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...

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 seems the New Year has once again caught us off guard. 2024 has been a tumultuous year, for the Never Say Dice crew and the rest of the world, to be honest. We don’t need to go into specifics of the things we’ve gone through in the past year (feel free to insert your own), but the short version is that our other responsibilities have meant less time: less time for gaming, less time for media, less time for storytelling. As we go into the new year, there’s no sign that any of this is going to be slowing down, and will likely get much worse. None of this will keep us from our annual New Year’s Resolutions post, however - it’s simply a factor to consider, for us and for yourselves. It’s going to be tough out there, dear reader, and we all need to remember that every little thing is a victory. Here are some of the little things we’re going to try to do in 2025. - B A : There really isn’t a need to go into what's held us back, or what we’ve accomplished, and certainly I don’t expect ...

It's come a few times, but we here at Never Say Dice have a somewhat unique generational viewpoint as "cuspers" or X-lennials or whatever they're calling us this week. We were the very last students to have our primary schooling take place in entirely the twentieth century, and while they were on their way out, we still received a fair amount of Cold War rhetoric and American Exceptionalism, especially in the earlier years of elementary school. Notably, we got some of the final vestiges of the kind of " Great Man theory " our parents also received, curricula full of flawless figures, sanitized into simple stories for easy digestion by attention-deficient pupils: founding fathers, war hero presidents, tireless inventors... In our region, at least we were lucky enough to cover Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman, their fascinating lives stripped down to a few selflessly heroic actions that helped solve the crises of their day. They were special, unique peopl...

Like it or not, the electronic gaming landscape is dominated by long-running series, and has been since its early days . No matter when you read this, if you take a look at the current best–selling games, you’ll see a list that’s almost entirely sequels, off-shoots, reboots, or remakes of any of the above. This is something the medium inherited largely from the comic and cinematic industries it’s modeled after, but also reflects a certain risk-aversion as development costs skyrocket and mere success is insufficient to keep a studio afloat : name recognition is a safe bet. Publishers can assume some baseline of sales from dedicated fans who will always buy the latest installment of their favorite series. We at Never Say Dice can’t say that we’re totally immune to established gaming franchises , but for the most part we don’t stay on top of series with numerous installments like Assassin’s Creed , Final Fantasy , or Call of Duty . (Not that this will keep these games from filling out ...

This week in our ongoing “Fantasy Forward” series of posts, discussing ways to make sword-and-sorcery settings feel less pre-packaged is going to deal with something… squishy. Something touchy-feely. Something that, I feel, is rarely used to its potential in imagined settings: culture. We’re not expecting anyone to become trained sociologists or, heaven forbid, anthropologists in building out their fantasy settings (although I’m very curious if anybody with said training has incorporated that into games of their own), but there’s plenty of room to develop how people (regardless of species) live, learn, love, and do things. Real world cultures are the product of generations’ worth of history, experiences, stories, and beliefs, which can be a lot to live up to! How can we come up with original cultural elements in our fantasy settings, and how can we convey them to our players and audiences in ways that feel natural instead of forced? - B A : Music! Art! Literature! These are all amazin...

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 w...