Recently, I've been undertaking a task that I've been putting off for... literal decades, now that I think about it - retrieving and sorting the books that went into bins in my parents' basement when I first moved out of their house. As we've talked about plenty of times, you can glean a lot about person from their chosen media, and our selves are no exception. While a lot of books I uncovered were from my teens and early twenties, there were a few favorites going back to when I was much younger. One of the most beloved books that greeted me for the first time in nearly twenty years was  The Book of Lists ,  accompanied by two of the follow-up volumes. They're the kind of book that, thanks to easy-to-access internet, seem downright quaint now, but there was a time when they, especially the first volume, were my constant companions. At the time, I think I was more focused on the sheer amount of knowledge (some of which was rather... spicy for a kid my age) available ...

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 ...

As we've discussed here before, electronic games have a fascinating relationship to “player characters,” with a number of evolutionary paths developing ever since players were first asked to identity as the captain of a spaceship, the spaceship itself, or a nondescript adventurer about to descend into a colossal cave. The only thing that defined characters was their role within the game and the means through which the player interacted to fulfill that role. Anything beyond that was, to borrow a phrase, an exercise for the player’s imagination. It's easy to assume that most people approached these stories as shapes to move around a screen or math problems to systematically solved, but there's also no reason not to think players might have filled out these scenarios with elaborate backstories of their own or (in the case of Star Trek ) connecting them to an established setting, characters, and storyline. Either way, creators had little to work with, given their limitations b...

Like it or not, the electronic gaming landscape is dominated by long-running series, and has been since its early days . No matter when you read this, if you take a look at the current best–selling games, you’ll see a list that’s almost entirely sequels, off-shoots, reboots, or remakes of any of the above. This is something the medium inherited largely from the comic and cinematic industries it’s modeled after, but also reflects a certain risk-aversion as development costs skyrocket and mere success is insufficient to keep a studio afloat : name recognition is a safe bet. Publishers can assume some baseline of sales from dedicated fans who will always buy the latest installment of their favorite series. We at Never Say Dice can’t say that we’re totally immune to established gaming franchises , but for the most part we don’t stay on top of series with numerous installments like Assassin’s Creed , Final Fantasy , or Call of Duty . (Not that this will keep these games from filling out ...

Let's get this out there now: I love explosions. Like any 80s kid, it originated with cartoons - although I'm sure each of us has our own story, going back to a specific movie or show. For me, it was the original Danger Mouse , which premiered in the UK the year Andy and I were both born: 1981. By the mid-80s, it was on Nickelodeon here in the states, and required viewing for my father, my sister, and myself. The opening is a frenetic, yet oddly sparse, mess of energy, serving as a great lead-in to the show itself, with the titular Danger Mouse and his hamster assistant Penfold running from a number of old-fashioned  bombs, each punctuated with an onscreen "BANG" or "BOOM." With each of these "blow-ups," as I called them, my father would lift me and my sister into the air and we'd go into the episode energized and giggling. Blow-ups were not only moments of excitement, but familial joy. Before long, I'd be exposed to the ur-text of cinemat...

How much time have you spent on a particular game? How much time have you spent in that game? While modern electronic games present your total playtime with a prominence making it almost impossible to avoid (especially if you're using a service like Steam), it hasn't been that long since the former question was entirely on the player to keep track of and the latter simply nonsensical. While some of this is a function of the way the Almighty Algorithm tracks us and our gaming habits, it's also a result of games having endings - something else that wasn't always present. Not that the ever-running clock exists solely to feed the gnawing hunger of a monstrous inhuman marketing machine, but it really is a useful factor in how we select games and try to fit them into our busy lives. Likewise, time passing within a game's setting is the result of the medium's development in general. The passage of time in Pac-Man 's nightmare world of flashing lights, powerful (i...

In the world of digital games, there's often a final goal of completing everything the game offers. On a modern gaming platforms, you'll probably even receive a “trophy” or “badge” for doing this, and we’ve previous discussed bringing these kinds of achievements into our tabletop worlds. Certainly, one might feel a sense of accomplishment from having reached platinum status in Spider-Man or a feeling of regret when you just can’t finish everything in a GTA game and need to move on. Personally, I’ve been in both these scenarios, and still may re-play San Andreas yet again and finally make it to 100%. Generally, though, this is a situation that can leave you with feeling either very satisfied or with a sense of longing and missed opportunity. Both ends of the spectrum, and all points in between, can be seen in tabletop gaming as well. How can we identify different forms of completionism at our tabletops and how can we tackle them as a team? Quarrelsome Questing Your tabletop ...

The paddle. The light gun. The push-button guitar. All manner of joysticks, trackballs, and, of course, gamepads. The Nintendo Power Glove. The Coleco Super-Action. The Brøderbund U-Force. The Sega Toy-let (maybe... don't look that one up). We here at Never Say Dice collectively have lifetimes of experience with electronic games, and have seen all kinds of control peripherals come and go . From the straightforward to the truly bizarre , they all share a common purpose: to act as the medium between player and game, the means by which all interaction occurs beyond the one-way comprehension of audio and visual output. For such a significant role, though, the humble controller seems a little-recognized aspect of gaming as a developing artform and storytelling medium. When an idea catches on, it's quickly taken for granted, while alternate approaches are derided as foolish delusions or gimmickry. So, this week at Never Say Dice, we'd like to steer the conversation to electroni...