Hello and welcome to the Dice Exploder 2023 end of year bonanza! I love me a good ranked list of movies on an end of year movie podcast, but ranked lists are bad and this show’s about RPGs not movies, so you get this instead. It’s me, Aaron King of the RTFM podcast, Lady Tabletop of the Alone at the Table podcast, and Sharang Biswas of winning tons of Ennies this year and being a games academic, and the four of us (plus a half dozen other special guests) are here to tell you about a bunch of cool games shit we played, read, and listened to this year. Hope you had a great year in games! Come on down and listen to ours. Our picks: Aaron’s games * GREED by Gormengeist * Undertree Temple of the Elf Gods by Happy Chthonian * Crush Depth Apparition by Amanda Lee Franck Audrey’s games * Void 1680 AM by Ken Lowery * Wreck This Deck by Black Armada Games (Josh Fox and Becky Annison) * Extreme Meatpunks Forever by Sinister Beard Games Sharang’s games * Fight With Spirit by Story Brewers Roleplaying * The Silt Verses by Gabriel Robinson and Jason Cordova * The Broadcast by Jason Morningstar and Lizzie Stark Sam’s games * Eating Oranges in the Shower by Hazel Anneke Dixon * Barkeep on the Borderlands by W. F. Smith * Exiles by em acosta Game adjacent things * Aaron: Grog the Frog by Alba BG * Audrey: Roleplaying Games Enter the World of Ballet in a Unique New Performance by Linda Codega * Sharang: The Dungeons & Dragons players of Death Row by Keri Blakinger * Sam: The Ink That Bleeds by Paul Czege (here’s an excerpt from the Indie Game Reading Club) Thing we’re proud of * Aaron: RTFM, Speedrune, and Aaron’s annual list of favorite books * Audrey: Behold: A Game * Sharang: Winning 3 Ennies: Judges choice for MOONLIGHT ON ROSEVILLE BEACH and Best Rules/Best Family Game for AVATAR * Sam: you’re lookin at it Picks from friends of the show: * Ray Chou: Decuma * Thomas Manuel: A.A. Voigt on Youtube, Daydreaming About Dragons podcast by Judd Karlman, the Indie Game Reading Club, and Aaron Marks at Cannibal Halfling. * Mikey Hamm: Picturepedia and other coffee table reference books * John Harper: Girl By Moonlight * Em Acosta: The Zone and Blades in ‘68 * Nova / Idle Cartulary: mindfulness fantasy map drawing (see her Dungeons Regularly vols. 1 and 2) * Moe Poplar: the Dice Exploder podcast Further reading: * Meakpunk manifesto by Heather “Flowers” Robertson * Sharang’s piece about Brindlewood Bay * Amanda Lee Franck’s Comradery * Alba BG’s Instagram * BALLETCOLLECTIVE presents THE MOMENT IS IMMINENT * RTFM patreon episode on VOID 1680 AM * LadyTabletop’s VOID 1680 AM broadcast Socials Aaron can be found on, like, just listen to RTFM, linked above. Audrey on Tumblr, and her podcast Alone at the Table about solo games. Sharang is on itch and Twitter and Bluesky. Sam is @sdunnewold on all socials 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! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit diceexploder.substack.com