Dice Exploder

Transcript This week, now that the part of season 3 that was funded by Kickstarter is over, I’ve got a treat for you: the backers-only bonus episode with Mikey Hamm, designer of Slugblaster. You didn’t think I was gonna just hold on to an episode this good forever, did you? It’s the show’s namesake mechanic! Mikey is currently Kickstarting Two-Hand Path, a solo game roll-and-write dungeon crawler....

Transcript This week's cohost is James Wallis, cohost of the Ludonarrative Dissidents podcast, a show a lot like this one that's Kickstarting their third season now, and designer of one of the first story games: The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Today we're breaking format: instead of talking about one game mechanic, James brought in the concept of innovation in game de...

This week I'm bringing you an episode from the new podcast Lyrical Ludology with host Logan Timmins, a show all about lyric games. I'm very excited for it. There's already at least one more episode of Lyrical Ludology published, so if you like this one, go subscribe and take a listen!

Transcript It’s the solo games episode! Hopefully the first of many. I’m joined by Seb Pines, designer of The Awards winning game Dwelling and haver of MFA in basically solo games, to talk about prompts in solo games. This is a broad survey of solo games. We talk about a bunch of games (listed below) that all behave differently. If you’re curious about this side of the hobby, this is the primer fo...

Transcript This is an intensely visual episode. If you'd like to follow along with the sheets we mention and get some extra commentary from me, you can do so at https://www.diceexploder.com/blog/2024/2/22/dice-exploder-aftershow-character-sheets I’m fascinated by character sheets, mostly because there are so so so precious few that I think do a good job. I don’t mean this to call anyone out -...

Transcript Alex Roberts, designer of Star Crossed and For the Queen, joins me to talk about pity points from Kagematsu, a mechanic that doesn't actually do anything itself beyond evoke a particular feeling when put in opposition to love points. This episode is what I always dreamed Dice Exploder could be. We start from a simple game mechanic, but we get into power dynamics at the table in the...

Transcript This week I've got designer and illustrator Strega Wolf van den Berg on to talk about money and the Mork Borg third party license. What, if anything, is the difference between making RPGs for fun, to pay rent, and to be paid fairly? And what is the cost (aha) of bringing money into making art? On the flip side, this is also an episode about community, and how the shape of Mork Borg’...

Transcript This week I've got Nova, aka Idle Cartulary, of the excellent Playful Void blog among other places linked below. Nova's one of my favorite writers in the, as she puts it, DIY elf game scene, and I knew that was a world I wanted to cover more this season. Nova brought on the rumor table from Zedeck Siew's Lorn Song of the Bachelor, an excellent elf game adventure. We got to t...

Transcript On the season 3 premiere, I’m joined by John Harper, designer of many games featured on past episodes of Dice Exploder including Blades in the Dark, Lasers & Feelings, and Agon 2e. John brought in the Psi*Run risk sheet, a fairly complex dice resolution mechanic, known generically as Otherkind Dice. The risk sheet is such an elegant piece of design, packing essentially a whole game...

Thursday January 25th Dice Exploder is back with an all new crowdfunded-by-listeners season! The lineup includes John Harper, Alex Roberts, James Wallis, Idle Cartulary, Strega Wolf van den Berg, Emanoel Melo, Seb Pines and MORE - that's right, I'm over-delivering on the Kickstarter as a treat. Check back next week for the season premiere, and visit the blog's new home at diceexploder....

Transcript Hello and welcome to the Dice Exploder 2023 end of year bonanza! I love me a good ranked list of movies on an end of year movie podcast, but ranked lists are bad and this show’s about RPGs not movies, so you get this instead. It’s me, Aaron King of the RTFM podcast, Lady Tabletop of the Alone at the Table podcast, and Sharang Biswas of winning tons of Ennies this year and being a games...

Transcript Today I’ve got for you another between-season bonus episode. This time we’re breaking format to talk about i know the end , a module I published earlier this year about going back home after a long time away and all the horrors that entails. Because if you can’t occasionally publish something self-indulgent in your podcast feed, what’s even the point of having one? My cohost for this is...

Transcript It’s a bonus between-seasons Dice Exploder! Wowie! As promised back in my episode with Gem Room Games about Mork Borg , today I’m talking about accessibility in game design using Mork Borg’s graphic design as an example. My cohost is Marc Muszynski, a friend and screenwriter with low vision, and we talk in detail about his experience with Mork Borg. Is this game, with all its important...

Transcript On this episode I’m joined by Nychelle Schneider, also known as Mistletoe Kiss, a moderator from the Blades in the Dark discord and contributor to The Wildsea, the upcoming Dagger Isles supplement for Blades, and Underground Maps & Passkeys among others. Nychelle brought on the idea of customizing existing games, homebrewing mechanics for your table (or even publication). This is......

Transcript Thomas Manuel of the Indie RPG Newsletter and the Yes Indie’d podcast joins me to talk about Secondary Missions, a mechanic from Band of Blades by Off Guard Games. In Band of Blades, a grim military fantasy forged in the dark game, you and your party go off and do missions. Meanwhile, there’s a whole other squad out there doing a whole other mission! What’s up with them? This mechanic t...

Transcript This week I’m joined by Tasha Robinson, film editor at Polygon, Games on Demand aficionado, Golden Cobra honorable mentionee , and author of this excellent piece about today’s game and mechanic: Fall of Magic and the five and a half foot long handprinted scroll at its heart. There’s a lot to say about such a unique physical object, and also a lot to cover about maps in RPGs at large. We...

Transcript In the year of our lord two thousand and twenty, many things occurred. But one of those things was the cultural event known as Blaseball. Blaseball was, more or less, a simulated baseball league that ran one game an hour, one season a week, that players could bet on and then use their winnings to vote for global rules changes. It got... weirder from there. And bigger. And memeier. It be...

Transcript This week Sam is joined by Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games, known for Fiasco, Night Witches, and many other excellent games. Jason brought on transparency, a concept originating in the Nordic larp community, which describes the separation of player knowledge from character knowledge (similar to dramatic irony. We go through a whole library of example games in this one as we talk...

Transcript Double the cohosts, double the mechanics, double the Kickstarters to back! This week, Sam talks with Kali Lawrie and Dan Phipps of Gem Room Games about Mork Borg by Pelle Nilsson and Johan Nohr: its graphic design and the Calendar of Nechrubel. Mork Borg is famous for the absolute assault on the eyes [complimentary] committed by its graphic design. In this season of the podcast about ho...

Transcript This week, Sam talks with Tan Shao Han about stress from Brinkwood by Erik Bernhardt, a character resource originally from Blades in the Dark by John Harper. This is one of those episodes where to talk about the mechanic in question, we kind of have to talk about the whole-ass game around it because so much of Brinkwood is tied up in stress. And in this case, we really had to talk about...

Transcript This week, Sam talks with his middle school buddy David Block about We Are But Worms: A One Word RPG, other lyric games, and experimental art at large. Some topics discussed include: * Art * Games * Poetry * Lists The best place to find David is on the Dice Exploder Discord . But No More: A One Letter Supplement for We Are But Worms: A One Word RPG You can find Sam on Bluesky, Twitter,...

Transcript This week, Sam talks with wendi yu about the Fate Point economy, a meta currency system from Fate by Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue and published by Evil Hat. Some topics discussed include: * Getting into storygames * “Generic” RPGs * When crunch kills the vibe * The Hero’s Journey * The (lack of) difference between rules and flavor * Writing good aspects: it’s hard! * wendi’s game here, t...

Transcript This week, Sam talks with Morgan Nuncio about cramped quarters, a move from Uncharted Worlds. Some topics discussed include: * Travel in story games * Making this move at the beginning, middle, or end of a scene * Moves as training wheels * Stonetop’s “keep company” * Wanderhome * For the Queen You can find Mo on Twitter @SirenaBesos. You can find Sam on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and...

Transcript This week, Sam talks with Clayton Notestine about hexagons and hex maps. Some topics discussed include: * The birth of RPGs out of wargaming * Avalon Hill’s hex map * The vibes of different numbers * Why hexes and not squares? * The hex’s modularity * How RPGs create stories in the fiction and at the table * Leaving hexes empty * Travel in RPGs * Hex flowers Clayton can be found @ClayNo...

Coming August 17th, 2023: DICE EXPLODER SEASON 2 . (Here’s a transcript of this trailer.) That’s right, we are back next week with an all new season. It's 12 new episodes, 13 new co-hosts diving face first with me into the world of tabletop RPG design one mechanic at a time. This is gonna be a season that's a lot about flavor and vibes and how those things themselves are fundamentally mech...