A phrase that's probably most associated today with the Marvel What If…? animated series, the concept predates it by some time. Before the phrase even came up in comics (Marvel's original What If series started in 1977), the concept was over all sorts of media. Not necessarily in a What if "B" happened instead of "A", but certainly in a sense of “what if you took a vigilante detective series" (already a popular genre at the time) "and made it bat-themed ?” Often, the answers are very satisfying. They scratch some sort of brain itch we may not even be aware we had. You see it come up in comics, TV shows, movies, even our old favorite Choose Your Own Adventure  books, which are essentially founded on the question. One place where you typically don’t see it, oddly enough, is in our tabletop roleplaying games. So this week on Never Say Dice, let's explore the concept of “What If” sessions in tabletop gaming. - A Book(mark) It! A : In the original ...

The Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Is there another fictional (or even real-world) mixed drink as well-known to geeks and nerds everywhere? Like much of the larger Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy universe, it doesn’t make much of a direct appearance in the story itself, but establishes the character of the setting and the people who occupy it, especially given how early it appears in the story. The original 1978 radio play text ( unchanged in the 1981 television version ) is a great bit of writing, but it’s expanded upon greatly in the 1979 novel with the actual recipe for the “best drink in existence.” Each ingredient comes from a different planet, each with its own story or tradition, and, even though we never get to see any of these worlds (or their contribution to the Gargle Blaster), the sequence does a massive amount of worldbuilding and tone setting. And that’s one thing that’s interesting about cocktails - unlike most real food, they’re specialty preparations that stand out on ...

It's been just over two years since I first talked about SHUMPs as part of " Pew-Pew Zoom ," a series of posts on the history of narrative in video games set in space. (At some point I'll have enough experience to cover 4X and other strategic space game genres as well.) Since then, I've found myself bit by the SHMUP bug and put a lot more time not only into playing these games, but learning more about their history and the culture surrounding them. So this week, I thought we'd do a quick update on the fastest growing genre in my game collection and the discoveries I've made along the way. To start with, while my first SHMUP post was almost endearingly retro-brained (the most recent game I mentioned will turn 30 this year) and that, even though I've acquired many newer games, most of my actual play falls in the era I originally covered: the late 80s and early 90s. My genre associations were largely with the 16-bit era of consoles, so most of my foray...

Towel Day?!? Hasn’t the blog covered that before ? Well, yes, and a few other Douglas Adams-related things . How could we not? This year, the day itself even falls on one of our (intended) blog posting days: May 25th. (It isn’t like we’d post on a Thursday... never could get the hang of Thursdays.) The writings of Douglas Adams seem to be one of those touchstones that most nerds of all ages and backgrounds can agree upon. You might prefer Star Wars to Star Trek, or Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings, but all of those people seem to appreciate the absurd, yet dry humor of Douglas Adams. Though he may have left us almost a quarter century ago, his daft spirit lives on in all of his fans. So what better way to celebrate than to once again appreciate the legendary towel! As if you weren’t already familiar: “Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar hitch hiker can carry. For one thing it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth on the cold moons of...

Star Wars Day may have come and gone, but this May has a different significance for the franchise: the fortieth anniversary of the third film, The Return of the Jedi. Not only did this movie bring the original phase of Star Wars to a close, its significant in the lives of the Never Say Dice founders as the both the first Star Wars movie to be released in our lifetimes, and as the series’ ending during our most formative years (Ewok movies notwithstanding). While it’s no longer Star Wars’s cinematic capstone and many of its plot points have been rendered moot in subsequent installments, Jedi remains an important part of our development, both in our relationship to the franchise and in our understanding of what narrative means and is capable of. So let’s venture to the Galaxy Far, Far Away for the final time… or so we once thought. A : Return of the Jedi is little more than a marketing ploy to get children to buy toys. That's why they put the Ewoks in there. Cute little furry things...

I'll say it up front: I am no fan of winter, despite the fact that some media I enjoy features it prominently enough to call it a central character. It's probably no coincidence that these are harsh and violent stories of twisted motivations, revenge, and betrayal where the weather is a monster to be feared. I'm no fan of the cold, the lightlessness, the monotony... sometimes, I think being born in California might have affected me more than I realize. Recently, I discussed choosing games to match your mood and situation , and mentioned that the change in weather and real-world frustrations had led me to return to a few games I had taken breaks from: Fallout 3 and Demon's Souls . With the winter solstice just around the corner, I thought I'd explore why these games are speaking to me at this particular moment, and what I (consciously or not) am looking to gain from them. Both these games could be described as "post-apocalyptic," but a more appropriate t...

It's no wonder most genre fans have an involuntary twitch whenever they hear the word "remake." I don't need to go into examples - if you're reading this, I'm sure you're already thinking of one (or many) that utterly missed the original work's point, or was only tenuously connected, or veered into a more "test audience-friendly" direction. And yet there are legitimately beloved remakes that have largely supplanted their predecessors in popular consciousness: The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986) , Battlestar Galactica (2004), Westworld (2016)... If we include works that respond to, while also recreating, the originals, we can include things like Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1986)... although musical adaptations probably deserve their own category.  With such unpredictable results, why do remakes happen? Setting aside the purely commercial reasons often trotted out as conversation-terminating cliches ("t...

Forty-five years later, it's easy to take Star Wars (1977) for granted. Sure, as film scholars both armchair and professional love to point out, George Lucas wore his influences on his oversized Tattooine-robe sleeve: 1930s serials, Akira Kurosawa, spaghetti westerns (particularly ones also influenced by Akira Kurosawa), teenage hot rod racing films, WWII fighter pilot movies... but nothing had ever blended it all together like that. And while the joints between the various segments seem obvious now (thankfully, Marcia Lucas is finally getting credit for her part in turning her husband's unfinished mess of a movie into a cultural-defining juggernaut), at the time it was largely seen as a non-stop thrill ride of excitement and energy. Previously, we've talked about the influence (and very lucky timing) Star Wars would have on the nascent video game industry and how, within a year of its release, space games had become the dominant force in arcades as fans could experien...