO HOT!! Before i go away for a few days to spend time with the family, I need to record this podcast and I pick the hottest day in the UK of the entire year to do so. So I look like a wet fish and yet will try to give you an entertaining show!

I talk about channel updates, the games I played recently, the recent PR boo-boo with Pendulum and Stonemaier and then talk about whether we as gamers, myself included are starting to get jaded on online gaming when we desire face to face interaction?

Just a general chit chat to tell you what I've been up to, channel updates, holiday plans, what I've seen on TV, played in video games etc. Then I mention the recent updates by FFG for upcoming games and expansions.

I wasn't sure if I was going to do this but by popular request on my first stream, people wanted to hear my thoughts on the recent Dice Tower Awards. So I though I'd combine the Spiel Des Jahres awards as well as Dice Tower into one big thoughts episode. Watch me go through the awards on their websites and discuss in more detail!

Well in general I will be doing 30 minute episodes give or take but this was a special case. Jeremy Howard of ManvsMeeple got in touch with me and asked if we could do a chat over Skype. Of course I jumped at the chance and as you might imagine, we talked for........A LONG TIME.......so much so that I didn't want to do 3 separate episodes for one conversation. So after a poll was held, I decided to release it all as one bumper episode!

The introduction to the show goes into detail about the circumstances and then we get right into 75 minutes of conversation about everything from games to theme to publishers to cats to relationship advice. This was great fun to do but a pain to edit!

The audio is much better guys! I finally figured out OBS filters so now you should have no troubles going forward! Sorry for last week!

So let's kick off the show with some highlights of what games I'd played recently, some Kickstarter projects I'm looking into and how great it was to finally go back to my Dice Portsmouth cafe after so many months.

Then I talk about my experience at Virtual Gridcon run by Paul Grogan while giving my general thoughts on what I think of virtual conventions in general.

Hold on!! What's this?

Well everyone, I recently did a massive relaunch of my whole channel "The Broken Meeple" - if you check out my YouTube channel you can see the after effects of that. Well that also means the podcast got a refresh, with a brand new look, ACTUAL VIDEO CONTENT OF ME SPEAKING via OBS software and a promise to maintain a regular production (95% certain) of 1 episode of around 30 minutes each Sunday.

So rather than delete all the old content, I've created this Episode Zero to explain everything in detail and show you on screen (audio fans don't worry, I describe everything!). I will say OBS was a "pain" to say the least and my audio isn't 100% perfect, but it's a learning curve so expect improvements going forward!

It's been a while due to a mix of reasons, mainly because of my daily YouTube content I've put out to keep you all sane (or not) during COVID. But it's time you got an update as to what else I've been doing as there's plenty going on behind the scenes.

In addition there are few interesting app/PNP additions to some games that are worth a discussion and at the end, there's my final 3 questions for the Q & A.........please submit more questions! :P

Talk about hot off the press! The Golden Geek Awards for 2019 were just released. Now granted, I don't tend to rely on the rating or award systems governed by BoardGameGeek, but that doesn't stop me from giving my thoughts!

So I will take you through each award (that I can fairly comment on) giving you the winners and runners up and some of the nominations that I feel should have been given more love.

Afterwards, I have 3 more questions from the mail bag including thoughts on a rather controversial "solo gaming" video released by others recently. . . . .

Doesn't isolation just suck?!

Ah well once I've moaned about how I'm coping as an extrovert with isolation, I can talk about gaming matters!

Firstly my thoughts on Dominant Species which I played literally last night for the first time on Tabletopia........was it worth the 5 hours of investment?

Second, a quick snippet on my fears for how the gaming industry is going to return to normal with regards to releases.

Thirdly a kind contributor has given me a few cool questions to answer for Q & A including how I came up with the Broken Meeple name and why is theme so important to me in a game?