[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploiter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and rank it against its peers.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Sam Donald and my co-host today is Nico MacDougal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back Nico to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to have you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Glad to be here again.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just diving straight into it today without an intro because today we're here to talk about the awards.
[SPEAKER_01]: The awards are, uh, you guessed it in a words show for table top RPGs that Nico, you, are running these days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a little bit about the awards?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the deal with the awards?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the awards is an NTTRPG award show.
[SPEAKER_00]: We recognize 20 best things a year essentially.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that I think sets it apart is both that that it's, it is 20 best things, but there's not ranked within themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no number one, there is no number 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just 20 things that are,
[SPEAKER_00]: worthy of attention, cool, weird artsy, whatever metric the judges decide to use.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other thing is that of late, I've taken more and more steps to sort of focus that and ensure that we're looking at smaller, weirder games or any sort of TTRPG adjacent thing that
[SPEAKER_01]: Diana Jones whatever else there is might not get as much attention in yeah yeah I think it's cool awards show I think I want to talk a little bit about ranking things before we get like too far into the stuff so broadly speaking what we're going to do here today is like highlight a few of the last cycle of awards entries and some mechanics from them that we love in classics sort of dice exploded fashion but
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I don't know, ranking things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have such a love hate relationship with that probably goes back to my love hate relationship with the John Q.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second movie, high fidelity.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like I really find ranking things to be so much fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have done so much of it in my life and I will continue to do it until the day I die.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just find it to be a really compelling way to
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a solo game, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a means of self-expression and also then of like a framework for conversation about art and that framework has some severe limitations because you are like ranking things that really don't need to be compared.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like saying one piece of art is better than another piece of art is silly in the first place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of people, a lot of bros and a lot of communities, just humans at large really have a tendency to say like, we have to get to an objective ranking, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the is better than that thing and that's just I don't look that's healthy for anyone But I don't know just the active doing it is is fun and and brings me joy as long as you don't take it very seriously And something I like about the awards is they're sort of doing as little ranking as possible Well, still fundamentally being a ranking activity and that you are sort of like Seeking out a specific
[SPEAKER_01]: niche to be in a word show within that is really vibes based instead of like me Anders year to year based on what the judges tend to what kind of judges you can tend to bring into things So I don't know I I find the whole prospect very interesting I should say I was a judge along with you in the first year that they were active when so when else was running them But I just wanted to check in with you and be like, well, so what do you think about a word show at large like why do you care about this thing enough to run it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I also feel like I have a funny relationship with ranking things because people always ask, you know, like, well, what's your favorite book or what's your favorite movie or what's your favorite food or whatever and I feel like I've never had
[SPEAKER_00]: what I feel like are good answers to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, like yeah, what's your favorite book?
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden, I'm like, and I've forgotten every single book I've ever read.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you things that I like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you the things that I've read the most recently that I like the most, you know, or that I found most interesting or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think I've always had a difficult time with that sort of,
[SPEAKER_00]: really, really regimented idea of ranking, which is part of what I really enjoyed about the awards back when I, you know, the first time it happened when I was a judge for it and why I've kept going with this is because the process for, for judging the awards, the initial thing is like you're saying like, is this good enough sort of a yes no vote to like be considered further?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then once you have your sort of little pool of finalists and it's like you distribute some votes based on what you like the most you could give one vote to 20 things or 20 votes to one thing, but then at the end of all that there's no revelation of like who got the most votes out of anything it's just like the 20 things that sort of got the most votes collectively and so I think it's a really
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really interesting way to arrive at a consensus of good, interesting art of a larger pool based on the opinions of 8 to 12 people, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is ranking, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ending up with 20 things that are being said.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, well, these are the best things that we got, but you're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to get so granular as to be like, well, this is number one, and this is number two, and this number three, and what I'm more interested in is what sets apart a pool of good interesting artsy, weird stuff from other things, maybe it's because they're, they ask interesting questions, maybe it's because they just do one specific thing really, really well, and I feel like that's what we've sort of consistently ended up with with the awards and the three years that we've done it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so before we get into specifics again, tell me about people going to apply to be judges, people can submit their games to the awards, what are the kind of deadlines here, how can people participate in this of sounds compelling to them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we'll be accepting judge-self nominations in the month of April.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be a Google form on the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be sharing on social media, the website is the awards.games.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that I want to particularly note this year is that I've made this like a public commitment that at least 50% of the judging panel, which is usually like 12 people,
[SPEAKER_00]: will be people of color, and at least 50% will be people of a marginalized gender identity, and those are not obviously mutually exclusive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have loved the judging panels that we've gotten in the past, but I want to make sure that minority groups within the tabletop role-playing game community know that I'm specifically interested in hearing their thoughts and want them to be involved in this, and I'm hoping that also inspires people to submit games as well,
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of which, the games will be, or, you know, games, podcasts, art essays, we need to what have you, but you can submit those through a different form, but that's the month of May.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anything published, and this is where things are little, weirder than usual, anything published between June 1st, 2024 and May 31st, 2025 is eligible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're looking backwards a
[SPEAKER_00]: Or looking backwards a little bit, part of this is because I personally think it's just a little funny to kind of pick up where we left off because I did not do the awards last year because I had done it two years in a row and was a little burned out on it, but I always wanted to bring it back and then the other element is that I'm hoping that the looking backwards a little bit is going to both give some more attention to things that maybe weren't as
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, disseminated, distributed, what have you when they came out and also to eliminate some element of Reacency bias.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say, everyone should go do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think participating in the awards is really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the awards becomes better the more people.
[SPEAKER_01]: participate in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think it's a lot of work to judge your words.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I really think if you are excited about participating in this at all, like you should do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I do this, it was like super influential on how I think about games.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think it was one of the things that led to me starting dice exploded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: how much conversation about games I was able to have during that judging process.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to say up front, like it's a wonderful thing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also a significant time commitment, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just, that's the heads up I want to give people.
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So check it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: But with all that said, let's talk about some of the games from last time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these were all games that were published
[SPEAKER_01]: June 2023 through the end of May 2024, you have picked our first game that we're going to kind of spotlight here.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is it and what mechanic of you pull from it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, our first game is Cloud Empress by Wantz,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a mother ship hack, I suppose it's more accurately a panic engine and the mechanic that I have chosen is that you gain a stress whenever you draw your weapon and also when someone draws their weapon on you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I've chosen this is because, and I sort of looked back through what I could find in the mothership rules that, again, it's obviously based on to sort of compare it, and a lot of the stress triggers in that game are mostly on sort of like failure of various roles, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like you're making a save, you're making an attack, whatever if you fail you it's like you often take like a detend of stress or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very variable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can really change the tenor of a scene if all of a sudden you're like, oh, I've taken a lot of stress and that's like obviously a very bad thing because it triggers panic, it triggers bad other bad things to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can create a little bit of a death spiral, but that's also sort of the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in Cloud Empress, there are other triggers specifically that, you know, for like when you take one stress, I wanted to focus on this one because it's, I've ended really interesting that it's directly
[SPEAKER_00]: other effects of violence or not even violence right they don't even have to be attacked like it's just like it's aggression This is a mechanic that is so clearly about violence, but not through
[SPEAKER_01]: mechanizing violence itself, but through mechanizing the threat of violence, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it is saying like one of the most important parts of violence is the sort of hovering ghost of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, the like the hand sort of like like in a sort of like a Western, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the like the hands hovering over a gun, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the 100% same metaphor, but yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the idea of like
[SPEAKER_00]: building into the rules like hey when you draw a weapon like you are changing something about the scene right like you are changing something about the action that is happening it's changing you it's changing like the people that you're interacting with that you're talking to that you're like threatening now presumably right you could argue that like that sort of happens already you're right like whenever you do whatever you draw a weapon like if you describe drawing a weapon in a game it's like yeah you've
[SPEAKER_00]: you've changed this from a conversation to a threat, to a fight, to aggression, what have you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But building that into the, the, well, the panic engine of it all, of like, yeah, you get stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more stress you have, the more likely you are to panic when you panic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Worst things happen to you of the chance to just potentially die like if you get too stressed You can just like essentially have a heart attack and it may be really think about those actions, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You really have to think about like okay, like is violence is drawing a weapon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's even making a threat the right thing to do here Yeah, that the right thing for my character is that the right thing for anyone else's character
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, really cool mechanic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think cloud impressed just generally being a hack of mothership that looks very, very different from mothership.
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very cool product.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad it got recognized here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know they've done a lot of building on it and community building around it since it won this award too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people should definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything the last thing that I'll say to you that I really like about it is the sort of modularity of it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not just this particular line or these two triggers, but like the listing of triggers of like game one stress when this happens really opens up design for future supplements or even adventures.
[SPEAKER_00]: where they want to customize the environment or the vibe of like, you know, of a dungeon or a social encounter or whatever or a whole, again, a whole module, you can say like, oh, yeah, when you're in this location or when you're talking to this person, you gain a stress when X thing happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like you couldn't do that with mothership, but like by putting it into the base rules, by building it into
[SPEAKER_00]: the engine from the jump.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it really sort of highlights that as like this is a really potentially interesting and fruitful place to do some design, even just in like a home game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it would be trivial to take this rule and drop it into your mother's ship game, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my first pick is from border riding by Joe Reed, which is a game about
[SPEAKER_01]: a particular location and a community within that location and how that locations borders change across generations or decades or certain months of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, like every time, you'll play out a little bit of story and then you'll jump forward in time and redraw the map of what your thing looks like and you'll keep doing this over and over at the map keeps changing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That the game comes in the form factor of like an old road trip glove box map that you like open and like fold out and it has this huge gorgeous map on it with all the rules of the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: in the margins around the central giant map.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the mechanic that I picked.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the forefactor this game, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's just, it's so cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so easy to imagine taking this thing, folding it out and setting it on the center of the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you have done that, looking up rules seems way easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also, it's just, I love the idea of
[SPEAKER_01]: games don't have to be books like they can come in other forms like you can do something else with the game like this road trip map really puts you in the mindset of like this is a game about space and like territory and landscape and like everything that you were to associate with that like the paper itself once you've unfolded everything it's so large that
[SPEAKER_01]: makes the thing feel expansive, like just the form factor of this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's neat, but then it also like creates a emotional experience in you as you were just imagining playing the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then again, once you sit down at this table, to actually play it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find that really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to find somewhere
[SPEAKER_01]: the United States that'll just like print me stupid maps like this so I could make a game like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also want to like, I want people to figure out how to like put games on, you know, cupcake wrappers or whatever, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like just like, yeah, I feel like the fact that this game is such a playable game, not in traditional form factors, just really, really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that also really comes through even when you don't have the physical product because that's the thing with the awards that we only have digital products like yeah even in the digital format, they have a PDF of like the whole just like what the image of it all laid out would look like right like of the map but they also just had like the rules like in a little booklet form because they also provide I think it that's probably the digital only version is like a little booklet
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I 100% agree that the physical product of the game is so genuinely impressive and like an undeniable factor of how you engage with the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like even if you don't have the ability to get that original physical version like the scenes and like the the
[SPEAKER_00]: message of the game like comes through even in just the rules and like the physical map product of it only like enhances that it's not like you must have the map product in order to get something out of the game, you know, I think that if you did so you had to have the math product I might like it even more.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, I do think that there is something like the game was fully unsolvable with this topic about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm thinking now about a earlier year of the awards recognized Tim Hutchings, a collection of improving exercises, as I recall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a game loosely, maybe it's a game.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a game like objects that is styled as a basically an old how to learn to draw.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I had like, we were supposed to have done exercises and stuff, but it's also like the way Tim presented that was like, hey, my name's Tim Hutchings and I like found this old palette of books published in 1928 and now you can buy one from my website right and you really come to the bit of that of like that's what this thing is and so the physical product you kind of need to like play the thing because you are supposed to be doing this drawing and the game really wants you to be doing this drawing in the book itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the digital version is like a PDF that's like a poorly scanned at a public library ass, like PDF, you know, like the digital format, like it commits to that, that framing device around the game, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that way, I like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like games that.
[SPEAKER_01]: are committing to their thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever that thing is, if you are changing media from digital to physical, embracing that change and adapting to that change is really exciting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think Puerto Riding does that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, no, it is very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kinds of games that sort of demand a certain way of engaging with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like they're unplayable otherwise, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like you can't, you know, like part of the whole sort of benefit of tabletop games is is the ability to.
[SPEAKER_00]: like two play around with it and change it's like context and rules if you want even and et cetera et cetera but when it's a game like this where it's basically an old like street map they were like map of the u.s. you'd have to like unfold you had to like a co-pilot had do you have the whole map unfolded in the car next to you next to a driver like that's going to change how you play it and if you play it in a different way it's like you're not playing the game but you are playing kind of a different game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, what's your second pick?
[SPEAKER_00]: My second pick is how to introduce this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a collection of three games.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the collection is called Forgotten Palaces by Anna Amthropy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And within that collection, there is a game called this maze will be big enough to call home someday.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the game is about basically a group of kids making their dream video game in 1990X.
[SPEAKER_00]: So some sort of abstract period in the 90s and it's not quite like an asky-based like visual design, it's not quite like original door fortress, but
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's kind of like that where you're like drawing rooms and like sort of building a dungeon building a game and putting these characters that is provided in the game onto the dungeon to represent various things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the specific mechanic that I'm looking at, I don't call it out here, is in the ending the game section.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it reads, when every room on the map has a name, and in parentheses, remember, rooms added by players are named immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: The game is wrapping.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really,
[SPEAKER_00]: there's something very sort of like emotional about reading that because the idea is that like at the beginning of the game you start with a certain number of unnamed rooms there's like a provided map that has like some that are already drawn or of course if you just want to start fully blank like you can just draw a bunch of empty rooms yourself and then sort of start playing but
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a sort of damn acleus sort of hanging over your head, you know, of like this idea of like we have full control over like when we end this game, but we also don't because other people are playing so like if everyone agrees then like yeah you could never end the game right and much like a video game that gets stuck in development hell you could be like we're going to keep making this bigger we're never going to stop making this game it's never going to be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you could all decide, like, yeah, like, okay, I think we're kind of done, you know, let's end the game now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if ideally this would be in character, but you could have this kind of conflict between actual players as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have someone who's like, I'm actually done making this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be finished and everyone else is like, no, we want to keep going.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't stop them from naming those unnamed rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this really like,
[SPEAKER_00]: it's it's pointing you towards like hey you like you have control over when the game is done you don't have to judge it based on like when it sort of feels right or like when the when the deck of cards runs out it's like you have the choice of when to finish it but also that comes with its own sort of like threat and promise of like
[SPEAKER_00]: what will it feel like to finish it what will it feel like at the end when we name our last unnamed room like the game is rapid we're done making the game and again like we were sort of talking about with border writing it's like it's very like three tactile it's very physical it's and that it's very it's visual too right you have a hidden middle of your play space it's what you're engaging with constantly you're sort of like looking at it
[SPEAKER_00]: And you see things filling up, and it's getting bigger, but also it's kind of getting smaller in a sense because like the moment you name an unnamed a room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The game is that much closer to being done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't get as much of an emotional reaction to this as you, I think, I mean, games end, you know, and like, everything, everything gets to that point eventually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that there's not a lot here that is like making me feel that more than typical.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I really do appreciate
[SPEAKER_01]: any game that calls out its ending.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think role playing games at large have a really bad habit of not telling you went to expect an ending or how to conclude playing them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes that's one shot games, sometimes that's of very frequently, that's campaign-length games.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that it's really, really helpful in play to have that sense of
[SPEAKER_01]: casing of like, are we halfway through this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we a quarter of the way through this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I know because of my experience as a human being with story structures like embedded in my brain, I know what kinds of swings to take when in the process if you are making that process and its duration really cleared of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so anything that is like intentionally laying out really early on, this is when the game is going to end is really welcome to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I can see why you might not have the same sort of emotional connection to it, but the reason that I Like for sure that I identify that the reason why it is like I get that is because of like the framing device of like You're a bunch of kids who are like making the game right and so like I'm imagining in play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it provides an interesting
[SPEAKER_00]: outlet for both anyway game but also for like introducing conflict between characters right where it's like where you can have that sense of like of these kids where someone can be like well I want to do this thing no one else is feeling that they're like okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna act out and like
[SPEAKER_00]: get us closer to ending the game and like that's a really interesting way to demonstrate that like obviously you can just say that but you can also take a very material step towards doing that and I also like I mean I mean I mean I was born in the 90s I was a child and have very few actual memories in that period of time and I've never made you know like a video game but it also feels very sort of nostalgic in that sense of like thinking back to like
[SPEAKER_00]: as a kid of like playing and sort of like not wanting that play to end but also like knowing that it will kind of like you're saying like you know like things end and like that that's what happens and like as a kid I feel like I both knew that and also hoped it wouldn't happen essentially right and I'm seeing a similar
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like connecting a similar vibe to that at least in my own experience in this of that sense of like, yeah, like it's going to end, we know that we're adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only do we know that things end, we also have like X number of hours to play this game that we decided to sit down and give our time to, but it does that double duty of like bringing a sort of thematic element of the framing device to the forefront while also just sort of respecting the players time and giving them a clear out for like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, like you can like you're gonna like the game is wrapping the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: We finish the game will be complete But it also leaves you open the possibility of like but like is the game done quote-unquote like the kids make the game They actually wanted to make like did they have a complete game and we're like wow We really did that and we made the perfect game exactly like we wanted
[SPEAKER_00]: you know dust hands jobs done right like it's both a very practical mechanic and also something that can sort of expand out beyond that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: My second pick our last game today is string the Hornets Nest at Hethamcia.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, but here we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is an adventure module.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a dungeon, the premise of this adventure is that there's a monk who's been meditating for about 10 years, and it's getting very close at the end of his meditation.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the time that he has been meditating, a giant,
[SPEAKER_01]: Nest of bees has taken root inside of his meditation dungeon and the monks outside need you to go in and rescue him so that he can complete his meditation in safety away from the giant bees and you know there are all sorts of like atomitan guardians that have been set up to keep people from coming in and
[SPEAKER_01]: interfering with his meditation, so it's going to be a tough time getting in there, getting this guy, and then getting out again without jostling him so much that he wakes up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the mechanic that I really like here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is a dungeon where like there's a
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a very clear goal from the outset that is not just like grave robbing, you know, I always appreciate that in a dungeon, but I also really like a dungeon or any game where like you are given one fictional toy to play with like one thing that the dungeon is kind of like a based around and here that is escort this meditating man you can't
[SPEAKER_01]: drop him or make loud noises around him or speak directly to him or he'll wake up and like that would be really bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then mission game over.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also plays into something I really love in kind of stories telling at large, which is the most interesting answer to what should this thing be is a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like you can easily imagine like getting to the point where it's like I've got this dungeon where I want to like escort a thing through the dungeon like what should the thing be and
[SPEAKER_01]: the most interesting answer is probably a person like here's here's this person let's have a relationship with this guy like the mythology around him and then like in practice is he a guy or is he just like some gear that you're lugging around you i i don't know but i i like this so much conceptually i think it's just just strong
[SPEAKER_01]: premise for a dungeon and makes all the different factions in the dungeon feel cohesive because they're all kind of tied into that core premise too.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's just really smart design.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I think what you're saying like it is interesting what you said like these sort of the sense of like, oh, is this a guy or like some gear right and the adventure does not say like this is going to happen, but it's not hard to extrapolate that like if you wake up this monk before the 10 year process is complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: He and all the other monks are going to be upset like, you know, that doesn't mean I'm going to like attack you you got big stakes though exactly like, but honestly it would probably be a much worse for them to like for him to wake up and be like, no, I'm very disappointed you know, like, oh, no, like I've disappointed this guy that I was supposed to help like the the habit, the disciples, you know, whoever else is around and I think that is I think for a lot of people can feel like a more
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it can feel like a more like consequential outcome than just like, oh, I didn't get paid, you know, or even like a, oh, I failed to bring this powerful magical artifact somewhere and I didn't see a great evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, you know that you should be upset about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you feel that in the same way as like a meditating monk who wakes up and is like, oh, but I was so close and then you ruined it and that is making me sad and upset.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are those are some of our favorites from last time on the awards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I mean, we set all this up top, but let's close out again with telling people how they can get involved here, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So April, you can submit yourself as a judge where you can tell your friends that they should submit themselves as judges.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, I don't think I want to say about this, if you don't think that you're qualified, I promise you that you're qualified, like 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: The once you have read 200 games or 100 games or whatever ends up being like you will be qualified to make judgments about those games.
[SPEAKER_01]: So get yourself in there or whoever in your community is interested, apply to be a judge and then in May submit all your stuff that got published between what were the dates again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically June 2024 to May 2025.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what can we expect in terms of the process from the words?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like one of the winners can get announced, once the judging gonna happen, and all that's kind of fun stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so judging will be from June to August for the first round.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after votes go in for that first round, there'll be another shorter period, maybe eight weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then winners will be selected and announced in a live stream channel, TBD.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will be in,
[SPEAKER_00]: October ish.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember that you can submit not just games also like lyrical urology, a great podcast that I believe is crowdfunding.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's second season right now from production.
[SPEAKER_01]: One and a word in the last cycle.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only recent dice exporter hasn't been submitted in the past is because I judged for them and I felt like there was a conflict of interest there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you're making stuff that is around games also, you should get in there, submit that stuff too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't think it qualifies, A, it might and B, that can also be up to the judges to decide.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nico, thanks for coming back on DICE Explitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: One day we'll have you on for a normal format episode, but not a day yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did not yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy, you know, I'm happy to be able to talk about multiple things in one episode, even if we could make full episodes out of any of these.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again to Niko for being here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, you can apply to be a judge for the awards in April, and you can submit all your work in May.
[SPEAKER_01]: Check for links in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to everyone's sports dice, splutter on Patreon.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can follow Niko on Blue Sky at gigantic spider.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find me on Blue Sky at dicexplutter and you can find my games at sdonowald.h.io.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our logo is designed by SportGree.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray and our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tesmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thanks to you for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta go make lunch.