Brazil  (1985) is one of those movies that lurks in the back of our collective subconscious, its influence generally felt rather than referenced directly ( Futurama  shout-outs notwithstanding). An image, like the interrogation baby mask or the microscopic computer screens, will bubble up occasionally, and of course, there's the legendary ending... and everything Terry Gilliam had to do to make sure that ending even made it into the film. But  Brazil  is a movie with something to say, a visually and conceptually dense satire of the world into which it was released... and more appropriate to our own world with each passing year. So, for the fortieth anniversary of the American release, Never Say Dice is going to take a ride down the pneumatic tube into the all-too familiar nightmare of  Brazil , both as dark satire and as a holiday film. -  B A Side : Brazil certainly isn’t a Christmas movie that I’d watch every year. Come to think of it, this may be ...

I don't think I've seen it out there as a meme, but you can tell a lot about a person's history by asking which iteration of A Christmas Carol was their first. Consummate child of the 80s that I am, for me it Mickey's Christmas Carol , taped onto Beta from some mid-80s showing. At the time, I didn't appreciate that it was only the second ever screen appearance of the already-legendary (in comics), although it did help set the stage for my DuckTales fandom shortly afterwards. While a number of changes are made for time, intended audience, and the central hook of casting existing Disney characters, Mickey's Christmas Carol doesn't duck (sorry) its responsibilities when it comes to the story's final climax: the existential horror shown Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Future - a terrifying, yet captivating, sequence for a youngster like myself, capping off a story involving more temporal complexity than anything I'd ever seen to that point. ( Back to...

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet, Cupid, Donner…ah, you probably recall all of them including Rudolph - the most famous department store mascot reindeer of all. If you're a regular reader of the blog, it shouldn’t be any surprise we’re bringing up a Rankin-Bass Special yet again . Previously, we've dissected Mad Monster Party , frequently referenced their animated Tolkien adaptations , and taken inspiration from both Santa Claus is Coming to Town and, yes, Rudolph .  This time though, especially after having just passed the 60th anniversary of the original airing, we revisit Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and take a look through the lens of a classic tabletop adventure. So pull up your ice blocks, lend your ears, and keep an open mind about treating this holiday classic as an adventure. Peppermint! The story itself works best as a starting point, or even backstory followed by a shorter truncated adventure. You get introduced to a few of the main cha...

Anyone who knows their Never Say Dice Lore is familiar with our lifelong Simpsons fandom. While we were lucky enough to catch the legendary Golden Age of the series when those episodes were first airing, we actually started before even that. While most of the elements are present that would eventually enshrine the series in cultures worldwide, the show itself is rather different in its first two seasons: slower, with a smaller scope and emphasis primarily on family and social relationships - not to mention relatable scenarios, the kind of things that happen to regular people. (And not one single magic robot!) As a kid, I remember them hitting pretty hard emotionally, particularly “Bart Gets an F,” “Bart’s Dog Gets an F” (no surprise those would hit someone who, at the time, was the same age as Bart), but especially “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish” which dealt with mortality I’d never seen before. I had fewer of those moments of deep emotional connection as the series went on, ...

In the United States, the time has come once more to hunt down a turkey and fixin's, throw on the telly, and eat yourself into a food-induced coma. Though the holiday is particularly late this year, a food coma is one thing that seems like it can’t come quick enough. But before we gorge ourselves with stuffing (or tell our families to get stuffed over political differences), let's take a few quick moments to figure out how we could stuff some gaming into our already-packed schedules. Sure, we have meals to cook and roads to travel, but you can always get little time in for gaming, right? There and back again… at an Expected Party Travel has to be the biggest obstacle to fitting in quality game time, no matter if you’re headed to or from your event, or whether we're talking about video or tabletop formats. While I might have been found on long car trips with a Game Gear in my youth, cell phones and other mobile gaming devices bring plenty of opportunities today. However, as ...

The methods of Claus, the Great and Powerful are universally known, told, quite literally, in song and story. (Much of the established canon comes from one particular poem , in fact, making it both a song and a story.) Long before the Elf/Shelf Surveillance Network was set up, we were assured that Santa simply knew if we were "bad" or "good," and admonished to be the latter if we had any hope of receiving the presents we were expecting. The punitive lump of coal is an interesting holdover from an era when the stuff was commonplace - but it persisted long after most children had ever seen a lump of coal, let alone had to help carry it or feed it into home furnace (there also being an implication of punishment and drudgery for those benighted children unfortunate enough to find themselves part of an anthracite yuletide). But... you never actually hear about those, do you? That's a side of St. Nicholas rarely seen. Some regional traditions pass these duties off t...

We’ve talked previously about the various holiday specials that may make their rounds at the Never Say Dice households on a yearly basis. We’ve even looked at gathering inspiration from a few of those specials with dives into How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . Lately at the blog, perhaps due to the passing of Jules Bass last year, our collective minds seem to be gravitating toward Rankin-Bass 's holiday productions. Fortunately, there are a number of these holiday stories to choose from. As a child, one of my favorites was Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town . Maybe it had to do with being exposed to Fred Astaire movies at an impressionable age, as he serves as narrator here. It could just be that it's another Rakin-Bass classic. Perhaps, though, it's more about the magic they included in the story. (No Bugsy, I'm not talking about the yo-yos.) While you can take "magic" in a more generic literary sense to describe the supernatur...

Thanksgiving really is one of the most American of holidays (if you ignore that weird Canadian version , anyway). Even more than, say, Independence Day, there's a clear disconnect between the celebration itself, the story it's commemorating, and the actual messy history. It is, in its own way, an origin myth of (white) American identity - of Europeans fleeing persecution to a new land, which welcomes them through both a bountiful harvest and the kindness of a native population willing to share it with them. It's the pilot episode for Manifest Destiny , blatantly ahistorical to even most elementary school students, and, weirdly enough, genuinely accepted as such. Most depictions of the holiday, at least prior to the rush of Cold War hagiography that presented American history as a theatrical attraction with a "NO COMMIES" sign at the entrance, was focused on the imagery of food and family. Specific foods at that, making this one of the few ritualistic meals to surv...

April Fools! You know it’s a good holiday if an important part of it is shouting the name at an opportune moment. But who, and what, are the fools, exactly? The fooler, the foolee, the act of fooling, itself? The fools inside us or the fools we fool along the way? April Fools is somehow all of these and so much more. Rather than do a leg-pulling post of disingenuous nonsense (not to be confused with our regular… “genuous” nonsense?) that doesn’t read as well between April 2 and March 31, we thought we’d talk a little about how you can go about bringing some of that April Fools’ spirit into your games. Maybe even the spirit of the original April Fool, Dickens-style ? - B     B : Working out what makes any kind of joke “work” is always going to be tricky, if not impossible (a “fool’s errand,” one might say”, but pranks have the additional complication of needing the prankee to “buy in,” and accept something as presented to them, while also making the reveal accessible to them in...

The second of March is important to this blog for a number of reasons. First, and foremost, it marks the beginning of life for Never Say Dice co-founder Bugsy... who happens to share a birthday with the author Dr. Seuss. While his legacy may have seen some controversy over the years, especially these last few, it's spawned another thing important to this blog: Read Across America Week . While that particular holiday week isn’t something we at NSD had in our formative school years, reading is a pursuit that's been important to both of us throughout our lives and continues to be. After all, we couldn’t ask you to read this blog every week, or even have the background in TTRPGs and other games it takes to write this blog if we didn’t support  and appreciate reading  for its own sake. Reading is fun and mental. - A A: I can go anywhere. I can be anything. These lyrics are part of the Reading Rainbow theme song. The show was a way to bring children into the world of reading and a ...