On this episode I’m joined by Nychelle Schneider, also known as Mistletoe Kiss, a moderator from the Blades in the Dark discord and contributor to The Wildsea, the upcoming Dagger Isles supplement for Blades, and Underground Maps & Passkeys among others. Nychelle brought on the idea of customizing existing games, homebrewing mechanics for your table (or even publication). This is... a big conversation, chock full of cool ideas that I hope people take and run with. There are so many games out there, and I think there’s so much to be gained by making stuff that can plug into and enhance other people’s art. Nychelle also has so many interesting trains of thought about in this episode, many of which I didn’t follow up on as much as I wish I had. So I encourage you to listen to what she says, and then take those ideas an run with them. I hope that every week, but especially with this one. Further reading: A post-show blogpost about Sam’s joke Blades playbook The Boogeyman Blades in the Dark Nychelle’s Blades playbook The Surge Vincent Baker’s blogpost Apocalypse World Custom Advancement Tim Denee’s Dogs in the Bark Sam’s Blades crewsheet Spirit Chasers Sam’s Blades downtime hack Doskvol Breathes Several zines by Aaron King of PBTA moves that exist outside of games: Reading the Apocalypse, PbtA23 January Digest, and PbtA23 February Digest Socials: Nychelle’s website, Twitter, and itch. The Blades in the Dark Discord Sam on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch. Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show! Transcript: Dice Exploder: Nychelle === Sam: Hello and welcome to the season 2 finale of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and pull it apart like your dad fixing a broken vacuum. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and yes, this is the end of Season 2. We've laughed, we've cried, we've funded a whole friggin Kickstarter, and we are now going to take one hell of a break, because damn am I tired. I'm expecting Season 3 at the end of January, but we'll see how it goes. And in the meantime, keep an eye out for a number of bonus episodes I got planned. I've got that Mork Borg and accessibility episode recorded. I'm plotting out a, like, let's celebrate this year in RPGs panel show near the end of the year, and I may have a couple of other treats for you too. But this week, my co host is Nychelle Schneider, also known as Mistletoe Kiss. I knew Nychelle first as a moderator on the Blades in the Dark discord, where she's a community leader and just General encourager of everyone who stops by. Just a lovely human being. But she's also contributed to like a million projects the Underground Maps and Passkeys charity bundle of Blades content I put together a few years ago, the Wildsea, the upcoming Dagger Isles supplement for Blades. She's made A lot of Blades content. And when I asked her to come on the show, I was delighted that Nychelle wanted to talk about just that: adding your own mechanics to existing games. This is a big conversation. It's so full of cool ideas that I hope people really take and run with. There are so many games out there, and I think there's just so much to be gained by making stuff that can be plugged into and enhance other people's art. I've done this a lot with Blades myself, and I just never get enough of it. And Nychelle has so many interesting trains of thoughts about how to do this in this episode, many of which I didn't follow up on as much as I wish I had. So I really encourage you to listen to what she has to say carefully, and then keep pushing at those ideas. I hope that every week, but especially this week. So, with that, here is Nychelle on adding to existing games. And be warned, we get right into it, no hellos or anything. Okay, uh, here we go, prepare your ears for game design. Nychelle: I think a lot of times in game design, we can get caught up a lot in making s