I meant to post about this over a month ago, but failed drastically. However, better late than never I suppose. (Sorry Eric). Myself and my good friends Rich and Marty were invited by the host Eric to feature on the GM Book Club podcast. This episode is called From Graphic Novels to Gaming Tables: How Monstress Inspires Adventure and is all about Monstress by Marjorie Liu.
I love graphic novels and comics and find that the stories tend to be bit wilder in this format. So it was a joy to do a deep dive on this one with the others. Eric did a masterful job of hosting and kept us all on track.
We discuss the book in the context of roleplaying and look for things to port into our games. Great fun!
If you would like to check it out choose one of the links below.
As the three of us are based in Australia, we now make up the international chapter of the podcast! I’m looking forward to recording more of these episodes in the near future and we have a couple locked in already.
I’ve just finished reading The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart a cult novel from the 1970’s about a man who lives his life by rolling a dice for all decisions. It’s a strange, comedic and slightly dark book and worth a read if you like that sort of thing. However, it got me thinking about the central feature of dice in the games that we play. There’s always a quiet moment just before the dice land, especially when there’s a lot hanging on the roll.
Breath held. Glances exchanged. As the dice decide your fate.
In that moment, the story does not belong to the Dungeon Master. It does not belong to the players. Instead it belongs firmly in the hands of Lady Fate. And if you let it… it can create something far more powerful than anything you planned during your session prep.
The Temptation to Control
Every Dungeon Master knows the pull. You’ve crafted the encounter. The story arc is all there. The perfect story is unfolding… until a player makes a completely unexpected choice or the dice threaten to derail everything. Using hidden rolls becomes a quiet safety net. A nudge here, a fudge there. The story stays intact. We’ve all been there, especially at the beginning of our DM careers.
But I believe that something subtle is lost in the process. When players suspect the outcome is being managed, tension fades. Victory feels softer. Failure feels less real. The game becomes less of a shared discovery and more of a guided tour. Consequently, the fun begins to fade.
Letting the dice speak is about surrendering that control. Not recklessly like Luke Rhinehart in the Dice Man, but deliberately. (Although some might say Luke Rhinehart was also being deliberate in his dicing… read the book to find out).
Open Rolls, Open Story
Rolling in the open changes the atmosphere immediately. Now, when the villain strikes, everyone sees the number and it’s associated consequence. When the rogue attempts the impossible leap, the result is there for everyone to witness. There’s no veil, no quiet adjustment behind the screen. Success or failure, it’s all there. And this, in a game, is electric.
It means that when a character fails, it wasn’t because the DM allowed it. It means when a desperate plan succeeds, it wasn’t because the DM wanted it to. The story earns its scars and triumphs honestly. Every roll matters more.
Let the dice decide the fate of your game
Fate is a Better Writer Than You
Here’s the uncomfortable secret: the dice often tell better stories than we do. We are chock full of preconceived ideas and notions. The books we love, the movies we’ve just watched, they’re all stored in your head waiting to be let out. Of course, the dice have none of these.
Planning a heroic last stand? The dice might deliver a sudden, brutal defeat instead. Expecting a tense negotiation? The dice might turn it into an unexpected alliance or a catastrophic insult.
These moments feel real because they are unplanned. They surprise everyone at the table, including,, most importantly, you.
Surprises like these are the heartbeat of engagement for everyone at the table. A campaign where outcomes are certain and safe becomes predictable. A campaign where fate is allowed to intervene becomes legend.
The Discipline of Not Rolling
Unlike the protagonist of the Dice Man, letting the dice tell the story does not mean rolling for everything. In fact, the opposite is true. If you roll constantly, the dice become noise and if I’m bein honest, something of an irritant. Ultimately, the magic fades. The key here is restraint. Roll when:
The outcome is uncertain
The stakes matter
Failure would change the situation in a meaningful way
Don’t roll when:
Success is obvious
Failure would stall the game without adding tension
The action is trivial or purely descriptive
Think of dice as the exclamation marks of your story, not every word.
Designing for Honest Outcomes
If you’re going to let fate take the wheel, your game needs to be ready for wherever it drives. That means:
Flexible encounters: Avoid hinging progress on a single success
Fail-forward thinking: Failure should open new paths, not close doors
Consequences over corrections: Let outcomes reshape the world rather than trying to steer back to a plan
When the dice derail your expectations, don’t try to fix it. Go with it and see where it takes you.
Trust at the Table
Open rolling is also an act of trust. You’re telling your players: “I’m not here to beat you, and I’m not here to save you. I’m here to discover what happens with you.”
Players take bigger risks. They invest more deeply. They accept failure more readily because they know it’s real. Ultimately, the table becomes less adversarial and more collaborative. Not in the sense of controlling outcomes, but in sharing the experience of them.
Oh no a 1…
When the Dice Hurt
Of course not every roll goes the way the table wants. Characters will fall at the worst possible moment. Plans will collapse. Sometimes the story will take a darker turn than expected.
This isn’t a flaw, it adds texture to the story. If you think about it the most memorable campaigns are rarely the ones where everything went right. They’re the ones where things went wrong and the group had to respond.
The Story That Emerges
When you stop hiding rolls, when you resist the urge to intervene, when you only call for dice at the moments that matter… something remarkable happens.
The story stops being something you as the DM tells. Instead it becomes something you witness. A living thing, shaped by decisions, chance, and consequence.
You’re no longer the Wizard of Oz sitting behind the curtain. You become more of a player sitting at the table, just like everyone else, watching the dice tumble and wondering…
“What happens next?”
And that question in games like these, is where the magic lives.
There are games that arrive with binders of lore, intricate rules, and the expectation that you will prepare. Then there is Nice Marines by Grant Howitt, a free one-page RPG that asks the simple question: what if genetically engineered space marines tried to solve problems with diplomacy?
I first came across this game on my favourite actual play podcast Dungeons and Daddies. Definitely worth a listen.
Everyone plays a kick ass, no nonsense murder machine in service to the Emperor of Mankind. Anyone who has walked past a Warhammer store knows the drill. Buzz cut, massive power armour and a very clear view on what action to take against heretics and aliens. Kill them all.
In this game the twist is that the war on this world is over and this team of murder hobos has been left to get the planet ready for the new imperial government that arrives in a weeks time. So no shooting your way out of problems. Diplomacy and tact are needed by these super soldiers who usually do their talking from the barrel of a gun.
Given it was one page of rules and I’d already planned and run Shoot out at Virellion Estate that day I decided to hot the table with zero prep. No maps, stat blocks or carefully balanced encounters. Just a table, some dice, and the kind of players who are keen to lean into whatever crazy concept hits the table.
The day of gaming had been so busy that I hadn’t had a chance to worry about this lack of prep until dinner, when it suddenly dawned on me that I’d be running it…. Here’s how it went.
The Setup: Bureaucrats vs Zealots
To say I didn’t do any prep is a slight over exaggeration. Straight after dinner I sat down with the one page of rules and rolled up the two factions who needed their dispute solved.
The Capuleys: bureaucratic administrators, drowning in parchment and procedure
The Motags: religious zealots of the Imperial Church, fueled by doctrine and divine certainty
Both had the same goal: Control the Governor’s Palace, and build a statue honouring the war hero fallen Brother-Captain Valek. No deeper intrigue. No hidden twist. Just two unstoppable forces politely trying to outmaneuver each other.
Besides writing a name and two word description for the leader of each faction, that was the extent of my prep.
Making It Work (Because the Rules only give you so Much)
Being literally one page Nice Marines is extremely light on guidance for the games master. So I bolted on a simple structure:
Each round = one day
Each marine gets one action per day
At the end of each day, everyone meets back at base to discuss their next plan
The bosses return on Day 5, so everything had to be “resolved” by then
This gave the game a rhythm and clear direction to the players around how to achieve their goals. As we had eight players, it was going to be difficult to keep them all engaged. Having a structure like this meant that no-one hogged the spotlight and there was a clear area for actions and discussion stopping the analysis paralysis that sometimes plagues players.
The Dice: Agents of Glorious Ruin
The core mechanic of this game is beautifully chaotic:
Roll low → something bad happens
Roll too high → something catastrophic happens
Outright success is an unusual thing to achieve. Only different flavours of disaster.
From this…..
Highlights from the Descent into Madness
I’m lucky in that my players are always up for some silliness. And that is what we got. Here ae some of the highlights from the session.
The planet’s communications system was accidentally destroyed during what was meant to be a simple data gathering excercise.
The meat farming industry suffered a similar fate, which raised some uncomfortable logistical questions about feeding the population.
A political marriage was arranged between the rival families to secure unity…
…which led to the murder of the now inconvenient spouses. Yes. That escalated quickly. The tone briefly dipped into something surprisingly dark before bouncing back into absurdity.
A grand parade featuring jetpacks turned into a skyborne chain reaction of explosions, debris, and heroic overcompensation.
Despite causing irreparable damage to the planet our bred-for-war heroes managed to solve the dispute and prepare the planet for Imperial rule.
to this… Space Kings!
The Emperor Mechanic (House Rule Madness)
We added one rule that, frankly, stole the show. Whenever anyone praised the Emperor, everyone at the table had to immediately praise the Emperor and make the sign of the Aquila.
Last person to do it? They get a black mark.
At the end of the game, whoever had the most black marks would likely be… dealt with… by the Inquisition. This did two things:
Kept everyone constantly on edge
Turned casual dialogue into a reflex-testing panic sport
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a table of grown adults snap into synchronized religious fervour because someone muttered “for the Emperor” under their breath.
Renowned author Dan Abnett knows the Aquila. He wont be talking to the inquisition any time soon.
An Unexpected Story
What surprised me most wasn’t the explosions or the chaos. It was the story that emerged. No one sat down intending to tell a tale about a forced political marriage spiralling into dark comedy. No one planned the uneasy alliance, the performative unity, or the quiet unraveling beneath it. But it happened anyway.
It seems that when you strip a game down to almost nothing, what fills the space is player ingenuity. And in this instance, morally questionable wedding planning.
Final Thoughts on Nice Marines
Nice Marines was amazing fun to run and from what I gather to play. However, it does rely on the following, which may not be every groups cup of tea.
Improvisation
Player creativity
A willingness to let things go completely off the rails
If you need structure or definitive rules, it will frustrate you. However, if instead you enjoy improvisational craziness and your group has a spare couple of hours definitely give it a go.
