From Introduction:
There’re basically five sorts of “things” in the Arcana, helpfully arranged into numbered sections.
Firstly, there’s alternate world-building and scenarios. The DIE Beta suggests a single set scenario – people who played an RPG as younger people getting back together and then getting sucked into a warped version of their teenage D&D game. This was chosen as it is a strong enough structure to work for any group you throw into it – plus the simple fact that kids getting back together as adults is the same structure the comicuses. This section gives my notes for completely different ways of running DIE – both in terms of the groups of people, and the worlds you drop them into. These are often considerably more demanding on a Master’s planning and/or improv skills, as you’re on your own a lot more. Still – there’s lots of fun stuff in here, which can be added to literally any game of DIE. There’s even one way which makes things simpler.
Secondly, I’ve also included a handful of pre-generated non-traditional DIE scenarios, both of which can work as a single-session game, or as a prompt for a larger one. If
you’re thinking of writing a DIE scenario for someone else to run or even making a more formal set of notes for yourself, these are likely a useful template to build from. One was
originally in the backmatter for issue 7, but the others are new (and one is festive!).
Thirdly, there’s additional worked examples of how various people have run DIE. If you’re still chewing over how a DIE game could go and what sort of prep you may wish to do, this is more grist for the mill. This is the Arcana at its most accessible – in fact, the only reason it’s not in the main text is that having five long examples of how DIE could
run in the document could overwhelm a newcomer instead of helping them.
Fourthly, we have some additional, slightly fiddly non-core rules. The most useful are probably the Minor Miracle generation, which are likely useful to a GM of a more
technical bent. There’s a couple of other minor things. If there’s any future Arcana additions, this is likely where I’ll lob stuff for extra playtesting.