Dice Pool

Created by Evil Hat

A streaming series of GM advice to help you get that game off the shelf and onto the table. Tips & tricks from expert GMs for running Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and Fate.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

One week til our first GM Panel. Make sure you're signed up!!
4 days ago – Fri, Jan 03, 2025 at 12:46:56 PM

Hey friends,

All the surveys for Dice Pool have been sent out. If you haven't received yours, head to https://dice-pool.backerkit.com/ to retrieve the link and activate your Moonbeam account.

This is where we're hosting the streams so you need to create your account and join the Evil Hat Realm in order to take part in our panels. Instructions for that are in your BackerKit survey.

Our first panel is one week from tomorrow! Lily Eisner, Anthony Nomo, and Alexis Sara will share their insights on running Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Topics we currently have on the agenda include:

  • How conditions work
  • Creating characters the players want to engage with
  • Developing compelling villains

And more!

Our Thirsty Sword Lesbians panel will be Saturday, January 11th at 9am PDT. We hope you're as excited as we are. 

We'll see you over on Moonbeam!

Smoke Test, Moonbeam, and Seminar Dates!
25 days ago – Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 11:16:01 AM

Hi, friends. Several important items in this update so please take a moment to read through it.

1) We're sending out the smoke test today. This is an initial launch that only goes to a small percentage of backers. We use it to test the configuration of our BackerKit fulfillment pages. If you are part of the test, you will  get a very brief survey to fill out and once you complete it you'll receive your personal link to join our Moonbeam community. If you're a VIP backer you'll also get your selected PDF/Roll20 rewards. If the smoke test is successful we will send everyone their fulfillment survey next week.

2) Moonbeam is our new community space to help support and celebrate playing the games we publish at Evil Hat.  There are channels for discussion, dedicated space just for all our Dice Pool backers, and we'll be using the space to livestream the Dice Pool GM panels. You will get a link to join when you complete your BackerKit survey. Moonbeam is a new initiative and it's currently in alpha so some features you may expect from other community platforms might not be there yet. For what we're looking to do with Dice Pool, we're confident Moonbeam will work and we have a tight relationship with the developers if bugs do pop up. We're looking forward to meeting you all there!

3) Our GM Panels are scheduled! In order to accommodate the widest number of participants across a variety of timezones, we've set our GM panels for Saturday mornings starting at 9 am Pacific Time. Specifically, the four panels will be:

Jan. 11, 2025 - Thirsty Sword Lesbians GM panel
Jan. 25, 2025 - Monster of the Week Keeper panel
Feb. 8, 2025 - Blades in the Dark GM panel
Feb. 22, 2025 - Fate GM panel

For our Backstage Pass & VIP backers, the "campfire chat" portion of the panel will happen a few minutes after the main panel wraps up.

If you have a conflict and can't attend the live stream of a given panel, don't panic. We will be posting links to the VOD in the Dice Pool channel on Moonbeam so you can catch up with them at your leisure.

That's the buzz! Thanks again for your support. We really appreciate your patience and look forward to kicking this all off in the new year!

Rollout Timeline!
about 2 months ago – Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 04:23:30 PM

Hey friends, thanks for your patience as we've been putting things into place. Here's our planned timeline:

In the next week or so we will be shifting the project into pledge management mode. There are no physical rewards to ship so the good news is that unless you choose to upgrade your pledge, we will not be charging you any additional money. This is just a necessary step so we can start using BackerKit to deliver your various rewards like the webstore discount codes or PDF/Roll20 rewards if you backed at the VIP Package level.

We will begin onboarding people into MoonBeam the week of December 9th. As you may recall, MoonBeam is the streaming & community platform we'll be using to host these panels - as well as a place where you can discuss All Things Hat. You'll get codes and invites to join MoonBeam the second week of December.

We will be hosting a State of the Hat stream on Saturday, December 14th. Sean Nittner, our Director of Projects, will review the status of the various games on our development slate and answer questions about our release schedule/process. This was not part of the promised line-up but we wanted to offer you a little something extra for waiting. Plus it's a chance for us to pilot MoonBeam and shake out any issues that might pop up before the full GM panels.

We're targeting Saturday mornings in January & February for our four GM panels. We don't have specific dates to share just yet, but we feel that holding our panels at 9am Pacific time on a Saturday will accommodate the largest number of backers to view each stream. And if you can't attend a particular panel, they'll be available to view on demand. We'll get you more details on just when each panel will occur once we get all our expert GMs booked.

That's the update! We'll have more details for you as things get nailed down, but thank you again for being a supporter. We're looking forward to sharing some terrific tips and advice to help you run a great game!

Building The Dice Pool
5 months ago – Fri, Aug 16, 2024 at 01:50:41 PM


The tick, tick, tick of crowdfunding is over and we crossed the finish line with 424 backers and almost $12k in pledges. Thank you to everyone for your support!

Most of the pledges have been collected at this point although BackerKit usually needs another week to round up all the payments and transfer them to us.

Next up: We will be working with our partners at Moonbeam to begin building out the community space that will host the streams. Moonbeam integrates a collaborative online community directly with livestreaming. It includes cutting edge moderation tools so trolls and spammers don't ruin our good time. 

Our Evil Hat Realm should get spun up next month and then we're going to do some internal testing to get our legs under us before we start sending you all invites to join the platform.

So expect things to simmer along in the background for a bit and we'll update you as things get solidified.

Thanks again and have a great weekend!

Final 40 hours!
5 months ago – Wed, Aug 07, 2024 at 03:57:38 PM

Down to the last 40 hours and we've tripped past the $10k mark which gives a healthy 25% pay boost to all our panelists. Thank you everyone!

We're really looking forward to producing these exclusive streams for you. Each one will be chock-full of tips, tricks and pro advice for running our most popular games. Whether it's Fate, Monster of the Week, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, or Blades in the Dark, Dice Pool will give you valuable insight into running a kick-ass session.

Our last stretch goal is a cool one: At $12,500 Sean Nittner, our Director of Projects, will hold a special bonus stream explaining how we bring a game to market. He'll walk through the complete process for publishing a game with Evil Hat - from what makes a successful (or unsuccessful) pitch all the way through development and creating a final, fully-illustrated game book.

With just 40 hours to go, we can get there with your help. There's still time to upgrade your pledge:

  • At the $25 level, you get special access to a post-stream "fireside chat" with each of our panels. This is your chance to help shape the discussion about running these games.
  • At the $50 level, you get to join the fireside chats PLUS a PDF bundle featuring Advanced Lovers & Lesbians, Tome of Mysteries, City of Red Waters, and the complete Fate of Cthulhu Darkest Timeline bundle. Plus you get your choice of one of four different Roll20 bundles. That's a minimum $100 retail value for your $50 pledge.

If changing your pledge doesn't work for you right now, you still help by sharing the project on your social media platform of choice.

We're excited to launch this series. Thank you to everyone who's supported us in this campaign. And if you haven't pledged yet: there's still time to get in.