Howdy, y’all!
Joe Hills here, hoping you had a presidential Monday last week and that today is even better for you! I’m assisted today by our community liaison, ThatTommyboii!
Today’s featured image is a slice of a photo I took of the burned out shell of one of my favorite non-hot chicken restaurants just this afternoon. Time marches ever onward.
Draw4 Charity a success!
Thank y’all so much for ensuring our 2023 Draw4Charity campaign was a success! We surpassed our $10,000 goal and raised $10,500 benefitting WorldBuilders!
Here’s the VOD of the HermitCraft TCG prize match segment I ran! I appreciate so many Hermits showing up to help raise money for a good cause.
I also appreciate the hard work of the other board members who organized this event!
Stepping down from the Draw4Charity Board.
Fans of this newsletter and my other miscellaneous work are likely aware that I’m regularly over-scheduled and over-extended as I attempt to balance life as a single parent with my obligations as an entertainer and small business owner. I regret that I’ve been unable to spend as much time behind-the-scenes planning, organizing, and coordinating the twice-yearly D4C charity streams as my other peers on the board.
Our chairman, Jack Mistretta (aka Pastability) offered to let me keep my title due to my early efforts helping him initially launch the event—but on reflection I feel the best way to respect the time of the others on the board and accurately convey my day-to-day level on involvement is to step down.
I formally resigned earlier this month, but continue to enjoy a positive relationship with everyone involved. I wish everyone at D4C the best, and I look forward to appearing as a guest at their future events.
Mercy Road 4: Save the Date for April 1st!
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing in one of the charity D&D games benefitting Child’s Play hosted by talented dungeon master Saucefire. The exact time of my session is TBD, so stay tuned for that detail.
Here’s the VOD of the Mercy Road 3 session played in alongside Quinn Murphy, Ryan North, Jack Packard, and Kat Welsford!
Mercy Road raised $8000 last year, and I’m excited to see what we accomplish later this spring!
Tommy wrote a ModMail tutorial!
If you are curious about what ModMail is on the Discord Server, Tommy has got you covered at: https://joehills.net/modmail-tutorial/
February Book Club Concludes with voice chat
I’ll be hosting a small-group voice chat discussion here about Tress of the Emerald Sea at 7pm US Central time tomorrow, February 28th. If you’ve read the book, please pop in!
If you haven’t, it’s about 12 hours on the audio book, and you can probably read the print one in half that. Good luck!
Upcoming Minecraft Server Events
- Modded Petitions: March 11th at 11am Central
- Deep Slate Nine Petitions: March 18th at 1pm Central
- Van Gogh Parade: March 18th at 2pm Central
Everstorm
January Everstorm closes
Survivors of last month’s everstorm have shared their final reports:
- NJ took a trip down memory lane and didn’t nearly burn down her barn this time.
- SuperStone had fun exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization.
- MJ enjoyed looting the shopping district and then mining some terracotta. Built some cubes at NJ’s farm. Shot a lot of skeleton riders … almost shot Ellas too!
- Gaea started out on a nostalgia trip and then was immediately entranced by a mystery
- TommyBoii met his love again but they were missing their other husband and their church.
Repent! Lenten everstorm opens
Okay, so this started out a bit more Eastery than intended, but put your “Hallelujahs” away. Uh… folks weren’t supposed to respawn when they logged out and back in, I had set the server property force-gamemode to true, and that had some, uh, life finds a way style consequences.
I’ve fixed that glitch, and we should be back on track in the meantime, here’s more obituaries than expected:
- NJ tried to help SuperStone and Centuritron but a zombie wanted a hug instead.
- Centuritron tried too hard to get spider powers
- fancytoy was slain by a baby zombie whilst attempting to craft a pickaxe.
- Qwarkeh fought off an invisible spider but succumbed to a drowned
- MisterLantz fell in a 1×2 hole, a creeper was kind enough to expand the hole.
- ChefNutmeg got stabbed in the back by a trident, while settling farm by the fishing dock.
- Void went exploring and got ambushed by three skeletons
- Ellas was lighting up a cave when they were cornered and murdered by a bone man
- MJ, FOR SCIENCE – death by lightning
- DottyMatrix donated her body to science.
Bonus Deaths! Doo doo doo doooo doot doo doo doo doo!
- Centuritron after having their soul retrieved from the underworld, was smote by Zeus by request of Hades anyway
- MJ, deaths 2-5 skeleton death loop
- Void, Going up in flames for science
Discord Updates
I’ve archived the following channels:
- #feb-mcyt-poll
- #feb-12-mardi-gras-parade
- #everstorm-january-2023
I’ve also created a #tbd-tcg channel for testing a self-hosted version of the HermitCraft TCG, which you can find on github at: https://github.com/martinkadlec0/hc-tcg
Please note that my self-hosted deployment of the TCG will not necessarily be updated daily like the one hosted by the developers.
Pinball FX3 Weekly Tournament
Congrats to Mr. Hardluck on two weeks of wins in a row! Can anyone take him down this week?!
Week 5: Hurricane
Week 6: Cirqus Voltaire
Week 7: Tales From the Arabian Nights
Join us for a seven day challenge that explores 1001 nights of stories!
Delight with scheherazadenfreuden as your friends fail to catch your high score!
Upcoming conventions
One of my favorite annual events, PlayOnCon just announced their Summer 2023 dates as July 6th–9th! Badges and rooms go on sale on March 12th at 3pm Central! They can sell out fast, so start planning now if you hope to hang out with my friends and I at a gaming convention on the lake!
- March 3rd–5th, 2023 in Nashville, TN: Tennessee Game Days Spring
- July 6th–9th in Columbiana, AL: PlayOnCon
Notable Streams
Until next time, y’all!
This has been Joe Hills with assistance from ThatTommyBoii!
Keep adventuring!