Death!!!! Death stalks you at every corner! There it is, right there! Deeaaath! Ok, maybe that was just a lamp…behind you! Oh right, that’s just the cat. There it is again! Lamp again. Really though, death is rampant in tabletop games. We’ve even previously talked about the particular issue of your players becoming Murder Hobos, those transient adventurers that travel from location to location, killing NPCS all over, and shaking the bodies down for anything they can use or sell. Given how D&D got its start, and the similar ways you can fund your character's activities in many of the digital games D&D's inspired, it isn’t a surprise this is a common occurrence. For this post though, we’re going to talk about a related topic close to the core of the issue: Death . Or rather, to be specific... Murder !  But with the high technology and/or magic so common in most of our tabletop settings, at what point does murder actually become murder? Why are murders in game narratives...

Here we are again, the Ides of March. And while our own issues with lunatic despots are unlikely to be resolved in a manner similar to Ceaser’s (metaphorically... maybe), we must persevere and strive on. So, along with the anniversary of a certain Roman power transition, the middle of the month brings us Pi Day… and our Annual Blogiversary! We all know what that means… prepare to be skewered with terrible pie puns! Et tu, fructose? - B Bake It So, Number One As the command team of the USS Enterpie , the PCs seek out new ingredients, new baking techniques, and boldly taking the oven to temperatures no one has gone to before.  Rolling Pin on the River The PCs must plan and execute a daring heist on a riverboat casino holding a regional baking competition. Will they be able to smuggle out pastries stuffed with ill-gotten gains, or will they end up with pie on their faces (and possibly at the bottom of the river)? (C)rust  The objective? To make enough pies to survive the wilds of...

The Weather Stone  remains a time-honored favorite method of “checking” weather conditions, be it in the real world or in the one in a tabletop game. You just can’t beat the accuracy. Perhaps it's been on my mind due to the "rocky" weather we’ve had recently, with "snowcrete" jamming up roads and pathways everywhere around me. Or maybe the fact that my eldest is now participating in Scouting that summons memories of Weather Stones seen during my own days of Scout Outings. Of course, if you want to go read deeply into my thoughts on the Weather Stone and its mysterious, clairvoyant powers, you can just go read the post linked above. What we haven't covered, aside from some breezy mentions in other posts, is the concept of weather itself in tabletop games: why it's important, how best to include it, and some off the wall things you might consider scattering into your own games. While this could have been a subsection in one of our larger " environment...

Given our recent New Years 2026 post , you’d think we’d be all done talking about the calamities of the real world. It'd be nice to think we could all  be past the national and international events that are weighing so many of us down. We can’t, though. It seems almost impossible to slink away from the heinous news megaphoning from the media day in and day out. We’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, to reject the evidence we see with our own eyes. Told not to believe that Charlotte Renee Good was murdered. Told to believe that she had it coming. Told to believe that the bullies are the real victims.  We’ve been told to comply with those same bullies' demands, and certainly not question whether those demands are lawful. We’ve been told we need to learn our lesson. Called names, assigned societal roles that don't fit us, and called "domestic terrorists" for merely indulging in the freedoms everyone in our nation is supposed to enjoy. How very dare we! It fee...

Well, if you’re seeing this, you, too, have made it through. What does it mean when the introductions to New Year’s posts sound like the last surviving notes of long-gone pirates? It’s a format I expect we’ll be seeing more and more frequently, as the collected accumulation of stress and tragedy continue to shatter any sense of time… or shared reality. Still, as they say, the horrors persist, but so do we… even when there’s a cost. So if our New Year’s Resolutions seem smaller-scale this year, it’s because it’s all we can do to keep going - a feeling I’m sure you, too, know all too well. Furiously scratching at the walls in panic, we tumble into 2026… but at least we’re doing it together. - B A : Before I sink into the state of what we’ve thrown this particular post entry into, I want to go over resolutions, past and present. Though, as noted last year , we can’t really dwell on what we didn’t accomplish, even if they're just bits of media we meant to attend to. My goals weren’t lo...

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 ...

There have been all sorts of physical "pranks" throughout time, often played on "nerds." The Wet Willie, the Hertz Donut , wedgies, noogies, snake bites, melvins (not the Melvins), towel snaps, titty twisters, swirlies, the Atomic Wedgie. Today though, we’re going to talk about pantsing. Or, really, almost the opposite of pantsing... Reverse Pantsing? That might be another wedgie-style "prank." This falls somewhere in between and is hard to describe, so we’ll just go over a quick rundown of yet another rule-breaking spell abuse meme. You may have caught a few more of these featured elsewhere on the blog .  To paraphrase in our own words, this one goes a little something like:  Player : I cast Immovable Object on the BBEG ’s pants. Distance spell so I don’t need to touch him. DM : Okay, but I don’t think it can be worn, held or carried. Player : Nope, read it. No saving throw either. I’m going to up cast it to 6th level to make it permanent. DM : Okay... ...

It was a dark and stormy night…what does reading that evoke in your mind? Is there a mental, or even physical and audible, groan when you see or hear that in a story? Perhaps you don’t have such an immediate reaction, but, cliché or not,  the phrase still brings to mind the gloomy and wretched environment it's meant to draw you into. After all, who wants to be out in the rain, and in the dark , no less? It can make you feel like Garbage . That isn’t to say a good walk in the rain can’t be refreshing, but we’re talking about a dark, and likely very cold, night... doesn’t seem like the best of times (though possibly the blurst of times) to be out in a storm. Recently, I came across a quote “'It was a dark and stormy night' - we can do better than that!” It's the challenge that inspired this post, so... Can we do better than that? Well, certainly we can do better than that. It's actually strange to the question asked directly rather than an assumed hypothetical. Whil...

As usual, it wouldn’t be the spooky season here at Never Say Dice if we didn’t dust off some nostalgic childhood memories and use them as gaming inspiration . As we've discussed before, it shouldn’t be too surprising, given how much macabre media molded the childhoods of 80s and 90s children - very much including ourselves. We’ve even already posted about a number of things from Boglins to Beatlejuices , and (probably) some other letters of the alphabet. More than a few of these tiny bits of nostalgia are proudly disgusting, like Blurp Balls or just good ol' generic ooze. ( Everything was oozy or slimy in the late 80s and early 90s! Venkman got slimed , the Ninja/Hero Turtles got oozed ... and I cared for none of that stuff. I can’t be the only one from that era who had this kind of textural issue.) One thing that fits right in with all the strangeness of the era is the bizarre phenomenon known as the Garbage Pail Kids : sets of trading cards produced by Topps, and designed ...

As we all know by now, it's difficult for this blog to not look at popular things and rip them apart and/or break them down. It doesn’t matter if they’re classic tropes from our favorite media or popular videos of stupid rules interpretations that engagement baiters have proliferated. The  trope this particular post covers will be a classic one : You All Meet at an Inn., also sometimes known as You All Meet at a Tavern. While it would probably be enjoyable (and fairly easy), to take this one down a notch this post is going to take a different approach than usual and support the trope's use. You might say this post is "Inn Defense" of the Inn as a starting point in games and stories. So for this week, read along as we fend off the major complaints and extoll the benefits of using the Inn (or Tavern) for your launch.  Where Everybody Knows Your Name “You all meet at an inn (or tavern).” You can probably already hear the players groan as you trot out the time-tested ope...