Game-ComPIEtable Items

Though occasionally we may wish it was January’s National Pie Day, a Happy belated Pi Day to all! Also, a Happy Blogiversary to Never Say Dice. Baking up 4 years of posts has been a tall order, but we’ve risen to the challenge every week. It should be no surprise that we've baked up another post for our dear readers that's crusted over with sprinkling of delicious puns. In previous years we’ve provided adventure hooks, rolled out a number of character concepts, and even some proofs of pie-rates. One thing we haven’t yet filled the posts with are Pi-tems. So this year, you’ll find a small collection of pi and pie themed items for your consumption. Enjoy! - A

Pi-noculars - Sure, you have your regular noculars in games. You might even have some bi-noculars. But what about pi-noculars? They let you see just as far as the standard binoculars from your game, but you can see around the largest object in view. Bakery in the way? Crusty old tree blocking the path? Use the pi-noculars and see through them in x-ray-like quality.

The Watchful Pies of Justice - From an annoyingly Chaotic Good baker, these pies will launch themselves into the faces of evildoers. Hope you've taken them out of your bag first, or things could get quite messy!

Hot-Pocket - Adventurers stranded without the means to start a fire? Hungry from all the day's battling? Break out the Hot-Pocket! A small pouch designed to heat and keep food warm…or you can turn it so molten hot it's like throwing a ball of magma towards your enemies (yet it's still somehow frozen in the middle).

Vial of Filling - Tired of lugging around massive quantities of rations? Want something small and discreet, yet still delicious... but need to feed a group of 4-6? Get yourself a Vial or two (or more) of Filling! Just pour the contents into a pie tin, pan, bucket, or barrel and watch it fill up with pie filling based on the color of the potion. Red for cherry, blue for blueberry, orange for pumpkin, and now introducing yellow for lemon meringue! (Warning: keep vials away from hobbits.)

The Handy Pie-Bar - Beloved of hungry rogues everywhere, there's no windowsill this can't jimmy open... just need to let it cool while keeping an eye out for guards.

Cloak of Crust - Sometimes that elf that weaves your cloak just isn’t in the spirit for making magic items. Sure, they love the forest and helping people hide for pranks, but why can’t they just do what they really love... baking? Before you know it, you’ve ended up with a Cloak of Crust. It may sound crumby to you if your adventures mostly involve outdoor skulking, but the Cloak of Crust is perfect for tomfoolery in cities and towns. Just active the magic enchantment and receive some elvish assistance in making yourself look like a bushel of delectable baked goods.

Chef’s Hat of Dough-mination - Do you often find yourself surrounded by weak-willed bad guys? Need to rise to the challenge of ordering them around? Just adorn yourself with the Chef’s Hat of dough-mination and let the orders fly. And what powerful chef would be complete without...

Enchanted Rolling Pin - Useful as a melee weapon or for taming disagreeable lumps of dough. What more needs to be said?

We hope you all once again enjoyed yourself a slice with Never Say Dice, we know we kneaded a good chuckle, at least. Please keep coming back for more of our tabletop gaming adventures, thoughts on AI assistance at the tabletop, video games, and everything else you’ve come to love at the blog. We hope to see you again each and every week. At the very yeast, we hope you come back again next year for more of our pun play. Enjoy all your tabletops, your dice, and your pi(e)s!

Send questions, comments, and vegetarian meat pie recipes to neversaydice20@gmail.com or Tweet us @neversaydice2.

Devouring "Roll for Sandwich"

Good timezone to Never Say Dice fans, adventures in Aardia, TikTok and beyond. No, I’m not the Roll for Sandwich guy (neither of us is), but if you haven’t heard of him already (or especially if you have), this week I wanted to talk about the TikTok/YouTube show Roll for Sandwich hosted by Jacob Pauwels. The premise is exactly what it sounds like: every episode, the host rolls dice to determine the various items that comprise a sandwich (except when the episode is about s’mores). He assembles the sandwich, then actually eats and critiques his random creation. If it sounds pretty niche to you... it is. You should probably be both a bit of a foodie and a TTRPG fan in order to truly appreciate both the strange layered creations and the roleplaying references. My eldest son has been so interested in the web series that he decided he wanted to try doing it for himself. So, for the last week of summer this year, we took stock of our cupboards, made our own charts, and proceeded to consume

An Introduction to Risus

While roaming the internet in the late nineties/early noughties, I came across a TTRPG that was rules-lite and called itself “the anything RPG.” Want to play a high school cheerleader/samurai-in-training part-time goth enthusiast fast food cashier? The hot pink stick figure art glared back at me. Nah, not interested. But I was wrong. The stick figures were actually purple, and Risus is a surprisingly versatile, handy and down right fun TTRPG. I wouldn’t figure that out though till I discovered it again several years later. Even though it was written as a comedy system (and somewhat lighthearted response to GURPS) you really can use it for just about anything: space opera, high fantasy, pulp, vampires,western, any movie setting you could think of...seriously anything. You can read a far more detailed and interesting history in a number of other places should it strike your fancy. It is time for your Risus indoctrination introduction. Risus really is versatile and fairly easy to learn

Be a Grinch! (in a Tabletop RPG)

The Holidays may be almost over (for a while), and we hope you’ve all enjoyed your seasonal music and movies/specials. We here at Never Say Dice have covered the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special and the new LEGO edition a few posts ago. A common thing many of us into tabletop RPGS like to do is incorporate media into our games. After all, many of us have grown up with the blending of media and the holidays as a given. It provides us a framework to build on and a common touchpoint to the people at our tables, virtual or otherwise. One classic character featured in holiday specials and commemorated in his own song is the Grinch, the avocado-green villain with strange cardiac growth problems apparently linked to his personality. The Grinch, villain though he may be, has a slew of characteristics that would make the character an excellent one at the gaming table. Those of you not familiar with Suess-lore may really only know the Grinch from the How the Grinch Stole Christmas animated

Willy Wonka - Cartoonish Supervillian or Time Lord?

Every spring, in at least some of the religions practiced in the States, brings yet another holiday full of varied confections: Easter. For some reason, perhaps it’s the candy content or the garish colors associated with the holiday here, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory seems to be the movie that most often comes to my mind. While there are other pieces of media that are more “classically Easter” entries, Willy Wonka just seems to belong here. Perhaps there’s something to those giant eggs, as well. Whatever the reason, it’s in our common consciousness around this time of year, and that has had me thinking about a couple of common internet theories. One common thought is that the titular character Willy Wonka is an incarnation of Doctor Who ’s (only semi-titular) protagonist, the Doctor. The other would have you believe that Willy Wonka is a cartoonish supervillian originating in the DC universe, most likely one of Batman’s adversaries. For this post, let’s go over the arg

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