There's something seriously, seriously wrong. You know it, I know it... but more than that, we all can  feel  it.  Anybody who consumes media, especially narrative media, feels it. Every round of layoffs, every cowardly kowtowing to censorious bigots, every work suddenly made unavailable, every creator screwed over... there's a  lot  and it's happening so constantly that it's easy to forget that  it didn't use to be like this . And it ain't like capitalism is anything new, but the system's never been so dead-set on eating itself like it has been the past few... I was going to say "years," but really, it's accelerated to an unfathomable degree over the past few  months . We're going to need to stop and take stock of what's going on and what we need to prepare for, as both consumers and creators. Did this whirlwind have a starting point, the flap of a butterfly's wing or the the first tightness in a coalmine canary's tiny chest? C...

I’m sure we don’t have to tell you, and our recent post schedule is a reminder -  it’s been a week. It’s been a month, a year. The crushing horror of the daily news makes our daily struggles harder, more draining… and then it only gets worse, in ways you don’t see coming. One of the ways it came this week was the death of John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne. It’s hit the both of us at Never Say Dice quite hard. Ozzy’s work was a lodestone for both of us, something we’d visit time and again, together and as individuals. We attended multiple Ozzfests together. These “Never Say Disc” posts were begun specifically as a way for us to talk about the anniversary of Black Sabbath’s debut album. Ozzy’s also been family tradition - we both have older siblings who created the space for us to begin our own explorations and from which this one man’s music and, yes, philosophy, would be a constant for both our lives. And now he’s gone. If this medium bears any aspect of who we are, it’s vital that w...

There are generation-defining pieces of genre media, influential works whose presence is immediately felt in everything that comes after it, works in whose facets we can see its peers, its predecessors, and all the many creations it will inspire. And then there’s Back to the Future (1985) , which is somehow the complete opposite. Generation-defining, sure, but also wholly unique to its own vision, an unreplicable artifact, notable entirely for its own brilliance rather than an empire built on its foundation. These actors, these scenes, that direction… there’s really nothing else like it - even the sequels are largely their own things rather than rehashing the original. There were a couple expansions via the short-lived animated series and the much-beloved Telltale adventure game , but on the whole it’s been allowed to simply be - a rarity in today’s media landscapes of constant remakes, reworkings, and rehashes. Back to the Future is a movie that means a lot to us at Never Say Dice, a...

You see, there was going to be a Father's Day post about the way the holiday coincided with the simultaneous No Kings Rallies, Trump Birthday Army 250th Anniversary Parade, Minnesota state government assasinations, and Israel's attacks on Iran. It was going to build on the themes of fatherhood and legacy in the  Metal Gear  franchise, and talk about how the villains are generally motivated by a need to force change for the benefit of future generations. It was going to build on my previous Father's Day post about breaking the cycles of paternal abuse in  Metal Gear , along with the  Yakuza/Like a Dragon  series . And then a series of unforeseen real-world issues came up in my life - nothing catastrophic, but all things that needed to be dealt with immediately... and the post was postponed. No big deal, I thought, Father's Day can be a starting point, but certainly doesn't need to be the focus. I could keep going in the direction I'd already charted.  And t...

A phrase that's probably most associated today with the Marvel What If…? animated series, the concept predates it by some time. Before the phrase even came up in comics (Marvel's original What If series started in 1977), the concept was over all sorts of media. Not necessarily in a What if "B" happened instead of "A", but certainly in a sense of “what if you took a vigilante detective series" (already a popular genre at the time) "and made it bat-themed ?” Often, the answers are very satisfying. They scratch some sort of brain itch we may not even be aware we had. You see it come up in comics, TV shows, movies, even our old favorite Choose Your Own Adventure  books, which are essentially founded on the question. One place where you typically don’t see it, oddly enough, is in our tabletop roleplaying games. So this week on Never Say Dice, let's explore the concept of “What If” sessions in tabletop gaming. - A Book(mark) It! A : In the original ...

The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Is there another fictional (or even real-world) mixed drink as well-known to geeks and nerds everywhere? Like much of the larger Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy universe, it doesn’t make much of a direct appearance in the story itself, but establishes the character of the setting and the people who occupy it, especially given how early it appears in the story. The original 1978 radio play text ( unchanged in the 1981 television version ) is a great bit of writing, but it’s expanded upon greatly in the 1979 novel with the actual recipe for the “best drink in existence.” Each ingredient comes from a different planet, each with its own story or tradition, and, even though we never get to see any of these worlds (or their contribution to the Gargle Blaster), the sequence does a massive amount of worldbuilding and tone setting. And that’s one thing that’s interesting about cocktails - unlike most real food, they’re specialty preparations that stand out on ...

It seems ludicrous now, here in the era of climate grief , when the most powerful financial entities admit that the worst is inevitable and adjust their plans for plunder accordingly , but there was a time, not that long ago, when environmentalism was hip and, even more unbelievably, hopeful . Earth Day turns 55 this year, and it's hard to imagine world that's turned farther from its founding spirit than the one we occupy now. Sure, the Captain Planet era seems hokey and naive now, when we're aware of terms like "greenwashing" and carefully constructed messaging that shifted the onus of eco-consciousness from massively polluting corporations onto consumers and the general public. Cynical ad campaign or not, effective or not, it was still a message of awareness and caring. As we aim our society straight at the wall of climate catastrophe and allow techbros to drop ever more LLM bricks on the fossil fuel gas pedal, it's worth it to remember that, thirty year...

Last week, in the face of an evident (and still extant, if not as prominent) financial crisis, we talked about ways that you can keep getting new experiences with games you’ve already acquired. This time, we wanted to discuss ways that you can access totally new (to you) games without requiring the kind of investment it takes to be on the cutting edge of releases. While we all have those inner voices (that may or may not sound like our parents) telling us to just be happy with what we already have or that we have games at home, if we have any interest in the way the medium of games develops, we want to at least be aware of what’s new and catching people’s attention. So how do we get our hands on games we don’t own (yet) without handing over much loot? - B B : We’re all gamers here, we’re all used to representing concepts as numerical models and converting values within that model. If we’re trying to cut down on one form of currency (cold, hard cash), we need to make up for it in other ...