Dice Exploder

Apr 15 2025 69 ep. 44 mins 238

Dice Exploder Podcast artwork

A show about tabletop RPG design. Each episode we bring you a single mechanic and break it down as deep as we possibly can. Co-hosted by Sam Dunnewold and a rotating roster of designers.

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Beats (Heart: the City Beneath) with Aaron Voigt

Apr 15 2025 33 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comLast week, indie rpg YouTube essayist Aaron Voigt and I delved into Heart: the City Beneath, a surreal and maximalist dungeon crawler with lots to love. But when I ran the game, I had some trouble with it from a mechanic that by all accounts I should love: beats, little nuggets of story, little goals your character takes on that they advance

Zenith Abilities (Heart: the City Beneath) with Aaron Voigt

Apr 08 2025 37 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comHeart: the City Beneath. It’s a surreal and bloody dungeon crawler full of so much to love… plus some bits that drive me up the wall. This week and next I’m devoting TWO episodes to it. Today, it’s everything I love about Heart as seen through the lens of zenith abilities: epic things that let players take control of the game and do

Elf Motors with Chris Duffy

Mar 31 2025 8 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comOver on the Dice Exploder discord, we welcome new members by asking them what their favorite mechanic is. It’s a great tradition, kicks off a lot of great conversations, but I have largely avoided having it turned my way. So today I thought let’s just get it out there in an episode: what is my favorite mechanic and what do I think about

Fateplay Scenes (House of Craving) with Sharang Biswas

Mar 24 2025 50 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comLast week was a show about how it might work to frame a scene when you get to decide whatever you want that scene to look like. But this week, we're looking at the reverse: what happens when you're given a very detailed scene and must figure out how to incorporate it into your story?This episode brings together a bunch of threads I’ve been

Spotlight Scenes with Moyra Turkington

Mar 17 2025 51 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comWhen you’re playing roleplay-heavy D&D, what does a scene look like? Since the game doesn’t give you much in the way of tools for doing so, are you framing scenes intentionally or just kind of letting them happen? And if the latter, is that serving you well?You very well might be, but I’ve become obsessed lately with how we frame s

Shadows with Elin Dalstål

Mar 10 2025 37 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comShadows are a metatechnique in larp where you have players in the role of something other than a traditional larp or rpg player character. Maybe they’re stagehands turning out the lights because there’s ghosts in this house. Maybe they’re the characters’ worst fears who wander around and whisper into players’ ears to egg them on in

Workshops with Marc Majcher

Mar 03 2025 48 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comThere's this period of time between when we've all agreed we're going to play a game now and when we start "actually playing." We've got to learn the rules, learn the setting, maybe go over safety or characters. Maybe we order the pizza in here, too.This part of a game is just as much something that can be intention

Dice Exploder is on Patreon, plus Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast

Mar 02 2025 4 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comThe show is on Patreon! There's not going to be a lot behind the paywall, but there is right now a pilot episode for a new podcast that's part play report, part games criticism, and part personal memoir. This pilot is about the excellent game Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, and you can listen to it now on the brand new Dice Exploder patreon.ht

Embodiment with Kate Hill

Feb 25 2025 51 mins

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comIn a lot of tabletop rpgs, to do something in the fictional world, we engage with abstraction: to pick someone’s pocket, we describe picking their pocket, or we roll a die to see how well we pick it. But in larp, sometimes the action is the action. I pick your pocket... by picking your pocket.This embodiment of play, where my real life act

Just Read the Card (Ghost Court) with Randy Lubin

Feb 18 2025 42 mins

Transcripts are available at diceexploder.comLarp! It’s that thing where you dress up like wizards, go into the woods, and hit each other with sticks. Right? Well.. yeah! Except no, because it’s a million other things, too.Today I'm gonna introduce you to the world of larp. If you've ever been intimidated by it, this is a place to start. Because I think tabletop designers have