iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Here's this week's prep (maybe don't read this Lin, but tbh who cares). The party's headed towards the Rim, so we've got a list of what's there. There's also a lot of shit going down off-screen at the Lake of the Iris. We're nearing endgame so I've consolidated all the remaining clocks into one.

150

Here's a barely legible page that shows more of these options. I reused this sheet over the course of 4-5 sessions which is why it's so dense. Clocks got crossed off as they lost relevance or transformed into something else. A lot of this stuff got written mid-session and became prep for next time.

1100

As characters / plot threads / threats naturally fell away and combined into trackable clusters, I'd get something that looks more like this:

A half letter (folded letter) page with a list of THREATS TO PUSH, 4 partially-ticked clocks, and a TO DO list.

1110

Completely impossible to track all that for me, but it was useful for ideating about the world. Here's an example of one of my fav threats, an NPC from a quasi-religious order of tech-worshipers. I like the custom move "reading someone in a Rim mask yields one word answers."

280

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 08/06/2026

Great call. This is what I started with. I was trying to do everything by the book to see how the prep system works when you commit to it hard. I found it fun and rewarding but with diminishing returns - when you actually name everyone and make them all threats, I think had >40 threats by session 2.

~15 sheets of paper spread out on a coffee table. Each has space for ~4 Apocalypse World threats on them.

2130

Dunno if this is my fav, but inspired by this fuckin guy from Midnight Run whose whole thing is to show up and say the piece of exposition we just got visually in a way that (1) confirms the audience understood it and (2) annoys the lead FBI agent so much it becomes a good running gag.

010

@notwritinggames.bsky.social is doing cyberpunk. It's so easy to make BABH cyberpunk it's almost unsettling to me. Also why do most of these genre-changes still have an associated Keanu movie? Who can say. Some favs from the venues list not pictured: hover car traffic jam, pawnshop full of limbs

Cyberpunk calling cards:
Unblinking cyber eye
Lipstick red hover car
Striking geometric makeup
Synthetic hunting falcon
Handheld cyberdeck covered in stickers
Laminated corporate identification card
Easily concealed laser knife
Malfunctioning mechanical hand
Branded black stilettos
Livestreaming implant with audience
Translucent green raincoat
Vending machine pistol
Old personal digital assistant

151

@wilkiescandylab.com's doing "neo-Western," like Fargo or Hell or High Water. What if "the City" was instead "the state of Texas?" I love Mikey's innovation of calling cards as bits of dialog. Not pictured: "save a cow, eat a cowgirl"

171

When @seaexcursion.itch.io pitched me a Roger Rabbit "Toon Town" playset I laughed out loud. John Wick Roger Rabbit, I mean lfg. My favorite part of this one: it's the only playset that wants a list of custom Wound calling cards:

A table of Toon Wounds calling cards:
Red hand slap across the cheek
Towering forehead bump
Accompanied by cartoon birds
A constellation of swirling stars
Piano keys for teeth
X-ray skeleton shock
Perfectly perforated torso
Riddled with mousetraps
Burnt to ash (except for their eyeballs)
Squashed into an accordion
Eyes knocked out of their head
Perfect silhouette hurled through a nearby wall
You can’t even see the injury, underneath the bandages

181

Last week I did a thread about how in Band-Aids & Bullet Holes you can change the whole genre of the game from John Wick to Constantine by giving someone the calling card "the fairy king's true name". I got a bunch of contributors to write new card packs like this, and I wanna show them off!

A table of Urban Fantasy calling cards:
Garrot wire pentacle
Someone else's shadow
Vial of vampire venom
Spell-scarred fingertips
Curse written in blood
Big fuckoff magic sword
Rune-marked human skull
Yesterday's faerie dust
Corrupted aura
Rifle with third eye scope
Heirloom amulet, cracked
Love potion
Muttered incantations

1237

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 20/05/2026

Toon Town gets a second character:

Mean lookin rabbit with tall ears and an eye patch

040

BABH's whole setup of "a community of characters yelling at each other" also ends up working well for... turns out basically any setting. Which makes crossover playsets like this also super easy! I think BABH will be a great "drop it into your existing setting to build out the wider world" game.

7 characters / NPCs for BABH themed around Blades

130

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 20/05/2026

I've found writing playsets for Band-Aids & Bullet Holes shockingly easy. It's just fun to write little evocative character traits and most people are intuitively great at it.

52 calling cards themed around Blades for BABH

100

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 20/05/2026

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes & Blades in the Dark: someone killed you. Figure out who and take your revenge before the Spirit Wardens catch up with you or you go feral like every other ghost you've ever known...

1155

And that brings us up to the present day! These powder-keg boards are going to be like board-game boards in the final box set. Here's a mock-up of what that might look like.

A nicer-still powder-keg. It's got a bright red background dotted with black, paper textures in the character slots, and a big ol' title.

Gradually I fleshed out the details on powder-kegs. I added an overview of the situation, an icon indicating the mentor is already dead, plus each character gets a description and a suggested scene (tech I stole from @jmstar.bsky.social's Space Larps).

A nicer powder-keg than last time with two character cards on it: Charon, a new hooded + n95 masked figure, and old Lockhart in their chicken mask.

This is my very first sketch of a powder-keg drawn 20 minutes before playtesting at Geeky Teas. It immediately worked so well. I was kinda shocked. Here's also a closeup on what those character cards look like. You can see how slimmed down character info got relative to that first sheet!

A card-sized jpg. Top half is an illustration of Lockhart: chicken mask, coat, sweater.

Bottom half is text:
LOCKHART
they/them
Calling card 1: animal head mask
Calling card 2: pool cue
Needs: an alibi for last night

130

Enter the "powder-keg", a relationship map with slots like on the last sheet that you plug character cards into (each character gets a card now instead of a whole sheet). These slots then showed how they related to other characters in the situation. Very Blades in the Dark crew sheet.

Two pieces of paper with card outlines on them, basically slots for cards to go in. The slots are labeled Mentor, Rival, Student, Student's Ex, and Rival's Parent. A couple playing cards hang out on the edge. Lockhart has a character card in the Student's Ex slot.

150

A third full-page pass. The idea here was you could put each character card in a slot on the sheet and see your whole deck laid out in front of you. This was especially useful during Duels when the game asks you to... lay out your deck like this. But it covered up the names of your calling cards.

A torn-up full page character sheet surrounded by some cards indicated by the sheet.

Here's a 2nd/3rd pass at the sheet. On the first of these I've cut Desperation; that makes it the newest version. On the others you can see I reworked how Debts are marked - you write names below questions that lead to Debts.

So here are 2 Lockharts on the first character sheet. Back before I wanna say @randylubin.com suggested writing directly onto cards, I assumed characters would need sheets where you marked which calling card matched to which playing card. So on this first sheet the 6 of spades is "animal head mask".

270

Lockhart (or Lockhardt back in this first draft) is the Hotline Miami character. I thought it'd be fun to do some pregens that called out particular game influences, so they get a chicken mask and, back at the beginning, a briefcase handcuffed to their wrist.

A promo image for Hotline Miami featuring a guy in a chicken mask with a baseball bat splattered with blood.

150

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 11/05/2026

Let's track the character sheet for Band-Aids & Bullet Holes over the course of design. "But wait," you say. "The game doesn't have a character sheet!" Well then this should be extra interesting.

A pile of character sheets laid out on a black table, each for a chicken-headed fella named Lockhart. Playing cards with writing on them are interspersed throughout the sheets.

13613

Also got a template in there for writing your own playsets for the game. I'm working on an example one right now that'll double as a module for another game...

Black text on white:

CHARACTER CARDS (BLACK: [CLUBS] [SPADES])
Spirit Warden's mask
heirloom blade
blood crawling towards you

241

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 07/05/2026

Revised Barf looks much grosser. Really lives up to his name. You gotta deliver on the promise of your premise! In this case the name Barf. Bonus third pic is an open-mouthed version I drew for a discord reactive (i.e. a thing where when you talk the pic switches to the open-mouthed version).

A dude with a long face, ugly short black hair, and real gross looking eyes. Huge bags under his eyes, I'm tellin you

God he's so much worse in this full version. Hair looks greasier, there's slightly too much detail in the face for this cartoony style. So gross.

Same guy as the second photo but with an open mouth all puckered up like he's making an "O" sound, but the effect is that his mouth looks like an anus with teeth inside it

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 07/05/2026

Talked on stream with @plusoneexp.bsky.social yesterday about playtesting art for Band-Aids & Bullet Holes. My main man Barf was always picked from the pile, then he got art and no one went for him anymore, then I changed his art and he's back to fan fav. Check him out: This Barf wasn't sad enough:

A big-chinned dude, curly hair, sunglasses, red Hawaiian shirt.

The same dude but with sadder eyebrows. Also I forgot to mention before but he's smoking two cigarettes lol

Same guy again but the shades are gone. He does look sadder, but mostly he looks stoned.

2181

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 06/05/2026

So I split the difference. Now in BABH there’s a bunch of stock characters, but they each only come with two out of three calling cards. You fill in the third. Meet Barf, my sad, wet boy:

A picture of a gross, greasy looking mfer. Below that is text:

BARF (he/him)
Calling card 1: bloody knuckles
Calling card 2: stench of cigarettes
Needs: a new kidney

180

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 05/05/2026

Sharpie all over a deck of playing cards. Build your character out of the shit they're known for: the stench of cigars, bisexual lighting, an erratic flamethrower. Fight Two Dozen Goons - this is the name of a move in this game.

2132

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 01/05/2026

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is getting some contributor playsets (think what if John Wick but cyberpunk) and my favorite so far is @seaexcursion.itch.io's Toon Town / Roger Rabbit playset. "Finch & Alley"

An alligator guy in a trench coat smoking a cigarette with a little bird on their head in a mobster hat also smoking a cigarette.

0215

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 22/04/2026

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes has a bunch of actual plays coming in the next month as we head into crowdfunding! Come hang out, see how the game runs, and watch a bunch of assassins get fed face-first into a wood chipper. 📅 this Monday, April 27th ⏰ 5pm PT / 8pm ET

An info image for this actual play. It reads:

BAND-AIDS & BULLET HOLTES
Get your bloody revenge
Monday April 27 | 5pm PT / 8pm ET | twitch.tv/lookingformomttrpg

There are then for portraits of performers with the names Sam Dunnewold, Maia Wilson, Max Weinberg, and Dusty Hill.

12814

Sam D @sam.diceexploder.com · 13/04/2026

Check out this image of a bunch of kids watching Reese pour milk on himself. This is mean to convey "everyone is staring! So embarrassing!" In 4:3, the empty edges of the frame make it seem like "why are these 6 kids standing so close together?" But that reveals how thoughtful the direction was!