There’s an old article from Dragon magazine that’s been making the rounds in internet gaming circles lately: Rig Volný’s “GM's Ten Commandments:Ten Dos and Don'ts for Game Masters Everywhere,” first published in 1987. The Never Say Dice crew got to thinking about how we felt regarding this collection of advice from (relatively) early in RPG history, and what we might add based on our own experiences. We should note that, after we had this initial conversation, fellow RPG blogger DM David made his own posts about updating the GM Ten Commandments. We’re not saying that DM David can read our thoughts (we’re not saying he can’t , either), but since we took different approaches to the subject, we decided to keep it as this week’s topic - and encourage you to go check out his work, as well. After all, when has an overabundance of advice ever harmed the GMs of the world? (Barring the many lost in the bloody Edition Wars, of course.) - B For reference, these are Rig Volný’s original

  For the past few weeks, I’ve struggled with finding the right thing to post on the blog. Between the continuing pandemic looming over our lives, the atrocity of the Capitol Attack, the impeachment proceedings, and the inauguration, these past few weeks have been full of stress. (Okay, maybe you international folks don’t have as much anxiety about the Capitol Attack.) Not to mention all the ongoing systemic racism, voter suppression, and political identity issues in the U.S. If you want to read more about our views on these things, you might want to check out Bugsy’s post from last week -  Limited Imagination: Storytelling and the Politics of Assumed Perspective . I haven’t even touched on my own personal problems with the household plumbing yet. This goes to show one thing, though: our lives are full of drama. So, what's wrong with all this drama? Plenty, but there will always drama in our lives, from ongoing political issues to stressful home repairs. Tabletop games tend to thri

Almost everyone who takes part in tabletop gaming has at least some fondness for dice - they’re the universally recognized symbol of our hobby, after all! (Some weirdos are enamored enough to namecheck dice in the titles of their blogs!) But for their near-omnipresence, there’s no one rule for when dice (or cards, or tiles… insert the appropriate randomizer for your game here) should actually be used. Like so many things, it’s up to the people at the table and what they all want out of the game. We thought a topic as fundamentally important as this would be a good way to start off 2021. So…. when should things come down to a roll, and how much should the results of that roll matter? - B B : It probably says something about me that, when I think about the unspeakable eldritch blasphemy that is F.A.T.A.L. the thing that bothers me the most is the text in its logo: “where the dice never lie.” Aside from the sheer stupidity of the concept of having a whole phrase as part of your logo dec

Happy New Year from both of us here at Never Say Dice. For many, this is the time of year for reflection and setting goals. It's time for New Year resolutions. A lot of people set themselves up to kick a bad habit. Some use it to start a new healthy habit. Others have lofty goals to reach, like being able to hug their families again or to geting a new job. Remember when setting your goals to make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). Whatever goals you are setting, smart or not, don’t beat yourself up if you aren't able to achieve them! Many start, many fail. As we often say here at Never Say Dice, trying is the first step to failure. For our part though, here are the Never Say Dice resolutions for 2021! - A A : My first goal for 2021 is to play in at least a one-shot TTRPG, if not a regular campaign, and I'd like this to happen by September. I'd prefer to do this with friends, but may have to settle for getting out of my comfort zone

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

This week features a rather obscure holiday honoring something that was a surprisingly large part of our collective youths: National Shareware Day. It can be hard to imagine now, but in the days of dial-up BBSs, disk swapping, and a pre-web internet, there was an entire file sharing ecosystem supporting independent software, which included a wide variety of games. From the “Episode 1 is Free” model to the “Breaks Itself After a Certain Period of Time'' approach to "Too Weird to Release Commercially” examples, shareware was the primary way PC users got to experience new games on the . As Andy and I both grew up at the tail end of this era and were denizens of local BBSs, we got to see a lot of this firsthand, and thought we’d discuss  this strange relic of our collective past, why it’s still intriguing, and how it relates to current publishing models for both electronic and tabletop games. - B B : Andy, what were your earliest shareware experiences? A : To talk about that,

Those of us in the United States just completed the annual feast of gluttony as opposed to our normal everyday gluttony this week, and here at Never Say Dice we are no different. Wait. Thankfulness. I meant "here in the United States we just completed our annual feast that celebrates thankfulness (and gluttony), and here at Never Say Dice, we are no different." While we're still not coming together in a normal fashion, due to the raging pandemic, we’ve still celebrated and brought our thankfulness to the table. So, this week, Never Say Dice would like to share with you, dear readers, what we are thankful for in the realms of games, storytelling and general nerdery. Feel free to let us know what gaming things you are thankful for on our Facebook page and Twitter ! Andy : One thing this wretched pandemic has given me, as it has for many of us, is significantly more time at home. This has allowed much more time to spend playing video games. While I have no intent to get a

You may have caught our Life Day post , which goes over what the holiday is about, where it came from, and what we can learn from it. If you haven’t checked it out, you may want to give that a read first. This week, I’m updating you on the new Disney+ LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special and reviewing this latest entry into the Star Wars universe. Will this special go down in history as a classic to watch every year with your loved ones? Or will it, like its predecessor, be reviled and spoken of only in hushed tones, ultimately removed from the streaming service, and unlikely to ever be seen again? As Never Say Dice did with the original, this special has been watched so that you may not have to! I’m sure one question first and foremost in your mind is "did the stars return for this entry like they did back in the 70s?" In the original special, we got almost everyone back: Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Mark Hamill, “R2D2” (I guess it was Kenny Baker? They really should have credite

Welcome to the wrap up for this series on the adaptations of the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe . If you missed them before, you can go back and read my reviews of the Disney version as well as the 1979 animated and BBC editions . In this post, we’ll review what little remains of the ITV adaptation and take a look at my overall rankings of the three full versions that I was able to find. Finally, we’ll take a quick look at what the future may hold for Narnia. ITV I can’t really compare the serialized ITV version to other productions, as most of it has been lost to history. That being said, I did find two existing parts on YouTube, and watched all sixteen surviving minutes - albeit in poor quality, even for 1967. It felt much like watching some of the earliest Doctor Who , once again taking me back to watching reruns on PBS as a kid. That isn’t the only time Narnia and Doctor Who are connected, but we’ll discuss that in another post. Episode 8, Parts 1 and 2 detail Aslan meeting Edm

One rainy Sunday a few weeks ago, I was stuck in traffic and listening to one of my all-time favorite records: Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 debut. Briefly, I lamented that I hadn’t gone into music criticism, despite my love of good music writing and Scrooge McDuck quantity of amassed unsolicited opinions records. If only I had a some kind of venue to try my hand at it...  and then I remembered that I did! Before I made it past the stoplight (it was that kind of rainy Sunday traffic) I had come up with the idea of a media review section for this blog, the name “Never Say Disc,” and our subject of its first post. Given our shared love of Black Sabbath and the fact that Halloween would fall on a Saturday this year, it was obvious that we'd need to inaugurate our new media section by talking about Black Sabbaths’s Black Sabbath . - B  Side B In my personal history of rock music, there is a specific point at which All Things Were Set in Motion, a temporal locus, if you will. An all

You can refer to it as the Pandemic Season, the Lost Season, or the Grass-Growing Season, but whatever you call it, we can all agree that the Maryland Renaissance Festival's absence is felt deeply. This would have been the closing weekend for this year's Festival and, while even a typical closing weekend would be bittersweet, with last goodbyes for the year shared in a mix of Halloween and Renaissance garb, it's bittersweet in a different way this year. Robbed of a real Festival, we’ve made do with digital ones and other related projects, and while these projects may continue (and so may the pandemic) only time will tell the full tale. Since we wanted to do something for the community and bring a bit of the living story to our readers, Never Say Dice reached out to a variety of workers, performers and vendors. We hope that you’ve enjoyed our previous interviews Missing MDRF (with Kim Alexander - Author at Page After Page, and Louie of The London Broil Juggling Show) and M