It's funny. As someone who views "detective" as an integral part of their personality , I sure have a lot of crime games. Well, crime media in general, especially movies, but games have certain... implications. You're the one committing the crimes , not watching other characters do them or following a protagonist as they piece together criminal events through evidence and investigation. You're right there, doing all the bad stuff yourself. Recently, in the ongoing quest to tackle my massive game backlog, I've been playing the first Tenchu game, released in 1998. I bought it because the creators would later go on to make my beloved Way of the Samurai series, but if one looked at my shelves, they could easily assume I chose it thematically, as Tenchu 's neighbors include numerous Hitman , Assassin's Creed , and Dishonored games - a subgenre we'll call "assassination games." I've seen it remarked that there's an irony that, while

There may come a time in your campaigns where you want the fun of combat without the stress that can bring. You probably want something a little heavier than pure roleplaying, possibly a team challenge featuring the thrill and random chance of combat, but less dangerous for the Player Characters. Enter... sports! (Something many of us into tabletop games haven’t been good at.) Sports offer an opportunity to include a game within your tabletop game. You can frame it as a local game regularly played wherever your players are currently visiting, a touring exhibition, or your universe’s very own Olympics. No matter what route you take, players love opportunities to test their luck, their character’s skill, and get a chance to win prizes or accolades without (too much) danger involved. It can be a great break if your campaign has been full of tense moments, and makes a good pause between major story arcs. The Olympics of our own mortal plane present a ton of great examples: protected, monit

We just figured out Blue's Clues, we just figured out Blue's Clues, we just figured out Blue's Clues, because we're really smart! If you have had or known a kid at any point between 1996 and now, you might be familiar with this saccharine refrain or some variation of it, which has appeared in every episode of the popular children’s series. If you’re not familiar with the show, an animated dog leaves clues with their paw prints for something they’d like to do, and the human host of the show bumbles along constantly talking directly to the young audience, asking for help and advice. Educational content aside, this is the premise of Blue’s Clues . What in the name of Gary Gygax does this have to do with storytelling and tabletop gaming, you may ask? Mysteries are something many of us like to feature in our games, but planning them can be difficult, and players are often quite good at spoiling your carefully-laid plans. As a series, Blue’s Clues uses basic storytelling an

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone. A Side :  If you’re familiar with the words above, you’ve probably seen at least one episode of the stalwart classic The Twilight Zone . (Or maybe you remember them from our previous Twilight Zone post where we reviewed a few episodes and the series itself? In which case, we hope you went and watched a few episodes afterwards.) The 2019 series revival may have been cancelled this year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t welcome these newer entries into our strange home. While some of the new Zones may have been rehashes of old material, a number of new episodes can join the ranks of that "middle ground between sc

POW! BIFF! ZOT! Fight scenes have been a part of narrative media for... well, as long as there has been narrative media . The Illiad , for instance, is full of the granular blow-by-blow we expect of fight scenes today, regardless of medium . So this is not a topic for which I can do any kind of justice - I'm sure there are people who have dedicated their entire careers to the study of narrative combat, and there will always be more to talk about, more to discover. Rather, this post will explore some recent thoughts inspired by (what else) a mostly-forgotten twenty-year old video game. Oni is a third-person action game with a focus, despite the arsenal of weapons featured in the official art, on melee combat. Today, it's remembered mostly as the game Bungie made after Marathon and Myth , but before Halo . Culturally, it's a rather bizarre relic: a western attempt at making an "anime game" based on limited reference points that the creators lifted wholesale, partic

Father’s Day isn’t a holiday I typically come to with a lot of excitement. While I love my kids, and care about my own father and other dads in my life, Father’s Day just isn’t something that I love to celebrate as a holiday. In honor of the day, though, and for those that do enjoy it, I’ve decided to use this week’s post to talk a bit about being a parent and a gamer. Both gaming (whether it be video games, board games, tabletop RPGs, or even all three) and being a parent can take up a ton of time in day-to-day life. If gaming is one of your passions, it's likely something you had to significantly reduce to make up for the time requirements of being a parent. Those unavoidable visits to the doctor, diaper changes, potty training, homework...the list of parenting responsibilities is endless. The list of games I’d like to play has also seems to have become endless in a very short amount of time. What can one do about it? (Besides obsessively organizing and cataloging your game colle

The COVID era, as we’ve taken to calling it, ain’t over yet - not by a long shot. But as vaccination percentages rise, restrictions are being eased at both jurisdictional and individual levels, and, while the decision is up to you and the other members of your pod (at least we get to use some cool futuristic terminology!), options are starting to open up. This week, we'll talk about our ideas for getting back to in-person gaming and and talk about how you can set up your own Post-Vax Agenda. - B    A : Strangely enough, despite how much we talk about it, I haven’t done any in-person tabletop games since over a year before the pandemic even started. Sadder yet, that campaign left a bad taste in my mouth like burnt pizza. I enjoyed it for what it was at the time, but now I wince at that burnt tongue feeling and nasty aftertaste. I have picked up a few games online since the pandemic started, and that’s been fantastic. Fortunately, those people are spread across multiple states, and t

Food disagreeing with you lately? The summer holidays are often full of greasy burgers and hot dogs. I know I’ve been grilling more than usual. That wasn’t what I was referring to, though. Does your food want to make hamburger out of you ? Then perhaps you need help from Peter Pepper. You might be asking yourself, “who?” Don’t worry, we’ll cover that in a moment. First we have the "how." We don’t need IntelliVision’s arcade-like super graphics for this post. We need Risus: The Anything RPG . What is Risus ? I won’t bore you with all the details here. (Besides, you can read our very own Introduction to Risus post.) In short, Risus is a rules-lite, versatile, and down-right fun “anything” TTRPG. In previous Risus posts , we have looked at converting the characters from Gauntlet , and taken inspiration from the Pole Position properties for an arcade themed setting I’ve been working on. In actual play, the game world would look something like Wreck-It-Ralph or ReBoot . For

We should start this post off with a minor disclaimer: I am involved in the running of Balticon , our regional literary science fiction and fantasy convention, and have been for a number of years. There is no financial incentive for me to promote this or any other volunteer-run convention - as the descriptor implies, there's no money to be made. I simply would like to use this platform to share something I care about, and that I think Never Say Dice readers will get a lot out of. With that out of the way, let's define what we're talking about here. There are a number of different types of conventions for the nerdly-inclined and they all have their own culture, history, and goals. A "literary" convention like Balticon is different from a comic con, a media con, or a fandom con. The first two have blended together over the past few decades, with less of a focus on comics (and the collecting thereof) and more on the proximity of media properties and celebrities, freq

The owlbear rushes forward beating aside your comrades. They now lay on the ground fighting the throes of death to regain consciousness.  The owlbear is wounded though, and you’re up. This is it. Now is the time to charge forward and end the battle. You swing your broadsword, roll a d20 and get...a 4. You duck into a shadowed doorway as stormtroopers march down the hallway. Their blasters are drawn, but you think you’ve found a good spot to avoid them. You’ve almost made it out of the compound. The GM has you roll for stealth. The escape all comes down to this one check. You throw the dice and get...3. The Players and DMs alike yearn for that critical success at a clutch moment, but failures can mean just as much. These situations can even become the defining moment for a character, adventure or campaign. What is the best way to handle those disappointing moments? -A A : Critical successes are something all players are hoping for. Even if skill checks don’t technically “crit”, there is

Today is V-E Day, and earlier this week, by sheer coincidence, I declared victory over Return to Castle Wolfenstein - specifically the Playstation 2 version. I'd started it a while ago, but picked it back up both to try and cut down my gargantuan list of  “in-progress” games and to build up to playing the more recent titles in the series with Andy. Playing RtCW in 2021 was certainly... an experience . I haven't chosen the games I've played during the pandemic specifically because of their relation to current events, but an eerie number have featured infectious disease plots ( Metal Gear Solid V , Dishonored , and Marvel's Spider-Man ), so gunning down Nazis at least gave me a chance to engage with a different aspect of our unfortunate times. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is, obviously, an "historical" game, but in more ways than might seem obvious (or intended)., The era it conveys is not the 1940s in which it was set, but the way that period was conveyed in