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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Moira Joy "MJ" Smith is the Dungeon Master for the Try Guys D&D actual play show "The Die Guys". She created the show in 2024 along with the Try Guys, and I was her right-hand dude during production and the show's video editor.
Today, ahead of a whole series I have planned later this fall on actual play, MJ and I sit down to talk about how we made The Die Guys. We start with a bunch of background - how shows get made for YouTube at large, how the Try Guys specifically make shows, and how this show came about - but we get granular to, all the way down to how I made choices in the edit about whether to leave in or cut individual jokes.
Further Reading
The Try Guys streaming service, where you can find The Die Guys season 2
The Die Guys episode 1 on YouTube
Socials
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!
Support Dice Exploder on Patreon!
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Dice Exploder: Afterimage is a new show format I'm trying, a mashup of This American Life with a play report.
I have a box full of memories that lives in my closet, a pair of drumsticks, a half smoked cigar, a thimble full of sand from a beach I've never been to. If I passed away and you were cleaning out my closet, you would look at this box and you would know it was important, but you wouldn't know why. You wouldn't know whose funeral I played at with those drumsticks, or on which rooftop in my hometown, I smoked that half a cigar. But you would feel their weight all the same...
Written, edited, and performed by Sam Dunnewold
Transcript available at www.diceexploder.com
City of Winter at Heart of the Deernicorn
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: https://app.sessions.blue/
My games: sdunnewold.itch.io
Follow me on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/diceexploder.com
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Dice Exploder: Afterimage is a new show format I'm trying, a mashup of This American Life with a play report.
When I was in the third grade, there was this cartoon that aired while I was coming home from school, so I could only ever watch the second half of episodes. The name of that show was Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast... or was that the name of a tabletop roleplaying game?
Written, edited, and performed by Sam Dunnewold
Transcript available at www.diceexploder.com
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: https://app.sessions.blue/
My games: sdunnewold.itch.io
Follow me on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/diceexploder.com
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Hello and welcome to Party by the Apocalypse, an actual play miniseries where we play Apocalypse World while breaking down how it works and the choices we're making as players so you can learn how to better play it.
Party by the Apocalypse is Dice Exploder’s first foray into actual play, and the whole thing is out right now wherever you get your podcasts.
In the full show, we over any number of mechanics and how they play out at the table: character creation, violence and combat, player vs player, prep, and more. But today on the Dice Exploder main feed I wanted to bring you a taste of the show featuring a part of Apocalypse World I find people are often intimidated by: the sex moves. What does the conversation look like around a sex scene in Apocalypse World, both mechanically and just as people? For one answer, come take a listen.
Party by the Apocalypse is:
Sam Dunnewold of Dice Exploder, a podcast about rpg designAaron King of RTFM, an rpg book club podcastKeganEXE of PlusOneEXP, a publisher of rpgsEssay of Three of Hearts, an actual play podcastTheme music: Phantasm by Purely Grey
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Today the folks over at Many Sided Media, the production house behind My First Dungeon and Talk of the Table, are launching a new podcast network... and Dice Exploder is a part of it!
Nothing on the show should change much, but today I wanted to sit down with Brian Flaherty, a co-founder of Many Sided Media, to talk about what this network is going to look like.
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
In the unreliable urban fantasy world of Changeling, Clarity is a mechanic that measures... well, for now let’s go with a character's ability to trust their own reality. But finishing that sentence is kind of what this episode is all about, because Clarity has deep ties to various sanity mechanics from any number of Call of Cthulhu inspired games, even as it’s trying to do something different, maybe a little more nuanced and less obviously offensive as measuring a person’s sanity with a flat number.
There’s any number of metaphors you might find meaning in with Clarity. It’s not clear to me that that makes it much better than sanity. And yet, today's cohost MintRabbit loves this game and this mechanic dearly, sees so much of herself in it. And seeing yourself in a flawed game, still finding beauty in it, that's what makes today's episode interesting.
Ad Links
Spectacula by Jeremy Melloul
Kiss Me If You Can by me, Sam Dunnewold
Further Reading
Changeling the Lost 1e by White Wolf Games
Changelings, Trauma & Gaming by Mint Rabbit
A second post from Mint about Changeling
Dice Exploder on safety tools
Socials
Mint on Tumblr, Bluesky, itch, dice.camp, and ko-fi
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!
Support Dice Exploder on Patreon!
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
For the two year anniversary of Dice Exploder, my first ever cohost Ray Chou returns for what starts off as a brand new episode about Stoneburner by Fari RPGs and that game’s oracle mechanic: a way to use dice, random tables, and the careful framing of stakes to adapt the game for solo play.
But at some point the conversation morphs into a deserving sequel episode to our first go around on rolling the dice in idie rpgs more broadly. When do you roll dice? Are partial successes good? And how does all of this change for solo and GM-less play? We didn’t ask all these questions last time, and we didn’t have great answers to the ones we did. So let’s check in on the state of rolling the dice!
Further Reading
Stoneburner by Fari RPGs
Apocalypse World by Meguey and Vincent Baker
Blades in the Dark by John Harper
Socials
Mythworks homepage
Mythworks on Blueksy
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
This is, at long last, the end of this Dice Exploder miniseries on larp. And I wanted to send it off by returning to the question I kicked it off with: what can tabletop designers learn from larp? To get into that, there’s few people I’d rather have on than Jay Dragon (Wanderhome, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast).
When I pitched Jay this topic, Jay wanted to bring in the 10 Candles from 10 Candles. This is a game best known for, what else, the 10 candles you light at the beginning of play. And the act of doing so, and then turning out the lights, sets a mood that feels like a ritual, something deeper and more visceral than most tabletop games, something not exactly larp-like, but that feels of a piece with the emphasis on environment and embodiment that larp often brings…
Ad Links
Spectacula by Jeremy Melloul
Make a Scene festival
Further Reading
10 Candles by Cavalry Games
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games
Wanderhome by Possum Creek Games
Game Design Study Buddies on Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll
Dice Exploder on Ribbon Drive by Avery Alder
A Dozen Fragments On Playground Theory by Jay Dragon
Socials
Jay on Bluesky and Possum Creek Games on itch and Warehouse 23
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Here near the end of Dice Exploder's larp series, I wanted to have on Caro Murphy (Galactic Starcruiser) to talk about experience design, and specifically how to think about curating all those parts of an experience bigger and larger than most of us at home will ever have access to. How do you design the set a game is played on? How do you design something for hundreds if not thousands of participants?
And Caro delivered so much more: we get into bleed and empathy and how Caro sees games as an inherently educational medium. Let's get into it!
Ad Links
Vesta Mandate by Story Games Chicago
Sign up for the Spectacula pre-release newsletter from Jeremy Melloul
Further reading
Meghan Gardner at Guard Up Adventures
Club Drosselmeyer
Caro on Imaginary Worlds and then Again
Galactic Starcruiser on Wikipedia
Socials
Caro’s website
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Safety in RPGs and larp is a huge topic, one I’ve wanted to cover on Dice Exploder for a long time, but one I’ve avoided it because it feels hard to approach inside the “pick one mechanic” format of this show. Even more than most mechanics I cover on Dice Exploder, I feel like most safety mechanics are in conversation with each other in both logistical ways—how they compliment each other—but also in the philosophy behind their existence in the first place, how including these mechanics at the table is ideally a statement about how we’d like to treat each other both at the table and away from it. So today we’re gonna name that underlying philosophy and call that our mechanic: “players are more important than the game” is something I hear in conversations around safety all the time, and that’s this episode.
To break it down, I’m joined by Sarah Lynne Bowman. She studies all this professionally, and she has so much to say and to share about how safety tools work in theory and in practice, how no tool can ever guarantee your safety (even if we should still definitely use them), and how building good communities around our games is at least as important to safer play as any individual tool.
Finally, content warning in this episode for mention of sexual assault and emotional abuse in rpg communities. We don’t get deep into any specifics, but they come up.
Further Reading
Your Larp’s Only As Safe As It’s Play Culture by Troels Ken Pedersen
Dice Exploder on accessibility in game design
Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics by Maury Brown
Larp Design, the book
Bibliography from Sarah Lynne Bowman
Koljonen, Johanna. 2019. “Opt-out and Playstyle Calibration Mechanics.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen, 235-237. Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost. 3 pages.
Koljonen, Johanna. 2020. “Larp Safety Design Fundamentals.” JARPS: Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies 1: Emotional and Psychological Safety in TRPGs and Larp (September 21): 3e-19e.
Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2024. “Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-Out from Role-Playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self.” International Journal of Role-Playing 15 (June): 9-35. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi15.323
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, March 2.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role-playing Games I: Introduction -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games II: Before the Game -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part III: During the Game -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part IV: After the Game --- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part V: Cultivating Safer Communities -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Socials
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Last 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 by achieving. I’ve always found it strange I didn’t love beats in practice, and I today I wanted to break down how and why they left me overwhelmed and unsatisfied. I think there’s at least as much to learn from looking at what doesn’t work in games as what does, especially in games and other art that feels so close to exactly for you…
Further Reading
Heart: the City Beneath by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Spire: the City Must Fall by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Socials
Aaron on Bluesky, itch, YouTube, and Patreon
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!
Support Dice Exploder on Patreon!
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Heart: 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 something gigantic and fucking cool… before killing their character.
I’m joined by ardent Heart-lover Aaron Voigt, aka the guy who makes the indie rpg video essays on YouTube. We get into Heart’s spectacular setting, the act of handing story agency over to players, and the joys of playing to lose. Then come back next week for part two with more Heart and more Aaron!
Ads
Rust Never Sleeps, a solo blackjack mecha rpg
Further Reading
Heart: the City Beneath by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Spire: the City Must Fall by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Sanfielle by Friends At The Table
Agon 2e by Sean Nittner and John Harper
Socials
Aaron on Bluesky, itch, YouTube, and Patreon
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!
Support Dice Exploder on Patreon!
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Over 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 it?
Further Reading
Elf Motors
Socials
Chris’s podcast How to Be a Better Human
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Last 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 building up throughout this larp series: immersion, the separation or lack thereof between player and character, safer play, and more. I couldn't ask for a better cohost for that than Sharang Biswas.
Ads
Extra Ordinary on Kickstarter now!
Preorder Sharang’s book The Iron Below Remembers
Further Reading
House of Craving by Tor Kjetil Edland, Danny Wilson & Bjarke Pedersen
Lumberjills by Moyra Turkington
I Say A Little Prayer by Tor Kjetil Edland
Just a Little Lovin’ by Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo
Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan
Rules of Play by Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman
The Self Reflexive Tabletop Role Playing Game by Evan Torner
The World is Born from Zero by Cameron Kunzelman
Socials
Sharang on Bluesky and itch
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
When 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 scenes in roleplaying games, and today I want to talk about a mechanic that does so very firmly: spotlight scenes, a procedure in which each player in the game gets a turn to say what they want the next scene to be.
To do that, I’m joined by Mo Turkington, designer of many great structured freeform larps including the well-lauded Rosenstrasse and her latest release Lumberjills. We get into the history of spotlight scenes, the pros and cons of including rules for framing and ending scenes in your game, and how even a mechanic like this one that feels so structural and procedural, when used int he right context, can have a beautiful, thematically resonant message in it about agency and self-actualization.
Ad Links
Song of the Scryptwyrm by Almost Bedtime Theater
Further Reading
Lumberjills by Moyra Turkington
I Say A Little Prayer by Tor Kjetil Edland
Just a Little Lovin’ by Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo
Rosenstrasse by Moyra Turkington and Jessica Hammer
Montsegur 1244 by Frederik J. Jensen
Red Carnations on a Black Grave by Catherine Ramen and Juan Ochoa
Socials
Moyra’s games on itch
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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
Shadows 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 into terrible actions and choices. They’re special effects, or ghosts, or whatever else you want them to be. Let's talk about them!
Ad Links
Extra Ordinary on Kickstarter now!
Socials
Elin 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
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
There'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 intentionally designed as gameplay itself, but I don't see much of that in ttrpgs. Meanwhile in larp, workshops to set up a game are standard practice. What do they look like, and what can we learn from them?
Ad Links
Extra Ordinary launches on Kickstarter March 10th!
Further Reading
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
Bleed on the Nordic Larp wiki
Playing to Lift, Not Just to Lose by Susanne Vejdemo
The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity by Jonaya Kemper
Space Train Space Heist by Sam Dunnewold
Veins of Corruption, Marc's itchfunding mega-zungeon
Socials
Marc on Bluesky and itch and actual plays on youtube
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
Support Dice Exploder on Patreon!
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
The 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.
https://www.patreon.com/DiceExploder
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Transcripts available at diceexploder.com
In 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 actions equal my fictional character's actions, might be what many people understand as the core difference between larp and tabletop games. Today, Kate Hill and I get into the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful of embodied play.
Further Reading
Playing to Lift, Not Just to Lose by Susanne Vejdemo
Bluebeard’s Bride
New World Magischola
Chasing Bleed – An American Fantasy Larper at Wizard School by Tara M. Clapper
Golden Cobra Challenge
Find Larp Shack on Facebook!
Two Hand Path and the Dice Exploder episode about it
Ad Links
We Three Shall Meet Again by Sam Dunnewold
Socials
Kate on Bluesky.
Kate’s actual play Path of Glory on twitch.
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!
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Transcripts are available at diceexploder.com
Larp! 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 so much we could learn from larp, so much that this is the start of a big series on larp.
And where better to start than with a mechanic that makes getting into larp easier than ever: just pick up a card and read what it says.
Further Reading
Ghost Court by Jason Morningstar
We Are Roommates Now by Wendy Gorman
Space Larps by Jason Morningstar
Welcome Guests by Jason Morningstar
The Climb by Jason Morningstar
So Mom I Made This Sex Tape by Susanne Vejdemo
Behind the Magic by Randy Lubin
The Hench Union Larp by Sam Dunnewold
Socials
Randy onBluesky
Randy’s foresight games are at leveragedplay.com
Randy’s consumer games are at diegeticgames.com
Randy’s online games platformStorySynth
Sam onBluesky anditch
The Dice Exploder blog is atdiceexploder.com
Our logo was designed bysporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song isSunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join theDice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
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