No, the blog isn’t going on hiatus , at least not any time soon... that we’re aware of... yet. Having co-posts, and each writer taking turns from week to week helps provide a good respite that keeps the pressure off - no need for a short term break. While gaming, and in particular tabletop roleplaying games, can be a release of their own, the pressures of life can leave you feeling a need to take some time away. It might be burnout, major life changes, or some other form of stress, let's say your country’s 500th anniversary to plan, your wedding to arrange, your wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. Any of those things alone could leave you feeling simply swamped and with a need to take a rest break for your own self-care and mental health. After all, if you haven’t got your health you haven’t got anything. If you’re feeling any of these things, it might be time to take a hiatus. But before you do, why not take a few moments and review some advice from Never Say Dice. Prepa

Quite often, we get pretty goofy on this blog. That's no surprise, with our focus on games and the occasional dive into nerdly music , movies and other media storytelling pursuits . This week, though, and in particular on the day this will be posted, I’d like to talk about something a bit more serious. (Though I promise we will touch on gaming somewhere in here. I can’t seem to not do that.) Perhaps the topic has become more visible in recent years, or maybe I’m seeing that because I’ve grown closer to it, but I still don’t feel like it's talked about openly enough. Especially in today’s political climate with an openly biased Supreme court, and the push to take away the rights of women and other minorities, I think it's important to discuss. Unfortunately, even beating around the bush, this is still pretty vague as to what I’m talking about, and could be any number of important topics. To be clear, I’m writing about miscarriage. (If any of you wish to skip this one, or j

Gamification seems to be everywhere these days, with articles on how to incorporate it into the workspace, or boosting your fundraising process. It even invades our personal lives with games that cover everything from learning new languages, getting fit (do we really need a new gamification application for every single kind of fitness trend?) and getting your errands done. It seems you could potentially gamify just about anything. It shouldn’t be too surprising -  as a species we’ve been playing games for an exceedingly long time. As we’ve mentioned on the blog before , the trendy D20 has origins that date back to at least ancient Egypt . While gaming may be old, the term gamification didn’t come around until the early naughties when Nick Pelling came up with it. Even then, the word didn’t really become popular until... Foursquare?! (Hard to believe that was a thing. Gamifying visiting places in the real world? Was this really the precursor to things such as Pokemon Go! and Zombies, R

By this point, my love of older electronic games should be well-established . I've always been a little out of step with the times - my family didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, so most things were acquired used through yard sales, thrift stores, and hand-me-downs. Even as an adult, I tend to acquire systems towards the end of their eras, with the exception of the PS2... and one of the reasons I went for that console back in 2001 was the backwards compatibility that made its predecessor's huge library available, with games already starting to show up on "used" shelves and in discount bins. It's been greatly accelerated in the pandemic years, of course: I've rescued all the old yard sale consoles from my parents' house incorporated them into the nightmarish hydra that makes up my desk/music area. This is thanks to a few recent developments that have made old consoles accessible in ways that would have been impossible just a few years ago and

It's been a tough week, a tough month, a tough year... If your lives are anything like ours, things are a bit hectic right now. Whether it's climate anxiety, the "open everything up" push running smack into the Delta Variant, the conflicts and contradictions of school reopenings, or plain, everyday, run-of-the mill chaos, it all gets to you. This week, we thought we'd return to the topic how real-life stress intersects with gaming... and the stresses gaming can bring. - B   A : The fighter just went down and is starting to bleed out. The magic user appears to be out of spells and seems to be floundering on what to do next. The rogue? They're looking pretty rough, and without the fighter to play off of, they might be brown bread after the next assault.  The Big Bad Evil Guy looks like he may be on the ropes, though.... but maybe they're faking? What do you do? Should you rush to the fighter and dump your last healing spell on them? Perhaps you should launc