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 this game's greatest influences: the 2014 Keanu Reeves movie John Wick.

The first half of this ep is basically a movie podcast. We go deep on what makes John Wick tick (in brief: the first 30 minutes). But the back half we get into the extremely popular concept within indie rpgs of genre emulation: making games that evoke another piece of media or genre of media. What makes genre emulation work? What do we think most people get wrong when they attempt to do it? And is it even a worthy goal?

Further Reading

Back Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter now!

John Wick (2014)

Escape from Dino Island by Sam Roberts and Sam Tung

Socials

Sam Roberts on Bluesky

Sam Dunnewold 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 designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta

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 rpgs each player gets one main character. This is often true regardless of whether or not there's a GM: certain characters "belong" to each player. Not so in Band-Aids & Bullet Holes.

But what does that look like? And what does it do to play? There's a lot of games that have played with other models, but to kick things off today we're digging into how it works in Jason Morningstar's Space Post, a game about delivering the mail in space, where main postman and space ship characters are passed around between players.

And to do that I'm joined by Sidney Icarus, game design smarty, designer of Decaying Orbit, and former host of The Hard Move aka the podcast whose format I stole for Dice Exploder. Come on, let's get into it...

Further Reading

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter

Space Post by Jason Morningstar

Bluebeard's Bride

Band of Blades

Everyone Is John

Ars Magica

Socials

Sidney’s website, YouTube channel, and Bluesky

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

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, but I didn't want you to just take it from me all the stuff I love about it, so I'm handing the show over once again to Lady Tabletop and Seraphina Garcia Ramirez. They're gonna tell you about Band-Aids & Bullet Holes through its core mechanic: take a marker, sharpie your character's core traits onto playing cards, then shuffle those up and flip them at each other, high card wins. As Sera says, somehow adding flavor to the classic card game War makes it so much better...

Further Reading

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter

Socials

Seraphina on Bluesky and itch

Lady Tabletop on Tumblr 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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

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" which lay out not just character traits and goals, but the central dramatic questions and stakes each character's arc is likely to concern itself with. And that, more than anything else, is probably what I want from my pregens.

Whitney Delaglio joins me to talk about Lady Blackbird's Keys (originally from The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon). She's got her own game coming to Backerkit next month - The Old, The Cold, The Bold - which iterates on Keys. So today we get into not just how they work but how you can make them work for you.

Further Reading

Lady Blackbird by John Harper

The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon

The Old, The Cold, The Bold by Whitney Delaglio - second edition on Backerkit soon!

Socials

Whitney on Bluesky

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

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 influences, and he came back with another diceless, GM-less resolution mechanic: the token economy of weak, strong, and regular moves from Dream Askew / Dream Apart. So today we're completing Dice Exploder's accidental Dream Askew / Dream Apart trilogy (paired with the episodes on lures and setting elements from the past couple months) and then digging into what makes this system work and what Realis learned from it.

Further Reading

Realis is on Kickstarter now!

Follow Sam’s game Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter!

Dream Askew / Dream Apart by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum

Socials

Austin on Bluesky

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 designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta

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 winners.

If you want to get involved in The Awards, you can apply to be a judge through the end of April and you can submit your games during the month of May! This year's Awards will cover games published between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025.

Further Reading

The Awards 2026 - apply to be a judge today!

Cloud Empress by Watt

Border Riding by Stout Stoat Press

This Maze Will Be Big Enough To Call Home Someday by Anna Anne Anthropy

Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya by Munkao

Socials

Nico on Bluesky

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

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 part of the belonging outside belonging engine, and specifically how they're implemented in Heave in the Dust...

Further Reading

Heaven in the Dust by Luke Jordan

Begin Again by Barclay Travis

Dream Askew / Dream Apart by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum

Socials

Tabletop Book Club, Bee, and Barclay on Bluesky

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta.

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 enough to progress,” it’s “once we have all these clues, how do we put them together and what do we do with them?”

Further Reading

Ballad Hunters by Tristan Zimmerman, now on Kickstarter

GUMSHOE by Cat Tobin, a list of resources for and articles about GUMSHOE

The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola

Socials

Tristan on Bluesky.

Molten Sulfur Blog, Nations & Cannons, and Shanty Hunters from Tristan

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta.

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 much I struggled with, and I wanted to break it all down on the show.

And I didn’t want to do that without bringing on someone who could unabashedly sing this game’s praises, because I think the game deserves that too. So today I’m joined by the general manager of my campaign, moderator of the Dice Exploder discord, my friend Seraphina Garcia Ramirez, to talk about the voice of Triangle Agency's game text and really the whole game at large.

It's the longest episode of Dice Exploder ever. Let's go.

Further Reading

Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland

Socials

Seraphina 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 the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

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 when you completely reinvent the setting, how do you think about what parts of the fiction are important and need to be kept vs what parts should evolve and change?

And to do that, we picked an old mechanic from Dungeon World that cuts to the heart of it: draw maps, leave blanks. But how detailed of maps, and how big of blanks?

Further Reading

Blades 68 on Backerkit

Blades in the Dark by John Harper

Dungeon World

Tim’s maps of Doskvol

Socials

Tim on Bluesky and olddog.games

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!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta.