It seems the New Year has once again caught us off guard. 2024 has been a tumultuous year, for the Never Say Dice crew and the rest of the world, to be honest. We don’t need to go into specifics of the things we’ve gone through in the past year (feel free to insert your own), but the short version is that our other responsibilities have meant less time: less time for gaming, less time for media, less time for storytelling. As we go into the new year, there’s no sign that any of this is going to be slowing down, and will likely get much worse. None of this will keep us from our annual New Year’s Resolutions post, however - it’s simply a factor to consider, for us and for yourselves. It’s going to be tough out there, dear reader, and we all need to remember that every little thing is a victory. Here are some of the little things we’re going to try to do in 2025. - B A : There really isn’t a need to go into what's held us back, or what we’ve accomplished, and certainly I don’t expect ...

I don't think I've seen it out there as a meme, but you can tell a lot about a person's history by asking which iteration of A Christmas Carol was their first. Consummate child of the 80s that I am, for me it Mickey's Christmas Carol , taped onto Beta from some mid-80s showing. At the time, I didn't appreciate that it was only the second ever screen appearance of the already-legendary (in comics), although it did help set the stage for my DuckTales fandom shortly afterwards. While a number of changes are made for time, intended audience, and the central hook of casting existing Disney characters, Mickey's Christmas Carol doesn't duck (sorry) its responsibilities when it comes to the story's final climax: the existential horror shown Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Future - a terrifying, yet captivating, sequence for a youngster like myself, capping off a story involving more temporal complexity than anything I'd ever seen to that point. ( Back to...

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet, Cupid, Donner…ah, you probably recall all of them including Rudolph - the most famous department store mascot reindeer of all. If you're a regular reader of the blog, it shouldn’t be any surprise we’re bringing up a Rankin-Bass Special yet again . Previously, we've dissected Mad Monster Party , frequently referenced their animated Tolkien adaptations , and taken inspiration from both Santa Claus is Coming to Town and, yes, Rudolph .  This time though, especially after having just passed the 60th anniversary of the original airing, we revisit Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and take a look through the lens of a classic tabletop adventure. So pull up your ice blocks, lend your ears, and keep an open mind about treating this holiday classic as an adventure. Peppermint! The story itself works best as a starting point, or even backstory followed by a shorter truncated adventure. You get introduced to a few of the main cha...

Given the power they exert over film and other visual media, it's no surprise that some editors think of themselves as gods... and when it comes to turning raw, disorganized messes of raw footage into complete narrative products, they might as well be. Not to mention the advice that a (possible) god once told (wannabe god) Bender, that goes doubly for editors: "when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." Not to say there isn't flashy editing, of course, the kind of cuts that demand a viewer's attention and acknowledgement through sharp juxtaposition or shifting from one part of a story to another in a manner reminiscent of a page being turned or curtain pulled. But these examples are notable because they're standout exceptions - most editing has the far more mundane, but no less miraculous, task of turning a three-walled set filled with lights, cameras, microphones, and all the people running them into the illusion of...

Anyone who knows their Never Say Dice Lore is familiar with our lifelong Simpsons fandom. While we were lucky enough to catch the legendary Golden Age of the series when those episodes were first airing, we actually started before even that. While most of the elements are present that would eventually enshrine the series in cultures worldwide, the show itself is rather different in its first two seasons: slower, with a smaller scope and emphasis primarily on family and social relationships - not to mention relatable scenarios, the kind of things that happen to regular people. (And not one single magic robot!) As a kid, I remember them hitting pretty hard emotionally, particularly “Bart Gets an F,” “Bart’s Dog Gets an F” (no surprise those would hit someone who, at the time, was the same age as Bart), but especially “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish” which dealt with mortality I’d never seen before. I had fewer of those moments of deep emotional connection as the series went on, ...

In the United States, the time has come once more to hunt down a turkey and fixin's, throw on the telly, and eat yourself into a food-induced coma. Though the holiday is particularly late this year, a food coma is one thing that seems like it can’t come quick enough. But before we gorge ourselves with stuffing (or tell our families to get stuffed over political differences), let's take a few quick moments to figure out how we could stuff some gaming into our already-packed schedules. Sure, we have meals to cook and roads to travel, but you can always get little time in for gaming, right? There and back again… at an Expected Party Travel has to be the biggest obstacle to fitting in quality game time, no matter if you’re headed to or from your event, or whether we're talking about video or tabletop formats. While I might have been found on long car trips with a Game Gear in my youth, cell phones and other mobile gaming devices bring plenty of opportunities today. However, as ...

We’ve written a few times on the blog about using commonly shared media to get people into gaming and developing your group's games . Finding common ground can be key in getting your group to coalesce just right. You can’t stick to just that, though. While you can find plenty of shared humor and excitement by walking the same ground you know you all love, you need to expand your horizons to keep games fresh and interesting. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go digging, though, inspiration can be found in any sort of media or event if you consider it long enough and apply it well. So, this week, let's take a look at some unconventional media that could inspire our tabletop gaming stories. A Novel Idea Television shows and movies do it all the time: steal from classic literature and folklore and make it your own. Would the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes be the same if they hadn’t reused classic episodes of The Twilight Zone ? Would Gargoyles have been as enj...

For reasons of which I am still not entirely aware, in the days leading up to the election I had a strange compulsion to look into the 1986 reboot of Superman comics. Maybe it was from going through the comic collections I've finally retrieved from my parents' basement - while I still haven't been able to find them, I had a few post-reboot issues that confused me as a kid and would, over time, learn the circumstances that led the publisher to push for a clean slate and undertake what's possibly the most successful "hard" reboot of a major media franchise to date. For the (blissfully) uninitiated, a devil -may-care attitude stemming from writing decades of crossovers , twist endings , and IP acquisitions with an expectation that the audience won't care enough to be confused (or, more likely, simply grow out of caring) had left the "DC Universe" an incomprehensible mess by the early 80s. But as we've discussed before , readers by that point ha...

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...

While many different traditions come up around this time of year, the one that's always scary popular is Trick or Treating. At least in the USA, things are typically focused more on treats rather than tricks... though, in some shady corners, flaming bags of animal poop, eggings, and the TP'ing of people’s houses still likely prevails. There are also always rumors of the tricks disguised as treats:  needles or razor blades shoved into candy or fruit treats, drug laced delights, and so forth . Even today, it's still recommended that adults go through their younglings' collection of confections before letting them have at (also a great opportunity to sneak some candy yourself). But before you slip into your sugar infused diabetic naps, have a quick read of a table of tricks and treats you can use to sweeten up your tabletop games. - A A mixed bag of candies and curses for your players can come in any number of ways. Perhaps they're a collection of Victorian tinctures ...

It wouldn’t be the spooky time of the year around here without Never Say Dice digging up some '80s and '90s macabre media or exhuming forgotten toys. In the past, we’ve talked about a myriad of Simpsons " Treehouse of Horror" episodes , had a Mad Monster Party , and played around with finding inspiration in monstrous toys such as Blurp Balls and Boglins . It was an era in which creepiness abounded, and you could find it in just about everything, even things like after-school cartoons and breakfast cereals . Beetlejuice was one media franchise that was adapted into all those things and more... it's even been on Broadway ! (Lets face it, the cartoon was a great kids' show and the action figures did some interesting things you didn’t typically see.) So, with the franchise being revisited on the big screen in the form of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , why don’t we see what inspiration it can bring to our games? Ghost with the Most Across all of the various forms o...