Dice Exploder

54:18

De-Roling with Caro Murphy

Dice Exploder ·

2026/09/29

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFurther readingBack Tower Runners on Kickstarter!DrachenFestIncantrix ProductionsImagi-Ne'er-Do-WellsSocialsCaro’s websiteSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!Dice Exploder on PatreonCreditsOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is

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59:29

Our Lives in the Wood with Kendo Smith

Dice Exploder ·

2026/09/22

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFurther readingOur Lives in the Wood episode 5This Game Takes Place in Your Home TownSocialsKendo on Bluesky and the webSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!Dice Exploder on PatreonCreditsOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads

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56:08

What Is There to Eat in Duskwall (Blades in the Dark)...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/09/15

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comNote: the "What Is There to Eat in Duskwall" pages of Blades in the Dark were written by Andrew Shields.Further ReadingBlades in the Dark by John HarperSocialsJeeyon on Patreon, Bluesky, and itchSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comJoin the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!CreditsOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely

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39:12

Duty Stations (Night Witches) with Ash Kreider

Dice Exploder ·

2026/09/08

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFurther ReadingThe Watch 2e is on Kickstarter nowNight Witches by Jason MorningstarSocialsAsh on BlueskyAsh's website, including listings for their games and booksSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!CreditsOur logo was designed by sporgory,

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3:08

New Episodes Next Week + An Announcement

Dice Exploder ·

2026/08/31

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

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41:03

Deckbuilding (Signs of the Sojourner) with Lady Tabletop

Dice Exploder ·

2026/05/26

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFurther ReadingSigns of the Sojourner by Echo Dog GamesBand-Aids & Bullet Holes by Sam, on Kickstarter nowSlay the Spire 2 by Mega CritSocialsLady Tabletop on itchSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!CreditsOur logo was designed by sporgory,

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52:22

Minigames (Firebrands) with Viditya Voleti

Dice Exploder ·

2026/05/19

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFurther ReadingBand-Aids & Bullet Holes on KickstarterMobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by Meguey & Vincent BakerThe King Is Dead by Meguey & Vincent BakerStewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern by Takuma OkadaSocialsViditya on Bluesky and itchSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer.Join the Dice

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65:01

John Wick (2014) and Genre Emulation with Sam Roberts

Dice Exploder ·

2026/05/12

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comMy new game Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is still on Kickstarter! Check it out today.In honor of BABH, this month on Dice Exploder I'm covering mechanics from other games that inspired it. In keeping with this show's increasingly loose definition of "mechanic," today I'm joined by Sam Roberts (Escape from Dino Island) to tackle one of this game's greatest influences: the 2014 Keanu Reeves movie John Wick.The first half of this ep is

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64:45

Character Nonmonogamy (Space Post) with Sidney Icarus

Dice Exploder ·

2026/05/05

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comToday is the launch of Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, my melodramatic action game of bloody revenge. It's a one shot, capsule game, box set, deckbuilder rpg. Check it out.In honor of BABH, this month on Dice Exploder I'm covering mechanics from other games that inspired it, starting today with the idea of character nonmonogamy. Traditionally in rpgs each player gets one main character. This is often true regardless of whether or not there's a GM:

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32:50

Calling Cards (Band-Aids & Bullet Holes) with Lady...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/04/28

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comMy first stand-alone print game, Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, goes live on Kickstarter next week on May 5th. I have a lot to say about it, and I'm gonna say a lot of it: May's going to be all episodes about mechanics from other people's games that inspired me in this design.Today I wanted to talk about Band-Aids & Bullet Holes straight up, but I didn't want you to just take it from me all the stuff I love about it, so I'm handing the

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30:22

Keys (Lady Blackbird) with Whitney Delaglio

Dice Exploder ·

2026/04/21

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comI love pregens! But why do I love pregens? I dug into this a bunch on an episode last year with Aaron Lim about the characters in Last Train to Bremen: I love being given a clear goal and baseline temperament when I sit down to play so I can get into drama as fast as possible. But the game Lady Blackbird goes a step further. Each character has "Keys" which lay out not just character traits and goals, but the central dramatic questions and stakes each

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57:42

Weak, Strong, and Regular Moves (Dream Askew / Dream...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/04/14

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comAustin Walker's new game Realis is on Kickstarter now, and it's been making splashes in the indie rpg scene since last year when the ashcan came out. The game's core mechanic, Sentences, feels like the exact kind of mechanic I love covering on this show. But where did it come from? I asked Austin to come talk to me about it and bring one of his influences, and he came back with another diceless, GM-less resolution mechanic: the token economy of

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32:22

The Awards 2024 with Nico MacDougall

Dice Exploder ·

2026/04/07

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comFollow Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter!The Awards are back! The rpg awards show with a bent towards indie games and the guaranteed worst SEO of all time is back for another around, and the current steward of The Awards - Nico MacDougall - is back on the show this week to talk through some of our favorite mechanics from the last batch of winners.If you want to get involved in The Awards, you can apply to be a judge through the end of April and you

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27:54

Lures (Heaven in the Dust) with Barclay Travis and...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/03/31

Transcripts are available at diceexploder.comBee and Barclay are the hosts of Tabletop Book Club, a podcast that is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a show with such fun energy, and of course good design talk. Because Barclay has a new belonging outside belonging game that's just come out - Begin Again, check the link below - today I'm talking with them about lures, maybe my favorite part of the belonging outside belonging engine, and specifically how they're implemented in Heave in the

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36:46

Always Give Them The Clue (GUMSHOE) with Tristan...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/03/17

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comMy friend Tristan Zimmerman is currently crowdfunding Ballad Hunters, a GUMSHOE game, meaning it’s based on a core mechanic built for investigation games and gathering clues. That mechanic goes like this: “always give the players the clue.” Simple! And I think so astute as to what the actual fun part of investigation is in RPGs: it’s not “can we roll high enough to progress,” it’s “once we have all these clues, how do we put them together and what do we do

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117:31

The Voice of the Text (Triangle Agency) with...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/03/10

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comI bet you’ve heard of this game Triangle Agency. Big exciting Kickstarter, super flashy product design, a game with… spoilers in the back? It’s corporate horror, it’s packed gorgeous art, it’s a game I spent 20 sessions with in 2025. And I… had a pretty frustrating time with the game. There is so much I love and admire about Triangle Agency, but also so much I struggled with, and I wanted to break it all down on the show.And I didn’t want to do that without

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48:07

Draw Maps, Leave Blanks (Dungeon World) with Tim Denee

Dice Exploder ·

2026/03/03

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comIf the thesis of last week’s episode was “hey the fiction of your game matters a lot and can even have mechanical effects,” how do you know how deeply to define that fiction? Maybe no one in indie games has recently faced that question on quite the scale of Tim Denee with Blades ‘68, an expansion to Blades in the Dark. I wanted to have him on to talk about when you completely reinvent the setting, how do you think about what parts of the fiction are important

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46:50

Doskvol's Lightning Barriers (Blades in the Dark)...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/02/24

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comIn Blades in the Dark, you play as criminals in Doskvol a haunted city where the ghosts are such a problem that they built giant lightning barriers around the whole city to keep them out. That sentence alone already makes me want to get the game to the table, and we haven’t even gotten to the rules of Blades in the Dark yet.That’s the conversation I wanted to take a crack at today: rules are important, they can radically shape play, but the fiction a game

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43:09

Setting Elements (Dream Askew / Dream Apart) with...

Dice Exploder ·

2026/02/17

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comThere's many ways to decide who has authority over what in an RPG. Traditional games have a bunch of players with one PC each and a GM responsible for everything else, while Dreams Askew / Dream Apart by Avery Alder and Ben Rosenbaum takes a very different approach: divide that "everything else" up into flavorful pieces, like "gossip & reputation" and "the wild forest" and give everyone a piece. That choice has become one of

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36:32

Afterimage: The Experimental Role-Playing Laboratory

Dice Exploder ·

2026/01/28

Dice Exploder: Afterimage is alternative show format, a cross between play report and personal memoir.The Experimental Role-Playing Laboratory, or ERPL, was a thrice a year mini convention put on by students at my college back in the 00s and 10s and onward to this day. It's how I got into indie games. I still think about it, and the people I met there, to this day. They still mean something to me. What might I still mean to them?Written, edited, and performed by Sam DunnewoldTristan Zimmerman at

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