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”, ther...

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...

Star Wars, as a roleplaying universe, is one that is near and dear to my heart. In fact, long before I got into Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars was my gateway into the world of tabletop roleplaying games. My father had mentioned D&D to me before, and we’d even played Dungeon! , but Star Wars was my first foray into what would become a lifelong hobby. It should be no surprise that the universe of space wizards and scruffy looking nerf-herders drew me to roleplaying. After all, I was already wearing “Jedi robes” and swinging around plastic lightsabers as a wee lad. Obviously, it was an already beloved world of pretend play, I just needed some dice to go with it. Add a best friend who had acquired the West End D6 system books, and the rest is Never Say Dice history. How do you recreate the excitement and magic of Star Wars at the tabletop though? In celebration of Star Wars Day , I’ve done my best to answer that question for my regular Dungeons & Dragons players in what may becom...