Hi ,Happy Easter! I hope you're having a lovely weekend. I'm fine and fortunately my brother and his family who live in Sri Lanka are safe from the tragic bomb attacks, it's sad and my thoughts go to the victims, their friends and families. With apologies for the abrupt segue and on a totally different note, you can listen to the latest podcast episode, a brilliant conversation about living playfully as a live philosophy with Emma Worrollo, the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Pineapple Lounge, a research agency specialized in working with kids, teens, and families. Emma also writes a blog and posts beautiful photos of her playful home over at The Playful Den."When children and youth are your business, there are 3 things that come up, pretty much in every single brief:How can my brand be cool?How can my brand be fun?How can I encourage playfulness?""If you can inject play into your [brand] experience, generally, and this is for any age, it's more sticky, it's more memorable, and it's more time worthy." - Emma Worrollo

• Living Playfully with Emma Worrollo, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of The Pineapple Lounge

Remember you can find and subscribe to the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast on all the major podcast listening platforms (please share with friends, give it a 5* rating and review!):

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts / iTunes

• Stitcher

• Google Play Podcasts

That's about it! Enjoy Sunday and Easter Monday for those who have it off, go out and play!Cheers,Willem

The planned Critical Role Vox Machina animation series looks amazing, check out the teaser on the link further down!!

 Weekly Combo Two or three flavours, interesting separately, fascinating together 

'It drives writers mad': why are authors still sniffy about sci-fi (The Guardian, 9 min read) It's no secret I love science-fiction and fantasy, often considered 'genre' literature as if it wasn't 'actual' literature. On one hand it's useful to have labels to place and categorize the overwhelming amount of information available out there, on another it's interesting to note the disdain that some people and even authors have about science-fiction. Fortunately that kind of attitude is waning,  perhaps at least in part given the hugely popular science-fiction and fantasy film and video series adaptations, from Game of Thrones to the Handmaid's Tale. Along those lines, worth noting more sad news this week, with the passing of acclaimed author Gene Wolfe. 

How Dungeons & Dragons somehow became more popular than ever (The Washington Post, 8 min read)

The original tabletop roleplaying game is super in. They sold more D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) books in 2018 than ever before. It's funny for me to note how I can almost be as snooty about D&D as authors in the previous article turn their nose up at the idea of their literature being science-fiction, even though I love tabletop roleplaying games. I am excited about how popular the game has become, I just hope it allows more people to go beyond D&D and discover others game I like more, and particularly different play styles. D&D dominates roleplaying games as a category, but just like other authors built on the success of Tolkien's Lord of The Rings for Fantasy, or say Asimov's Foundation for sci-fi, the same goes for tabletop roleplaying games. First, absolutely try D&D, and but then also check out games like Fiasco, 7th Sea, Legend of the Five Rings, Mindjammer, Invisible Sun, Microscope, Unknown Armies, Apocalypse World, to name a few of my favorites. 

What does Critical Role's Record Breaking $11 million Kickstarter mean for D&D? (D&D Beyond, 3 min read)

Of course any kind of self-avowed snootiness about D&D completely faded away in the face of this super exciting animation series planned by the team of D&D voice acting streaming team Critical Role. I don't follow them enough and completely missed this huge Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. They raised an amazing $11 million with 88,887 backers, vastly exceeding their original $750k goal. It is the 5th most backed Kickstarter project ever, and the 5th most funded, no small feat! You should totally watch the Kickstarter video featuring the teaser for the upcoming D&D inspired action animation, it looks gorgeous!