The Magician-Detective: Bugsy's Mission Statement

Hello, Dear Readers. I’m Bugsy, and I make up half of Never Say Dice. I am a writer, a gamemaster, a musician and songwriter, a scholar, and ~~most~~ best of all, a fool. I’d like to talk about why I’m here, what I’d like to accomplish in this space, some things we might talk about, and we’ll start with the totally not made-up thing I wanted to be when I grew up: a Magician-Detective.

Two of my absolute favorite, best-loved books as a kid were The Young Detective’s Handbook by William Vivian Butler and The Magic Handbook by Peter Eldin. Maybe I just liked handbooks, but these two made my most voracious obsessions both practical and real. I wanted to be the knower of secrets: to find them, to learn them, to keep them. The seeker of truth and the teller of lies. The Magician-Detective. Many years later, when faced with the obligatory “when did you first want to be a writer,” this imagined vocation immediately sprung to mind, and I realized that, without knowing, I had fused the disparate, contradictory roles of a storyteller. All my life, I’d longed to find the man behind the curtain, to study his ways, and one day, to take his place.

In this space, I would like to talk about storytelling and narrative for all the other kids who wanted to be Willy Wonka, the Wizard of Oz, or the Cheshire Cat, to lead their poor trusting protagonists with a grin through landscapes of wonder and nightmare. Sometimes, this will be about writing. Sometimes, it will be about gamemastering. And sometimes I’ll talk about works of media and what material we can take from them to spin into pretty, shining lies. I’m especially eager to sink my teeth into the storytelling frontiers of video games, since there’s so much to explore, but also film, fiction, and (naturally) tabletop roleplaying.

By going through all this, by mapping out the gears, polishing the mirrors, and having an honest heart-to-heart with the hamster in the wheel powering the whole thing, I believe we can all become better storytellers, better gamemasters… better liars.

So please, pull up a chair, pour a cup of your preferred psychotropic beverage, and watch out for the scones - they’ve been known to bite.

Lewd Dungeon Adventures with Phoenix Grey

While we here at Never Say Dice try to bring you our own creations every week, be they on storytelling, video games, tabletop games, or any number of other nerdly topics, we thought it'd be good to talk to some other creators so you, dear readers, can hear from others right here on our blog. We haven’t included an interview since our popular MDRF posts , and thought now would be the perfect time to start including them again. One creator I’ve personally backed in the past has developed a risqué game series called Lewd Dungeon Adventures: An Adult Tabletop Role-Playing Game for Couples . So this week, here at Never Say Dice you’ll get some background on that series from the creator herself, Phoenix Gray. - A We should point out that, like the game itself, this conversation will involve sexual topics, so if the subject of sex and gaming (in this case, both in-universe and among the participants themselves) doesn't interest you, you may want to move on to another post. I've be...

Peasant Railgun

Peasants are the common commoner amongst the NPCs of many a tabletop role playing game. It doesn’t matter the setting, there's going to be a variety of "common" NPC that's peasant-like in some way. The subject of peasants has come up in my Dungeons and Dragons gaming group once again as the Peasant Railgun meme makes its way through the internet once again. A crazy idea that's been around for many years. Not sure what we’re talking about? The concept goes something like this: we find a big bad target, line up a group of 2,280 peasants all in a row over the distance of two miles, have them all ready their action, and then have them pass an object (usually a spear) down the line over the course of a six-second round, until it reaches the last person in line who throws the ammo at the target - gaining "velocity damage" based on falling object damage, and dealing somewhere near 400d6 worth of damage. If this idea sounds ridiculous to you, and you’re a reg...

The Weather Stone

If the rock is wet, it's raining. If the rock is swinging, the wind is blowing. If the rock casts a shadow, the sun is shining. If the rock does not cast a shadow and is not wet, the sky is cloudy. If the rock is difficult to see, it is foggy. If the rock is white, it is snowing. If the rock is coated with ice, there is a frost. If the ice is thick, it's a heavy frost. If the rock is bouncing, there is an earthquake. If the rock is under water, there is a flood. If the rock is warm, it is sunny. If the rock is missing, there was a tornado (or the Rogue stole it). If the rock is wet and swinging violently, there is a hurricane. If the rock can be felt but not seen, it is night time. If the rock has white splats on it, watch out for birds. If there are two rocks, stop drinking, you are drunk. If the rock is glowing, get to a fallout shelter. Weather Stones have been "prognosticating" the current conditions for as long as…well, probably as long as there have been rocks. ...

AI DM: Olyphants from Gemini

How far can we travel down a solo-TTRPG path with AI before we’re stopped? We’ve talked about the ways people solve solo gaming in previous posts . What we’re doing in this series , though, is using AI to create a solo RPG experience that's less bound by the limitations of pre-scripted offerings. While AI has been around for awhile, we’ve really only recently started to see big advancements become available to the general public. In our first post , we used Google's AI Bard to get suggestions on setting the scene, provide feedback on actions, generate random events/encounters, and give prompts to help with brainstorming. We’ve also worked with Bard and randomizers to create a new PC - a bard tiefling Echo Shaw, and even the generalities of an island forest area of Whisperwind. This week, let's address a potential major issue with this project and then focus on creating a particular point of interest in this town. The Olyphant in the Room A funny thing happened when I sat ...

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