Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

To close out this miniseries on actual play, I wanted to feature a game that I think uses actual play as a game mechanic. Hear me out. Void 1680 AM is a solo playlist-building game in which you create a fictional radio broadcast. Except when you're done, you can send it to the game's creator (this week's cohost Ken Lowery), and he'll broadcast it out onto the real radio via the AM antenna in his garage (and on YouTube).

Obviously it feels different to play the game knowing it's going to go out on air. But I think it feels different even just knowing that it could go out on air. And while most actual play feels first and foremost like an act of performance, Ken's broadcasts feel more like an extension of gameplay and an act of community building. How's it feel to be inside all that? Come take a listen.

Further Reading

Void 1680 AM by Ken Lowery

Void 1680 AM Community Broadcasts archives on YouTube

Sam’s Void Community Broadcast

Chinese larp of Void on Instagram

Characters Without Stories featuring Sam

Socials

Ken on Bluesky and itch. You can purchase physical copies from his imprint Bannerless Games.

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Last Train to Brooklyn is an actual play from Twice Rolled Tales where they play Last Train to Bremen on a New York City subway car. It's also probably my favorite actual play full stop. Why? I think because it leans into what I'm most excited about this medium: treating capturing the act of play more like a documentary than a means towards fiction. It's excited at least as much about its nonfiction story as its fictional one.

Today I've invited Linnie Schell, one of the main creatives behind Last Train to Bremen, to come give me a beat by beat director's commentary on everything that went into it, all building to the moment I really wanted to highlight: its ending.

Further Reading

Twice Rolled Tales

The RuPaul videos Linnie mentions

Comedy Book by Jesse David Fox

Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion

Socials

Maia on Bluesky

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

One of my favorite parts about these episodes where I'm highlighting a single moment from an actual play is how many practical lessons I can bring back to my own table by going beat by beat through a significant moment in play. And today, Maia Wilson has brought a particularly significant moment from her show Maia's Game Room in which one character, in desperate straights, is pressured by an NPC to pay for his help with sex.

It's an intense moment. It may not be for you (and this episode may not be, either). But I think there's no better way to learn about how to establish good communication and try to keep people safe at the table than by breaking down a specific example. Plus, when you get this right like I think Maia and her table do, the results can be cathartic and compelling. Let's get into it.

Further Reading

Maia's Game Room: Electric State, episode 5

The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity by Jonaya Kemper

The Electric State rpg

The Electric State art book

Socials

Maia on Bluesky

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

In The Wildsea, you play as sailors on a sea of trees in a climate post-apocalypse where the climate won. And in the My First Dungeon mini series of this game, today's co-cohost Brian Flaherty took it on himself - along with co-player J Strautman - to write an original song, a “tree shanty,” that played on each episode.

Today Brian and I, along with his Talk of the Table cohost and Wildsea GM Elliot Davis, break down one of those tree shanties: how it came to be, and how this moment blends together preproduction, production at the table, and post production in a bunch of compelling ways. We also get to see some lessons on display about how to pace a campaign and how when you know you can trust your fellow players, you can take more risky creative swings. Take a listen!

Further Reading

The Wildsea by Felix Isaacs

My First Dungeon: The Wildsea episode 5

Talk of the Table podcast

Socials

Brian on Bluesky

Elliot on Bluesky and his games

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

It's a new series on Dice Exploder all about actual play. For five episodes, instead of breaking down one mechanic, we're going to break down one moment from one actual play show. And to kick things off, I'm joined by actual play critic and all-around-writer Rowan Zeoli of Rascal and Polygon. We cover an overview of actual play as a medium and the current state of the scene, we dig deep into the fine line this medium walks between fiction and nonfiction, and then we get to our moment: the very beginning of My First Dungeon's six episode miniseries on Orbital Blues. How can you make the most of those precious opening moments when there's so much to establish?

Further Reading

Orbital Blues by Sam Sleney, Joshua Clark, and Zachary Cox

My First Dungeon: Orbital Blues episode 1

Em Friedman on Patreon

Socials

Rowan on Bluesky and Rascal News

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Last summer a hot new game hit the indie rpg scene: You Will Die In This Place, a surreal and experimental... dungeon crawler? Technically? ...that seems to have more in common with House of Leaves than it does many roleplaying games. And for a couple weeks I saw so many discussions about this game that I eventually broke down and was like, do I need to do an emergency podcast about this?

No. I did not. I was busy with a hundred other things. But past cohosts Merrilee Bufkin and Jay Dragon did. So I invited the two of them to take over the show for a special bonus episode where they talk all things, or at least some things, You Will Die In This Place. It’s a dense text. They get into House of Leaves, gender, autism, misogyny, the state of the games industry, and a ton more. Take a listen.

Further Reading

You Will Die In This Place by Elizabeth Little

YWDITP on Gamefound

Socials

Jay on Bluesky and Possum Creek Games on itch and Warehouse 23

Merrilee on Bluesky and itch

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.

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AP season "reading" list:

My First Dungeon: Orbital Blues, session 1

My First Dungeon: Wildsea, episode 5

Maia's Game Room: Electric State, episode 5 - CW: sexual coercion

Last Train to Brooklyn

Void 1680 AM broadcasts

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Today we’re wrapping up the Dice Exploder series on love, sex, and romance with Will That Be All? by Graham Walmsley, a game about the social relationships between the downstairs staff at Melton Hall, a fictional British estate, over the course of about a decade between the first and second world wars.

It’s a lovely game about finding solace and community even as the world outside feel deeply uncertain - and that’s what Kim wanted to talk about: how setting, and in this case the spectre of war, can encourage and affect how not just romance but relationships of all kinds can play out in a game.

Further Reading

Will That Be All? by Graham Whalmsley

Breaking the Ice, and The Romance Trilogy, by Emily Care Boss

Rosenstrasse by Jessica Hammer and Moyra Turkington

Downton Abbey

Socials

K Lam on Bluesky and itch

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

I’m back! Alex and Sharang have done an amazing job talking love, sex, and romance over the past month but I have plenty to say on the subject myself. In particular, I wanted to approach the conversation Alex and Sharang started about the quantification of romance from the perspective of how I feel when I’m actually at the table playing these games. Because that quantification makes me feel kinda weird… but what do I want instead?

Because freeform romance is tough for me. Romance is scary! I want some help, some guidelines, some dare-I-say rules and mechanics for it. But if not quantification... then what? What else might help alleviate my fear and awkwardness? Or is that awkwardness part of the fun and charm of romance, and really we should leave it in?

Today, Tasha Robinson returns to the show to talk it all through with me.

Further Reading

Steal My Heart by Sam Dunnewold

The King Is Dead by Meguey and Vincent Baker

Socials

Tasha on Bluesky

The Next Picture Show podcast

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

In this final episode hosted by Sharang and Alex, perhaps their climactic episode, they are turning up the heat on sex mechanics all the way to physical contact, both as a way to simulate sex acts through other kinds of physical touch... and through actual sex acts being used as game mechanics.

This stuff is fascinating, I think much more broadly applicable than you might believe at first blush, and I think also very obviously under discussed in the way that all things sex and sexuality are under discussed. Let's get into it.

Further Reading

The Sleepover by Kat Jones & Julia B. Ellingboe

This interview by Lizzie Stark with Emma Wieslander, who created Ars Amandi for the 2001 larp Between Heaven and Sea

A Place to Fuck Each Other by Avery Alder

Kirigami Dominatrix Display Simulator by Aura Belle

Praise the Hawkmoth King by sage the anagogue

Vice & Violence by Scalli

ORKFUCK by SympatheticSapphic

Sapphicworld by Darling Demon Games

Socials

Alex on Bluesky and carrd

Sharang on Bluesky and itch

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.

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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Our series on game mechanics centered around sex and romance continues with returning champions Alex Roberts and Sharang Biswas, and today they are talking about dicks. “The phallus.” Or more generally, physical objects. I did some episodes on physicality earlier this year and how the physicality of a game undeniably affects how it feels to play it. But Alex and Sharang go a step further, talking about how in a game you can use an object as almost a vessel for player emotions. Take a listen.

Further Reading

Tales of the Fisherman’s Wife by Julia Bond Ellingboe

The Beast by Aleksandra Sontowska

Just a Little Lovin’ by Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire

Let These Mermaids Touch Your Dick Maybe by Riverhouse Games

Socials

Alex on Bluesky and carrd

Sharang on Bluesky and itch

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 to talk about the show!

Dice Exploder on Patreon