Quick, what’s your favorite tabletop RPG and why? What led you to deciding that was your favorite? Is it the first game you ever played, and if so, how have your opinions about it developed since your first experience? If not, what was the sequence of events between playing your first and playing your favorite? We may not be thinking of it when we’re playing or planning the games we choose to put time into, but there have been a myriad of decisions and experiences going all the way back to our first exposure to TTRPGs. Last week, we talked about using a quick, generic pitch to introduce potential new players to the concept of roleplaying. This time, let’s discuss how to get more specific in teasing apart your gaming lives and loves, and how you can take what you’ve found on your own journey to help someone who’s just starting theirs. - B B : With the way that games model a person’s entire life, or at least a significant part of it, it’s a wonder we don’t get metaphysical with it all th

How do you teach a person gaming? Back when I was in high school, it's no surprise I was a bit of a nerdy outcast. Lunchtime was a big concern, even more so than in middle school. The mix of kids there was different, and many of my friends from former years had gone to different high schools - even the two of us at Never Say Dice, were split up. However, this time I was fortunate: a group of card players sat next to me. As creatures of habit, we pretty much stuck to those same seats throughout the year. Every day while they ate, they’d play round after round of Spades. Occasionally they might mix it up with poker, hearts, or some other game, but Spades was the go-to. After a month or two, one of them was out sick and the rest were bummed that they wouldn't be able to pursue their favorite pastime. Showing unusual courage and social acuity, I piped up and offered to play a hand. I’d never played before, but had picked it up by watching them. From then on, I was always an alterna

Tabletop roleplaying games are, the majority of the time, about accomplishing something despite limited resources. Sure, there's a story with heroes (or anti-heroes, depending on your game), characters' individual plotlines, and plenty of other aspects, but, much non-game life, it typically boils down someone facing challenges using only what they have. It's no wonder so many adventuring parties are money-hungry, near lusting for coin or credits. That isn’t any real shock, though - if we go back to the original Dungeons & Dragons’ Men & Magic back in 1974, characters' experience was literally tied to the amount of treasure they were able to collect. When our tabletop games are originally rooted in that concept, can we really blame players for being money hungry? While experience generally isn’t directly tied to money any longer, and we’ve even slowly moved toward many games advancing player characters according to the development of their personal story, money

It's come a few times, but we here at Never Say Dice have a somewhat unique generational viewpoint as "cuspers" or X-lennials or whatever they're calling us this week. We were the very last students to have our primary schooling take place in entirely the twentieth century, and while they were on their way out, we still received a fair amount of Cold War rhetoric and American Exceptionalism, especially in the earlier years of elementary school. Notably, we got some of the final vestiges of the kind of " Great Man theory " our parents also received, curricula full of flawless figures, sanitized into simple stories for easy digestion by attention-deficient pupils: founding fathers, war hero presidents, tireless inventors... In our region, at least we were lucky enough to cover Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman, their fascinating lives stripped down to a few selflessly heroic actions that helped solve the crises of their day. They were special, unique peopl