Let us just tell you, we love it when people come to play a sample game with us and say: "Well we wanted a different kind of RPG and when we saw yours was called 'No Dice' we just felt we had to try it!"

Yeah, that's good.

The slight disappointment that tends to follow when we hand out packs of cards we're less keen on (see below).

But the joy of contemplating an RPG with no dice is what gets us up in the morning. But we're not really talking about actual dice when we say that (apart from D4s like caltrops, good for incapacitating enemies but a more joyless randomiser does not exist). No, we're talking about dice as clunky, clattery, obtrusive, dictatorial machinery that obscures a story. No Dice is, and always will be, about the story and dice just really sum up what gets in the way of RP becoming a truly narrative pastime.

We have had some debate about whether we're a company. Well in the sense of a company of raggedy patched players who dance and juggle for your amusement... yes, we are. In the sense of a finely tuned money making enterprise that puts food on our tables, sadly, no, we're not. But we'd like to be both.

What has this to do with narrative gaming? The point is that all games currently on the market tend to favour game and necessarily somewhat obstruct role play. That's not to say that role playing doesn't happen but it is an optional extra that is encouraged but it is neither enabled nor supported.

We wanted to enable and support role playing while encouraging good gamesmanship but not enabling or supporting it to the expense of a ripping yarn.

Because then people who knew the mechanics of game balance could add a new string to their bow with our stuff. The fact that what this means is a new two-dimensional paradigm of RP where you can tune a session for "Story" or "Game" is an incidental but joyful by-product of the process.

We publish what we do partly because it's, well, what we do and we're enormously proud of that. But also because we use these books to run Narrative Gaming sessions. They are our tools and we're sharing them with you. The book is just the start, however. We want to play a game, probably with you. So our events are really a core part of our raison d'etre.

We haven't yet reached a point where we make money from events, however. So the books are our way of fundraising for even bigger and better events. Buying a No Dice book supports us, lets us know you like what we're doing, and brings the day when we can all have a massive story party together ever closer.

We'll see you there.

This is a misunderstanding of what No Dice is. No Dice is not the Core Book, or anyone of our publications. No Dice is a project that seeks to start with the "traditional" much talked about and practised but seldom written down freeform role playing.

We get that everyone who's a roleplayer some times likes to kick back and just freewheel, systemwise but most written material aims to provide sourcebook material and a numeric game-centric system to accompany it.

We might be idiots - strike that, we have discovered over time we are idiots - but we believe that anything can be described, formalised and enriched with taught techniques. Hell, there are acting schools so why can't there be "freeform RP" schools as well?

The reason, hitherto, has been that there's really no body of work on the topic. So No Dice are a group of gamers who want to step beyond the state of the art and blaze a new trail, designing RP products that move away from the competitive elements of the "game".

Our RPs are designed to be dramatic entertainments that use the features of games to add dramatic tension for participants.

The Core Book was our statement of what we saw around us in the field when the project began. Hence a lot of dyed-in-the-wool role players will see a lot that is familiar. It's a foundation, a base point from which we have set out innovation will come, but it's taken some time to move away from the way we saw free form RP at the beginning.

So, if you are reading the Core Book and you feel you're in familiar territory then you've, naturally come to the right place to go further. What we would like to do in later editions is make the Core Book into something you can send to that guy you know. The one who will only play a game if he can win. And that other guy you know. The one who likes the idea of RP but just doesn't get it, and he hates those competitive gits who always feel they have to win everything.

We want you, the freeform fan to be able to give them a copy of the Core Book and say "Here, read this, get back to me if any of is seems to make sense."

So that's where we're at. And we're hoping we can continue to go forward from there.

I point you to the words of No Dice Leo in his journal. I think that's all that needs to be said on that topic.