And so we come to the big one in terms of showing advancement and development in your sword-and-sorcery fantasy setting, one that touches, and is touched by, all others: government. Kings, Emperors, and other monarchs are an inevitable element of any setting based ostensibly primarily on medieval Europe, but beyond that, things tend to get… sketchy. But those sketches are a great place for imaginative creators to fill in details , and shifts in governmental structures are some of the clearest signs of change in any civilization. And, if your setting includes more than one location, you can try out different, competing approaches and see the way they interact… often with the players/protagonists in the middle. So from barony to republic, from kingdom to anarcho-syndicalist commune , let’s explore how you can use government and politics to move your fantasy forward! - B A : For deeply political tabletop campaigns, it takes a special kind of group and a special kind of game. Just the sou

Last week, we started a new series of posts on how one might go about changing the stagnant nature of many “default” sword-and-sorcery fantasy settings by exploring how various aspects of the setting might develop over time and how the protagonists (or players, if this is in a tabletop RPG) might have an effect on these changes. While we started with one of the most obvious factors (technology), this week we thought we might go with something a little less so: economics, including the effect dungeon crawling might have on a regional economy that finds itself inundated with recovered treasure and artifacts… not to mention the adventurers who show up looking to get in on the action.  - B A :  The economy might be one of the most difficult things to consider in a game world - it's dangerous to upset the balance of your tabletop games. Just as with our technology post, a small change in the economy can have huge ripple effects. This is something we were even touched on: the city with a

It’s come up a few times, and may be considered ironic for someone who co-founded a gaming blog, but I have trouble getting into media that gets classified as “fantasy” - in as far as the term is generally used in gaming and publishing, and the preconceptions this usage brings. In other words, sword-and-sorcery stories and games set in some variant of medieval Europe, frequently featuring a stock set of species including elves, dwarves, orcs, and Hobbits halflings. It’s taken a while to put this hesitancy into words, especially since I eagerly devoured these kinds of works when I was younger - but I think this ultimately gets to the crux of the matter: something I’m calling the Been There, Done That (BTDT) Threshold. We all have them for everything we choose to engage with, and they’ll vary based on the things we’ve consumed and the amount of variety we’d like to see. In this instance, my exposure to this kind of fantasy had hit a critical mass, so the baseline where I’d go “been ther

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

"Tie-in." If you're hearing the term outside of a purely technical sense, odds are it's a pejorative. It's not something we call works we like, even when they fall within the (sometimes blurry) definition. "Tie-in" seems so cold, so mercantile, it might a well be "cash grab" or "knock-off." I'm sure you're already thinking of examples of tie-ins that fit one or both of those descriptions - but I won't name any myself, because all art is experienced subjectively. What might appear as crass commercialization to you may be the take on a character or property that "clicks" for someone else in a unique and meaningful way. Not to mention that, under capitalism, commercialization is inevitable, whether it's an original concept or something adjacent. And if we look at the concept of tie-ins the right way, we can gain some perspective that applies to our own creations... especially, as with most tabletop RPGs, they ex

Campaigns are a staple of tabletop adventuring. You and your pals gathering together regularly to tackle challenges in the same game world, session after session. Campaigns can be a great way to explore a tabletop world and your characters' place within it. That continued development and growth, along with the familiarity of that particular fantasy world, is likely what draws us back again and again. When you hear the term "campaign," there's a good chance you picture something pre-made like Curse of Strahd or Ghosts of Saltmarsh . You might think about the running live plays of various groups such as Critical Role, Acquisitions Incorporated or High Rollers. If you’re lucky, maybe your game has a wonderful custom campaign your GM created themselves (or you created if you're the GM.) (Websters' defines campaign as a "white sparkling wine made in the old province of Campaign, France.")   What does it really mean to be "in a campaign," though

It's that time of year again - every digital game storefront is having some kind of end-of year sale , meanwhile, that backlog just keeps getting bigger and bigger . Sometimes, it may feel like finding the right game for right now can be a bigger and more complicated challenge than anything the games themselves have to offer. With such widespread availability, particularly when factoring in a half-century 's worth of titles basically available on demand (depending on your current definition of "availability" vs. "legality”), option paralysis is a real possibility, and, for some of us, a guaranteed certainty. There are the obvious, concrete factors to consider: the amount of time you can dedicate, what your setup is capable of running, what you've already started and how close you are to completing any of those games. These are pretty straightforward to calculate, particularly with the help of tools like HowLongToBeat and your choice of review sites. But th

There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin. But this is our blog, and that means we can discuss whatever we want. Being the spookity time of year, it's a good opportunity to do just that. While "horror" might be the word of the month for many, there's also something to be said for the more mundanely macabre - the things that, while not horrific, blend right into the spirit of the month. Here at Never Say Dice, one thing that brings us into that space are the old Halloween specials of our childhood. While some should probably  stay buried in the past, worms crawling in and out of their corpses, others seem to endure over the years. The favorites might vary from household to household, but shows like It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or Garfield’s Halloween Adventure are still commonly well-liked. That begs the question, though: what makes a good Halloween special work, and what can we take from t