Listen to this episode here.
It's the Dice Exploder 2024 year end bonanza! This year I'm joined by Aaron Voigt, Rowan Zeoli, and MintRabbit plus a cavalcade of friends of the show to go over games and adjacent things we loved from 2024. Come reminisce about the year with us!
Aaron on Youtube and Bluesky
Aaron’s picks
Rascal News/Scrying on Iran's Tabletop Scene
Rowan’s picks
Voices in The Wood, a Void 1680 Actual Play. Rowan’s article on Voices in the Woods.
Former World of Game Design Employees Claim Tabletop Company Exploits Workers and Clients
Mint’s picks
Sam’s picks
Florilegium by Nick Wedig
The Disc 2 jam, organized by Ken Lowery, and specifically the Wanderhome designer commentary
Kiss Me If You Can by Sam Dunnewold, and actual play from Third Floor Wars
Other picks
Kurt Refling’s pick: Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games
Michael Elliott’s pick: Two Hand Path by Mikey Hamm
Alex Roberts on The Highlander II: The Quickening Unofficial Roleplaying Game by Adam Decamp
Jason Morningstar on The Big Store by Nathan D. Paoletta
Randy Lubin’s pick: the Dice Exploder Discord
Hendrik ten Napel on Eat the Reich by Rowan Rook and Deckard
Sharang Biswas’s pick: Combat in Dungeons & Dragons by Evan Torner
Audrey Stolze’s pick: Band-Aids & Bullet Holes by Sam Dunnewold
Sydney Icarus’s pick: Working the Case by Randy Lubin
Seraphina’s pick: Triangle Agency
Socials
Sam Dunnewold on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to the 2024 Dice Exploder year end bonanza! Each episode we take an RPG mechanic and break it down as deep as we possibly can. Except once at the end of the year I gather up three people I think are cool and we do a little panel about a bunch of cool stuff that came out this year.
It's 2024. I've got three cool people here. Let's go around. Who are those people? Aaron Voigt, have you with me. Who are you and what's your deal?
Aaron: Hey Sam thank you so much for having me. I am a writer and tabletop RPG enthusiast. I'm on Blue Sky at AA Voigt Tumblr at Monster Factory Fanfic, and on YouTube at AA Voigt where I post RPG video essays.
Sam: Love to have you. Rowan, I don't want to fuck up your last name. Who are you?
Rowan: As far as I know, I'm Rowan Zioli. I am a tabletop journalist. I'm a co founder of the worker owned, reader supported Rascal News, an independent tabletop journalism outlet. I'm currently doing some tabletop writing at Polygon as well, but subscribe to Rascal News!
Sam: Boy, are we gonna be talking a lot about Rascal News today. finally we have with us uh, Mint Rabbit. Mint, who are you?
Mint: Hi I go by MintRabbit I have been dubbed the TTRPG Librarian. I run a Tumblr blog called There's a TTRPG for That, where I cultivate a series of game recommendations based off of submitted requests, and I'm currently designing a game of Monster Babysitters, which you can find at my itch. io page.
Sam: I feel like a monster babysitter today. No, I'm just kidding. so the format today, we're each gonna go around. We're gonna say three games one by one that we loved from 2024. We're gonna say one game adjacent thing that we loved, and then we're gonna say something that we're proud of.
And interspersed throughout all that, we're gonna hear from some other friends of the show who have graciously sent in recordings of their favorite things from the year. And the first one of those right now comes from Kurt Refling.
Kurt: Hello folks, my name is Kurt Reffling, and I am a man who makes games. I want to talk about Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast, published by Possum Creek Games, who made the small press darling, Wanderhome.
Yes, Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast has been out digitally for years, but backers got or are getting copies in 2024, and it is an ever unfurling fractal of delight, a massive tome. But, individual elements are bite sized. There are these little chapters with just a couple pages of rules. There's an approachable cast that you can pick characters from that grows as you unlock things throughout the book, choosing your own path through it.
There has been so much care in constructing this, and I cannot believe it exists. Every time you open the book, it's like you're being served an amuse bouche. And I've been playing for months now, love the game and its characters. Truly, can't give enough flowers to the team that made it.
Sam: I'm actually I was surprised that no one on this panel picked Yazeeba's Bed and Breakfast. That must have meant it was a pretty good year for RPGs.
Rowan: You might, you might notice I have a different J Dragon game on.
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad we got some Possum Creek love in here at the very least. But to kick things off Aaron, what was your first pick?
Aaron: Yeah, so I wanted to bring Caro Asercion's Last Train to Bremen. It's a tragedy for a doomed quartet, basically you play as the four town musicians of Bremen, which is based on a, a fairy tale. And basically, you all are in a band. Thirteen years ago, you made a deal with the devil, and now that deal has come due, and you have to uh, escape. So you all are on a train together, kind of reminiscing about you know, the times that you've had together.
And it's based on a Liar's Dice mechanic, so that's, that's the, like, resolution mechanic, right, you're all just kind of playing Liar's Dice you know, whiling away the hours as you zoom to Bremen, but, like, the starting with it is like the presentation. It's like reading a playbill for a show if you've read it. Like there's just a bit in in the beginning where it's like, okay, we're going to introduce the mechanic, but it's it's presented as if you're reading play, like a playbill essentially, right? It goes we now humbly present for your edification a modest introduction to the rules of the game Liar's Dice, and it's got like the little animal pictures.
It's so fun. Caro you probably know from I'm sorry, did you say Street Magic? Or
Rowan: Wait, wait, I'm sorry. Did you, did you say Street Magic?
Aaron: Yeah, I did, in fact, say Street Magic. You know, Caro's a very well known designer but The Last Train to Bretman, I think, is just, like, such a great encapsulation of their style. and I think especially because, like, there's this bit where it's, like when you're breaking down the four playbooks, there's little, like, prompts that are, like, okay, here's how each of the characters relates to each other.
And I think that's a really smart, like, choice, I think Caro described it as like a shipping chart, essentially because it shows how the characters all have like I was listening to the recent episode of the Tabletop Book Club podcast where they're talking about how bands are just like polycule generators and like, this is exactly, this, this is such a, A great generator for, like, having like a weird, strange, messed up relationship with the people at your table.
So like, the mule, can ask other characters, like, Oh you know, what argument when you pushed it brought us fully to blows? I think the cat can ask the the dog, like, why did I break things off with you? Like, is this, like, messy, you know, like maelstrom of, of relationships kind of all, you know, bound up in this, like, band.
And then finally, you know, when you are, like, playing Liar's Dice, eliminating your fellow players, the last player who technically wins is then pitted against the devil, which is all three of the other players. And you'll have to, like, basically snipe at each other as you exchange dice.
It's, it's just such a great setup and framework for, like, a, a dramatic story. And you know, just shoutouts to Caro because it's, it's really something special.
Sam: It's so unbelievably good. This is what I posted on Blue Sky about this game after I played it for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I saw it on the pre doc for this episode. This game is like combining my six favorite things in indie RPG design right now. The incorporation of board game mechanics, hard framing stories with pre gen characters, evocative prompts, nostalgia and memory, light PvP, and art by Connor Fawcett.
It's just, like, it's such a gorgeous game. I love the way the Liar's Dice sort of puts you as players in the headspace of sniping at each other and allowing you to feel like you can play this fiction game PvP a little bit, but still have a good time because it's rewarding the losers with the ability to frame scenes.
It's just so good. I'm 100 percent sure I'm gonna do an episode on this game in 2025. I want to talk all about the use of animals as pre gen characters. I think there's such strength in that too.
But I really, every choice in this game is so specific and so tight. The bones of it are just so strong. This is the kind of game that I want people to be making in indie RPGs, and I'm so glad we're starting with it out of the gate here.
Aaron: It's really good, and some of the inspirations I wanted to bring up, which are just incredible, you, you mentioned Connor Fawcett, who also did some art for Friends at the Table. And Songfeel, their like, horror heart season was cited as an inspiration for this game. As well as the Phantom of the Opera Broadway Pit Orchestra, which if you're a theater head, you know, because Phantom was such a long running Broadway show, the people in that pit orchestra, like, ended up, like, just absolutely hating each other because, like, you know, they you just work for together for so long that you end up developing this enmity. Like that I believe there's like a famous quote where it was like I just know that there's the person sitting next to me was always playing a note like a half step too sharp just specifically to fuck with me and like that's that's the kind of energy you want to bring it to this game which I highly encourage Yes
Rowan: That's beautiful. That's just gorgeous. And I wish to have a rivalry, a nemesi, with such conviction at some point in my life.
Sam: Rowan let's throw to your first pick.
Rowan: Yeah, I think honestly, a perfect segue from the PvP of Last Train to Bremen is going to actually be 7 Part Pact by Jay Dragon.
I got the opportunity to play Seven Part Pact with Jay in its current developmental weird form, and it is an incredible game. The theme of the game is that you are all the most powerful wizards in the land, you are bound by a pact, a seven part pact, where you get to control magic and no one else does, but it's an exploration of gender, and an exploration of power and masculinity and bigotry and a lot of really powerful ways games I don't think often get to explore.
And so there's a real exploration of the trust that you have with the people at the table around you that I think is really powerful, that I think PVP games force you to think about a little bit more than your standard like Dungeons and Dragons format of the game.
You can read an article that I wrote about it on rascal. news because I'm just gonna keep blogging rascal the entire time.
But it's just such a fascinating idea because each player has their own mini game that they play, so it's a combination of a board game and a tabletop roleplaying game at the same time. And the way that the board games are structured to have competition with each and every other player at the table, like your wants and needs, despite how collaboratively you might want to be playing this game, pits you against the other players at the table, just by its very nature, it's like, oh, you're the most powerful wizard in the world and you have an agenda you wanna push forward, but also you have to spend time with your spouse and you have to be tending to the needs of your domain.
And so it really asks this question about what power does to people and what people will do to maintain that power and shape the world and they the way they want to.
Jay is a genius, which we heard just before of Ysaba's Bed and Breakfast. And I don't know, I just want to talk about this game because at the moment I played it, I just had dreams for the next week, and there's a phenomenon with everyone who plays this game called wizard dreams.
it's Kind of crazy, actually.
Aaron: If there's one designer who I think could force players to have specific dreams, it's
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Rowan: It's Ugh. Yeah.
Sam: think 7 part pack, I read it just last night, actually, in preparation for this, cause I've been meaning to read it all year, and I also knew it was like, you know, the length of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy or something, to read it all. Uh, But I, I finished it this past week. And the game is so fascinating. I love it for all the reasons that you're talking about. I wanted to call out two sort of logistical pieces of it I think are really cool.
The first is continuing that theme from Last Train to Bremen of board game mechanics and elements being brought into RPGs. I think that's something a lot of people, including myself, were calling out at the beginning of this year as a trend we were going to start seeing in RPGs. And it's really paying off, I think. Like, the games that are incorporating those kinds of board game mechanics are really interesting, and this is no exception.
And the other thing I really appreciated just in the introduction of this game is that one of the recommended forms of play for it was A Long Weekend. And that's also something I've been doing a lot over the past few years, is just like running a little house con, like get some friends, we get the Airbnb on Thursday, everyone flies home on Sunday, but we get that like Thursday night, Friday, Saturday game going.
And I've been on the lookout for games like Seven Part Pact that sort of lend themselves specifically to that experience of, like, let's just do Wizard Dreams for three days.
And I can't wait to try that out with this game.
Rowan: Yeah, I played an 8 hour session which I haven't done since college and it was just, ugh, there's nothing like just immersing yourself in a world that is not this one for a day at a time.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Mint, what have you got for us?
Mint: Okay, so the first game that I chose is a game called, well, it's not, it's kind of more of a setting. I don't think it's really a game. It's called The Gas Station by Dungeon Club and I found it on one of my weakly just scrolling through the new stuff on itch. And it immediately caught my eye because I think just the design of the game like especially like that first image, it kind of hit me in... I have, I have a So, Stranger Things really affected me. And like, the only thing it didn't influence me in was getting me to want to play D& D. Which is really funny, because I started watching Stranger Things at the same time that I started getting into indie games. And I was really into the whole, like, 80s, liminal, nighttime, neon light aesthetic.
And The Gas Station is all of that. And then it's also horror. Which is, again, I don't understand why I enjoy horror games so much, because I can't do horror movies. But I get really excited about running horror games for other people. It is, I think, one of the only games where I was like, no, I have to buy this right now, I can't wait for it to go on sale, I can't wait for it to be in a bundle. I have to get it now
Rowan: I love that. I think it's so fascinating that the difference between like loving horror and different genres of like, I really love it in this experience where I get to kind of control it and be in this environment with other people versus a movie. I think that's just so cool and interesting to touch on.
Sam: It also really is giving me, like, Kentucky Route Zero kind of vibes, and that game is really, really cool in the aesthetic that it is setting up, and I would love to wander around in the spooky world of this.
Aaron: I'm just skimming through it right now, and I just want to read this one bit, which is
The door shuts behind you and, and locks. You are doomed. Hanging meat. No beer, just ice frozen meat hanging from hooks.
And that's, that's what you gotta have. Listen I love that this game is, like, primarily text based with, like, some really evocative and colorful uh, neon you know, text design, but, like, at the end of the day, sometimes you just need meat.
You
Mint: there's also , if you scroll to the page of the dumpster there's a dumpster body bag where it only contains a body if you don't look inside it but if you do, it's something like benign, I think
Aaron: au
Mint: like, also how the different, like, parts of the gas station all kind of loop back in on each other.
This is probably more for, like, I understand that there's, there's a bunch of, like, things about OSR modules that I do not understand very well, because I, I'm still struggling to figure out OSR, like, like, as a style of play. But I do really appreciate having, like, a setting handed to you that just says, yeah, no, if they go here, here's a couple of things that kind of loop you back to, you know, the main part of the gas station, and it's all kind of interwoven and connected together.
Sam: love those details like the dumpster body bag that are almost more for the reader than for any players. Cause like, how are players ever gonna know if there was a body in there or not, you know? Like, that's something for you that is creepy and cool poetry that also is gonna allow you to help set the tone as you're running the thing.
Alright, so, my first game is actually a game that someone else sent in a thing introducing, so let's now hear from Michael Elliott.
Michael: Hi, this is Michael Elliott. I'm known for making games like A Torch in the Dark, Rig, Neon Black, one of my favorite games from 2024, has got to be Two Handed Path by Mikey Hamm. It is a single player post apocalyptic dungeon crawler where the dungeons are like old supermarkets and tanker ships, and your character sheet is just art of two hands that you draw scars on, and jewelry that augments your run, and every run is like really short and sweet. The design is so crisp and clean, and it's frustrating because I make these sort of games, and if I could make something as good and clean as Two Handed Path, and I, I don't know, I'd be, I'd be happy. I could finally, could finally be happy.
It's pretty good though.
Sam: Michael's burying the lead here. It's fucking Yahtzee. It's just Yahtzee. It's Yahtzee with like a coloring book aspect to it, right?
You're, you're this cool, like, wizard. You're running around, like, killing guys in, like, a post apocalyptic, like, modern setting. And then you're playing a version of Yahtzee that like uses d4 through d20 like one of each there you're like your magic dice and your powers and stuff.
This game is so addictive i've never played a solo game that feels so much like playing a video game. I immediately felt like i was in a roguelite like running through doing the roguelite thing. Like my favorite part of it is that the zine itself It's only like 16 20 pages long or something, but it contains a meta puzzle like of the kind you might see in an escape room maybe or like an old logic problems book or something. But if you solve this meta puzzle it changes gameplay. Like it has an effect on the game itself. It's like you've unlocked new mode plus kind of.
And I don't know I just loved playing this game so much from the initial demo Mikey put out. I did a little stream in the middle of the year of just doing like quote unquote speedruns for this game Tried a hundred percent it while blasting the Challengers score which I think is really like the vibe of this game too of like it feels like hot Hotline Miami maybe even I, I don't know, I, I don't know why this game was so so addictive for me, but I really I had trouble putting it down I've never had that problem with an RPG before it was so cool.
Rowan: That sounds incredible, but I do want to put a little pin in something. Did you say speedrunning TTRPGs? Because now there's a whole genre of thing I didn't know I needed.
Sam: Yeah, I know and like that wasn't the thing that I was actually doing. Like the thing I was doing was trying to 100 percent it but I was like presenting the stream in the same way that like speedrunners would do it and the game felt appropriate for that right like it feels like the kind of video game that someone would be out there like grinding away any percent runs on i i it was it's really really strange
Rowan: God, and this art is incredible. This, like, classic Americana tattoo style. Ooh,
Sam: yeah yeah. Mike he's a good friend of mine too and i got to kind of watch this game develop and i know that he developed it specifically as an approachable, deliverable project after having finished Slug Blaster and having that project becoming a behemoth that was not always within his control, right?
And I love seeing that too, not just from established designers, but new designers too, of like, Thinking about the overall scope of your project at the beginning of it as you're going into it.
And that's going to bring us to our next friend of the show clip here. We've got Randy Lubin.
Randy: Honestly, one of my favorite game related things from this past year has been the Dice Exploder Discord. it's just full of so many thoughtful discussions on blogs and podcasts and videos and games. meaningful conversations structured around questions of the day. Game jams, feedback on games, etc, etc.
There's just so much great discussion happening by so many thoughtful people, and it's well moderated, and I don't always stick with Discord, but because of how the forums set up and the roles work, it's just so accessible, and so easy to delve into and engage. Plus there was that lovely meetup at Big Bad Con where I got to put so many faces to avatars, and overall every time I visit it just gives me so much energy and inspiration, so.
Uh, listeners, if you haven't jumped in the discord yet, check it out. I think you're gonna find something that you really like.
Sam: I really appreciate you, Randy, giving me an excuse to just advertise my own Discord in the middle of my episode here.
we thank you for that. But also, like, I've been so happy with how the Discord has been going this year. I really love to see someone calling that out and benefiting from that, so thank you, Randy.
But let's move back on to Aaron, your second pick.
What do you got for us?
Aaron: This is a game called Fealty by Michael Elliott and Galen Pejeau.
Sam: Michael, who we just heard recommending Two Handed Path.
Aaron: Yeah, shoutouts to Michael. So I love Crusader Kings. I am absolutely the kind of nerd who likes those, like, grand strategy simulationist type games. And I think Fealty is, like, the best, like simulator for, like, a Crusader Kings style game that we've got currently.
It is a narrative game focused on the lives and exploits of those who serve the monarch of a nation full of magic, monsters, and diverse peoples. There's a couple playbooks, but basically you play as advisors to a cast of monarchs, which continues to change as you play, but I think it's just a great setup to be like, okay, you're not the king, you have to deal with the king's bullshit, though.
And the whole conceit of the game is like, so you and your two to four other players are part of the king's court, the monarch's court. And basically, whenever the monarch draws a card, that will like, first determine what mood they're in. So sometimes the monarch will just be like yeah, I let me see. The monarchs are at the mercy of their passions the weight of the nation's welfare lies heavy upon their brow.
So firstly, the game is written in this tone of like, yes, I am a long suffering servant of a monarch, but I do genuinely care about them, which I think is great. But like, some of the things that the monarchs you know, want you to do are like they like, we'll see a painting of someone, be like, that person is so beautiful, I need to marry them now, and now it is your problem as players, to like, go and find this portrait of the, of a person and bring them to the monarch or like they, they're like, okay, I have been chosen by God to lead this holy crusade. We need to put all of our money that doesn't go to a war towards the church.
And like I just think that's a hysterical thing to be like, all right, this is my job is to deal with whatever my, my dipshit boss's desires are. And then like the rest of the game is like trying to both manage that as well as like accumulate tokens and, and spend tokens. Like it's very much a token based game.
But, each of your playbooks also has a revolution move, which you can use to basically end the game. So like, if you, you know, as the jester accumulate enough tokens, you could eventually just kill the king. Which I think is great, which is like, you're both trying to collaborate with your fellow players, but also Like there is like the the threat that like if you start getting too much power you might just say we're done i'm i'm i'm buying the whole kingdom a thing you can do.
And I just I love that mix of like both crusader kings like I gotta deal with this monarch who who is just making my life hell but also like you know strategy and and just like that that whole like grand strategy you know style I think is so appealing and fun.
And then Galen Peugeot, who's done a lot of great art in the scene, has these, like, incredible portraits and marginalia.
They make it look like an illuminated manuscript, and it's so cool.
Sam: There's the cover art for this game, which I don't think it's like the final cover art, but was like the promo art they were using at one point was like this chessboard with pawns that their shadow made the shape of a crown, I want to say, and it was this great cool visual metaphor for the like, Oh, we're tiny people who are gonna, like, do something big and we're living in the shadow of the crown, but like, maybe we're gonna take the I don't know, like, I feel like I got so much of the game's experience just from that one piece of art.
The art in this game is really unreal.
Aaron: It's it's stunning. There's there's a piece of, like, a champion that just has a horse's head and a big, long sword. And there's just, like there's, like, some hummingbirds that, again, like, have little swords coming out of their noses, and they're, like, dueling in the margins. Pejeau just has a really, really great style. And I think it pulls off so well, and like you said with the pawns, like, using chess pieces is part of the game, and I think that just, like, adds to the thematic resonance of being like, you know, you are just being moved around, you are, you are subject to some sort of divine will that comes through your monarch, which is so thematically cool.
Yeah.
Sam: of Michael's games, too. It's all revolution, go kill the the heads of capitalism. Yeah.
Rowan: And we love to hear it.
Sam: We do. Uh, Rowan, uh, what do you got for us next?
Rowan: I have chosen a game that just finished crowdfunding and will be coming out next year, but you can find playable versions of it online. It is by my friend Elliot Davis, who just crowdfunded the game The Time We Have, which is an incredibly conceptually intimate game. It's a card based game where two players on the opposite sides of a physical door play as two brothers in a zombie apocalypse, one of whom is going to die in six days. And through a very For the Queen style card prompt mechanic, you play out those six days.
And it is an emotionally devastating experience. Literally, I have played it one time and it forever changed the direction of my friendship with Dillin Apelyan, another game designer and host of OneShot. You can read about it on Dillin's page. Dillin wrote a little thing about it. But you can see the reaction any time anyone plays this game about how emotionally impactful it has been for them.
I think, with two player games it is hard to get that level of intimacy unless you try really hard for it, because you can get a world building game that doesn't really, like, touch in that way. I've never had an emotional experience in the way that this game provided. You can watch all of the actual plays of it, where it is similarly devastating.
There's something really magic that Elliot has tapped into in this game, and even if he wasn't my friend, I would be singing its praises, because you can hear the interview with Thomas Manuel on Yes Indeed, where he talks a bit about the physicality of these objects, of how being and playing on the opposite side of a door brings a level of like, almost LARP like immersion, for lack of a better word, that I think is really interesting.
I don't know, this game has kind of been the hot button game for a little bit while it was crowdfunding. I just think it's so great.
Mint: I read the bit, I think, that Dylan wrote about playing the game with you, and like, somewhere in that bit Dylan mentions, like, oh, you know, games can be a little bit therapy. And that is kind of the experience that I'm always looking for when I am trying to figure out what to play and the, the way that you can take an experience that is never going to happen in your real life, and still make it connect to your real life in a way that actually changes you.
So, yeah, I'm excited to see more stories about how this game, you know, continues to affect people in that way.
Sam: This is another game that, like, contains within it so many different pieces of things that I am excited to see people exploring in the future of indie game design. You mentioned a bunch of them, right? The physicality of it is so cool to me. I think there's a connection there between incorporating board game mechanics and the physicality of this actually. So much of I think what is effective about board game mechanics that people are taking is the, the physicalness of them and the LARP ness of this in particular, like, I had this conversation early in the year with Jason Morningstar about how he would love to see more I hope I'm not putting words in his mouth.
How he would love to see more people bringing lessons from LARP into tabletop RPG design and vice versa, right? That there's so much LARP could learn from tabletop RPGs too, and this feels like perfect example of a game that is really taking elements of both of those things and combining them together to create something that even just from the premise gives me chills, right?
Like, I backed this game. I can't wait to sit down and play it. I suspect I'll be covering this game in a full episode on 2025. I'm doing a little LARP series, and I feel like this is the game we're gonna like cap it off with, specifically to talk about the thing that I'm saying right now, like, how do you bring some of those LARP elements into, to indie design.
It's such a cool premise.
Min, what do we got next from you?
Mint: So my second pick is Shadow Slash Giant by PsyCon Games, also known as Luka Brave. An asymmetrical hack of Badger and Coyote, and it's, about a shadow, which is a small child usually one with a special power, and a giant who is meant to protect the child.
Luca's voice in this game, I think it's kind of the first time where I sat down and read a game and I felt like I knew something about the person who was talking to me through it. And, like, just the way that Luca writes is so beautiful.
I'm also a little bit attached to this game because I'm very interested in exploring the themes around, like relationships between parents and children, and like, the ways that, that can totally affect a kid's life. And so having a story where you have one player who is being the parent figure, so to speak, and a player who's being, you know, a child, and then also having asymmetrical rules to represent the different strengths and weaknesses of each of those players, I think is a really, like, strong way to tie all of those themes together.
Sam: This is really cool looking to me. I really liked the mechanical framework of Badger and Coyote when I first read it a few years ago, and didn't really have a lot of interest in playing a game as a badger and a coyote, and I'm excited to see this.
But I think Rowan unlike you I have found two player games to be much more emotionally intimate at large because when you're trying to get to any kind of emotional weight, there's only the two of you.
So you it's you can't like sort of back out of a scene and let like the rest of the table handle it for a while. Like it has to be you the whole time. And this feels like a dynamic that would really take advantage of that.
Rowan: Absolutely, yeah. maybe I just gotta dive deeper, you know?
Sam: Well, a great pick. My second pick is called Florilegium by Nick Wedig. Florilegium was made for the Game Exploder Jam, which is something we ran on the Dice Exploder Discord. The premise of this jam was that to take your favorite game and demake it, to make like a smaller version, or to make a different version, make some other kind of version based on whatever your favorite thing was.
And we did a whole episode breaking down this jam and the results with me and Sam Roberts and Audrey Stolze and Greenbrier and so many cool games that came out of that jam. I almost picked this jam as my, like, game adjacent thing that I loved for the year.
But I, I talked about Florilegium on that episode, but I really wanted to get to it again now that I've had the chance to play it. This is a game that started as a demake of Ars Magica, which is this old game I know is very influential on the Bakers, who I think Vincent Baker's also making kind of a version of Ars Magica right now but Ars Magica is a game where you like are playing in, I don't know, 1700s, 1800s Europe as wizards. Like there are wizards in the world and they've all been confined to towers to do their magic stuff because magic is weird and we don't like it, and Magic takes, like, decades to do a spell, and so the game becomes all about the wizards that you're playing, but also, like, the support staff around them, their companions, and their, like, grogs, they're called, which are, like, the cooks, and the janitors, and the gardeners, and everyone else who is, like, supporting the wizards in their lives, and you rotate through playing all these characters.
And Ars Magica is, like, renowned for being an extremely crunchy game and that has never been interesting to me. Like I just have too many other games to play to engage with something that's going to take me a year to play a campaign of and so I was so excited about Florilegium for taking this premise that was really really cool me. Boy am I excited to play 7 Part Pact also, right? And make it accessible, make it into something that I can play a satisfying session of in an hour.
Like, the thing about this game is I have since playing it been like, yeah, I could play this game for a four hour session, but also I played 45 minutes of it with my partner. We have like an ongoing game of it that we've played like several times over the past six months and It fits so well, we can play for two hours, we can play for half an hour, the game is sort of like turn based, passage of time is this huge theme in the game, and like the changing of the seasons and everything, and that, means that big gaps between sessions feel like kind of thematically appropriate to the game too.
I also got to play a little one shot of it with some friends at a house con, and that also like gave this really incredible like found family kind of experience. The game was just so satisfying to me on so many levels. It's clearly, I'd say, 90 percent done. Like, there is sort of a 10 percent last polish that I would love to see Nick do. But I still, I can't recommend this game enough. It, it really hit that Wizards in a Tower for 10 years premise so well. I really, really loved it.
Rowan: Yeah, no, I'm just imagining now playing a game of 7 Part Pact and then also playing a game of Floralegium side by side of being like what's happening with these wizards but then also what's happening with these people over here like oh that just sounds so interesting
Sam: Yeah, it's like a troupe play thing, right? So I'm playing my wizard and also like your gardener and Aaron's wife and it's cool to see all of those things kind of like get passed around and play together. I don't know. Yeah, it's it's a slick experience.
Mint: I would be really interested to see somebody hack this game for Downton Abbey. I
Sam: Oh, yeah hundred percent Yeah, I think Downton Abbey might want a framework that is more about the sort of soap opera and melodrama of that kind of premise, This one is so pastoral almost in its way but yeah, it has a lot of that feel to it in a way that would be really fun to bring to Downton Abbey.
All right. Our next friend of the show is Jason Morningstar.
Jason: Hello friends, Jason Morningstar here, and something that I really liked this year was Nathan Paoletta's game, The Big Store. I love confidence games, I love, grifts and tricks, and role playing games have struggled with that. I've never found one that really nailed it until The Big Store.
So, Nathan took Worldwide Wrestling and adapted it specifically to con games. So, you're roping the mark, you're telling the tale, you're taking the touch, and then you're blowing them off, and It is just glorious. The game works well, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and it's brought me a lot of joy this year.
Mint: read that one! I read that one!
I'm really interested to see, like I think the connection between like, the big store and and pieces of media like Burn Notice or Leverage or Ocean's Eleven or Ocean's 8. It's, it's I found it actually educational to read because I was learning about, like, how cons work.
Those kinds of shows don't always, like, break down those pieces for you, right? And The Big Store kind of gives you an insight into what you need to do to make your mark, like, you know, be in the right mind space to believe you I think it's, it's a good way to teach the genre to new people.
Sam: And this is also a nice transition into Aaron your third pick.
Aaron: Yeah, I don't know why I keep picking games that also feature friends of the Pod um, but this is Helvetia uh, which is also by Bully Pulpit Games, aka Jason Morningstar. This is the first Jason Morningstar game I've read I really need to read Fiasco, but like, the pitch that got me really interested in Helvetia uh, was, quote, I set to make out a short LARP about the most boring thing I could think of and I was like, hell yeah, let's see what you got!
And as, Morningstar, it goes on to, to write in his comment about this, like, it's not boring at all, it's actually fascinating, this is based on Like, a, a real corporate coup essentially that happened about the Helvetia Milk Condensing Company, and You know, like, obviously that sounds like kind of a silly premise, but like, I think it is executed so well.
You, there, you basically you have three players uh, each of you gets a pre written character either John Wildey, Louisa Wildey, or Luis Latzer. You are all appealing to Fritz Kaiser. Who is, like, the, like, one of your founders of this company, this milk condensing company. He has a 25 percent stake. If you are able to convince him to give you his stake as he, like you know, retires then you will have a controlling interest in the company, and that means you can do whatever you want with it.
And, like, each of the characters has, like, a secret agenda so, like John Wilde uh, has been, like, basically, Embezzling money, so he, his plan is if he gets the stake, will sell it off to some company in Chicago. And like Louisa Wildey and Lewis Latser are having an affair which is really fun because like, it sets up all of these, like, interesting character dynamics.
And the way that the game is resolved is like, you know, you basically are, are, you have a little sheet that's like, here's the bids you can make, you can tell to Fritz Kaiser to convince him to give you his stake. Also, Fritz Kaiser is represented as a portrait at the end of the table you're playing at, so if you want to talk to him directly, you just flip the picture up and you talk to him, which owns. But like, You know, you have to make these bids to him and then, like, each bid has a point total.
You know, one thing that's fascinating is that depending on who, which character makes a certain bid that point total may be different. Like, you can offer Fritz, what is, like, a, basically, a you know, a seat at the board of directors, which like, is transparently worthless, like it doesn't mean anything, but like if Latzer does it, it's actually worth minus one point, but if John Wildey does it, it's worth plus zero points. Because Wildy's kind of a, like a, a naive a fool, whereas Latsir is like, kind of a more savvy person, and like, the way I interpret that, as Kaiser being like, you should know better than to, to offer me this, you fool, whereas like, your friend is like, okay, sure.
But like I love how this game is laid out, it has like a little, You know, a card of your actions that you're able to do it has, like, everybody's relationship dynamics and shows, like, how everybody knows each other and has, like, strange relationships with each other.
But one of the, my favorite parts about it is that, like There are some moves you can make, some bids you can add that will change, you know, the, the offer that, that Kaiser will accept from you, but you have to say them out loud to the other characters at the table. So you have to, you, you know, maybe you reveal their affair between Latzer and Louisa Wilde and because you say it out loud, that's going to affect how everybody else plays. They're going to be like, oh, you're going to reveal my affair? Well, I'm going to tell um, that, like Your, your daughter has a, you know, like a laudanum abuse problem. And like, you know, it making it really messy and, and dramatic.
And like, I love that possibility space where it's like, okay, let's air it all out. Let's go. Let's, let's, you know, go to the mattresses here for this milk condensing company. And I think that's such a fun excellent, like larp based game that is, you know, rooted in, in the premise of like, what's the most boring thing I can come up with.
Mint: If, I'm looking at this correctly I noticed that for example, for Louisa, There's technically two different options for what you do with John F. Montgomery and, and what you do with Albert that look like they're the same thing, but they're two different options. And I suppose it's, it's the worth and also, like, the meaning behind it is what changes it.
Aaron: that is how I read it, right? Like You know, there is dismiss John F. Montgomery as president, and replace him with Albert, or there is give Albert a good job within the company. Albert is Kaiser's son, so it's either make the, the unqualified son of the guy you're trying to get the bid from the head of the company or, you know, just give him a good job, and like, you know that if you give Kaiser's son the president's, you know, job, he's gonna screw it up, because he doesn't know what he's doing, but like. if you don't do that, then you won't get the controlling interest.
So it's like, it's so good. I just love that. There's like these little, like, like you pointed out, Mint, like little nuances that like, that will absolutely affect how the game plays out. It's so fun.
Mint: I also think that I enjoy the fact that it's giving players a very solid place to start with. Because if you are new to roleplaying games sometimes just being handed a character and being told what your character is interested in and wants makes it easier for you to kind of just step into that role.
Sam: Say it louder.
Mint: yeah. I mean, no,
I, I, so I've been doing the same thing with the playtesting of my game, and I was inspired by Lady Blackbird, and I know that Eat the Reich did the same thing
Sam: Last Train to Bremen.
Mint: I was inspired, yeah, and, and Yezeba's Bed and Breakfast. All of these games are great for not just getting you, like, getting new players to the table faster, it's skipping the character creation process completely.
And it's also allowing you to kind of, you can say something with your game, right? if you want to use the game as an educational tool, like, you could use this kind of game to teach kids about history by giving them characters and then limiting their choices. Or if you want to, have a game, like, say something about maybe the cycle of poverty. And so you give your characters options, but none of them actually elevate them, right? Blades in the Dark kind of does that, and I think you could push it a little bit farther by just limiting what, what they are and are not allowed to, like, do with their characters.
Sam: There's, this is a great game, I think for all the reasons y'all have listed.
It's also such a typical Jason Morningstar game these days of like, it's a LARP, but you can just play it around a table, like you don't have to get up and move around, it's only a couple of people, which feels really approachable relative to a lot of LARPs, both like on an emotional level, I think, and on a logistical level.
I think this format of game is so cool whether it's rooted in original history or set in the far future in space or whatever, like yeah, this game rules, Jason's games rules go check out not just this one, but more of them.
Rowan, what is your third pick?
Rowan: So actually it bounces off pretty well of what we were just talking about. I've been thinking a lot about how to bring political ideas to the gaming table, and how to bring the political ideas that we make at the table back out into the world as well.
The thing that I really am very very interested in is last year I was sent a a quick start really basic version of Oceania 2084 by Swedish anarchist Joker Symbolik.
Sam: yeah.
Rowan: It is basically 1984 but set in the future so it's the same level of surveillance state dystopia and the players are all revolutionaries and resistance members except for one who is playing Big Brother. And there is an anonymous way of, you have to connect with your other players, there is no winning in this game, it sets it out very explicitly within the text itself. You cannot win, but it's not a cynical, nihilistic, you can't win. It's very much a, because revolution isn't an option in this game, but survival and finding joy is the point of it.
These small acts of love, like leaving notes for other people, or like touching hands, or longing glances, like knowing intimate things about each other, very much like the original text, 1984 by George Orwell, is all about these small personal acts of resistance, but there is no sense of when you are going to get this enforcement of Big Brother's all knowing eye at your act of resistance.
You start to build up heat over the course of it as you do it more obviously, but there's not like a threshold of where it's automatically gonna happen. It'll just randomly happen even if you just do it once. And I think the way that it explores existing under those conditions through a tech dystopia of AR 1984, basically, is so incredibly cool.
And that's why I wanted to bring it today, just to talk about it, Especially because it's from Sweden, it's not from one of the big publishers, it was crowdfunded independently in spring of this year. Should definitely check it out, it's so cool.
Sam: Yeah, is it a one shot? Is it a campaign game?
Rowan: It's a campaign game, yeah, you can play it over the course of campaign, you can play it in one session, but it is, it's definitely made for long term play.
Sam: cool. Oh man, look at this. The game is inspired by roguelikes, red carnations on a black grave, lasers and feelings, Vampire the Masquerade, PBTA, a thousand year old vampire, and paranoia. Yeah, that's uh, eclectic, but compelling list.
Mint: Sign me up.
Rowan: It's like, hey, you wanna feel something? Here, you're gonna feel it. Hehehehehehehehe
Sam: Mint, what's your
third pick?
Mint: So, my third pick is Headstone Hills game, Flyover Country a haunted Midwest road tripping game. So this is a game that I did get to play in 2024 which is a miracle! I got to play the game the year that it was released!
Sam: What a concept.
Mint: Yeah, I know, right? It's an eight page game and it uses a tarot deck. You have a group of people called Drifters, and they are all on a road trip across the Midwest, and each character has a special power but they can only use it if they confess to having done something that is morally objectionable to some extent. So you have kind of like this powerful thing you can do, but you could only use it if you tell the other people about this thing that you've done that you're probably going to be ashamed of. And the move that you have is determined by one of the high arcana that you pull from a tarot deck.
I played this with a couple of friends of mine over the summer as a chance to play in person, and they commented that the fact that you're using tarot cards really changes the way that you play the game. you pull a number of cards equal to a stat that you have one of three, and then you can choose from the cards that you pull to represent your outcome. So, like, if you pull enough different suits, you will always be able to succeed. But there's also a limited number of cards in the deck, so there's only so many successes.
And sometimes you might pull three bad cards. But because you're using not just the suit, you're also using the numbers the suit will tell you one thing, and the number will tell you something else. So you could still have three bad options, and decide which bad option is the one that I want to make true. And the table that I played with enjoyed the fact that they could have some control over the narrative, and sometimes they might even go for the bad choice because they thought it was more interesting.
Rowan: I love bad choices in tabletop roleplaying games, the only way to make a good story.
Sam: I'm here, is to make bad choices. Can't do it in real life in the same way, you know?
Rowan: So true.
Sam: feels like the vibes of this game are comparable or of a piece with The Gas Station. Is that sort of weird Midwest thing, something that you're especially interested in?
Mint: I do enjoy the feeling of liminality and the, the kind of feeling of being in a small town. I have lived in a small town for a small time in my life, and it was quite a learning experience to find out that everybody knows everybody, and so if you make one mistake, the entire town will know about it the next day. And yeah, I think it's a really ripe setting for different kinds of stories because you can kind of expand your cast of characters and still, and have this one event affect everybody that you, like, know or care about, because everybody is such a small place.
Sam: Yeah, well, my last pick here is A Visit to the Lonely Oak by my friend Victor Lane.
This is a adventure site for Mausritter. Mausritter is an OSR style game. It is essentially like a Dungeons Dragons fantasy game, except you're playing as Anthropomorphic mice, like Redwall style.
So, I think it was my friend Nova, Idle Cartulary online, look her up. She reviewed Mausritter this year and noted that like when I'm sitting down to play an elf game with someone, to play Dungeons and Dragons, we know that like a knight is gonna have a hard time fighting a dragon, but also like in the stories the knight always prevails over the dragon, you know?
But Mausritter when you take that and you like map that onto mice, it's like, the mouse is not gonna prevail over the cat. Like, in the stories, the cat prevails over the mouse, and so the swapping of this setting to a Redwall kind of thing from a generic fantasy, it makes the gameplay feel really similar, you know, it's a lot of the same mechanics, a lot of the same style of play, a lot of the same dungeon delving, but this sort of fundamental metaphor of the thing I think hits the like, horror of being an adventurer in a fantasy world more strongly.
And this particular adventure site. I think is just a magical thing it is 22 pages long including some full art picture of an owl it's very contained, it has still a bunch of different factions, like, it's a whole little mini campaign setting. Like, I bet I could run eight sessions of play out of this thing.
It is just so efficient, which is something that I love, it is so sad, it is about this like, an owl has recently been killed By a mouse who has then named himself mayor of this city in a small village in a big oak tree. And then it's about all the various denizens of this oak tree and how they're responding to this, like, change in power.
And a lot of them are leaving because, like, this new mayor sucks, you know? But it feels emotional to me reading the thing, but also so immediately gameable, so immediately usable. I think it is just such a great little setting.
And it looks like Aaron King, who was on the Bonanza last year, has this worksheet manifesto that they published on Tumblr a while ago that was like, just put your fucking game out. Like I don't care what it looks like, just print it on some 8. 5x11 pieces of paper and like get it to the table so I can read it. And I love the way A Visit to the Lonely Oak, the physical version I'm holding my hands right now, feels like that. Like it really just got made. Like, Victor just put it out, and I appreciate that so much.
I don't know. it's just a small, efficient, great way to start playing Mausritter. I prefer it to, like, The Estate, the official box set that the game comes with. And I, I love these little OSR style adventure sites when they're good.
Yeah. So that's my last pick.
Aaron: I think this is such a great use of Mausritter, like, as a setting, because like Mausritter, like, like you said earlier, like, you know, the cat always beats the mouse. Mechanically in Mausritter you, you as a lone mouse cannot deal damage to anything that's like, over a certain size, they'll just like, completely own you.
And I think it's such a, great way to like, bring that Mausritter as horror to a setting, right? Being like, okay, yeah, there's an owl, which to a mouse is basically a fucking dinosaur. Like you can't, you're not gonna kill this thing, it, it's like a god to you,
Sam: It's like the Cthulhu dark thing or the trophy dark thing of like the rules for combat are if you try to fight a monster you die. Like, you know, I like that Mausritter has oh, yeah there are other mice and you probably need to talk with them and make there are rules for fighting them or whatever. But like then there are also these big unspeakable horrors that you can't deal with.
Okay, so our last friend with a game recommendation here is Hendrick ten Napel
Hendrik: Oh, hi there. I'm Hendrik de Napel. I made Naughty Goose Simulator foul play and I sent out a bi weekly newsletter. In 2024 I liked Eat the Reich so much I ran two, three session campaigns of it. The pre gen vampires and campaign materials are pitch perfect, ooze atmosphere and made GMing dead easy.
Sam: Eat The Reich really was, I feel like one of the major releases this year. It like won a bunch of Ennies, but also it, like, was just Gorgeous. That's the big thing that I feel like happened with Eat the Reich and also another game on the list of pre gen characters really having a moment maybe this year.
I didn't really realize that until I'm looking back at all these games that we're talking about today, but this really was a great year for pre gen characters in games, and I love to see that.
Rowan: Yeah, and also, who doesn't want to be vampires that kill Nazis? I don't know.
Mint: Tangent, have you heard of the game Kill Him Faster?
Sam: No, what's that?
Mint: It's about the, ever since inventing time travel people are trying to see how fast they can go back in time to kill Hitler.
Sam: Speedrunning any percent kill Hitler?
Mint: yeah,
yeah, so speed, if you wanna speedrun a game, I definitely recommend Kill Him Faster.
Sam: that's great.
Mint: You gotta know that at some point I had to say there was a TTRPG for that.
Rowan: It's so on
Sam: that's the catchphrase. That's Min's catchphrase. Yeah.
Great. We're heading now into our game adjacent things that we love, and I wanted to play this in with another friend of the show. Here's sharing from excuse me, here's Sharang Biswas on Evan Torner's essay, Combat in Dungeons and Dragons, A Short History of Design Trajectories.
Just before I hit play here he's starting with a quote from the essay.
Sharang: Where is the sweeping narration of epic battles, Dr. Evan Torner writes, or the rhythmic and performative combat found in various human rituals over the past millennia? Instead, clarity and computation are sovereign in D& D combat.
Evan's chapter, titled, Combat in Dungeons and Dragons, a short history of design trajectories in the book 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons, edited by Sidhu, Carter, and Zagal, might be one of my favorite RPG things to come out this year. Like I literally called him to gush about it right after I read it. Evan gives a thorough analysis of combat in various editions of D& D, of which there are at least 10, he informs us, he explores the mechanics, history, and the socio cultural values we can draw from these systems.
He reminds us that the tradition of combat systems in games are neither natural nor inevitable. That game designers draw from a specific set of assumptions and abstractions that we can and should question in order to explore our art form more fully. So I'm definitely going to assign this to my MFA students next year, and I highly recommend a reading.
Sam: So apparently you can just read this whole essay on Rascal?
Rowan: Yeah, you can. Rascal had a couple partnerships with MIT Press where their big book that that essay is a part of, we were able to publish a few of the essays from that book on our site for free for anyone to read.
We at Rascal agree with MIT that, like, tabletop games deserve to be written about as both historical objects, art objects, cultural objects and so we wanted to share this incredible piece, because Evan Torner's writing has shaped a lot of thinking in the tabletop world. His essay on The Forge is really, like, important and fundamental to the study of actual play.
So yeah, go read, this combat and D& D essay on rascal. news.
Sam: And speaking of which Aaron, let's go to your first game adjacent pick.
Aaron: Yeah, so my first game adjacent pick is Rascal. News. Um, I don't know how y'all heard about this but Games Media is having a bit of a tough time lately. um, I I came to this conversation from video game podcasts, but like, this is, you know, Giant Bomb, this is Kotaku, this is, Waypoint, right? All these, like, websites who are being acquired by basically corporate raiders scrapped for parts, and eventually, you know, firing everybody, and, probably most recently was both Lin Codega being let go from IO9 and Dicebreaker, you know, basically being bought and then completely shuttered, right?
And, and, that sucks, and I hate that so much but from that, we, and the tabletop scene, are fucking blessed to have got Rascal. news, which is a worker owned co op featuring uh, Rowan Zioli here,
but
Rowan: I swear to god, we did not pay for this to be sponsored, we don't have it like that, I swear.
Sam: what what happened? I mean first of all what happened was Rascal was so influential over this past year that we could not talk about it like six times on this show. But second I invited Aaron onto this panel first and He was like, oh, can claim Rascal as my cool thing?
And I was like, oh, yeah we should just give a Rascal on this panel. Like let's fucking go.
Aaron: Yeah
Rowan: I'm honored to be here, thank you, it really genuinely means so
Sam: Yeah,
Aaron: Yeah, mean, this is just personal for me, right? My mom was a journalist and I just had to, as I was growing up, watch her, like, deal with this same stuff in local news, right? Getting acquired by, various media corporations, and then, you know, having waves of buyouts, having to take on increasing you know, workloads for less and less money, and so I'm just, like, genuinely, truly grateful that we have that kind of, journalism in the space.
And specifically I wanted to highlight a piece by Nima Dabirian, Scrying on Iran's Tabletop Scene, which is like a really interesting and fascinating look into what somebody who's, who's living in Iran how he got into D& D through Critical Role, and, you know, brought those, like, Critical Role Matt Mercer's Effect style expectations to, to the hobby, but then, like, he talks about how, like, playing in Farsi felt a little bit different than, than English, but then as he, like, starts getting into it, they start developing you know, modes of play, right, Farsi becomes the language that orcs speak in their world, but French becomes, like, Elvish
And then like, you know, we're all here, like, pretty big indie RPG heads, and, you know, we deliberately try to not talk about Dungeons Dragons because, they don't need any more people talking about them, but it's very interesting to see how, like, culturally, the United States, you know, has affected Iran's government, right. There's a reason that Iran's government now is the kind of government that wants to suppress, western you know, media, right why D& D is not widely available, right Nima talks about how there's no like really official Farsi translations of D& D because the government would not permit that, right? And that's, that is something that like is, you know, to some degree the fault of the United States, right, in our, in our, interventions over the years.
And like, I just think it's, it's so, an interesting and great, look at how you know, American imperial hegemony affects other people, and how we can look at our hobby through that lens, I had just done a video on dialect, and how, like, language can be used as a tool of hegemony and imperialism, so I think that really played well into my thoughts about how, like, You know, reading how Nima's language and interpreting D& D through various languages was just like a fascinating way to be like, Oh, okay, you know, people bring their own cultural expectations to this, product that has already been talked to death, you know, we think, but seeing another person's, Insight into that is, is so valuable.
And then I'm just, I'm just so grateful that Rascal was able to, you know, buy that story and put it out there because like, it's just coverage that we haven't seen, at least since I've been in the hobby, have not seen in any real way to be like, hey, here's a cultural piece on, you know, Dungeons Dragons and like, just so I'm just like truly grateful that Rascal exists.
Listener you know, if you don't listen to anything else to this I'm grabbing you by the head and I'm saying please go to rascal. news and scroll down to the subscribe button and then click it and then put all of your credit card information to it.
Sam: I feel like almost everything you just said, Aaron, about Rascal and news in the gaming scene can be said about news in the broad institution of news in the United States, generally, maybe even globally. And I feel like this was a year and 2023 also was a year where we started seeing this model pop up that Rascal is based on, of like journalist owned sites, a few people banding together. 404 Media has also become like a big part of my media diet.
Aaron: Shoutouts
Sam: Aftermath,
Aaron: Defector,
Rowan: Hellgate, we're just gonna keep going off the
Sam: Yeah, too I subscribe to, like, I think that this model, I don't know how sustainable it is over the long term, I'm sure it has problems, we're so new to it, but it has been really invigorating to see, the sort of political shift around journalism that I think has partly accompanied, or maybe even inspired it, of like, an acknowledgement that journalism is never going to be neutral and that you shouldn't ignore those politics. That like as journalists you can in fact go in and tell people what is right and wrong about the world because some things are right and some things are wrong.
I don't, you know, there's a place for, I really love NPR too, right, there is a place for that kind of thing, and there's a place for this and I love seeing that in RPGs. I love seeing that with Rascal. I love that the hobby space that we are a part of is a part of that broader trend in journalism.
Rowan: really appreciate this. I am trying to bask in it all and not deflect. The reason why we made this was exactly for all the reasons you guys have been talking about, but Especially with like, Nima's piece there's something about tabletop roleplaying games that are a microcosm of the larger culture, like anything kind of is, nothing exists in a vacuum, but especially because it's become so politicized recently, like, we saw earlier this week with fucking Elon Musk saying that he's gonna buy it, and it being a center of a culture war, like, like all of these things are all interconnected.
And so, Nima's piece got published, like, days before escalations with Iran and Israel and the United States started happening. And like, part of the importance of humanizing people and sharing all of our experiences from around the globe, and like, Nima's piece could have been written by anyone in the United States, because the experiences are so similar, despite the fact that we live in such socially and culturally isolated regions of the world.
And getting to do that through writing about silly games, I think, is so, so important. And it is an honor to be able to have facilitated that and to be able to keep watching it grow.
Because yeah, sustainability for clarity and transparency. We make about twelve hundred dollars a month right now. And we now have four people full time. And if you're listening to this and you're not subscribed to Rascal, don't take my word for it. Take everyone else here, because appreciate it so much.
Sam: I mean right now there's a fucking 1 a month subscription holiday thing going on that I think you can get, which is criminal. I don't know why y'all are offering that, like, people should go out and be paying 10 a month, 5 a month, I mean whatever you can afford. Like, I know you're subscribed to various Patreons.
This, I think Rascal's better thank you Rowan for taking the plunge on that this year. Yeah. What is your next pick?
Rowan: My next pick is an actual play. I feel like as an actual play critic, I would be doing a disservice for not to talk about it at all this episode. So I'm gonna talk about Voices in the Wood by Tales Yet Told it is a actual play of Void, 1680 AM by Ken Lowery, Bannerless Games, incredible, incredible playlist making game. And it is set in the world of the Sublime which is a dystopian, suburban fiction world where people who don't obey the supreme leader get changed into animals over the course of time in a really horrific, body horror way.
It also has, because it's a playlist making game, has a bunch of like, DIY music throughout it, like it is, it just sounds like you're listening to a regular radio show.
Sam: hmm,
Rowan: honestly, one of the best things I've ever listened to and really, altered my perspective of where actual play could go because there are so many different branching forms of actual play. I, I highly recommend it. One of the creative minds behind it Kendo Smith, is just a brilliant actual play creator and actual player.
And Yeah, you can read about it uh, the announcement section in Rascal News, which is free to access, and just has all the things going on. I sound like such an ad. We're just gonna having Rascal ads throughout the whole podcast.
Mint: I almost picked Rowan's article about Voices in the Wood because when I saw that article I got very excited because I am currently working through the first season of Tales Yet Told after listening to the pirate short season that they did and the characters in the first season of Strangers in the Wood, there's you can tell that a lot of that show is so intentional in, the story that they're trying to tell, and they've put a lot of thought in the characters, in the kind of story they're trying to tell, and matching the game to the story.
They're, taking a look at the game and saying, this is the story you want to tell with this, and they, I think, it's kind of like pairing wine and cheese, right?
and I, I, I have not yet listened to Voices in the Wood because I know I need to listen to it after I finish Strangers in the Wood. seeing the article about it made me so excited that it's getting that, recognition because even in season one, I'm seeing so many pieces about it that I love. And I'm glad that you were able to write that article with the same amount of love for that piece of media.
Sam: I also think Void 1680am is such a great and interesting choice of a game for actual play because the game itself is already creating a artifact that someone could go listen to, that adapting that for an audience feels like so much less work than adapting the magic of sitting around a table with people and doing the thing that comes with, you know, Dungeons Dragons or something more classic.
I'm excited about this actual play.
Mint: I want to say they're also doing another thing, which I really like doing, which is taking two TTRPG systems and making them kiss, because they have the same setting and it's, it's, the setting is continuing across game, like, you're not stepping out of the system, you're not leaving your story behind, you're just choosing a different way of telling it.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Love
Rowan: And they're doing a third one in the same world. They're actually playing The Time We Have by Elliot Davis in the same world, and an actual play is coming. So it's gonna be three games. The Strangers in the Wood is Babes in the Wood. By Adam Boss, which, great game.
Sam: Love that game. Mint, I think that brings us to you. What's your game adjacent pick?
Mint: Yeah, so my game adjacent pick is a newsletter that came out in September of this year by Meat Castle Gameware, also known as Christian Sorrell. it's a short piece called In Defense of Fiction, and Christian is kind of talking about his experience over the past year of reading a bunch of fiction after he hadn't been able to for a while, and reminiscing about how impactful fiction can be in, in creating a player buy in in a way similar to art.
But I think it's, it's more accessible in some way for a game designer who maybe can't afford to pay for art. Or to use it as like a, to pair it with art, to, to kind of give the reader a sense of the kind of game that they could play using the rules that have been given to them.
And I've actually, I just started rereading Changeling the Lost, the first edition, and there is a short story at the beginning of Changeling the Lost called I think it's called What Alec Bourbon Said. And, it kind of reminded me of how, the reason why I got into games like this, and WildSea is another one that does this, is having these short pieces of fiction, it kind of feels like you're inside a greater story. And uh, if it's written well, it gives you kind of like a snapshot of this world that's going on.
And, and, it just totally inspired me every time I picked up one of those books. Of saying, oh, this is the kind of story I can, play. Mm
Rowan: Yeah, Moonlight on Roseville Beach also does that really, really well. That's a book that I'll just pick up and read every once in a while, because I'm like, oh, the fiction in this book is just, like, really fun to read.
Mint: hmm, mm hmm.
Aaron: I need every RPG designer listening to this to put more fiction in their work not only because I think it's fun to read, but also because I'm a filthy YouTuber and And it makes for great content, so please, please, please, please, please, please, put more short stories and novels, if you've got
Mint: You,
Aaron: novels in your story, 2025's the year of RPG fiction, we're doing it, folks, we're doing it/
Mint: and you put your money where your mouth is, because you wrote a whole ass book
Sam: Hahaha.
Aaron: I mean, the book came first, the RPG was a marketing tactic, but I'll take it, either way,
Rowan: Classic.
Sam: There's nothing wrong with that direction either. I wanna shout out, I think the Missives from the MeatCastle newsletter at large is just a great newsletter and I actually haven't read this particular one. I should get to it because it sounded great the way that you put it, but I, I know MeatCastle's work is good kind of across the board.
Mint: Yeah, fun fact, I got to meet him last year because he relocated to my place of residence. And we, yeah, uh, he's like, yeah, so what kind of game designers are there in Newfoundland? And I'm like, let me introduce you to all three of them. And we all went out for sushi together.
Sam: Love it.
Rowan: We love in person community.
Sam: We do. Alright, my game adjacent pick was the Disc 2 Jam organized by Ken Lowery of Void1680am. This was a game jam on itch. io where the pitch for the jam was Anything that would be on the second DVD of your game. And a lot of that meant designer commentaries, there were some other really interesting stuff in there, too. But I am I'm just such a sicko for a designer commentary like I love love love obviously, I have a whole fucking podcast, maybe you've heard of it, it's called Dice Exploder, about getting into the like details of You Why people made the choices that they made. And this was a whole juicy jam just for that and I loved making stuff for it. I loved reading everything that came in for it. I will specifically shout out the Wanderhome designer commentary.
We love JDragon and Ruby, , too. Both of their commentary in the Wanderhome submission for this jam was excellent, excellent stuff that I learned a lot from.
I just love this kind of writing. I wish people put this stuff out with I understand why people don't put this stuff out with their games, like, I love that David Lynch video that goes around, too, of someone asking him, like, elaborate on that, and he says, no. And like, that's, you know, I respect the hell out of that, too, but I want to know everything. I want the plaque by the artwork in the museum. I want to know what you were thinking. I want to know what you you, the author, meant by your work, or what you think you meant with your work. Because it's not going to overwhelm what I think you did. I, it's extra context for me to engage with you.
Like I think the point of art is for me to try to make a connection with you, whether that's me as an audience or me as an artist, and when you fucking sit down and explain yourself, like, that helps with that connection, that enhances the artwork itself, it doesn't take away from it in my opinion, and so I loved seeing a whole ass jam of that.
Aaron: Yeah, like at the risk of being masturbatory, like, I think we do need to like, treat our art, our RPGs like their big fucking deals, like they deserve, box sets and, eight hour long lore videos on YouTube. You know, there's so much filth on YouTube for stuff that doesn't matter. And I think that like, even if we put like 10% of the, the effort that goes into, fucking finding out Easter eggs and grant theft 0.05 or whatever, we'd be able to like, just like get into like some really phenomenal stuff that people are working into their RPGs. So like I, I'm just so thrilled that Ken Lowery put this together 'cause it's just great.
Sam: Yeah. And that is gonna transition us into the last chapter of our show: things that we are proud of, and to do that, we're gonna kick things off with Audrey Stolze who just hosted an episode of Dice Exploder.
Audrey: The game I played most and I think loved most this year was the ashcan of Band Aids and Bullet Holes by Sam Dunnewold. Hi, Sam! I really, really love this game and all the iterations of it that I have seen so far through playtesting, which I'm really excited to have been a part of, to where it is now as the published Ashcan.
Because who doesn't love telling a story you about revenge and murder and sometimes intimacy and sometimes all of the above. I've never seen John Wick. Sam has always pitched it as a John Wick game, but I have played this game over and over nonstop and I just cannot wait to see the full thing published. I think it's such an exciting game. More games should use decks of cards and trick taking.
There is Not a better game to take to your local board game bar or nerd bar or whatever and play with your friends over some drinks, which I did this year, and I think that you should too.
Sam: obviously flattered, thank you very much, Audrey. Aaron, what are you proud of?
Aaron: Yeah, so I know I talked a lot about how great Rascal's work is in the RPG scene and like how it's got like foundational journalism that is just like absolutely essential to the hobby, but unfortunately me and Caro Asercion did write the best essay in tabletop RPG history this year. Which it was actually an April Fool's joke that me and Caro did which is a, like, critical analysis of We Are But Worms a one word RPG, which has been featured on DICE Exploder before.
You know, I gotta shout out Juliet Lemieux, I gotta shout out Luca Brave, who, you know, both influenced the creation of this piece, but like, I thought it would be hysterical to be like, you know that one word game? Let's make a 45 minute YouTube video about it.
And like, I hope that that like, kind of boils down what my work is in the scene, which is, like, getting really deep and doing interesting, weird reads on games that, like, obviously are saying something I, listen, I don't think um, Riverhouse Games intended for We Are But Worms to be a Hamlet essay, but like, I do think that that's kind of a crystallation of what I'm, a distillation, rather, of what I'm doing in this scene, which is like, let's just put different, you know, cultural and you know, fictional artifacts in conversation with each other, and see what the hell comes out.
And I think it's really funny, I think it's great and Caro really helped a lot with it, so thank you so much to them, but, please check out We Are But Worms you know, a one word RPG, and also my video on it.
Sam: I think it's also a great encapsulation of being able to genuinely find 45 minutes of like it's not a waste of time like it's not a meme of it's a meme of an essay Yeah, sure But it's not like the things that you are saying for 45 minutes aren't interesting, right?
Like that even in a game that is one word long you can find that much to talk about you can make that Important and like we as a community have and that's cool and good actually and I love that work that you're doing Aaron
Rowan: Yeah, like, as much praise as you've hawked on me, you are so incredible, Aaron. And the work that you're doing on, like, cultural criticism in tabletop games is It's just incredible and so, so good. So like, if yeah, anyone listening to this who's not subscribed to your YouTube channel needs to go do that. It's so good.
Mint: you've put books on my to read list. There are books that I've read because you, you, you've talked about them in context to, a number of other games.
Aaron: That, I mean, that genuinely is really great to hear, like, I hope that whatever the fuck happens with my channel, it inspires people to read more designers and read more books generally. So, thank you.
Rowan: Also the value that you have as someone who thinks about these games, I have talked to multiple people who have like watched the videos that you've made and have been changed because of the time that you have taken to like look into their art as an object of worthy of criticism. So like, take that with you and keep doing it, please.
Aaron: mean, that's the thing, right? In the RPG scene, you know, even the most famous people are only known by a couple thousand So, Like, so, like, when you, when you drill down into even, like, a, a person's, very small game, like, it means a lot more, so I, you know, I hope that my work really shows that designers are doing some really incredible stuff.
Sam: Rowan, what are you proud of this year? I bet it's another Rascal News article. Let's fucking go.
Rowan: Be crazy if it wasn't, right?
But the thing that I'm most proud of I was gonna talk about my actual play in porn piece, but I decided that the investigation I did into World of Game Design might actually be more worthy.
So for two months, I did a deep and dive investigation into World of Game Design, a company that is a lot of things in the tabletop scene. They are part distributor, part manufacturer, part Commission, part kickstart consultant, there's a part convention representative, there's just a lot going on there.
And over the course of two months, I spoke to a lot of people you might have seen on Twitter a while ago, Ian Yusem posting about some issues that he was having with World of Game Design, which kicked off my whole investigation and revealed a lot of rough stuff about this industry, about how people who are really passionate get exploited and paid very little and if anything at all and in doing so enable problematic practices that don't exist just in the tabletop space, but because there are very few investigative journalists in this space focusing on the industry, often gets to go unaddressed. It really often becomes like a whisper network kind of thing where people are protecting each other through that, but it often are afraid to come forward.
One thing that happened a lot when I was investigating this piece was that they people had just been waiting for someone to ask them about it because they were afraid of breaking a contract that they had signed or they were afraid of putting a target on their back in the industry because the industry is so small that if you piss off someone powerful maybe you won't get to make a career in the thing that you love anymore but also if you don't say anything you might not get paid for it or you might get exploited and have to work like 80 hour weeks or it's rough.
And that's something that I'm very, very proud of, is to be able to be a person in this space that gets to hold powerful people to account, because again, like we said before, now more than ever, journalism is needed in this space, like fact based journalism that doesn't just objectively go, here's what both sides are saying, but is like, one side is saying it's raining outside, the other side isn't, I'm gonna look out the window and see what's actually happening.
So yeah, that's, I wrote that last month, it appeared and that's one of the things I'm most proud of doing this this whole year.
Sam: It was really good.
Rowan: Thank you.
Aaron: journalism, folks. Investigative journalism, five bucks a month, the Atlanta could never, what are we doing here? One woman
did that.
Sam: we're plugging the hell out of Rascal News is what we're doing, um, Mint, what were you proud of?
Mint: I wrote something kind of just a personal essay about maybe six months ago about my experience running rotted capes for some friends of mine, and the realization that I kind of have been having over the course of this entire year which was about why I think you should play games that you don't think you're going to like .
s planning to play Rotted Capes two years ago when I kind of made the connection that one of my, friends really enjoys zombie media. And I was telling him about it, and he said, I will pay you money to make sure that you can get this game so that you can run it for me. And I said, absolutely. And so I spent two years trying to understand the game and then getting a physical copy of the game and reading the game and making character play kits for the game, so that we could sit down and actually play it.
And I didn't even think I liked it that much. I am not a zombie media person. I'm not a superhero media person. Rotted Capes is zombie superheroes. And I came away from that, one shot that we played, going, that was amazing, it was a wonderful experience with people who I very much love.
And my friend Sean, who is in that group, and is also a GM in, in the group of people that I play with, had kind of engaged in an experiment with me over the past year where we kind of took turns running a game that we were interested in. And so half the time, you know, we were choosing to run a game that the other person probably would have never thought to look at. And he also, like, introduced me to a game that I would have never thought to play and ended up being one of the most fun sessions I've ever had at a table.
And so just, the experience of realizing that, oh, like, I might not have the same interests of the people who sit around the table with me, but I could gain a new interest just by letting them show me something that they're interested in, or taking the time to sit down and learn about a game because you know it's going to mean something to somebody else, can really, like, broaden your palate and give you little gems that you never knew you would want to play.
Sam: I love this essay and the things that you're talking about in it because I think it is a great microcosm specific example of the thing that I love about roleplaying games at large, which is the magic of bringing in contributions from a number of different people and doing the work to combine them in a way that is exciting and surprising to everyone and like enhances all of them and blends them together in this way.
That like you're coming in with this goal of like do something cool for your friends, but like their excitement and their contributions like makes this thing that you otherwise maybe wouldn't have enjoyed wouldn't have been to your taste something that is magical to you and that you love and I just think that that is what RPGs are all about, baby
Good essay.
Mint: Thanks.
Rowan: essay.
Sam: I'm gonna close this out here. So after this we're gonna do plugs and then stick around after the plugs cuz I've got a bunch more friends of the show that I didn't have time to play during the main body here, but we'll have another 10 minutes of people's recommended cool shit after this, so stick around.
But my My thing that I'm proud of in 2024 is this game, Kiss Me If You Can. It's a two player uh, little card game that I made. It's just a little rom com. One of you is an international art thief and the other is, like an agent trying to catch them, and you do a little rom com together. And I designed this game to be, like, a 25 minute game. Like, I really wanted to make something that you could play quickly with two people and have fun and have a popular little rom com out of it.
And I did it! I did it, I think it's good. I don't think it's a home run, but I think it's really solid, it is what it is, there's this great actual play of it that Craig Shipman and his partner did on 3rd Floor Wars that I think went really well. They play for 90 minutes, and so I also managed to create this game that like, you can do in 25 minutes, you can do in 90 minutes, like friends of the show uh, Jenn Martin and Sidney Icarus played a little game of it as I was like, heading out to the airport at Big Bad Con, and they just like, knocked it out in 15 minutes and had a great time.
And I love the flexibility of this game, I love the tone of this game, but also, the reason this is here is because then I took it and I wrote a screenplay based on it. Like, the, I'm gonna take this movie now and like, this is gonna be the movie that I sell next year in actual Hollywood, like, I'm confident, I think it's really good, it's a fun rom com. I'm so proud of that script, like I really think that script is one of the best things that I've written in years.
And it's based on this cool little game that like came out of my design goal of something with cards that I can play in 20 minutes to do a little cute little rom com. Yeah, that's my game. Kiss me if you can.
Rowan: I love the name. It's so clever, like, truly well done. I love when a game just sets out to do a thing and achieves it on every level.
Sam: shout out to Merrilee Bufkin, from an episode earlier this year who came up with that name. I believe the original name of the game was Sex Me If You Can, which is also good in its own way, but a little bit different in tone. yeah, Different rating for that
movie. Yeah.
Mint: I read through this game and I was like, I want to play this with my partner.
Sam: It's really cute. Yeah, I know Audrey also played this game with their partner and had a great time.
So
Rowan: Yeah. My part, my partner's currently recovering from surgery and this is literally like, I'm like, oh, this is gonna, what we're gonna do later
Sam: Yep Yep. There you go. Do it up So once again stick around after the outros here for some more messages from friends of the show. Aaron. Where can we find you?
Aaron: I'm at AAVoigt on and BlueSky on YouTube!
Sam: Rowan
Rowan: I am at Rowan Zeoli on Blue Sky. You, I'm
one of a kind. I don't know.
Sam: and Rascal News. There's links in the show notes.
Rowan: Please subscribe to Rascal News if you haven't gotten that already. You're all so great. I'm gonna go take a nap,
Sam: Mint, where are You
Mint: You can find me at, there's a TTRPG for that, at tumblr. com. And if you want to talk to me, you can also check out my playtest discord which is linked on my store page for Protect the Child.
Sam: Thank all three of you so much for being here. This was a blast. You're all so smart. I'm glad we got to have this time to go through so many cool games here.
Rowan: Thanks for having us.
Sera: Hi, my name is Serafina Garcia Ramirez. I'm a game designer and a moderator for the Dice Exploder Discord, and a game I liked in 2024 was Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Hewitt and Sean Ireland.
Triangle Agency is about wielding enormous reality warping power, navigating bureaucratic red tape, and juggling your everyday responsibilities.
I found the way the game plays with layout, structure, and tone really exciting, and the game kept reinventing itself and surprising me as I dove into its secrets. At the table, it's been equal parts wacky and horrifying, and it's going to have a spot on my shelf and a place in my heart for a long time.
Sidney: G'day Sam, this is Sydney Across of Waxwings. com. au. Long time listener, first time caller.
Mystery games feel really unsatisfying to me these days, even with the abundance of options that are available to me as a player. Either way, using some OSR, blorb, simulationist approach where the mystery has an answer and it's up to the GM to dole out clues. Or, we're using something like Ollie Jeffery's Mystery Mechanic, where each player gathers clues and then establishes a hypothesis and like, rolls to see if we're right. In that first simulationist version, it's really fun to perform the tasks of investigation. They can feel more like, uh, tiptoeing around a Mother May I tradition of play. On the other hand, those indie approaches using Ollie's work tend to feel more like we're creating a truth through the roll rather than discovering it, which always leaves me feeling a little bit unsatisfied.
But that's not the problem today, because I am calling in about Working the Case by Randy Lubin of Diegetic Games.
Working the Case is a collaborative mystery game, 30 60 minutes, 2 5 players, no facilitator. We begin with a murder, and we collectively play as the detectives that will get to the bottom of it. Working the Case comes with a really cool fold out sheet. to describe this to you visually, I want you to imagine, uh, you're up and down your Y axis, those are your suspects. We build these out by drawing and playing cards that create suspicious conspirators and their complicated web of connections to the victim. Your X axis across the top. That lists the four juiciest words in a murder mystery. Means, motive, opportunity, and secret.
The game plays by drawing a hand of cards for each player that references those four clue categories. Things like self defense or ideology or access to ventilation shafts. As players, we take turns, discovering this evidence by choosing a card, playing against a possible suspect, and then framing the scene around that.
Here's the thing though, Sam, no matter how good your evidence is, each round, we draw a card off a short stack, which eliminates one of the suspects as a confirmed innocent. This whittles down our list each time, but also, importantly, it means that the game By virtue of this shuffled stack of cards has already decided who the murderer is. We're not creatively asserting what happened, we're creatively asserting what clues lead us to discover what happens. And that is a very cool difference.
For me, Lubin bridges the gap between handcuffed simulationism and dynamic creation. It feels like narrativist, but not flimsy. It feels honest without telling me I'm wrong for pursuing a different suspect. Working the case just feels great. It's the right mix of saying the obvious next thing for connective tissue and being totally surprised by other players, or even, even your own moves, your own card plays. It's, it's creative, it packs a hell of a punch, and did I mention it's 30 minutes long? It's probably the most satisfyingly complete roleplaying experience I've ever had in a half hour.
Working the Case by Randy Lubin is available on his website on Diegetic Games. Uh, you can also get links through there to playingcards. io where it's available for online play. And I recommend that you stay tuned for the sequel, Seizing the Crown, which will employ all of those same mechanics against a Game of Thrones style factional intrigue and warfare.
Sam, thanks so much for inviting me on to gush about a game that I love on a podcast that I also love. I adore everything you're doing with Dice Exploder. I'm so glad the last season was as good as it is. I look forward to whatever the next season is. Thanks again, mate. I love your work. Oh, and uh, by the way, Sam, mark experience.
Alex: Hi Sam, thanks for asking me to record something. So one of the most fun things I did this year was watch the much maligned sequel to the film Highlander, Highlander 2, The Quickening, but one of the coolest gaming moments that I had this year was playing and honestly kind of just finding out about the existence of and knowing that someone was willing to run the unofficial Highlander 2, the Quickening roleplaying game.
What a thrill. Like, it's a great game. I encourage everyone to play it. I mean, I encourage everyone to watch Highlander 2 as well, but trust me about the game. But it really just, there's like a special feeling that someone made a role playing game for you. And, going, oh my gosh, yes, someone actually thought up this weird experience that I want to have and I didn't think anyone else really wanted to have. Anyway, it was a fantastic time, and thank you Adam DeCamp for making this game for me.
Jeff: Hey Exploders, this is Jeff, Sam's dad. The last couple of times I've taught my computer security class, I've added some material on pentesting, which is also known as ethical hacking. The idea is that you can hire a pentester who will try to break into your computer systems, then write a report telling you how to improve your security.
It's super interesting stuff. A lot of the education around pentesting involves setting up intentionally vulnerable servers containing secret information, and then the students use whatever they've been learning to try to hack into the computer and find the secret. It's all very game like, and there are even capture the flag tournaments.
So for my class this term, I created some of these capture the flag exercises and set my students loose. The end result was great. As far as I can tell, the students learned a ton of stuff, and they had a great time doing it.
The reason I'm mentioning this here is that my students also tried so many weird techniques against my servers. Stuff I never would have thought of myself. I would check slack at night, and some student would have posted, hey Jeff, I broke the server again, and I'd have to get out of bed and go fix it so they could get back to work. The students were super cool about it, and I think they very much enjoyed breaking my stuff.
Anyway, this has all made me think very fondly of all you game designers out there heading into your next playtest. Here's hoping your mechanics hold up against the bizarre behavior of your playtesters. Or maybe even better, here's hoping those playtesters break stuff in a way that teaches you something interesting.
Thanks very much to all you exploders for including me in your community this year. Happy New Year, everyone!
Sam: As always, you can find me on socials and itch at S. Dunnewold. You can also join the Dice Exploder Discord, just like Randy Lubin said, come on down and talk about the show.
Our logo was designed by Sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And thanks, as always, to you for listening. See you next year!