Transcripts are available at diceexploder.com

Larp! It’s that thing where you dress up like wizards, go into the woods, and hit each other with sticks. Right? Well.. yeah! Except no, because it’s a million other things, too.

Today 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.

Further Reading

Ghost Court by Jason Morningstar

We Are Roommates Now by Wendy Gorman

Space Larps by Jason Morningstar

Welcome Guests by Jason Morningstar

The Climb by Jason Morningstar

So Mom I Made This Sex Tape by Susanne Vejdemo

Behind the Magic by Randy Lubin

The Hench Union Larp by Sam Dunnewold

Socials

Randy onBluesky

Randy’s foresight games are at leveragedplay.com

Randy’s consumer games are at diegeticgames.com

Randy’s online games platformStorySynth

Sam onBluesky anditch

The Dice Exploder blog is atdiceexploder.com

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

Join theDice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Pregens! 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.

Aaron’s Kickstarter

Ithaca in the Cards: Second Expedition and What Should We Have Tomorrow? Full Course

Ad Links

A Perfect Rock 

Growing Thylacine: A Pamphlet Zine TTRPG

Further Reading

Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion

Caro Asercion on Dice Exploder

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games

Lady Blackbird by John Harper

Larp Design and the chapter BASICS OF CHARACTER DESIGN by Juhana Pettersson

Socials

Aaron onBluesky anditch.

Sam onBluesky anditch.

The Dice Exploder blog is atdiceexploder.com

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

This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar and Sam Dunnewold.

Join theDice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

What’s the best way to convey the emotional experience of being a post-apocalyptic demon-fighting wizard action hero? Did you say “a coloring book with some Yahtzee on the side?” Because that’s what Two Hand Path designer Mikey Hamm landed on.

Last week was an episode all about the joy of destruction and transgression, and I wanted to balance that out today with another episode on physicality in games and the act of creation. But because I’m joined by the wonderful and prolific Jeeyon Shim, this spilled out into so much more: Jeeyon's background in child education, solo games that ask you to do a verb other than journal, how important it is for our humanity to take breaks and touch grass sometimes, and just how much fun art can be.

Further Reading

Two Hand Path by Mikey Hamm

Making Comics by Linda Barry

Field Guide to Memory by Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim

A Mending by Shing Yin Khor

Ad Links

Sock Puppets

Mission ImPAWsible

Socials

Jeeyon on Patreon, 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!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Don'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.

Further Reading

Audrey’s podcast Alone At The Table podcast and the Wreck This Deck episodes specifically

Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings

Birds Love Dirt by Emily Jankowski

Under the Autumn Strangely by Graham Gentz

Balatro

This video about a particularly infamous Magic: the Gathering commander deck

Rookwood by Nerdy Pup Games

Ad Links

Sword Opera

Shownotes

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!

Transcripts can be found at diceexploder.com

It's the Dice Exploder 2024 year end bonanza! This year I'm joined by Aaron Voigt, Rowan Zeoli, and MintRabbit plus a cavalcade of friends of the show to go over games and adjacent things we loved from 2024. Come reminisce about the year with us!

Aaron on Youtube and Bluesky

Rowan on Bluesky

MintRabbit on Tumblr

Aaron’s picks

Rowan’s picks

Mint’s picks

Sam’s picks

Other Picks

Kurt Refling’s pick: Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games

Michael Elliott’s pick: Two Hand Path by Mikey Hamm

Alex Roberts on The Highlander II: The Quickening Unofficial Roleplaying Game by Adam Decamp

Jason Morningstar on The Big Store by Nathan D. Paoletta

Randy Lubin’s pick: the Dice Exploder Discord

Hendrik ten Napel on Eat the Reich by Rowan Rook and Deckard

Sharang Biswas’s pick: Combat in Dungeons & Dragons by Evan Torner

Audrey Stolze’s pick: Band-Aids & Bullet Holes by Sam Dunnewold

Sydney Icarus’s pick: Working the Case by Randy Lubin

Seraphina’s pick: Triangle Agency

Socials

Sam Dunnewold on Bluesky and itch.

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

A few weeks back, a conversation on the Dice Exploder discord lead to a new game jam: the Femininomenon Jam, a jam about femininity and whatever that means to you, happening now on itch.io through February 11th. To help kick off your thinking on what a game in this theme might look like, today two of the hosts of that jam sit down to talk about the challenge deck from Wickedness by M. Veselak. In this game about a coven of three witches, the challenge deck is a bespoke oracle for conflict resolution. And right out of the gate we get to dive into the deep end with this jam's topic as we ask: is this mechanic "feminine"? What would that even mean?

Further Reading:

Wickedness by M. Veselak

The Femininomenon Jam

Socials

Audrey Stolze / Lady Tabletop on itch and tumblr

Seraphina on itch and bluesky

Audrey’s solo games podcast Alone At The Table

Sam D on Bluesky and itch

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

I usually like to think of Dice Exploder as a pretty focused show with a pretty tight format. Yeah we may sprawl sometimes, but we’re not here shooting the shit, we’re here to talk game mechanics. But sometimes, a guy wants to stretch out like a dog in the sun, hang out for a while, and just yap the day away while answering a bunch of listener questions. And there’s no one I like yapping with more than my friend Merrilee Bufkin. So this week, it’s casual times on Dice exploder as the two of us answer a bunch of listener questions.

Further Reading:

Aaron Voigt’s youtube essays

Kurt Riefling on itch

Sam's favorite games blogpost

Exiles by Ema Acosta

Jiangshi by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim

Fiasco by Jason Morningstar

The Forge book by William J. White

Secco Creek Vigilance Committee by Keith Stetson

Killing Time by BrewistTabletopGames

Socials

Merrilee on Bluesky and itch.

Sam on Bluesky and itch.

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

It’s a Dice Exploder EMERGENCY POD! Less than 24 hours ago as of recording, John Harper, designer of Blades in the Dark, released a brand new official supplement for the game: Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts. It’s 110 pages packed full of new setting and new mechanic ideas, and I really wanted to talk about it! I love Apocalypse World’s concept of “advanced fuckery,” and I’ve never seen such a good and extended example of it all in one place.

Further Reading:

Deep Cuts by John Harper

How to Overcome Your Hyperdiegesis Allergy by Idle Cartulary

Errant by 

Otherkind Dice on Dice Exploder, with John Harper

Socials

John on Bluesky and Twitter.

Sam on Bluesky and itch.

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

Hello from the between-season malaise! Today I'm joined by Aaron King, back again, who interviews me about my new zine Dice Forager: a 50 page collection of games, manifestos, and mini written-out episodes of Dice Exploder. We talk about how setting goals is great and people should do it for, what counts as a manifesto, and how making art meant just for your friends can be just as if not more rewarding than for any other reason.

Preorder Dice Forager now! (if you live in the US, otherwise DM me and maybe we can work something out)

Further Reading:

Dice Exploder blog: Hospitality, Safety, and Calibration 

Traffic Lights are Communication Tools by Meguey Baker

World Ending Game by Everest Pipkin

Your public library

Socials

Aaron King on itch and the RTFM podcast.

Sam on Bluesky and itch.

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Transcript

This week I’ve got James D’Amato (Campaign: Skyjacks, the Ultimate RPG book line, and the upcoming Oh Captain, My Captain) here to talk about custom oracle decks. Yeah a Tarot deck is cool, and great for doing Tarot, but James makes the case that it’s the “custom” in “custom oracle deck” that will really bring the not-quite-but-feels-like magic of an oracle to your table. But before we get into that, we dig deep into a mysterious black cube to get to our specific custom oracle deck: the Sooth Deck of Invisible Sun.

Further Reading

Invisible Sun

Invisible Sun on the One Shot podcast

Spindlewheel by Sasha Reneau

Campaign: Skyjacks

Oh Captain, My Captain preorder link

Socials

James on Bluesky and Twitter

Sam D on Bluesky and itch

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Ad Links

Characters Without Stories, including my episode

Indie Press Revolution