Dice Exploder

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Dark Ages , Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Under Hollow Hills, 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars Socials John on Bluesky and itch Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer. Join t...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Beyond the Pale, Tannic, Landmark, Hidden, Secret Socials Amanda P. on Bluesky and at Weird Wonder Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk ab...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Dark Sun, New Class: Really Good Dog , Lorn Song of the Bachelor, Nine Space Games, A Perfect Wife Socials Zedeck on Bluesky and at his blog Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer....

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Liminal Horror, Heart, Blades in the Dark, Cairn Socials Craig on Bluesky and Linktree Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further reading Back Tower Runners on Kickstarter ! DrachenFest Incantrix Productions Imagi-Ne'er-Do-Wells Socials Caro’s website Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. Join the Dice Exploder...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further reading Our Lives in the Wood episode 5 This Game Takes Place in Your Home Town Socials Kendo on Bluesky and the web Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. Join the Dice Exploder Discord...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Note: the "What Is There to Eat in Duskwall" pages of Blades in the Dark were written by Andrew Shields. Further Reading Blades in the Dark by John Harper Socials Jeeyon on Patreon , Bluesky , and itch Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show! Credits Our logo was de...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading The Watch 2e is on Kickstarter now Night Witches by Jason Morningstar Socials Ash on Bluesky Ash's website , including listings for their games and books Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads b...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Signs of the Sojourner by Echo Dog Games Band-Aids & Bullet Holes by Sam, on Kickstarter now Slay the Spire 2 by Mega Crit Socials Lady Tabletop on itch Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Further Reading Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by Meguey & Vincent Baker The King Is Dead by Meguey & Vincent Baker Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern by Takuma Okada Socials Viditya on Bluesky and itch Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgor...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com My new game Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is still on Kickstarter! Check it out today. In honor of BABH, this month on Dice Exploder I'm covering mechanics from other games that inspired it. In keeping with this show's increasingly loose definition of "mechanic," today I'm joined by Sam Roberts (Escape from Dino Island) to tackle one of...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Today is the launch of Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, my melodramatic action game of bloody revenge. It's a one shot, capsule game, box set, deckbuilder rpg. Check it out. In honor of BABH, this month on Dice Exploder I'm covering mechanics from other games that inspired it, starting today with the idea of character nonmonogamy. Traditionally in rpg...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com My first stand-alone print game, Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, goes live on Kickstarter next week on May 5th. I have a lot to say about it, and I'm gonna say a lot of it: May's going to be all episodes about mechanics from other people's games that inspired me in this design. Today I wanted to talk about Band-Aids & Bullet Holes straight up...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com I love pregens! But why do I love pregens? I dug into this a bunch on an episode last year with Aaron Lim about the characters in Last Train to Bremen: I love being given a clear goal and baseline temperament when I sit down to play so I can get into drama as fast as possible. But the game Lady Blackbird goes a step further. Each character has "Keys&#3...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Austin Walker's new game Realis is on Kickstarter now, and it's been making splashes in the indie rpg scene since last year when the ashcan came out. The game's core mechanic, Sentences, feels like the exact kind of mechanic I love covering on this show. But where did it come from? I asked Austin to come talk to me about it and bring one of his...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com Follow Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter ! The Awards are back! The rpg awards show with a bent towards indie games and the guaranteed worst SEO of all time is back for another around, and the current steward of The Awards - Nico MacDougall - is back on the show this week to talk through some of our favorite mechanics from the last batch of winne...

Transcripts are available at diceexploder.com Bee and Barclay are the hosts of Tabletop Book Club, a podcast that is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a show with such fun energy, and of course good design talk. Because Barclay has a new belonging outside belonging game that's just come out - Begin Again, check the link below - today I'm talking with them about lures, maybe my favorite par...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com My friend Tristan Zimmerman is currently crowdfunding Ballad Hunters, a GUMSHOE game, meaning it’s based on a core mechanic built for investigation games and gathering clues. That mechanic goes like this: “always give the players the clue.” Simple! And I think so astute as to what the actual fun part of investigation is in RPGs: it’s not “can we roll high...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com I bet you’ve heard of this game Triangle Agency. Big exciting Kickstarter, super flashy product design, a game with… spoilers in the back? It’s corporate horror, it’s packed gorgeous art, it’s a game I spent 20 sessions with in 2025. And I… had a pretty frustrating time with the game. There is so much I love and admire about Triangle Agency, but also so mu...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com If the thesis of last week’s episode was “hey the fiction of your game matters a lot and can even have mechanical effects,” how do you know how deeply to define that fiction? Maybe no one in indie games has recently faced that question on quite the scale of Tim Denee with Blades ‘68, an expansion to Blades in the Dark. I wanted to have him on to talk about...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com In Blades in the Dark, you play as criminals in Doskvol a haunted city where the ghosts are such a problem that they built giant lightning barriers around the whole city to keep them out. That sentence alone already makes me want to get the game to the table, and we haven’t even gotten to the rules of Blades in the Dark yet. That’s the conversation I wante...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com There's many ways to decide who has authority over what in an RPG. Traditional games have a bunch of players with one PC each and a GM responsible for everything else, while Dreams Askew / Dream Apart by Avery Alder and Ben Rosenbaum takes a very different approach: divide that "everything else" up into flavorful pieces, like "gossip &...

Dice Exploder: Afterimage is alternative show format, a cross between play report and personal memoir. The Experimental Role-Playing Laboratory, or ERPL, was a thrice a year mini convention put on by students at my college back in the 00s and 10s and onward to this day. It's how I got into indie games. I still think about it, and the people I met there, to this day. They still mean something t...

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com It's the Dice Exploder 2025 year end bonanza! This year I'm joined by Lin Codega and Diogo Nogueira to go over a whole bunch of game mechanics that we think represent where rpgs were at in 2025 and where they might be going in the future. Further Reading Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall Praise the Hawkmoth King by Sage the Anagogue I want to fi...