Old Men Running The World

Tag: die rpg

DIE RPG: When I roll A 1

I’ve been meaning to put this here for a while, but as the DIE RPG quickstart has been lobbed on Drivethru and Itch, it seems a good time. This is a tweaked version of something I wrote over on my newsletter, when I finished my long playtest campaign of DIE RPG.

I often think of this bit of Red Dwarf.

It’s where Rimmer is describing his great victories in Risk, much to Lister’s annoyance. An endless string of “And then I rolled a 6!” The joke being, that no-one is interested in hearing about people’s gaming adventures.

I spent fifteen years of my life trying to prove that wrong, and get people excited about that time I rolled a 6.

Or a 1.
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Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen lives in Bath, for a certain value of the word “lives”.

www.kierongillen.com

July 27, 2025
DIE RPG: That Horrorshow AI Emotion Wheel Emotion Knight Expansion

A couple of days ago, an AI generated emotion wheel went viral on Bluesky which lead to a bunch of folks messaging me saying it should be a DIE RPG expansion, lol, etc.

It is unwise to make jokes at me.

You can download this 4-page expansion PDF here.

It includes rules for playing Emotion Knights of any emotion on that wheel, including a stance for each emotion.

DIE RPG is available from Rowan Rook & Decard. I now realise you could abstractly run this expansion with the free Quickstart too, but don’t do that to yourself.

Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen lives in Bath, for a certain value of the word “lives”.

www.kierongillen.com

June 7, 2025
DIE RPG: Designer Notes
These originally occurred in the DIE Arcana beta. I’ve tweaked them a little to give any perspective born of bringing the game to completion.

The early drafts of DIE RPG were mostly written in a mode which Grant described as Uncle Kieron leaning over to you in the pub and ranting enthusiastically. Some of that remains in the final book, as one can’t purge that level of avuncular horror that easily.

However, one thing I don’t talk about explicitly is what I was trying to actually do. And so this is basically me answering the question “Hey, Kieron, wtf you doing here, man?”

My primary aims were to:
1. Support the themes of the comic in a different medium.
2. Be as accessible as possible.
These broke down in a few areas.
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Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen lives in Bath, for a certain value of the word “lives”.

www.kierongillen.com
January 30, 2025