Dragon-Blooded schemes, Nazi-hunting vampires, and dice counted aloud.
Pair of Dice Lost is an actual-play show where dice pools get counted out loud and rules get settled in the moment. Brendan is storyteller for an Exalted campaign about living gods on the wrong side of the law, while 'Eat the Reich' turns a party of vampires loose on World War II.
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Pair of Dice Lost is an actual-play podcast that records tabletop roleplaying games with the dice math, the crosstalk and the occasional dropped connection left in. Two very different games sit side by side. The first is 'Exalted: Like a Dragon-Blooded', which storyteller Brendan introduces as a game about living gods on the wrong side of the law. Each player opens with a name, pronouns and a character. Tyler plays Ricky, a fire-aspected street exorcist; Christina plays Elyon, a water-aspected investigator; Cody plays Amalur Devine, an air-aspected shady businessman; and Britt plays alongside them. The system is crunchy, and none of it happens off-mic. Players count thirteen-die pools aloud, stack automatic successes, spend motes to raise a trait and spend willpower on a roll. In one scene a character turns a power on a rival to uncover the intimacy he most wants hidden, the kind of leverage the rules reward when it is used for blackmail. The rival spends motes to pump his guile, and the roll still comes up twelve successes. In another, a sixteen-success performance roll wakes a creature that recognises Britt's character as the leader of its clan. Brendan is open about the production side. In one cold open he thanks listeners for their feedback, explains that technical issues cost the group its entire Hundred Kingdoms War arc, and says Act 4 will wait until it is fully edited, with extra scenes added to liven up the finale and its extended combats, as he did with 'Friendly Neighborhood Exalts'. The Exalted sign-off credits the theme, 'Dragon Dance' by Raphael Crux, and rewards anyone still listening with stunt dice. The second game, 'Eat the Reich', swaps intrigue for pulp. The players are vampires loose in World War II, and the fiction is cheerfully excessive: bats devour a priest, the party shelters in a church while Nazi troops shoot it up, and the narration waves off the old rule about vampires and sacred ground as Catholic propaganda. Objectives carry threat ratings and success targets, so an aerial turn that opens with a vampiric screech at incoming planes and ends with grappling hooks wrapped around a wing gets costed in blood and dice. When Hitler's voice takes over the radio in a game where he is not supposed to speak, a character simply punches it. A handbag-and-stiletto takedown gets quoted back with relish across two episodes. The seams show here too, as players pull up the wrong chat, forget how much blood they have left and restart Discord. With the Eiffel Tower, a zeppelin fight and Hitler himself still ahead, one player asks to make the game last longer instead of rushing the ending.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes hearing a crunchy system like Exalted worked through roll by roll, and who is happy to switch to bloody, profane World War II pulp when the table picks up 'Eat the Reich'.
What sets it apart: It pairs a rules-dense, act-structured Exalted campaign with a gory vampires-versus-Nazis romp, and in both the table's working parts stay audible: dice tallies, mote spending, dropped connections and a storyteller who openly explains what was lost and what he is still editing.
A group of nerds playing table top games. We always yeet the baby
A vampire plots to steer a plane by grappling hook; your inner rules lawyer gets the dice count.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A social roll exposes a hidden intimacy so strange that the mechanics become part of the dread.
The episode closes in on the finale by letting a rules dispute turn into something much more personal. A Dragon-Blooded character uses rumor dredging gaze to expose the intimacy the target most wants buried, while the target spends motes to raise Guile and still cannot stop the…
A quick return route gets complicated when a tyrant lizard enters the final-battle planning.
Pair of Dice Lost turns a quick route back into Chirskiro into a messy final-battle setup, pairing a portal through the family's vault in Great Forks with the sudden problem of an awakened tyrant lizard.
A hijacked radio and a giant man-bat push an Eiffel Tower fight into wild aerial combat.
The Eiffel Tower fight opens with a Mustang out of time, a German radio voice announcing Hitler's control of the airwaves, and Sir Drake preparing to unveil Sivarhound.
A garage escape becomes a tactical scramble of dice, dropped connections, and one very useful Mustang.
Escape plans rarely arrive fully assembled, and this one has to be built under pressure, with an armored truck and motorcycles closing off the garage exit.
A dice negotiation turns Nazi blood, critical sixes, and an unfinished route into grim tabletop comedy.
Eat the Reich makes a dice-heavy objective feel like a grisly comic set piece, with the players weighing successes, incoming damage, a restored firebomb, and the question of how much Nazi blood is taken or consumed.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
A group of players begin a session of the Exalted tabletop RPG, introducing their characters and setting the scene.
A group of players begin a session of the Exalted tabletop RPG, introducing their characters and setting up the ongoing story.
A group of players introduce their characters for a session of the Exalted tabletop RPG, set in a world of living gods on the wrong side of the law.
A group of players introduce their characters for a game of Exalted set in the Nexus pleasure district.
Brendan says this is the last Act 3 episode, and the lost Hundred Kingdoms War arc will be rebuilt before Act 4 resumes.
["Ferris spends a sixteen-success animal-handling roll waking a tyrant lizard into a new familiar, and Devine's stealth run ends with Unbowed Ashen Mountain in the doorway.", "Brendan's Exalted table puts Tyler's Ricky, Christina's Elyon, Cody's Amalur Devine, Britt's Rush Ferris, and Mikayla's Turali on a vault route from Great Forks to Chiroscuro.", "The party treats the Resht family's pool house as a hidden entry point, passes through the cleaned-up vault, and jokes about protection rackets and a magical prison pocket.", "Chiroscuro's undercity is abandoned but maintained, with lit front desks, swept rooms, and Ragal Salon talking about Amalur Devine's return behind a Shave D'Adam door."]
Pair of Dice Lost's Eat the Reich: Episode 5 opens with Hitler hijacking the radio to announce Sivarhound while the coterie pushes toward the Eiffel Tower.
Pair of Dice Lost’s Eat the Reich: Episode 4 centers on a garage escape under fire from Nazi motorcycles, an armored car, and rooftop snipers.
["Pair of Dice Lost's \"Eat the Reich: Episode 3\" opens with a Michael Kors bag strangling joke before Cody pushes the table into a German technology pavilion and a dice-heavy combat scene.", "Cody runs the session while Chuck, Astrid, Flint, Irina, and Nicole trade blood counts, damage blocks, and combat abilities as they fight through the pavilion.", "Chuck's acid-spit revolver attack takes down Stolzadot, the steel-skinned half-man, half-machine boss with inch-thick armor and six threat.", "After the kill, the crew drinks the blood, takes advances, grabs a prototype beam emitter and a loose glowing fuel source, and starts searching for the exit route."]
Pair of Dice Lost plays Eat the Reich: Episode 2 as vampires fight through a French church while two Nazi battalions attack from outside.
Pair of Dice Lost's "Eat the Reich: Episode 1" follows Cody running a vampire roleplaying mission in Sector 3 of Nazi-occupied Paris.
Pair of Dice Lost’s “Exalted: Like a Dragon-Blooded; Episode 119” follows Brendan and six players as their characters free adult prisoners from a boat after killing its sorcerer.
Pair of Dice Lost's “Exalted: Like a Dragon-Blooded; Episode 118” continues Act 3 with five Dragon-Blooded characters fighting over the Beacon of Hope.
Pair of Dice Lost’s “Exalted: Like a Dragon-Blooded; Episode 117” follows Brendan, Tyler, Christina, Cody, Britt, and Mikayla through a combat sequence involving Ricky, Elyon, Amalur Devine, Rush Ferris, and Turali of House Regara.