"Difficulty" is a word that invariably comes up in discussion of games of any sort. It's a setting in electronic games. It's a skill check in tabletop games. It's the basis for heated arguments about the relationship between creators and players , between accessibility and experience . But, for all of this, can we really define difficulty as it relates to games? It's a term that can mean all kinds of things in all kinds of situations, but, at its core, it's about the way that audiences engage with stories and their stakes. And speaking of stakes... As I've mentioned previously in this blog, I started reading the original Dracula in October out of some lunatic idea of looking at the Castlevania series as an adaptation of the original novel. (Which may still happen someday, who knows what horrors the future will bring.) Life being what it is, it took significantly longer than I'd originally planned and I only finished the book yesterday. While focu

Choosing who you would defend, or knowing who would have your back when the proverbial dung hits the fan should be pretty easy. When the dice hit the table, who do you want sitting alongside you to help destroy that dragon or make that million-to-one shot against the space station? Your initial reaction might be to name those same people... but is it really going to be those ones you’re already with? We’ve talked before about how you might convince people you know to join a game . For some of us, it really might be the exact same group. For many, however, the answer is probably very different. Why do we pick different people to join us at our tabletops? Have I been gaming with the wrong people? What kind of thought process even goes into deciding who we should game with? These are all very good questions, and this week we’re going to take a look at some potential answers so you can find the right game and the right people. - A A : Choosing your game preferences is a good first step to

We’ve talked before about how gamemasters and narrators can use details to build story. But these details don’t always need to be part of the plot, and are often as much about the worlds the characters occupy as they are the events they’re taking part in. And while we all draw inspiration from our own out-of-game experiences , aren’t people playing games and engaging with stories to get away from everything they have to deal with in the “real world” (such as it is)? What kind of “slice of life” details to build the setting and atmosphere, and what risks bogging things down? And, in collaborative forms of narrative like tabletop roleplaying games, how do we encourage others to share the details of their own characters’ lives in a way that grows the story for everyone? - B B : As I’m sure our readers are no doubt aware, my favorite tabletop game, and the one I have the most experience running, is Paranoia , a game which is as much setting as it is system. Games like this can be somethin

It’s been quite a week in the world of tabletop RPGs, and, while it’s nice to see our little hobby featured in all kinds of media, we would have preferred it be for more positive reasons. Never Say Dice are by no means qualified (or up-to-date) enough to talk about the OGL kerfuffle, but the discussion around it did get us thinking about the nature of ownership when it comes to games. For an activity centered around the participants’ infinite imaginative possibilities, what does “ownership” of a system, setting, or even a session mean, exactly? What aspects of a game are inherent enough to have a brand name, and how much can the people at a table change things up before it starts to feel like something else? - B A : The whole issue seems pretty broad, which is one part of the problem. Even if you only take a quick look at the idea of “ownership of a system,” it gets pretty complicated. Sure, there might be trademarks on specific things like Beholders, Mind Flayers and Displacer Beasts,

A while back, I was on an expedition in my attic to find my copy of the Bill & Ted comic book as background material for a post... but I found something else, an old roleplaying artifact. The book? Dungeons and Dragons, Supplement 1: Greyhawk (9th printing). A 68-page pamphlet-like book filled with relics of a bygone age. The rules have changed over the years, but taking a dungeon delve into a piece of history can still inform us today. We’ve already looked at the “ Men & Magic ” and “ Monsters and Treasures ” sections in previous posts and discussed a variety of the topics they contained. Now it's time to take a look at the final section of the book, this one entitled “Underworld & Wilderness Adventures,” to find more interesting pieces of history and a little bit of inspiration. What will come from the epic conclusion to the book? A few "new" adventure ideas or an original take on something we now consider to be "classic?" With essentially only a

The season has come once again for the Home Alone movies to make their run on our viewing devices. There's something powerful when you’re a kid about seeing children your age in media take on and defeat adults. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that this movie worked for me so well when it first came out. After all, Kevin/Macaulay and I are around the same age, and not only does he run the house for a few days, but he also defends it from the wet bandits. The movie(s) even entertain and inspire my own children. My older son can often be found studying and making his own battle plans, and my younger guy is usually making traps around the house - just in case bad guys show up. Somehow, though the premise laughs louder and louder at the suspension of disbelief the older it gets , the movie still stands the test of time for holiday entertainment. Maybe it will survive for future generations out of the nostalgia of parental figures, or maybe it will slowly fade into obscurity. For n

The holiday season is trucking right along once again with stores starting to tout their Black Friday deals weeks in advance. After all, Black Friday is a tradition ( sort of) . Americans are busy celebrating their Feast of Maximum Occupancy Thanksgiving, Canada just celebrated theirs last week, and before you know it we’ll be looking at Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, etc. etc. A time of year thick with celebrations and chock full of traditions. Although for Never Say Dice, as we mentioned in Home Media for the Holidays , our traditions mostly consist of trying to take some much needed time off and spend it consuming some of our backlogged media - be it traditional films, books, TV, or games. This year though, I thought we might dig a little deeper into some of our own traditions.- specifically, those that involve tabletop gaming. So pull up a plate of leftovers, and let's all ponder while we gorge ourselves. - A B : One of the joys of gaming with other people i

I've recently completed all the trophies in Marvel's Spider-Man That may sound like bragging, but that's not my intent. I already know that I’m a little late to the party . While I probably should have been spending time with other obligations or going through new games and storylines, I had an ulterior motive that had nothing to do with game accomplishments: I wanted to take my kids with me through the story this time. Perhaps I’ve robbed them of completing the story on their own at some point, or maybe it was a bonding experience they won’t forget. Only time will tell. Either way, it did get me thinking about the replayability of games, and specifically of tabletop roleplaying games. Dungeons and Dragons , to use the perennially popular system, is something that's revisited over and over. However, people are typically reusing it to have new and different adventures, rather than replaying the same adventure multiple times. We’ll often come back to the same books and m

The battle has nearly reached its climax, but the outlook is dire. The Healer just went down... along with the Tank. You’re down to a handful of cantrips, and you send out one last firebolt. Natural 20! The Big Bad Evil Guy goes down and you save the day! The chase through the asteroid field has been dangerous and the shields can’t take any more. There's one last stretch to get through before the ship can make the jump out and you need three successes on four dice. Time to roll! Your group has snuck into the base to steal valuable intelligence in the war effort, but an important general is mere feet away from you with his back turned. One shot could change the tide in this war, you pull your side arm and… hope you get that dopamine hit once again. Our tabletop games are often about risk (no we don’t mean the board game) and the rewards aren’t just in game victories. We feel the success just as much as our imaginary characters do. So how do we balance these player experiences? -A B

This blog, at least the tabletop gaming entries, are mostly written from the perspective of Dungeon Masters and gamemasters. That makes sense, after all - the two writers here have spent significantly more time running games than actually playing in them. There's nothing wrong with this, but typically the people running tabletop games would like an occasional chance to be a player as well. So what happens when the stars finally align, and (after much convincing) one of your regular players or GMing friends offers to (gasp) run a session and include you as a player? If it's been a while since you were on the other side of the (literal or metaphorical) GM screen, the concept can feel a bit strange and even worrisome. Fear not! For this week on Never Say Dice, we have some tips to help you in the temporary transition from RPG Runner to RPG Player. - A A : You’ve made it to character creation and that backlog of unused ideas is practically screaming at you. If you’re anything lik

For almost as long as we’ve had tabletop games, they’ve been depicted in various media, from movies and TV shows to news and print. Arguably, at least until the most recent gaming renaissance we’ve entered, that portrayal in mainstream media has mostly been negative. If you lived through the Satanic Panic like the two of us at Never Say Dice did, you’re likely to understand what we’re talking about. For those newer to the hobby, tabletop game fans were depicted as socially-inept, sloppy nerds at best, and Satan-worshiping murder cultists and at worst. (Can’t we just be both in peace!?!) Perhaps as the hobby, and those who partake of it, have matured, these portrayals have softened a bit. Or perhaps positive representations in streaming media have made a significant change. Maybe it's both. This week, we thought we'd talk about how we've seen these depictions change, and how has they've affected our shared hobby and the preconceptions newcomers bring to it?  - A A : C