It’s Johnny’s last week!
Celebrating our departing Head of Video.
Johnny Chiodini departs team Dicebreaker for new shores later this week. Ahead of waving a fond farewell and wishing good luck to our friend, DM and Head of Video this Thursday, we wanted to celebrate some of the amazing things Johnny has brought to Dicebreaker during his time here.
Johnny was one of the first faces on Dicebreaker’s YouTube channel, moving across from our delightful video game friends at Eurogamer in the long distant past of early 2019 and helping build Dicebreaker on his fondness for tabletop RPGs, tiny plastic rats and wishing people a lovely day. He was soon joined by Wheels, and together they launched the Dicebreaker channel with a delve into the cheese mines of Villagers, a crowdown in Tuki and a (literally) smashing game of Penguin Peril. Later that year, Alex Lolies made the video team a trio and the board was set for greatness.
Since then, Johnny has led the entire Dicebreaker team through the worlds of tabletop RPGs Blades in the Dark, Quest and Deadlands in his continuing role as ‘literally everyone else in the world’, as well as, of course, putting up with the party’s antics in our Dungeons & Dragons series Dungeonbreaker. He’s played on-stage games of Codenames and Werewolf, suffered through a a particularly naff Fighting Fantasy, and helped determine the most ridiculous monsters in D&D at conventions (remember those?), as well as pulling off the shock twist of 2020 as mild-mannered office worker Nigel Banbridge in our Let’s Play of Carly Rae Jepsen RPG Boy Problems for EGX Rezzed. He even read a bunch of The Lord of the Rings to some pleasing jazz for last year’s Christmas Yule Log. That’s not to mention the many, many miniatures he’s painted every other week while discussing everything from medieval literature to upsetting ‘90s kids TV characters.
Alongside appearing in hundreds of videos on the YouTube channel (and popping up to ably represent Dicebreaker elsewhere - the panel on mental health and tabletop from last year’s EGX Digital is just one such highlight), Johnny also wrote a number of excellent pieces for the website, including his review of the latest Warhammer 40,000 set Indomitus, his thoughts on then-upcoming RPG Deadlands: The Weird West and an entertaining recollection of playing brutal strategy game classic Diplomacy over the internet during lockdown.
It’s safe to say that Dicebreaker as a whole wouldn’t be what it is today without having Johnny’s passion, empathy, knowledge and hard work to build on from the very beginning. For all the kindness, dedication and patience (so much patience) he shows on camera, there is a hundred times that amount behind the scenes - he’s truly one of life’s good guys. The Dicebreaker team will miss Johnny a heck of a lot, but we’re as excited as anybody to see what he does next - and to see where the next member of the team (could it be you?) helps take Dicebreaker’s video output in the future, building on everything that Johnny helped lay down.
We’ll be bidding adieu to Johnny in person with a painting stream on Thursday - and he’ll pop up in at least a couple more videos over the coming weeks - but for now please join us in celebrating your favourite Johnny moments in the comments. Thanks for everything, Johnny.