When you’re playing roleplay-heavy D&D, what does a scene look like? Since the game doesn’t give you much in the way of tools for doing so, are you framing scenes intentionally or just kind of letting them happen? And if the latter, is that serving you well?
Shadows with Elin Dalstål
TranscriptCommentShadows are a metatechnique in larp where you have players in the role of something other than a traditional larp or rpg player character. Maybe they’re stagehands turning out the lights because there’s ghosts in this house. Maybe they’re the characters’ worst fears who wander around and whisper into players’ ears to egg them on into terrible actions and choices. They’re special effects, or ghosts, or whatever else you want them to be. Let's talk about them!
Workshops with Marc Majcher
Transcript1 CommentThere's this period of time between when we've all agreed we're going to play a game now that’s just as much something that can be intentionally designed as gameplay itself. But I don't see much of that in ttrpgs. Meanwhile in larp, workshops to set up a game are standard practice. What do they look like, and what can we learn from them?
Dice Exploder is on Patreon, plus Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
TranscriptCommentDice Exploder is now on Patreon! There's not going to be a lot behind the paywall, but there is right now a pilot episode for a new podcast that's part play report, part games criticism, and part personal memoir. This pilot is about the excellent game Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, and you can listen to it now on the brand new Dice Exploder Patreon.
Embodiment with Kate Hill
TranscriptCommentIn a lot of tabletop rpgs, to do something in the fictional world, we engage with abstraction: to pick someone’s pocket, we describe picking their pocket, or we roll a die to see how well we pick it. But in larp, sometimes the action is the action. I pick your pocket... by picking your pocket.
This embodiment of play, where my real life actions equal my fictional character's actions, might be what many people understand as the core difference between larp and tabletop games. Today, Kate Hill and I get into the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful of embodied play.
Just Read the Card (Ghost Court) with Randy Lubin
Transcript3 CommentsToday I'm gonna introduce you to the world of larp. If you've ever been intimidated by it, this is a place to start. Because I think tabletop designers have so much we could learn from larp, so much that this is the start of a big series on larp. And where better to start than with a mechanic that makes getting into larp easier than ever: just pick up a card and read what it says…
Mule (Last Train to Bremen) and Pregenerated Characters with Aaron Lim
TranscriptCommentPregens! They're not just a tool to get started playing quicker, they're also a way for a designer to take you by the hand and guide you to a very specific place, and they're a shared language across every table that picks up your game. Today, Aaron Lim and I break down all the joys and beauty of pregens, up to and including Aaron's meme charts.
Coloring Book Character Sheet (Two Hand Path) with Jeeyon Shim
TranscriptCommentPodcast Transcript: Flauros the Demon (Wreck This Deck) with Audrey Stolze
TranscriptCommentDon't you hate it when one card in a deck gets a little bent? You ever have someone spill their coffee on your cards while you're playing and wish death upon them? What if I told you there was a game that told you to do these things and worse... on purpose?
We're kicking off season 5 of Dice Exploder with two episodes on physicality in games. Today that's Wreck This Deck, and the transgressive feeling you get when the core mechanic of a game is to fuck up a bunch of playing cards. Specifically, we're talking about the revenge demon Flauros and what exactly he demands you do to your deck.
A Mirror Dungeon
CommentIdle Cartulary again has me blogging, this time after her post about how to make a zungeon. She’s basically got an almost meditative procedure for creating a cool little dungeon-y location for people to explore. You can use this to write a location in… well it took me about 80 minutes. Here’s what I came up with.