359: gnomic short sentences
Hullo
DIE 4 soon
DIE 6 later
Old
Links
Bye
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One week until DIE: Loaded #4 drops, and it’s The Fun One. For a certain DIE-y value of fun. Here’s the preview pages we put out.
If you want to know more of DIE: Loaded? Here’s the microsite.
Actually, they’ve just launched some functionality, which means you can have actual customised urls. So “https://bindings.app/l/dieloaded” now will link directly to the site. So it’s easier to share and remember.
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April’s Solicits for image are out, and DIE: Loaded #6 is in there. Stephanie’s cover is above.
DIE: LOADED #6
Arriving: April 8, 2026
Lunar Code: 0226IM0380
Age Rating: M
Page Count: 32
Cover price: $3.99
Wherein things get significantly more complicated.
DIE: Loaded is very much in the gnomic short sentences stage of the hype cycle.
Our alt cover is by Toru Terada, whose work I didn’t know before Stephanie introduced me.
Suffice to say, I love it.
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I found time to get back to my list of 101 favourite TTRPGS, and covered 97 to 90. We’re over 10% done. That was meant to sound encouraging, and not doomed.
Anyway, I cover a whole load of games, such as Delta Green, Deadlands, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and other strangeness) and my least favourite version of D&D. I talk a whole lot of nonsense. Here’s a bit about Hobbit Tales…
My biggest memory was playing with my wife and my brother. We found that while my brother happily spurted out a stream of perfect “Daisy Merrywater”-esque hobbit names, my wife and I – professional writers – found that neither of us could actually improvise a Hobbit name better than “Bumbo”.
That said, you have to remember that Tolkien wasn’t great there one too – one of the best bits in the drafts of Lord of the Rings is where he reaches Bree and suddenly realised “Bingo Baggins” is a terrible name for a lead, so let’s call him Frodo instead.
...and lot more, inevitably.
For fans of early Kieron Learning To Write Comics, there’s a page of an exercise I did back in the early 00s, when I tried to convert comic pages.
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I believe I mentioned the My Last Dungeon patreon episode I was running previously. The first of the two part is now live for patreon backers, and the first 55 minutes of it is on their public feed, in your app of choice. If you want to see how I run DIE in a one shot, this is a good example. Total Party Kill is a particular grimy scenario, and the players are just great in here.
Also, if you want a drinking game, drink every time I use the word “awful” when describing something.
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Some crowdfunders! Previously pluggesd TTRPG zine the Deepest Dark is now live – doomed cave explorers narrative game. I’m playing this with her in a week or two, and am really looking forward to getting it to table. Paul Duffield is funding the third part of The Firelight Isle series. I’ve got the first two parts, and look forward to getting this one too. Paul does lovely work. Finally, Emma Vieceli’s musical Unfolding – Including, It Starts Small, the winner of the 2024 Best New Song contest – is funding for a new fancy run (“Industry sharing”). This is crowdfunding in the purest sense, in terms of helping something actually come into existence. You can support it here.
Jay and Miles’ X-plain the X-men has been just the heart of X-fandom for twelve years, and they’ve just announced they’ll be wrapping when they finish the Morrison run. It’s an amazing achievement, and I applaud them, and am also a little relieved they’ll never get to my stuff. Phew. Now is a great chance to go back through the archives.
El Sandifer’s Last War In Albion reaches From Hell, and drops a 32,000 chapter on it. Cripes. I am frustrated it took me days until the obvious “From El” pun struck me. I grow weak in my old age.
Lewis Carroll writes on the allure of the Inner Circle, and its capacity to make people who are not yet bad people become bad people. This was genuinely good, and also relevant.
I didn’t know that Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen were doing a discussion newsletter chewing over children’s books from a creator’s side, but them taking apart The Very Hungry Caterpillar is just a masterclass of two people who absolutely know a form looking at something with expert, charming eyes.
Joe Quesada continues his nuts-and-bolts of comic storytelling by talking about reading direction, and how your composition interacts with it. Honestly, skim down and look at the diagrams alone, to be aware of how direction interacts with stuff. This is very clear and very useful.
Caspar briefly interviewed by Bam Smack Pow about working on The Power Fantasy.
Clayton Cowles expands a thought he had on socials, and talks about how you don’t have to bust your ass to be good. As in, the work you put into a project doesn’t actually relate to the effect of the project, and being good actually means judging this. Doing something that is hard and less effective is an actually fairly easy trap to fall into. God knows I have.
Charlie Jane writes about how she loves technology, and her relation to it, leading to how actively depressing it is to be around right now with the way tech is. This echoes some of my own feelings around this, to be honest.
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What a week.
Main thing throwing a spanner in it was poor Iris, who turned out to have a chest infection. Antibiotics are doing their work, but she was a sad little girl for a while, and when here basic mode is wall-climbing, seeing her slumped and tired was clearly awful. She’s well enough to do the gym now, so that’s something. She’ll return to fighting crime across Bath’s skyline.
Obviously, that means time off work, and everyone’s time getting pushed backwards. The script I was going to wrap on Monday wrapped yesterday – and even that was two days earlier than I feared. I’m going to spend the rest of the working week on DIE 6’s backmatter – as well as an interview with Gar about the Metadungeon, I want to take a break from the gods to do something else. I’ve had the idea for a while of how to do a 30-minute 1 player 1 GM introduction teaser game of DIE – the sort of things that folks used to do at cons. I’m going to write it up and get it out there and see what people make of it. I suspect having something that you can run to show a curious friend a vertical slice of what it does could be useful for folks.
Script club was also sent out - and going through THREE #1’ script really made me think it was probably the best one to share full stop. It’s got so much research and notes in for folks. I dunno what the next one will be - I think The Power Fantasy #1 will be March, when issue 16 drops - so if folks have any ideas for what you’ll like to see this month, do shout.
However, as the week has been squeezed, I’m going to keep this short again. A Power Fantasy thing and another Iris thing before I get out.
The Power Fantasy #16’s orders came in. Now, it could just be how good my banger-version-of-Adagio-for-strings-powered instagram teaser is (it’s not that) but the orders were up on #15. As those who follow comics at all know, any kind of uptick on an issue is extremely unusual, so it was great to see. I did actually theorise that if there was an uptick, it would start around here, so it’s nice to see that. So thanks for retailers who have upped their orders, and to anyone who has spoken to the retailer about it. The Power Fantasy loves you.
Secondly, Iris.
It was time for bed and she’s legged it somewhere. I find her sitting in her pyjamas, on her seat at the table. She has her foot curled up before her, and she’s carefully applying left-over pasta cheese sauce over the soles of her feet.
I watch her doing it. She carries on doing it. I ask her what she’s doing.
She’s putting cheese sauce on her feet.
Yes, Iris, I can see that. But why are you putting cheese sauce on your feet?
She continues her task, clearly aware this is a stupid question.
She wants to leave cheese sauce footprints on the kitchen floor.
Of course. Silly me.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
5.2.2026