Dice Exploder

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
It's the Dice Exploder 2025 year end bonanza! This year I'm joined by Lin Codega and Diogo Nogueira to go over a whole bunch of game mechanics that we think represent where rpgs were at in 2025 and where they might be going in the future.
Further Reading
Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall
Praise the Hawkmoth King by Sage the Anagogue
I want to fight my friends in the back of a moving truck by Seraphina Garcia Ramirez
Traffic Lights Are Communication Tools by Meguey Baker
Daggerheart
Draw Steel
The One Ring starter set
Sam Sorensen’s overview of Over/Under and one of Lin’s pieces on the aftermath
Apocalypse World 3e Kickstarter (now finished)
Socials
Rascal.news
Weird Games and Weirder People
Lin and Diogo on Bluesky.
Sam on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our 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 Patreon

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Mausritter is an old school dungeon crawling game where instead of playing as elves fighting dragons, you play as mice fleeing from owls. It’s not unlike any number of other old school games like Cairn or Into the Odd, but its inventory system is the only inventory system I’ve ever actually liked. Does it work differently than other games? At a raw numbers level, not really! But instead of a bunch of paper bookkeeping, Mausritter turns items into little cardboard squares like board game pieces that you put in a grid on your character sheet. That physicality makes all the difference.
Further Reading
Mausritter by Isaac Williams
The Lonely Oak by Victor Lane
Cairn by Yochai Gal
Blades in the Dark by John Harper
Quinns Quest on youtube and patreon.
Socials
Quinns on Bluesky.
Sam on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our 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 Patreon

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Apocalypse World 3rd edition is on Kickstarter right now. In many ways, it hasn’t changed much. In many ways, it's a whole new apocalypse. So I thought it'd be fun to have on the Bakers and go through a playbook - the Brainer in 2e vs its equivalent the Brain-Picker in 3e - and ask them about every single change on the sheet, from updating the basic moves all the way down to a single name on a single picklist.
Further Reading
Apocalypse World: Burned Over 3e on Kickstarter and a preview of The Brain-Picker
Apocalypse World 2e handouts, including the Brainer
Designing a seduce or manipulate replacement on the Dice Exploder Patreon
Preview the Bakers’ seduce or manipulate replacement on their Patreon
Socials
Meguey and Vincent on Bluesky.
The Baker House Blog
Sam on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our 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 Patreon

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
To close out this miniseries on actual play, I wanted to feature a game that I think uses actual play as a game mechanic. Hear me out. Void 1680 AM is a solo playlist-building game in which you create a fictional radio broadcast. Except when you're done, you can send it to the game's creator (this week's cohost Ken Lowery), and he'll broadcast it out onto the real radio via the AM antenna in his garage (and on YouTube).
Obviously it feels different to play the game knowing it's going to go out on air. But I think it feels different even just knowing that it could go out on air. And while most actual play feels first and foremost like an act of performance, Ken's broadcasts feel more like an extension of gameplay and an act of community building. How's it feel to be inside all that? Come take a listen.
Further Reading
Void 1680 AM by Ken Lowery
Void 1680 AM Community Broadcasts archives on YouTube
Sam’s Void Community Broadcast
Chinese larp of Void on Instagram
Characters Without Stories featuring Sam
Socials
Ken on Bluesky and itch. You can purchase physical copies from his imprint Bannerless Games.
Sam on Bluesky and itch
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our 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 Patreon

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Last Train to Brooklyn is an actual play from Twice Rolled Tales where they play Last Train to Bremen on a New York City subway car. It's also probably my favorite actual play full stop. Why? I think because it leans into what I'm most excited about this medium: treating capturing the act of play more like a documentary than a means towards fiction. It's excited at least as much about its nonfiction story as its fictional one.
Today I've invited Linnie Schell, one of the main creatives behind Last Train to Bremen, to come give me a beat by beat director's commentary on everything that went into it, all building to the moment I really wanted to highlight: its ending.
Further Reading
Twice Rolled Tales
The RuPaul videos Linnie mentions
Comedy Book by Jesse David Fox
Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion
Socials
Maia on Bluesky
Sam on Bluesky and itch
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our 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 Patreon