Draw Maps, Leave Blanks (Dungeon World) with Tim Denee
From Dice Exploder by Sam Dunnewold
March 3, 2026 · 48 min · Season 8 · Episode 3
About this episode
Tim Denee discusses the balance of defining game fiction and mechanics in the context of his work on Blades '68.
Transcripts available at diceexploder.com If the thesis of last week’s episode was “hey the fiction of your game matters a lot and can even have mechanical effects,” how do you know how deeply to define that fiction? Maybe no one in indie games has recently faced that question on quite the scale of Tim Denee with Blades ‘68, an expansion to Blades in the Dark. I wanted to have him on to talk about when you completely reinvent the setting, how do you think about what parts of the fiction are important and need to be kept vs what parts should evolve and change? And to do that, we picked an old mechanic from Dungeon World that cuts to the heart of it: draw maps, leave blanks. But how detailed of maps, and how big of blanks? Further Reading Blades 68 on Backerkit Blades in the Dark by John Harper Dungeon World Tim’s maps of Doskvol Socials Tim on Bluesky and olddog.games Sam on Bluesky and itch The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com Our logo was designed by sporgory , our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer. Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show! Credits Our logo was designed by sporgory , our ad music is…
People in this episode
Host: Sam Dunnewold
Guest: Tim Denee
Topics covered
- game mechanics
- indie games
- fiction in games
- Dungeon World
- setting design
Keywords
- game design
- fiction
- mechanics
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Blades in the Dark
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: diceexploder.com
Books & works: Blades '68, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World
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