Welcome back to Waiting on the Trade, a monthly comics book club for people who don’t have time for monthly comics!

In this episode, guest host Jonathan Gurney gets sucked into the emo roleplaying adventure that is our podcast, as we discuss Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles’s DIE Vol. 1.

This episode’s explanations, observations, and links of note include:

• If you want to nose through the DIE RPG rules, you can do so by clicking here. We all loved how the game mechanics influenced DIE‘s narrative (and vice versa).
• If you enjoyed the essays at the back of DIE, you should sign up for Kieron Gillen’s newsletter. There’s at least one good joke each week, in addition to quite-interesting-ramblings.
• I wanted to back up our claim that Dungeons & Dragons is currently having its best years ever.
• Come on, you knew we were going to link you to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, so you didn’t have to look it up yourself. Still want to see a Trust Knight, despite Pat’s gentle derision.
• Behold, Jono’s favorite D&D deity in all his glam glory.
• We drop so many references to video games, RPG systems, TV shows, and books in this episode that it’s impossible to re-reference them all here. But I do want to give a special shout-out to Jono’s Guardians of the Flame comparison, since it’s his episode and all.
• Want to learn more about Albany, Western Australia’s connection to World War I? I did.
• You likely noticed that I was unclear on exactly how to refer to Dominic/Ash, pronoun-wise, throughout this episode. Gillen says “He” is appropriate for Dominic and “She” for Ash.
• OK, sorry, I couldn’t resist. We talked about mecha dragons too much to not include this link.

Follow-Up Recommendations

If you liked DIE Vol. 1, we think you might also like:

• Rat Queens.
• Erfworld.
• Of Dice and Men.
• And, of course, DIE 6 – which releases this week!

If you enjoyed Jono’s time on the podcast, be sure to check out his pet pictures on Instagram. And be sure to join us here next month, when we discuss Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku Vol. 1 with guest host Bryce Manning.

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New to the show? Waiting on the Trade is a monthly comics podcast, run by two gents who don’t have time for monthly comics. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at WaitingOnTheTrade@gmail.com.

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As always, thanks for listening!