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...

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...

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...

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...

At the tabletop, maintaining everyone’s attention and interest can be a difficult task. Both here at the blog, and among tabletop gamers in general, there tends to be a heavy focus on the “A plot.” The overarching quest in your game’s (or story’s) campaign or adventure. Going to Mordor, for instance, to destroy the One Ring in a volcano is a classic example of an A plot. We should take some time to talk about "B plots," though. These secondary moments might take the form of their own side-quest or just something a small taken on by fraction of the group or even a single character. The reforging of a broken sword or a side-trip to recruit an army of ghosts. What makes for a useful secondary plot point, though and how can we use them most effectively in our tabletop game sessions? Join Never Say Dice this week as we take on B plot of our own  to ponder these questions. This time it’s personal! The most common B plot in a tabletop campaign is likely one that involves the player ...

With much of the country in lock-down or self-isolation, tabletop gaming grinds to a halt. Right? Traditional board and card games may be difficult to manage without being isolated with your players. However, while you can't sit across the table with your chums, there are still many ways you can participate in "tabletop" role playing games. Please check out some of the following resources and keep your storytelling active in these trying times. Keeping the "table" in tabletop If you're considering moving your regular game to a virtual setting, you likely already have a communication tool in mind. There are a wide number of ways to communicate out there from voice only Discord channels to full video chats. We won't get into those options here as you likely already have your preference. Options for handling the table potion of the game are fewer, but alternatives do exist. A few popular ones are: Fantasy Grounds , Rolisteam , and Roll 20 . These pl...

We should start this post off with a minor disclaimer: I am involved in the running of Balticon , our regional literary science fiction and fantasy convention, and have been for a number of years. There is no financial incentive for me to promote this or any other volunteer-run convention - as the descriptor implies, there's no money to be made. I simply would like to use this platform to share something I care about, and that I think Never Say Dice readers will get a lot out of. With that out of the way, let's define what we're talking about here. There are a number of different types of conventions for the nerdly-inclined and they all have their own culture, history, and goals. A "literary" convention like Balticon is different from a comic con, a media con, or a fandom con. The first two have blended together over the past few decades, with less of a focus on comics (and the collecting thereof) and more on the proximity of media properties and celebrities, freq...

What should you, the detective, do now ? That's one of the first prompts for interaction I ever saw in a mystery game: The Witness by Stu Galley (although modern accreditation would likely say "directed by" rather than attributing the whole thing to him) and  published by Infocom in 1983 for just about every home computer platform then in existence. I acquired the Commodore 64 version from a yard sale and immediately rushed up to my room to try it. I've loved detective stories for literally longer than I can remember - it's simply always been . The complete collection of Strand Sherlock Holmes stories I received for my seventh birthday was one of my most prized possessions and I frequently hauled the massive tome to school with me... even if I never made it past the first few stories. Encyclopedia Brown, a little closer to my demographic, was a hero of mine and I think I had every book in the series (along with the adjacent se ries Encyclopedia Brown's Book o...

There are many ways to play a TTRPG solo. There are many ways people solve this , and you can see some of them in previous posts - all with their own pros and cons. What we’re doing in this series, though, is using AI to create a solo RPG experience that's less bound by the limitations of pre-scripted offerings. While AI has been around for awhile, we’ve really only recently started to see big advancements become available to the general public. In our first post , we used Google's AI Bard to get suggestions on setting the scene, provide feedback on actions, generate random events/encounters, and give prompts to help with brainstorming. Last time , we worked with Bard and randomizers to create a new PC for the game and ended up with a tiefling bard. This week we’ll take a look at a few highlights of the remaining character creation steps and work with Bard on a starting location. Rounding Out Our Character To finish off the character, randomizers gave us a themed musical inst...

Access to social media (well, media in general) has only increased over the last several years. You can subscribe to (or pirate, I suppose) numerous streaming services for music, television, and movies and watch/listen to them almost anywhere. This is even true for books, comics, and games - they’ve all become increasingly accessible. And that's even before we  start considering that “social” media.  Having such a deluge of media available at our beck and call means we're likely to consume a wider variety of things, and also to have a wider variety of media “spoiled” for us. Busy watching the latest Marvel dump? Then you probably haven’t caught up on the most recent Star Trek entry. All caught up to Star Trek? Then you likely still need to see the latest Star Wars or other nerdly offering. While your tastes might not span all of these items, you get the picture…and these are just "small screen" examples, so far. Even "niche" media isn’t safe, depending on t...