Many of you may be aware already, but March 10 is Mario Day! Maybe you’ll break out one of the 200+ games featuring Mario (no doubt Nintendo will have deals on a few), watch the Super Mario Bros. Super Show or read some Super Mario Bros. comics . No matter how you celebrate the day, you’ll be spending time with a character who has a long history and background. Your first experience with our favorite plumber may have been in Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. (the only game where Mario plays the villain) or the original Mario Bros . My first Mario experience, as is probably the case with many of you, was with Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Mario had already appeared in 21 games by this point, but it wasn’t really until Super Mario Bros. that audiences saw the character we recognize today. To celebrate the character of Mario, in true Never Say Dice fashion, let's talk about the story within that game. Think about the first time you sat down with that legendary game: Super Mario Bros.

This Tuesday, I turn 40. I share a birthday with both Lou Reed and Dr. Seuss, a legacy I’m doing my best to look up to. Needless to say, there will be no big birthday bash, no retrogames with friends, no late-night Dio singalongs. It hasn’t exactly been the way I pictured exiting my thirties. But, as I’ve said before, the best thing to come out of the past year is this very blog and the opportunities it gives me to both explore the media I enjoy and to share my discoveries with an audience. For the past few years, it’s been my goal to have something published by the time I hit 40 (curse you, 20 Under 40 story collection!), and, even though it’s in a way I never anticipated, my dream has come true. Never Say Dice has had more readers than I ever could have imagined when Andy and I started this endeavor a year ago, and it’s helped me regain a confidence in my writing that I haven’t felt since college - even if that still seems like it was just yesterday! Nonetheless, the event looming b

Somehow, the stars have aligned, the schedules enmeshed, and all (or enough) players are present.  Now, whether you’re thoroughly prepared or winging it (you will always be winging it), it’s time to get things going. But how do you roll it all out, making sure that everything happens in the best possible places, and for the most appropriate length of times? How do you know when to ramp up, slow down, turn the tables, or call the cops it a night? Let’s talk about pacing your gaming sessions. - B B : Working out how to pace a gaming session is something GMs have had to deal with since the very beginning, and even though there’s never been a one-size-fits all approach, it must have been particularly vexing in the early days, before there was any basis of comparison. Board games and wargames have rhythms entirely determined by their rulesets and the players’ actions, concluding only under specific circumstances: when someone wins, or everyone gets bored and stops playing. Besides trial-an

Is romance in the air where you are? It's certainly brewing at Never Say Dice. No, not between Bugsy and Andy*, but as another tool to use in storytelling. Perhaps it's just an invention of the greeting card companies. Maybe it's the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the Saucer People, under the supervision of the Reverse Vampires, that's forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner! Like it or not, the Valentine’s Day holiday happens every year. When it comes around, nearly everyone (including us apparently) trots out their romance related stories. Should this only be a yearly thing? For most, romance and sexuality are a large part of the human experience, so why shouldn’t they feature in our stories and games? So, this week, lets discuss how you can incorporate this aspect of life into your tabletop time. Romance at the Table It isn’t difficult at all to find examples of romantic storytelling elements in literature and

This week, PlayStation Plus subscribers got access to one of my favorite recent games of recent years: Remedy Entertainment’s Control With its fusion of cosmic horror and comedic bureaucracy (not to mention "what if gunfight... but with Jedi powers?"gameplay) this is a game that might have been custom-made just for me. Control takes the tired “secret government organization overseeing the paranormal” trope and shifts the focus towards the first part, presenting the headquarters of the titular Federal Bureau of Control (known as the “Oldest House”) as a Brutalist maze of filing cabinets, typewriters, water coolers… and twisted hallways folding in on themselves, a Ritual Department, and a power system that may be running off an imprisoned elder god. It’s a setting defined by contrasts, blending the dull familiarity of the recent past with the nightmarish and otherworldly. But what’s really unique is the care the designers took to make the Oldest House feel like place people a

There’s an old article from Dragon magazine that’s been making the rounds in internet gaming circles lately: Rig Volný’s “GM's Ten Commandments:Ten Dos and Don'ts for Game Masters Everywhere,” first published in 1987. The Never Say Dice crew got to thinking about how we felt regarding this collection of advice from (relatively) early in RPG history, and what we might add based on our own experiences. We should note that, after we had this initial conversation, fellow RPG blogger DM David made his own posts about updating the GM Ten Commandments. We’re not saying that DM David can read our thoughts (we’re not saying he can’t , either), but since we took different approaches to the subject, we decided to keep it as this week’s topic - and encourage you to go check out his work, as well. After all, when has an overabundance of advice ever harmed the GMs of the world? (Barring the many lost in the bloody Edition Wars, of course.) - B For reference, these are Rig Volný’s original

  For the past few weeks, I’ve struggled with finding the right thing to post on the blog. Between the continuing pandemic looming over our lives, the atrocity of the Capitol Attack, the impeachment proceedings, and the inauguration, these past few weeks have been full of stress. (Okay, maybe you international folks don’t have as much anxiety about the Capitol Attack.) Not to mention all the ongoing systemic racism, voter suppression, and political identity issues in the U.S. If you want to read more about our views on these things, you might want to check out Bugsy’s post from last week -  Limited Imagination: Storytelling and the Politics of Assumed Perspective . I haven’t even touched on my own personal problems with the household plumbing yet. This goes to show one thing, though: our lives are full of drama. So, what's wrong with all this drama? Plenty, but there will always drama in our lives, from ongoing political issues to stressful home repairs. Tabletop games tend to thri