Listen to this episode here.
This week, now that the part of season 3 that was funded by Kickstarter is over, I’ve got a treat for you: the backers-only bonus episode with Mikey Hamm, designer of Slugblaster. You didn’t think I was gonna just hold on to an episode this good forever, did you? It’s the show’s namesake mechanic!
Mikey is currently Kickstarting Two-Hand Path, a solo game roll-and-write dungeon crawler. Check it out.
While I thought this episode would be a big of a goof about a goofy mechanic (and it is), it also brought out some of the most thoughtful thoughts on deploying mechanics with precision and purpose that I’ve had on the show yet. Also, we had a blast.
A slug blast.
List of Games with Exploding Dice
Middle Earth Roleplaying Game
Shadowrun
Earthdawn
Luck of Legends
The Burning Wheel
7th Sea
Heart (Deep Apiarist class)
Renegade Racers
Kids on Bikes
Armello
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Mikey on Bluesky.
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Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and, uh, explode it. We explode the hell out of it. My name is Sam Dunnewold and now that the kick-started portion of season three is finally over, today I've got a treat for you: the backers only episode from that campaign. You didn't think I was going to just hold onto an episode this good forever, did you? It's the show's namesake mechanic exploding dice.
My co-host for this one is Mikey Hamm, designer of the award-winning slug blaster, all around good dude, and enthusiastic nerd. He's got a new game on Kickstarter right now, Two-Hand Path, a solo game roll and write dungeon crawler, draw power ups, right onto your mage's hands as cool tattoos and rings and shit. Is great back it now. Anyway, Mike, he's a goof, slugged blasters a goof, and I thought he'd be great for what I thought was going to be a goofy episode on exploding dice.
But this turned out to be a much more in depth conversation than I had devil's bargained for. Because while exploding dice might be a silly and flamboyant mechanic, the sheer number of games that use it and the many different variations on it brought out a lot of opinions in both of us about how mechanics are like tools, and how designers can deploy them with intention, and how goofy excitement is just as important a tool as quote unquote sensibility.
But before we dive into all of that, I wanted to say this too. Mikey and I talk a lot in this episode about how we think people should be going about designing the best games that they can. But I hope it's clear how much both of us believe that fundamentally, the thing every designer should be doing is whatever makes them happy. If listening to us is helpful, hell yeah, I'm so happy to hear it. If we're wrong about any of this for you, Good. Who says we have any idea what we're talking about?
And on that note, here is Mikey ham with exploding dice.
Mikey: Let's talk about some dice.
Sam: Mikey, thanks for being here. It is the first ever bonus episode of Dice Exploder. We're, as you say, we're talking about exploding dice, obviously. What else could we talk about? It has to be this. What are exploding dice? Tell me about it.
Mikey: Yeah. Exploding dice. Well, I, I, a lot of times people in rule books also call it open-ended, which just isn't as exciting of a word, but I think it kind of conveys it a little bit maybe more clearly, but Yeah.
If you roll usually like the highest result on a dice, I always think of a d6. That's what pops in my mind. You roll a six, you get to roll it again and add the result, and you can keep going forever.
Sam: Yeah. You can roll infinitely high. You could roll a 666 if the devil is really in your dice for day. You know?
Mikey: That's right. Yeah.
Sam: upper limit. And this mechanic is way too big to be in a single game. Right? Like I, I don't know how. Look, we're gonna talk about how like this mechanic is in, you came up with this list of like 12 different games that I'm sure it's in, like tons of others too. It's everywhere.
Mikey: Yeah. and I'm not, I don't think of myself as a well-researched game scholar either. So
Sam: Yeah.
Mikey: a lot of games use it, especially like in different, I think we'll talk about this, but different types of games and errors of games used it, right?
So,
Sam: Yeah. The shocking thing to me was I remember first encountering exploding dice in Shadowrun second edition when I was like 12 years old and my dad bought me that game from a used book store. It was like highlighted all over the place. I'm sure my dad did not understand the content that was this game.
And exploding dice were in there. And I was like, that's pretty cool. And my recollection was that it was very much something of that like nineties, early aughts era of game design. And then you come in with this list, and it's like Kids On Bikes. Like that's a recent game.
Mikey: Some new stuff.
Sam: Like people are still using this stupid mechanic. It's so weird and bad. I don't know what to like,
Mikey: is where we're, this is, I mean, we might as well underline the premise of this episode is probably gonna be me defending exploding dice against your sort of like general dislike of them. but
Sam: Like the pull quote from this episode is me saying, why would you do this? And you saying, bro, it's cool. You're overthinking it.
Mikey: fun.
Sam: just fucking rips
like exploding dice rule. It's called the, the reason it's in every fucking game is because it's called exploding dice. Do you not need exploding dice in your game? Because I sure as shit do. Like, let's explode 'em. It's the podcast name. Let's do it.
Mikey: I do think that that's why this is one of the mechanics that people know about and, you know, the mechanic that led to the name of the podcast It's just, not very many mechanics have a name at least like not a commonly sort of understood one and most of them aren't nearly as cool as exploding dice.
So, you know, 'cause people say like, you know, you have a roll under mechanic. You know, like things that kind of describe a mechanic well, I guess, but aren't that exciting. And then there are tons of mechanics that like don't really have a name. Like is there a name for like the Blades in the Dark result spread? Probably not. It may, I maybe just Blades in the Dark result spread. Right? But
Sam: Yeah. And then, you know, look, you have Devil's Bargains inside Blades. That's kind of like a cool name for it, but everyone runs out there and renames that and all their hacks to be more flavorful because like devil, it doesn't fit every game, you know? Like people are are constantly doing that. Whereas exploding dice like you're absolutely fucking right. It's called exploding dice. Like who's renaming it? Only losers.
Mikey: And that's the thing, like, I mean, I'm sure that there are nerds nerdier than us who, who have, who know, who know, who know, like names of lots of different mechanics. I think you can even go on like board game geek and like search by mechanic and stuff in the, in the board game realm. But I don't know how much that
Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. So yeah. Trick taking and all that stuff. So,
Sam: Exploding dice is unmatched in naming. Nothing else like it.
Mikey: Yeah, no, exactly. So.
Sam: Okay, so I'm gonna, walk us through some examples first,
and I'm gonna walk us through examples from abs, like stupidest to least stupid. Okay. So I, I think the absolute worst version of this mechanic is Shadowrun second edition. So
Mikey: And I'm gonna let you take this one 'cause I've never played it and barely read it, so, so I'm not, I'm not gonna argue with you on this one at all.
Sam: So imagine a dice pool. You're putting it together, and we're gonna take exploding dice out of it for a second. The way dice pools work in this game is you get like eight dice in your hands whatever. You have a couple of numbers that add together to get the number of dice you're gonna roll. The GM sets a number you need to get on an individual die to get a hit, and then the number of hits that you get total, so the number of dice above whatever the difficulty that's your, like successes for the roll. And then you can spend successes to do stuff maybe. So.
Mikey: So, that's pretty meaty.
Sam: Yeah, so exploding D first of all, there's already too many numbers. Second of all, exploding dice do not get you additional successes. The way exploding dice work here is that the GM can just say, actually on this roll, the target number is a nine. And so to get a nine, to get a single success, you have to roll a six on your die and then re-roll it. And add three.
And I don't understand why you would do this. Like why not just raise the number of successes that you need? Why not have exploding dice, like count as additional successes, as opposed to like raising the number on the one die?
There's so many other ways you could do to make it less confusing. And they've chosen none of them. All the, like this Is it's
Mikey: count. I feel like counting successes is kind of new.
Sam: That's, that is true.
Mikey: I think that's like a newer thing like the d6 die pool with where you count your successes I think, I think that's newer like Shadowrun is still in the, where it's all about beating like DC or a target number. Right? So yeah, it's kind of in this weird place where it combines a dice pool with that.
So, but I agree in that like that works if your target numbers are gonna be like, you know, seven, eight, or maybe nine, for something really hard and you want to portray that, but, you know, I think in the example text I'm reading, they talk about like target numbers of 14 and like put, they put in parentheses like really hard and it's like, no. Yeah.
Sam: No, no shit. It's like a less than one in 36 chance. Like why are you rolling dice in the first place? And also we got back up said target number seven, eight, and nine, and target number seven is irrelevant. Target number seven is not a real target number because anytime you roll a six and explode it, like anytime you're rolling a six, it automatically explodes, which means you actually never can get a six. You go straight from 5 to 7. It doesn't make any sense. It's just bad.
Mikey: That's one of the things that doesn't make sense. if you open the hood and you have to be careful of it if you're a GM or a game designer like hacking the game. I'm not sure if that oddity presents at in play because, you know, it's kind of one of those things where it's like I mean, I didn't think of it. You were the one who you showed me, like a player might not think of like, oh Yeah, I guess I'll never roll a six or a seven. It like, but a GM certainly has to be aware of that, right? Like,
Sam: Well, a GM is not going to be aware of that I think a lot of the time. I certainly wasn't when I was 12 and running this game, you know, like, I think when you're dealing with the probabilities... To come around to your side for a second, I think when you're dealing with the probabilities of exploding dice that are already kind of at the tail of the bell curve in that fringe area, like what does it really matter like that you need an eight or a nine on a a single d6? Like. Okay. You need, you need a high, it's unlikely. It's just really unlikely. It doesn't really matter whether it's a three percenter or a four percenter.
Mikey: Yeah. I don't find it appealing in a case where like if there's some specific action you're gonna do and the GM says, okay, well you can try it, but you'd have to roll this crazy thing to do it. That's not as fun to me.
There are some uses of exploding dice, and this will be sort of one of my arguments for why exploding dice are fun and I, I don't think it applies to the Shadowrun example, but it'll apply to other examples we'll look at later, is that even if something is extremely unlikely, just knowing that there's the possibility of it makes the roll more exciting.
This is the same reason that people buy lottery tickets, right? Everyone knows that there's virtually no chance, but even a very logical person buying a lottery ticket will feel a bit of a dopamine rush when they scratch it, right?
And I know I mean, since we're talking about old games that use this, I'll talk about Roll Master and Middle Earth Role Playing, which I've only played once, but my gaming group that I play with regularly, you know, they're older than me and that's what they all started. And in that it's a percentile system, and if you roll 95 or higher, it's open-ended, it explodes. Right? And so, you know, It's the kind of thing where it doesn't happen often, but it definitely happens at least once or twice a session with the amount of rolls all the players are doing.
And those moments are often pretty memorable. And they have like, MERP is like all these tables for like every single thing. But the tables have really fun and kind of funny stuff especially the further above 100 you get like,
One 17 to one 19 while daydreaming you put your hand in front of your bolt while firing, lose a finger. You know, like, so it has fun stuff. So like, it's exciting when someone gets that open-ended thing and it's ex, every role is exciting 'cause you know that that stuff has happened.
Now, obviously this is trad stuff. This is not storytelling gaming where, you know, modern story gaming, we want to emulate like very tight often formulaic narratives like movies and stuff. That's what the games are built to do. This isn't gonna do that. This is gonna be like, you know, classic trad game silliness where your main character can die on his first roll.
Which is exactly what happened the one time I've played Middle Earth Role Playing. I had this badass half orc guy with like two, we were playing kind of a Middle Earth like western setting. I had like two guns and I didn't know anything about role master and how gritty and brutal it is. And I was like much more cinematic in the way I played.
And so I jumped up on it. I said like I jump up on the tables and I fire and the GM rolls a bunch of dice and I got like, I exploded something and got my head, my head blown right off. Like in like one Yeah. exactly. First thing.
And of course it was like so shocking and like deflating for me in the moment, especially as a younger gamer. And especially because with MERP character creation takes like three hours. So it's like extra brutal.
But it is true that like that moment became legend at our table and like we talk about it, you know? So I think sometimes those exciting ran-- like the more unlikely something is... and you and your gaming group are playing a campaign in a single game, For, you know, a year or two, which again is more common with these trad games, those kind of crazy moments are going to happen sometimes, and so, I think it makes sense under that lens, but not in Shadowrun. At least
Sam: yeah.
Mikey: at least what I'm reading here. That you're right. That's so, seems so wonky, but
Sam: Yeah. Shadow Run is just incredibly wonky. I, I did wanna underline though, like the point that you're making about like, weird stuff at the edge of the bell curve is fun is something that I talked a lot about in season two on an episode with Chris Greenbrier about Blaseball.
We talked about in that how Blaseball was a game built entirely on generating weird bell curve tail stuff and enjoying it. and Chris brought up the example of how in this game, the Great Soul Train Robbery, there's this chance that if you roll three dice and all of them come up sixes, then the devil appears.
And it's just, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, it's one in 1,024 chance or something that the devil just like shows up on his train and like fucks you up or whatever. But like the fact that it's in the rules, that the devil can just show up fucking rules and like, that's, that's, exploding dice, right?
Mikey: Yeah, exactly. And just having it there. Yeah.
it just, it, there's this crackling possibility and it just like it, and it tells a lot about the world. And you know, it's kinda like how you can, in some games, you can have a table that is completely unnecessary, but it says something about the world, right?
Like no, I love that kind of stuff. And, you know, and if that ever happens you know, it's, people will talk about it forever. And it, you know, it probably takes up, one little sidebar box worth of space, so it's not, Yeah.
I think, I think that kind of use of that kind of stuff can totally be cool depending on the kind of game you're making.
Sam: So let's push through a couple other examples here. So, Earthdawn and 7th Sea have a pretty similar version where essentially you're rolling a dice pool, and then you're in Seventh Sea you're keeping like the highest couple. And Earthdawn you're just like rolling two and adding 'em up, but dice explode, so you know, you're, you're generally shooting for target numbers that are like in the teens, sort of like standard D&D, D 20 kind of target number ranges. But you have the capability of getting up to 25, 30, 35 because you're rolling a bunch of dice and they can explode.
Which is cool. Great. I, I, know, I think really my knee-jerk reaction to uh, exploding dice are bad was just remembering Shadowrun Second Edition, but like Earthdawn, go for it.
Mikey: Yeah. No. And a lot of this comes down also to how much people like doing math, right? Like some people have no problem , like, they find adding up a bunch of dice results fun. Right? And other people that's just like in the way. And if there's a way to design that out of a game that's good.
Right? but I agree. Like, I think it's always better in a situation where you're not trying to hit a specific target number. It's more like if your dice explode, you get bonus, fun, cool things. Or, you know, if it's just like damage, you know, it's always fun to get like more damage, but I've always think that's better than a situation where it's like, oh, I like we need this dice to explode.
Like, I don't know, because it's so rare, right?
Sam: Exploding dice as like sprinkles on top of the ice cream as opposed to like a, like you don't wanna just sit there and spoon sprinkles into your mouth
like
Mikey: I I don't think you wanna make it, you don't wanna make it like a, like a load bearing mechanic, I don't think. Like, 'cause I, I don't know. I mean, maybe someone will crack it and find a, like a way, but that to me, all the best examples I see, because, you know, I think it's like a fun, silly mechanic.
So it seems, like it would be hard to make it like a mechanic that really does its work, right? All the examples we're gonna talk about the ones that work are, yeah, where it's like extra bonus stuff or like some sort of fun extra, but.
Sam: So I think Burning Wheel has the best example of like exploding dice as just a workhorse mechanic where dice explode, but you don't add them together. You just count additional successes.
So, you know, you got a pool, you need like three successes on the roll or whatever, and like if you need fours, and you roll 6, 3, 3, 2, then you roll another six, then you roll a four, you got three successes off of the one die.
And that's sweet. And I think this reduces the overall variance because you're not like adding to the total of a single die. You don't have to like, keep track of all that stuff. Like all that just goes away. It's just simple successes and you're already sort of operating on a level of like one to four or five successes and one additional success off an exploded die like matters there quite a bit and also doesn't push you into the range of like rolling a 14 on a d6, right? You're, you're still keeping the bell curve somewhat contained. So you get a lot of the fun of exploding dice still while keeping the thing reasonable.
Mikey: I agree. I found this paragraph that you sent me where they explained, it felt a little like thick and unwieldy when I was reading it, but then I took some dice and I like just tried it and it it's super intuitive in play, right? Like, which a lot of dice, pool mechanics are. Right?
I actually like, you know, I made a dice pool game and so, you know, but I, I feel like I've complicated feelings about it only in that, I think sometimes I think it's maybe in the story gaming scene, like I think we, you know, rolling a d and adding a modifier and trying to beat a target number is seen as very trad. And we all got really excited about dice pools and I think dice pools are really cool and like, especially for different kinds of games and stuff.
But it is funny to me, I see people designing a game with a dice pool, and they're very proud that they, they don't have to do, like, they're not doing math like the way a trad thing is.
But really It's actually so much to keep track of and you're still counting up a lot of things. And you're, you're upgrading your success levels and, you know, doing all this stuff. And sometimes I'm like, man, you know, like, I don't know. Adding seven to eight is not that hard.
You know, like a D&D skill check is unequivocally like quicker than a Blades in the Dark roll. Now, Blades in the Dark roll accomplishes a lot more, but I think sometimes we can get almost like tribal with mechanics, right.
And I think that I like to, I dunno, my philosophy is to stay like open-minded and curious and think of mechanics as like value neutral. Because I feel like you never know when something's gonna like be the right tool for the job. But and I think there's a whole movement now this sort of post trad thing where people who like excited about story games and now are looking back and being like, man, there are some things I miss about my trad games. I wonder if I can like apply some of this and fix that. Right? And, and I find that stuff exciting. Maybe that's the place I'm in right now, but
A lot of game designers, you know, we wanna challenge ourselves and go into the new thing and I think, it makes sense that after I've spent, quite a few years working in like a very story game space, now I'm like, okay, like what else? Like, let's try this and this. And I think, maybe it's just my friends who are sort of in similar places, I just see a lot of them trying some of this, you know, like post trad tactical stuff or they're going even further and like going into different directions. Right.
And, and that's cool. That's the way it should be. Like we should always keep moving in different directions and circling back and, yeah. it's neat.
Sam: Yeah. I'm out here like sending em a list of NSR OSR games and modules that I wanna run. And then also signing up to run a bunch of LARPs at Big Bad Con, so,
Mikey: Totally. Yeah. And then, and then you got like me and uh, Cass Ray, Nevyn as he's online, like we're working on something that's like, tactical, a little more board gamey, even like, you know, we're just, we're trying different stuff. and then there are people in our community who I feel like are still on the path of like, trying to just make the purest story experience they can, and I think that's cool too. I just don't think it's the only path, but, and the only way to have fun.
But it is like, I find it so cool just to like, and you know, you can, boil something down. You're super good at that. At just like, how can I make like the cleanest thing? And I think that's admirable too.
Sam: That is certainly my want.
Mikey: Yeah.
Sam: Um, I think a lot of the people listening to this show who found this show so far are really coming outta that like, Forged in the Dark story game space. I'm curious if you can just speak a little bit in more detail to what you see as like the signs that a forged in the dark style dice pool is not the right fit for a game that are coming outta that community.
Mikey: Hmm.
Yeah. That's a good question. I think what you gotta do is you gotta, you gotta play test and record a play test and take a section where someone does a role and just see how long it took. And then see what the results were and if the result was worth it. You know, like
Now there's so much play culture stuff too, because I know a lot of people have said that one of the re ways people sort of quote unquote play Blades wrong and maybe aren't enjoying it as much as they could, is that they're, they're rolling too often. They're used to games where you roll more often.
And that, that's probably my experience too. That's why I think when I ran Blades with my group, we started like sort of cutting corners off of the roll and, not worrying about position effect too much, or at least, shooting from the hip on it and not consulting the tables or anything.
Although I feel like that's, again, that's a beginner thing anyways. That's when you're learning, you're going back to the tables and stuff, but I
think,
Sam: in effect, the whole point of it is to be training wheels for you to just like have a conversation about the fictional positioning of the roll at the table, right?
Mikey: Totally. Totally. but yeah, but I noticed that my group I, we just like rolling dice I think, and I think we're just also are, that's sort of the rhythm that's been hardwired into us from playing D&D so much. And and I mean there might be something to be said for like games that try to challenge and rewrite those habits in a group.
But I think there's also sort of a sophisticated design style where you you try to design a game that works with a table's habit. So if you sort of know your audience and what games they're coming from, you can kind of like try to find the places where like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. right?
So um, Yeah.
And so for my group, we were rolling a lot more. And so when I made Slugblaster, I tried to make it so you can roll quite a bit And I tried to keep that roll pretty quick and you have great intentions and then you have to add some other cool thing and there are definitely ways in Slugblaster to have a pretty complicated roll. But I think in general, I, I succeeded in making it a little more sort of poppy and, streamlined in that way.
But yeah, I think like, man, I'd, I'd encourage people to like take a look at their game and what they want and just for fun, like try playing it with like, I don't know, like a D 20, like just see what happens and compare it. 'cause you might be like, you might be sick to your stomach when you find that it works pretty well like that, which means that maybe maybe a dice pool isn't even the best thing or maybe you have to sort of restructure the dice pool like conversation or something. But,
And you don't have to even play test with a group. You can just like, If you can play test by yourself, just try jumping over a chasm and attacking an orc in your game and then do it in D&D and just see like, how much more are you accomplishing?
And if the answer is a lot more, then yeah, keep it going, right? But, but I think sometimes we can kind of Rube Goldberg this thing a little too much just in our attempt to use fun new tools like dice pools, right? A lot of, I mean, that was me, I was just like, a dice pool is cool. I've never played a game with this before. And so you want to use it, right?
Or you feel like you know, you, you like a lot of things about Blades in the Dark that seem to line up with what you're making, but I think a lot of us realize that like what might look like a perfect fit at the beginning, you quickly realize like Blades in the Dark is pretty like bespoke system for that
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Mikey: specific story.
And like you change one thing and the whole thing can come apart.
So,
Sam: People do not fuck around with the fundamentals of that system when they to hack it nearly as much as they should. Like, I really think, listen, this is behind a paywall now, I can get spicier than normal.
Like, if you aren't ripping the guts out of a system when you are hacking it, like, like I, I, I imagine you will make something that is perfectly fine, maybe even good, but like, you probably are not making the best thing for what you want to do because I, I really think every system that is functioning at a super high level is extremely bespoke to the story that it's telling.
Mikey: Yeah. Or you have to go the other way and you have to make sure that the game you want to make is like a one for one re-skin of what, Blades in the Dark is. Right? Like, I, I think that is my advice to people who want to hack Blades in the Dark
Sam: I thought you were gonna come in here and defend generic games for a second, and uh, I'm glad you didn't do that. All right. All right. Come back.
Mikey: no, no. Um, No. I think you have to No, no, no. I, I mean, should I? No. I think,
Yeah, like, I think when people talk about hacking Blades in the Dark, I want to just be like, make sure your game is about a group of criminals doing crime in an isolated area that has a supernatural component, and then you're okay. You know, like,
But like, then you can basically just do like, like an actual. Like hack or like, you know, not like what we a lot of us ended up doing, which was like just making new games that like use pieces, which is awesome too, but it just takes a long time. Right?
And, sometimes you, you can get a sense that a person doesn't, they're not in it to spend two years making something. They're just like, oh, can I hack this to do superheroes? And you're like, oh, you, can, but you're probably gonna realize that either it's not gonna work quite right or you're going to have to spend two years reworking things, right? Like
Sam: the best way to get to your superhero hack of Blades is to play Blades for two years with your home game and then be like, do you wanna just run this with superheroes instead and like hack it on the fly with your home game and like, leave it on the table.
Mikey: Right. You've, you've sort of been doing some stuff like that too, right. Of just like, really freeform game creation in the mo Like real time, real time game creation. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. you were about to spin off into another point.
Mikey: Oh, no, I was just gonna say like, I think you could totally make a Blades in the Dark hack in under a month if you stuck to that formula and just, you know, like, I'm gonna do Blades, but in 1975. I'm gonna do Blades but in
Sam: Prohibition era, and there's ghosts. We
Mikey: Yeah, yeah, exactly. If but it's otherwise, I, I agree with you. It's like, don't just use a mechanic because you like it or because the other games you like are using it or the culture of the scene you're in likes it. That might not be the best mechanic for your game.
You know, mechanics, they've become in some scenes they're, they're, yeah.
they're almost seen, like, it's almost like there's so much dogma around them that it's almost like certain mechanics are inherently good or evil. But I don't, but I to, but I don't think that's, the way new designers especially should, should feel about things like they should feel open to throwing things out or trying something else.
Or exploding dice might be a great example. That's like a thing that is so fun and is so appealing, especially to certain kinds of new game designers like me that you prob like I can imagine so many people want to crowbar it into their games.
Sam: Well, I think this is actually a great segue into the last example I wanted to talk about, which is the Deep Apiarist is a playbook or a class in Heart: The City Beneath
Mikey: Okay. Yeah. This is a game you have a fraught relationship with,
Sam: right?
I, yeah. yeah. We, I need to do that episode 'cause I'm not gonna do fucking two hours about Heart right now. But yes, it is true that I have a fraught relationship with Heart.
But Heart at large does not have exploding dice. But yes, the Deep Apiarist is the bee man or or person or whatever sort of nibling gender you want to have.
And bb!
I once played a game of Space Post where there was a character who was a bee that we decided had the pronouns bee/bim will ride that joke until I die.
So, So this is a game that, it's, it's core dice mechanic is pretty similar to Blades in the Dark. It has a full success, partial success, and a failure. And it's using d10s instead of d6s. So you know, a full 10 is like a success, I think like A six to nine or something is a partial success. Whatever. Doesn't matter.
The Deep Apiarist is the bee person. They're like gradually becoming made of bees and they have an ability sacred geometry that says when you roll a six on any D 10, then you add an additional D six to the die. So we're back to adding the explosion onto a single die roll, but the second die can't explode. And there is a real reason for this to exist because six is the number of the hexagon. Hashtag Go check out the episode I did with Clayton all about hexagons.
Mikey: Yep.
Sam: Uh, But uh, it's a number sacred to the bee people because it's the hexagon number and so this is an ability that's just like sixes are better. Like when you roll a six, you roll a D six and you add it to the result. And it's not pushing out the extension of the bell curve either as much, right? It's taking a little bit of a partial success amount and moving it up towards the full success essentially. So like it, it scooch is the middle of the bell curve over a little bit. But it, it still has that feeling of like, aha. Sometimes I get to roll an extra die Isn't that kind of cool and fun?
So you like get the fun of exploding dice. You get the like, flavor reason for this mattering and you get not weird probability stuff. It's just a home run ability for me.
Like this is how you should be using every ability, like this is, this goes back to everything we were saying about Blades in the Dark hacks, right? Like you, anything you are keeping from any game, any mechanic in any game, even if it's not a hack, should be there for a reason. It should be there because it is supporting something cool in the game that you're making. And this is supporting the lore of the bee dudes, the lore of the bee niblings. Like it's just, it just rules. It fucking rules.
Mikey: Yeah, absolutely. It's just, yeah, it's, exactly. It's just like a fun little thing where yeah, I love that especially when it's like a number that doesn't make sense, like in the, the math of it, it's just a random number in the spread, but that number is significant. that's just awesome.
I'll talk about another game. One other one this is Renegade Racers by Kegan X. And it's just like a fast and furious type game. In fact, you have two approaches. You can go be fast or you can be furious. that's like your two skills basically.
But yeah, they use an exploding thing for your stunts and it's funny, they use a d4. So that's something we didn't really talk about that much. But yeah, if you use different die sizes for exploding it can change things wildly, right?
Like, and so they use a d4. So, and it's kind of more your, of your count successes thing too, because it's um, you know, if you end up rolling a four one time, you get a basic stunt. If you do two times you get a character stunt, which is like a special stunt that your character has, or two basic stunts.
And if you roll four three times, you get to do a montage, a stunt montage you know, and that's it's not a great chance that that will happen, but it's again, it's enough that it's the kind of thing that's probably gonna happen in a campaign at least once.
Sam: Right? It's not one in 1024, it's one in 64. Like,
Mikey: And just having it there, like who doesn't want to know they have the possibility of getting to do like a stunt montage, right? So I think that's cool. And I'm, I haven't read the full game like super well yet, so those odds might even be different. There might be some other element I'm forgetting to incorporate in.
But anyways, I think especially, man, exploding dice seems to really fit well with magic things, damage things, like anything chaotic and sort of cool extra things like stunts and stuff like that. And like as soon as I saw this I was like, that makes so so much sense because I guarantee if I had been able to find a way, I would've put exploiting dice into Slugblaster in like the tricks mechanic, right?
Like, it just, that's where it seems to want to live is, is in that kind of, this is here for fun extra stuff, not to determine if your character has the strength to lift this gate. It's for the exercise. I don't know, it just seems like it fits well in there.
I think there's a d and d spell that explodes. Oh yeah. Chaos Bolt, right? Like the Sorcerer's Chaos bolt. And that's a perfect place for it, right? Like uh, that lottery ticket thing of like, I can cast a spell. It's not as good as casting Magic Missile, but magic Missile doesn't have the chance of killing every skeleton in this place, and
Sam: Well, it damage is a great place to put it because like, it's actually pretty cool if we just like end the combat right now. 'cause then we don't have to be in combat anymore.
Mikey: Mm-hmm.
Sam: Like you know, like the, the, the, the consequences for exploding like really too far. Kind of don't exist in the best places for this.
Mikey: Yes, totally.
Sam: If you just do the thing like super well, like that rules.
Mikey: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: I really do like my metaphor of sprinkles on the ice cream
Mikey: I agree. Yeah,
Sam: exploding dice feels like to me. You know, that, that the idea that like, magic is gonna explode and other dice rolls aren't, is really. It, it like doesn't really change the math of your game very much or your whatever's going on, but it does make magic feel a little special.
Mikey: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. I think that's it. If you have a you know Robin Laws in one of his podcast episodes, he talked about when to make a mechanic humble. And it's, it's this like thing of like, you have all these mechanics in your game, or you know, all these pieces in your game at least, and they can't all be noisy and be asking for attention, right?
Sometimes you just need some simple mechanic that gets someone through the, you know, a shoe leather mechanic, right? That just like gets you from one place to another so that you can then spend more time with whatever your game is supposed to be focusing on. Right?
Sam: Yeah, mark rosewater, the, the head designer of Magic calls this a complexity budget. That if you're over budget, then people are are just gonna be overwhelmed and they're not gonna play your game. They're gonna lose what's going on. But if you're under budget, then when you put the complexity in the place that's fun so people will go engage with it.
Mikey: Exactly. So you know, he talks about like, yeah, sometimes you want, to just. Go simpler. and you know, you don't, you don't have to impress your game designer friends with every rule in your book, right? And in fact, that's going to not work, right?
But then the next episode they, they return to it and say, okay, now we're gonna talk about like, like if you've made your mechanic too humble and you want to un humble it a bit? And they talk about, you know, ways to expand or, or dig deeper or, you know or jazz it up.
And I think this is a great example of something that you could just, yeah. Like you said, sprinkle on something that you want to add a little more pizazz to or highlight a little bit more, you know?
I know when I was designing Slugblaster I had moments like that where I was like I looked at the book and just sort of like how much time I was devoting to each part, and I'd realize like, man, the real estate, I'm allotting here, doesn't map to what I want the game to be about. So I'd have to go in and shift things and cut things but also expand certain things. Be like, okay, I really wanted this game to be, have a lot of chases in it. So, I have to take this chase mechanic and change it from one column to a full page or whatever, and just kind of like, you know, even if it's just providing more examples, but it gives a visual cue, it just adds some weight where people go, oh, okay. He's saying that chases are important in this game, right? So
Sam: Yeah.
Alright, so we, we talked a, a minute in there about kind of the math of exploding dice on how smaller dice explode more often, and that's kind of interesting.
Um, I went and found a, a link to this in the show notes. But someone has like a chart with all the math on this. And I was really hoping that like an exploding D four would actually have a higher expected value than like a regular D six.
But that is unfortunately not the case. It turns out you have to get all the way down to D twos, otherwise known as coins which actually do explode to a higher value than d threes even exploding d threes. I thought
Mikey: Oh, that's funny.
Sam: But you know, it's, it's coins for you. But I
Mikey: just haven't made a coin that's fun to roll. Or at least not, not, not commonplace. I did play with this one board game they had these little runes and you'd and they were, they were perfectly made. They were like a d two in a sense. But they were just beveled enough and like, curved enough that you could scoop 'em up off the table really easily and into your hand, like dice.
And then, they fell really nice and I was just like, I need these to become popular 'cause I want to use D twos in my games. And same with d threes. I'm like, I need. I need like a D six, but labeled as a D three. I need that to be in every polyhedral set so that I can use d threes in more of my games, because like, especially story gamers, all we want are three results. You know, like, and so it's like there's certain, there's certain dice I just need to become popular so that I can like, make the games I want to. Right. So,
Sam: Fudge dice. Do not get the respect they deserve.
Mikey: I love, I used fudged in my very first iteration of Slugblaster back in 2016 when playing with my friend. Yeah, we, I used them as the Yeah, exactly. Oh, no, for sure. It's, yeah, proto slug blaster. But um, Yeah, I used it as the, and or the, but like you know, you succeed.
And you succeed. Yeah. So I don't know if that's even how you'd use 'em in Fate. 'cause I haven't played Fate, but, but they worked great for, for what I
Sam: Check out the episode I did on Fate with wendi yu this season.
Mikey: oh man. Yeah. That's good.
Sam: So she's amazing. So
Mikey: absolutely.
Sam: There's a tendency for, like, in all the games we put on this list that have exploding dice in them, that I picked up and opened, every single one of 'em was 300 goddamn pages long.
Like I, I really feel like exploding dice keep living in these enormous games, these games that are otherwise already too complicated in their resolution mechanics and in the rest of them. There's an obvious answer for why this is, which is that like people who like weird little fiddly bits just fucking can't help themselves. Here's another one. Like they get on there.
But like, is that just it? Do you think that there's something else to why exploding dice only live in these complicated games?
Mikey: No, I think you're onto something, but then I think the caveat I would say is that like Renegade Racer, I'm looking at here is 13 pages. But I know for a fact that the Renegade Racer designer, they're sort of one of those post trad like experimenters, right? Like this sort of idea of like, let's make these games that use the fun, crunchy mechanics we like, but then adding, you know, indie sensibility to it, right?
So I think in fact I'm looking at the back of the book and one of the reviews is a one star review that says not D&D compatible, which is just hilarious. So, yeah, I think like, that's it.
I do agree that That kind of numbers equals excitement personality trait, although those people they can handle trad games more, right? but when those people start designing games and if they collide with the indie sphere, then they're gonna make games like Renegade Racer and cool stuff. Right?
But I think that's exactly it. There's people who
I, I often talk about this when people ask like, what's a good roleplaying game to introduce my friends to who haven't played before. And I always say like, I don't think there's one answer. I think there's two answers. And it really depends. You have to know which kind of friend you have.
Do you have a friend who likes board games, in which case I would start them with something like a dungeon crawler or something with very light roleplaying in it. Or even something like Fog of Love, which is basically a board game, but it has these little role playing prompts occasionally in it.
Or is your friend the kind of person who like was a drama kid and likes improv games, in which case I would have them play like Fiasco or something first. Right.
Sam: For the Queen!
Mikey: Yeah, exactly. and that's super reductive and simplistic, but I just think, role playing games are still this kind of weird mishmash hybrid of, of things.
Right. And the biggest. longest running ones of them tried to appeal to all those things. And I think that's part of the reason they're successful is because they kind of appealed to lots of different player types you know, maybe not fully satisfying any of them, but like, but
But
Sam: But you can get them all in the same room.
Mikey: Sure. Sometimes it's like you can't get your perfect group who all like Fiasco. Right? And so I do think like, you know, that's why it seems like this space, there's a lot of arguing about what is a role playing game and what is and what's the right way to do role playing and, all this kind of stuff.
Which obviously if you take a step back, those are ridiculous questions, but I think it makes sense that we talk about it just because there are so many people play these games for so many different reasons. Right?
They're the people who play them for, as Grant Howitt would say , press button, make number go up. Right? And then there are people who play them to tell a story or to get into a character. And most people play them for a mix of all those things.
Sam: Process their generational trauma.
Mikey: exactly. That's right. Yeah. Marry a slime and raise a family and you know, like all, you know, so I think, we can't reduce it. Like most of us, the reason we like roleplaying games is 'cause we get to do all of those things. Right.
Like, I, I mean, I think me and you were talking about that The other day about how some games, the mode switching you have to do, can be seen as a, benefit, right? For people who like to have a little break from role playing and want to, do um, bookkeeping, as you said, right? And then there are other people who they're like, no, keep me in the good stuff. Right? So,
Sam: yeah. You keep just going off on these wonderful tangents about like the philosophy of role-playing games at large and great content that I don't have a follow up to. And then I come back with a question like,
"So tell me more about Exploding Dice?"
Mikey: No I'm delivering my manifesto, like this is my only platform. Like
is this this bonus episode hidden behind a paywall is like where I've like left my legacy. Yeah. No, no, no. I think that's, I mean, just.
Sam: We'll release it in 69 years from now. Um,
Mikey: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: I, this is truly what I love about the show, is that like I am here like "stay on topic, stay on topic," and people are like, abso fuck. Absolutely not. Like, I'm gonna take your topic and I'm gonna talk about whatever the fuck I want.
Like that's the point of the show. That is
Mikey: you never listened to a podcast, Sam? Come on. I thought I was doing this. Right.
Sam: All, all of this stuff coming out of the tiny details, that's what exploding, or that's, that's what Dice Exploder is all about anyway.
But I do wanna ask one last question about exploding dice which is if you can take a second and just imagine in your mind's eye what you think like the best game to showcase this mechanic would look like. Like if your goal as a designer was highlight the mechanic of exploding dice, what is the game that you would make?
Mikey: Yeah. I think it would be about like emotionally unstable wizards or something, right. Like and I'd want to juice it somehow where the exploding was happening more often.
Sam: You would just only use D fours, right?
Mikey: yeah, I guess so. or big dice pools where it's, guaranteed to happen a bit. But yeah I think chaos magic is a perfect place for it.
But then I would, cause we're indie, I, gotta put some feelings into it. So I, I would connect, you know, I'd have each wizard your school of magic would be like your emotional Flaw or crutch or something, you know, like your trigger or something like that.
And like, I would really tie it to that. So you can be in the school of jealousy or the school of rage or whatever.
But then yeah, the goal of the game would be just to create like carnage, both physical and emotional
Sam: you it'd be like on a reality TV show, right? You'd it'd It'd be like a reality TV show wizard game featuring exploding dice.
Mikey: Okay. Well, we need to strike this from the podcast so that we can write this, right?
No, Yeah, I, I think that's it.
Sam: We need to get back to fucking what is that game even called? The, the Glocknight. We need to get
Mikey: Oh, Glocknight. Yes.
Sam: Glocknight should have dice exploding all over.
Mikey: Yes. A hundred percent. That you get to use exploiting dice when you use mushrooming bullets. Right? Like hollow tip.
Sam: Yeah. There's, there's one playbook that's just like exploding dice all the time.
Mikey: Yes, it's the grenade playbook.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Mikey: That's the thing about exploding dice
Sam: we're doing this. Oh my God. This is a Glocknight design diary
Mikey: exactly. I do think you're right. Like as we talked about, the name of the mechanic is so cool and in some ways Is cooler than the mechanic itself. Like evokes more like, like as, as I, you know, say about like this reality show wizards, like I'm picturing a feeling of rolling these dice, but I honestly don't know if the mechanic would even support that or if once we start play testing, I'd find some other kind of similar mechanic that would actually do it better. But I think it'd be a good place to start. Right.
And, but yeah, I think, I think it's, if, if you're, if you're making a game. Where you want, like, that lottery ticket, like possibility feeling and like chaos is encouraged and a crazy thing happening is what the story is going to become about and not something that's gonna derail the story, then I think that's probably where it should be used.
Sam: All right. I am gonna take us out.
So, I mentioned this earlier. I almost read this verbatim. I'm gonna read this actually verbatim from my notes now. So:
"In the end, this is a niche thing that doesn't change much, but it's a lot of hassle and variance and clunk for what exactly?"
Response: "bro. It's cool. You're overthinking it. This shit rips."
And that's the end of it. And I've actually come
Mikey: I'll co-sign that.
Sam: I think both of these statements are false because the first statement is just wrong. I've, I've come around completely, like sprinkles are amazing, like adding spice, like cut up that jalapeno and put it on your fucking ice cream. Like let's use exploding dice.
But also the second one is wrong because like overthinking it is what this show is about and is what brought me to that conclusion.
Like overthinking it fucking rules. Listen to Dice Exploiter season three. Back it now. You already have, if you're listening to this, like, let's fucking go.
Mikey: yeah, yeah. That's great.
Sam: Thanks for being here, Mikey.
Mikey: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
Sam: Thanks, Mikey. You're the best. Mikey did this episode with me for free to support the Kickstarter campaign I did, and I could not be more grateful. Remember, he's got his own game funding right now, Two-Hand Path, a solo game roll-and-write dungeon crawler. Link in the show notes.
You can find him on Blue Sky at Mikey Hamm or you can buy Slugblaster: Kickflip Over a Quantum Centipede from MythWorks. That's Myth. Works.
You can find me on all the socials at S. Dunnewold, Bluesky preferred.
Our logo is designed by Sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.
There's a Dice Exploder discord. Come on down and talk about the show. We'd love to have you. And thank you! Oh my god, what a treat to have you listening! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Talk soon.