dicepool Book Club, July 2026
What You Need to Play
- The VOID 1680 AM source material
- A deck of cards
- A d6
- Pen and paper/text editor/voice recorder
- Access to a music collection (physical/digital)
In July, we played VOID 1680 AM, a solo adventure where you create a playlist and answer caller questions in an AM radio broadcast. The gameplay takes about two hours, and could go even longer if you wanted to add songs to your set list or have additional programming. There is a mechanism to continue your broadcast with future sessions and answer questions from repeat callers. The game allows you to structure your broadcast program however you would like, you get to find your wavelength (pun intended), and imagine the callers that would want to listen and call into your show. As with most journaling games, you can add a much or as little detail as you want.
VOID 1680 AM uses a deck of playing cards as its main mechanic, and uses a d6 to clarify caller requests and what they call in about. There is also a tie-breaker coin toss that you can utilize as necessary. I found the main card mechanic easy to follow and enjoyable. Essentially, you break your deck into face cards (with aces) as a grouping, and divide the remaining numbered cards by suit. You use the face cards for your caller prompts and the numbered cards to generate your song lists.
I have to be honest, I was not expecting to enjoy this playthrough. Even though I grew up with mixed tapes, I never made any myself. I am a terrible public speaker, so the idea of putting out a whole radio program gives me hives. I am also a bit of a difficult gamer and it can be hard to put myself in situations where I don't have first hand experience, but this game made it easy to sink into the premise and get into it. I sat down with my stack of records and the media player on my phone and made short work of the game. I even found myself thinking that a three song block was too short and it would be nice to add more selections.
The actual game play is super straight forward, once you have your supplies and divided card deck, you dive in! There is a little in-game setup, you get to choose what your station is going to sound like. Are you a little rinky-dink show in a corn field in Ohio? Are you in the attic space of a rundown Victorian? The possibilities are endless. You chose a theme for your program; are you informative, looking for company, a comedy routine, or the morning coffee show? For each song block, you pull three cards from the suit listed and pick your songs that resonate with the prompts. You will introduce your first song in the block and then take a caller as the remaining songs play out. If your cards line up, your caller can make a request, usually they just comment on the previous selection or the weather. Once your four blocks are finished, you get to wrap up your broadcast and move on to the next thing in life.
This was a quick game, it took me about an hour and a half. The source indicates that your playthrough will be about two hours, which I think is very reasonable. For my first playthrough, I just wanted to get the feel for it and I didn't go into much detail about my callers. When I run through this again, I want to take more time and give more life to the people and calls that come in.
I didn't have much of a musical theme for my setlist, as I have a fairly eclectic taste in music. I think that having a more specific genre to stick to would be a fun challenge. What I didn't do was create an actual playlist and listen to it to see if I liked all my song picks or if there was any flow to my selections. I might go back and do that, there were some fun songs on the list.
Book club really enjoyed this one! We all agreed that it was fun and we would do it again. Two of our book club members posted their playthroughs on Discord (one audio recorded, one written) and they were both so fun to check out. The nature of solos, is, well, solo, so book club is so great because I get to see how other people interact with the game. We had a lively discussion and really dove deep into talking about nostalgia, exploration, and how music has impacted all of our lives. It was a great way to spend a Tuesday evening. One of our members' partners has radio DJ experience and another did some HAM radio work and their perspectives added a fun detail to our conversation. We talked a lot about how this could be modified to play with other folks or for other programming aspects (talk radio vs music radio). One member did three setlists, each related to the music specific to an American city. We all agreed that we would play this one again.
Finally, here is a small selection of our favorite songs/artists in our setlists. Thanks for listening!
- Fat Bottom Girls, by Queen
- Help, by the Beatles
- Waiting Room, by Fugazi
- King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
- Mariah Carey
- X-Ray Spex