Bone Throwers Theater

Bone Throwers Theater starts its episodes with a small ritual. A spoken introduction runs through what bones do, holding a body up and making it strong. It then recalls that diviners once threw them to read what was coming, and ends on the plastic and resin cubes that now fall from the players' fingers. The dice, in other words, are the bones, and the show is an RPG actual play podcast built on that idea. Its campaign thread is Wayfinders, a science-fiction game with Jordan as Game Master and Jeremy, Jeff, Johnny and Ellie playing the crew. Campaign episodes carry numbered titles such as 'BTT WF 1.5: Ruckus on the Rooftop', and that one picks up with a recap of what came before. In that episode, the scene moves on dice and banter: a streetwise roll one player would rather not make, a clue shaped like three separated triangles that someone compares to the Triforce before being corrected, and Kumu flung bodily onto a roof by a crewmate. 'BTT WF 1.4: Commentary 1' steps outside the fiction entirely. The players introduce themselves by the characters they normally play and talk through their decisions. One explains jumping straight off a balcony to show a character was not afraid. Another describes Sigma-9 as a resort world with long flights over pretty countryside for an avian species, and the group admits to being caught off guard when a character named Finch turned out to be human. The one-shots swing between very different systems, and the label is used loosely: Raccoon Sky Pirates runs across more than one episode, and there is one titled 'BTT One-Shot: Grimworld, Ep. 6'. The rules of Raccoon Sky Pirates are explained on the recording. Each character carries three attributes, such as sneaky, deft, cunning or simply 'YOLO', and a roll on a twelve-sided die that misses its mark can put a problem on the ship's track, which runs from straining through whoops to boom. In play, that turns into rake heads wired into a grappling hook, lowered down a chimney, and a lawn sprinkler yanked out of the ground as the complication. Grimworld puts Jordan on the player side, as Arlo, nicknamed Squint, while the table works through a firefight of dice pools, damage totals and a bonus die that replaces the lowest roll. The Shadowrun one-shot brings a different kind of backstory. The players recall starting on second edition, playing third with enough house rules to call it 3.5, and switching to fourth edition this time because Jordan handed over his 20th anniversary copy. What holds all of this together is the table itself: borrowed dice, quick rules checks and affectionate jabs. The Raccoon Sky Pirates episodes are a practical way in, because the rules are laid out from the ground up. Episodes close by naming the show a Nerd Circle podcast production, pointing to a website, an email address and a YouTube channel, and repeating the same parting line: may the bones fall ever in your favor.