Hi, I’m one half of Never Say Dice, specifically the cranky D&D and fantasy content-consuming half, and you may remember me from meme busting posts such as: Them Bones , Divine Bovine , and Uh-oh Here Comes the Peasant Railgun . Finding ways to kill foes in the tabletop realms fills the imaginations of players and DMs alike. Finding smart ways to do so within the rules is even more important when we all want to play a game that's fair and reasonable. Then we have the other type of gamer, who wants to have their moment in the creative sun by ignoring, flouting, or perverting the rules. If you think those kinds of people sound fun, you’re wrong! And this post isn’t for you. We call those kinds of people "engagement (or rage) baiters", and they're putting unwise ideas into impressionable player’s heads. So, once again, we here at Never Say Dice are doing our part to break another "meme," and hope nobody buries us alive for trying to stop all the…burying ali...

Once again we wish a Good Timezone to Never Say Dice fans, adventures in Aardia, TikTok and beyond. No, we’re still not the Roll for Sandwich guy (seriously, neither of us), and if your memory's a little crusty, you should go devour our f irst blog post on Roll for Sandwich . The social media show is hosted by Jacob Pauwels, and is exactly what it sounds like. Every episode (nearly), the host rolls dice to determine various items that will comprise a sandwich. The host then consumes his creations and determines a name and point value along with sharing his commentary. It'is a nerdly social media underground phenomenon that has spawned fans following creators, imitators, different mediums such as pizza, and plenty of homages to the original creator. If you enjoy food and gaming (yes, in that order), you might want to dig right into the feast of these short video collections . It still enthralls my children (when we can get ourselves to all focus and watch a few episodes) and my...

The post schedule around this blog hasn’t been the smoothest as of late. Between life’s pressures and unexpected tragedies such as rock legends (and personal heros) dying , it's not hard to imagine how that would impact a regular day. Unfortunately for our dear readers, one of the things that has kept me from writing over the past few weeks is vacation. Though, while one might expect they'd get more writing done on a vacation, the fact of the matter is that taking your whole family on a trip, even limited to those living in your own household, is something of a job in itself. Vacation is what I want to talk about this week, though, so perhaps it works out after all. While I may have previously talked about gaming while on vacation and finding inspirations in your trips , or even taking a vacation from your weekly gam e,  this week I want to look at something a bit different: giving the characters a vacation.  Time to Party Our characters in tabletop roleplaying ga...

How often do you visit the barber in your electronic games ? It could be as easy as revisiting the character creation screen. Or it may require you to visit a specific contact in the game, spend some of the game’s currency (special or not)  and select your new hair style. Rarely does a game have some mechanic where your hair, and preferred styling of such, needs to be maintained in some way. That's a huge departure for something so eventful and important in real life, and something that's ever-changing... whether we want it to or not. It grows, it greys, it falls out - all mostly out of our control. We style it, cut it, dye it, and get it as close as we can to how we actually want it to look. It's something we spend a lot of time on, and yet in most media, including tabletop games, it's largely ignored. So this week, let's do up your hair and bring the barber shop into your tabletop games with Never Say Dice.  Do the New 'do Changes in appearances for your table...

Collecting, and curating those collections, is something that seems to span cliques, cultures, and economic statuses, even throughout history.Though there are some major differences: one would imagine the upper crust collects things such as cars and yachts, and historically what gets collected has certainly changed over time along with tastes change... though you still see Hummel figurines, pressed pennies, and fancy spoons in tourist destinations. Ask any average person today, and they'll likely say they collect something themselves. It might be as simple as coins or stamps (if you’re thinking booooorrriiinnnggg , you're probably right, but don’t yuck their Yum !), as widespread as trading cards, or as nerdly as dice (shout out to our fellow dice goblins ). We even have games based around collecting - the writers of Never Say Dice are certainly no strangers to Magic: the Gathering and other collectible card games, even if we’re not currently wizard-dueling each other. They al...

A phrase that's probably most associated today with the Marvel What If…? animated series, the concept predates it by some time. Before the phrase even came up in comics (Marvel's original What If series started in 1977), the concept was over all sorts of media. Not necessarily in a What if "B" happened instead of "A", but certainly in a sense of “what if you took a vigilante detective series" (already a popular genre at the time) "and made it bat-themed ?” Often, the answers are very satisfying. They scratch some sort of brain itch we may not even be aware we had. You see it come up in comics, TV shows, movies, even our old favorite Choose Your Own Adventure  books, which are essentially founded on the question. One place where you typically don’t see it, oddly enough, is in our tabletop roleplaying games. So this week on Never Say Dice, let's explore the concept of “What If” sessions in tabletop gaming. - A Book(mark) It! A : In the original ...

The environment is a pretty big thing in TTRPGs. Perhaps you’re out in space, or in some post-apocalyptic game, but even in D&D, the environment is a big part of the game, with event-specific classes and spells to drive this point home. Specifically, the Druid (not to downplay the Ranger) is one big call-out of D&D. They’re even mentioned as far back as the original Greyhawk supplement from 1975 (you may have already seen our Greyhawk posts ), though they didn’t become playable as a character class until 1976. Along with that, there are plenty of nature-based abilities and spells. It should be no surprise, then, that those spells and abilities get misused. Yes, once again you’re in for another round of Never Say Dice Ruins Your (shitty) TTRPG Memes . This one comes from a frequent offender, and we’re going to stop naming them to (hopefully) discourage these things from happening, or at least going quite as viral. The setup goes something like this: Player : I’m going to use Pl...

In pre-printed tabletop games, and even morein freeform adventures, we know our location from the start. Your pre-published map shows all three levels of the castle, along with a a list of shops and other points of interest in the town. The spaceship blueprint has a list that covers crew quarters, the engine room, gunner stations, etc. Or maybe your book doesn’t have maps or blueprints, and presents flavor text and broad descriptions of the the people and places it covers. Both maps and descriptions, even general ones, are helpful when you’re running a game, and can cut down prep time for a scene. For those of us who fly by the seat of our GM pants in sessions, though, these may sometimes become a hindrance when we haven’t had a chance to go over them in advance. When presenting players a location, knowing where things are placed, what's secret or hidden, what doors are sealed/locked, where all of the traps are and so on, are all things you should probably know ahead of time. But ...

Tabletop roleplaying games are all full of helpful hands, particularly in Dungeons & Dragons . You and your teammates are always helping each other - there's even a "help" action. There are quite a number of hand-y spells such as Chill Touch, Shocking Grasp, Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp, and Vampiric Touch. You even have spells with the word "hand" in them like Burning Hands and Bigby’s Hand. Today, though, we’re specifically focused on one hand in particular. A simple cantrip, but a favorite of many spellcasters, and extremely useful. We’re talking about Mage Hand. While we could expound upon the multiple uses of this utility spell, and maybe we shall eventually, today we’re going to focus on a meme . That’s right, this is another edition of Never Say Dice Ruins Your (shitty) TTRPG Memes. You can see our previous work regarding the Peasant Rail Gun ,  animating skeletons and the Divine Bovine earlier in this series. The set up this time is rather simple: y...

Some five years ago, when it seemed like the world was coming apart, two friends decided to create something together - a space where they could talk about the things they cared about, where they could share their thoughts and maybe a few people might even listen in. And this endeavor was inaugurated, naturally enough for 3/14, with a series of riffs on pie puns. We find ourselves in a similar situation today, with uncertainty, chaos, and cruelty swirling around us. But we’re still putting out this blog, and every year, we’re still putting out another round of terrible pie riffs. (Not about terrible pie, mind you - everyone knows there’s no such thing.) And this year is no different. As the world falls apart around you, take time for each other and make an effort to keep doing the things you care about. Even when it’s a bunch of pie jokes. -  B Save the Twin Pies Mall! For 80s movie-inspired games like Kids on Bikes or Tales from the Loop . The PCs come from a town centered around...

In general, tabletop games are full of competition, from historical dice and card games right up to modern themed board games. There are certainly plenty of tabletop game tournaments out there... something that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as there are even jigsaw puzzle competitions. One might argue that there are a number of board games out now that unite the players as a team, but they are still competing against the clock, a target score, or some other metric. One tabletop genre where you see significantly less competition is roleplaying games. (By which I don’t mean there's a lack of games... though D&D still tops the charts, even if they’ve started to stumble). Some might argue that competition in RPGs takes the form if "players vs. the GM" (or at least the GM's BBEG), but that's not really the case. As we’ve mentioned numerous times in our posts, the GM is there to help the players tell a story - it isn’t about "competing" with them. ...