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.

This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

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Characters Without Stories, including my episode

Indie Press Revolution

Transcript

Today, Caro Asercion (i'm sorry did you say street magic) brings us a game and mechanic all about instinct and physical embodiment: Keys from the larp Keymaster. This game isn't like most games. It’s so much about physical embodiment and exploring group identity rather than pesky shit like “storytelling”. Physicality! Larp! The Golden Cobra Challenge! We've got it all.

Further Reading

Keymaster by J Li

The Golden Cobra Challenge

i’m sorry did you say street magic by Caro Asercion

Socials

Caro on itch

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!

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Oh Captain My Captain by James D’Amato

Stout Stoat Press

Transcript

Thrilled this week to have on one of my favorite movewrights, it’s Aaron King of the RTFM podcast. Aaron brought on Love Letters from Apocalypse World, a kind of custom move the GM can write when it’s been a while since we played and everyone might need a refresher on what was going on to get the ball rolling again. I think custom moves are a wildly overlooked part of Apocalypse World, and today we go deep on why that is and how and when to write your own.

Further Reading

Apocalypse World by Vincent and Meguey Baker

Aaron King’s Worksheet Manifesto

The SF Ultra podcast

Reading the Apocalypse by Aaron King

Socials

RTFM podcast and Patreon

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.

This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar. Thanks Chris!

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

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Jukebox by Jar of Eyes

Oh Captain My Captain by James D’Amato

Transcript

It’s the crossover event of the season! This week I’m joined by Jeff Stormer of the Party of One podcast to talk about the core mechanic of Desperation by Jason Morningstar. In this game full of dread about a small Kansas town struggling through a never-ending winter, instead of deciding what happens, each turn you draw a card and decide who the thing on the card happens to. It’s a super slick mechanic. Meanwhile over on Party of One, you can listen to Jeff and I actually play the game.

Further Reading

Me on the Party of One Podcast

Desperation by Bully Pulpit Games

Socials

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.

This episode was edited by Chris Greenbriar.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

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Spectrum Roleplaying by Nat Knight

Sock Puppets by Kurt Refling

Transcript

For this final episode of the Dice Exploder D&D miniseries, I wanted to go back to the source, to my first experiences playing the game. And I figured who better to do that with than someone else who was there, my first DM, my very own father.

We get plenty nostalgic for back when I was 8 years old, but I also made him talk to me about THAC0, early D&D's needlessly opaque and complicated version of an attack bonus. I made him do this because I think of THAC0 as so representative of how D&D's rules have worked for me over the years, and because my dad has never given a crap about any of those rules. When we played, he barely even read the rulebooks. So how did we still end up playing D&D? What were we even doing?

Further Reading

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, second edition

Dice Exploder on Theorize from Brindlewood Bay, and the pros and cons of a fixed world vs one you’re making up together at the table.

E.T. (1982, dir. Steven Spielberg)

Ad Links

Reacting Consortium

Fractals Co-op

Socials

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

I have a list of mechanics I’d like to cover on Dice Exploder, and I’d say about a third of them are jokes. One of those jokes is Rule Zero, a maxim that says "the DM (or GM) is always right." I think of Rule Zero as originating in D&D culture, and as part of this D&D miniseries, I thought it'd be interesting to use as a way into talking about the play culture around the game, how it's actually played at the table, and how many of its rules people actually use.

There's no one I'd rather talk with about "do rules matter" than returning cohost Em Acosta (Exiles, Crescent Moon) who's spent a lot of time thinking about what rules they find actually useful in play. And in the end, we find yet another answer to my series-long quest for an answer to the question: "what actually is Dungeons & Dragons?"

Further Reading:

Rule Zero on TV Tropes (I do not endorse this but interesting context)

Neverland

Quest

Pathfinder

Errant

Em’s Patreon

Em’s banger games Exiles and Crescent Moon

Socials

Hire Em

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!

Back ⁠⁠Dice Exploder season 4 on Backerkit⁠⁠ now!

⁠Transcript

This episode I'm joined by Sam Roberts (Escape from Dino Island) to talk about prestige classes, special classes from D&D 3e that you could only take by multiclassing into them. Sam thinks of these things as a noble failure: a very cool idea whose execution almost immediately dropped the ball. But what can we learn from their corpse?

We get into that, along with a boots-on-the-ground discussion of what our experiences were like actually playing D&D 3rd edition and an exploration of advancement as a concept at large: how does it work in most games, and how might it work instead?

Further Reading

The Game Left Unplayed, blogpost by Jay Dragon

D&D third edition

D&D 3.5 edition

Sam R’s game Escape from Dino Island

Socials

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!

Back ⁠Dice Exploder season 4 on Backerkit⁠ now!

Transcript

Welcome to the D&D miniseries! I wanted to kick this off with a look into the mechanical heart of D&D, but I didn't really know what that meant. So I asked my friend Tristan! Designer of the award winning game Shanty Hunters and author of the Molten Sulfur blog, Tristan now spends his time as a designer on Nations & Cannons, a hack of D&D set in the American Revolutionary War.

Tristan brought on a mechanized design principle underpinning D&D, the Adventuring Day, which says the game should be balanced for parties to go through 6-8 combat encounters between each long rest. It’s an interesting idea... even though absolutely no one in the known universe actually plays D&D like that. So where’d it come from? And how do you approach it as a designer?

Further Reading:

From the Dice Exploder blog: D&D Is A Comedy Game

Molten Sulfur Blog

Shanty Hunters

7th Sea

Mork Borg

Errant

Nations & Cannons

Socials

Tristan 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!

Back ⁠Dice Exploder season 4 on Backerkit⁠ now!

Transcript

Today I'm kicking off a miniseries of Dice Exploder episodes all about the Tarrasque in the room: Dungeons & Dragons itself. But before we get into that, I wanted to lay out for context where I'm coming from, what my relationship is like to "the world's greatest roleplaying game™" is like, and what questions I was hoping to answer with this series.

If you listen to this show, you probably come from a community that's skeptical of D&D. I'm not personally a fan. But it's unquestionably doing something for many people, and I don't buy that they simply don't know any better. So what's the deal? What's good about Dungeons & Dragons?

Further Reading

At 50 Years Old, Dungeons & Dragons Is An Artifact post by Lin Codega on Rascal News

Dungeons & Dragons Is A Comedy Game on the Dice Exploder blog

Homage to the Players Handbook by Tim Hutchings

Rascal’s pledge drive

Socials

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!

Back Dice Exploder season 4 on Backerkit now!

Transcript

Among my favorite RPGs is Alex Roberts' triumph of minimalistic, elegant design: For The Queen. Today I'm doing just with along with Kimi Hughes of Golden Lasso Games. For The Queen is a card drawing prompt game, and one prompt is always the game's last: "The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?" That's today's mechanic, but we cover most of this pretty small game at some point.

You can back Kimi's new game Starscape on Kickstarter now!

Further Reading:

For The Queen by Alex Roberts

Starscape by Kimi Hughes

Oh Captain My Captain by James D’Amato

Socials

Kimi on Bluesky as well as Golden Lasso Games.

Happy Jacks on YouTube.

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!