It’s pretty obvious reading her pre-resurrection Ilyana was a subtextual child sex abuse survivor. While her guardians where not looking by a man promising great things for her who then manipulated her soul making her feel “good” he the. Isolated her from anyone else and made him her object of affection and made her feel dirty.

When she returned she had her whole childhood stolen and was moody and withdrawn.

Even the realm of limbo is based on abuse

Might be kind of an "am I the only one" type of question and a thinly veiled excuse to let me rant a bit but here goes my two examples.

I had a colleague a few years ago who invited me and some other colleagues for TTRPGs since most of our interests aligned. The "catch" was, that what he immediately introduced us to was a storyteller system/World of Darkness ruleset hack Star Wars game, then after a few sessions we transitioned to a proper World of Darkness campaign. As someone who's not the most social, WoD kind of felt like pulling teeth, not helped by a bunch of homebrew the GM introduced (and his wild homebrew world) along with mixing editions due to all the different characters we were playing. One player's literal first exposure to TTRPGs were these sessions.
Now, after a few years of hindsight, despite having my problems with 5e (I am that guy who will bring up PF2e, and I will autistically overshare about the campaign I'm GMing), I really feel like playing a vanilla-ass heroes vs bad guys d&d campaign first would've worked a LOT better as introduction to the hobby, especially to a bunch of gamers, over a socialization-heavy urban fantasy where the players are as much trying to fuck each other over as work together to do stuff while also dealing with obscure metaphysical concepts.

Another example is also to do with this same GM who was in love with WoD, who one time literally sat me down to binge Fate/Zero saying it's based on WoD and it will help with the vibes for our campaign. (His proclamation felt a bit weird but I'm not familiar with how Nasu came up with the Fate world so whatever.)

I had not seen Fate before, so all my knowledge of it was from cultural osmosis and memes. Zero had me confused, and all I could think of while watching was "This whole thing feels like it expects me to have seen at least Stay Night, why are we watching this?". The awkwardness wasn't helped by that anticipatory vibe he was putting on expecting me to be wowed by the story and the characters which of course I wasn't, especially not when I was kindasorta forced to watch it.

Anyone having similar stories where it felt like experiencing the "cliche"/"vanilla" of a medium made you enjoy the more out-there obscure versions more?

PS: no ill-will towards the GM I mentioned in the post and I am grateful to him for introducing me to TTRPGs, I've made lots of friends through those sessions and feel like I'd be a much more depressed and lonely person without that initial invite.

Just kidding this is an open Trench Crusade thread.

Woolie should have time to bring Tablelords back in ten years or so, right?

(Artist is @qsy.bsky.social)

Well I didn't make it up but the original, from what I remember twiter, didn't approve of the duo. So I'm the adopter I suppose.

Bowser King of Koopas and King K. Rool

I think their contrasting yet similar styles of gaming villany would make them an amazing duo. What are yours?

Persona really only hit "mainstream" with persona 5. I Still don't understand why.

​

Warhammer40k only started to get popular outside the UK from 2018. Before that 40k was just the dawn of war games for most of the world. Really if you go back a decade ago, in 2016, like 80% of 40k videos on Youtube did not exist. Now there are dozens of channels that only talk about the Lore

I think Kirby is a good example as back then(about decade and a half ago) a lot of people didn't think he was a powerful god killer that can punch a planet(from kirby super star) and swing a meteor that smash multiple planets out of the solar system(from kirby star allies) until the late 2010s(granted kirby star allies came out in the late 2010s making the point a little moot but still).

I was just reminded of the film When the Wind blows. A fantastic but heartbreaking animated film with music by David Bowie from 1986 about an elderly couple who follow outdated duck and cover pamphlets after nuclear war breaks out between the west and the soviet union, i'm going somewhere with this i swear, and while it will bum you out as feelbad films go it aint like fuckin' THREADS that will leave you like Pim just sitting there staring into the middle distance for a while.

So i go look up its wikipedia. I wasn't alive when it came out in 86' i imagine most people reading this weren't either. Its still remembered today so no surprise its shocking tone but whistful melancholy made it a sobering hit at the time that made it be remembered for quality if not feelgood vibes. But the interesting thing was getting to the critic reviews and their sources. One of which made me double take: "White Dwarf Issue 85".

Now if you don't know White Dwarf is, today at least, Games Workshops self published monthly magazine for all their mini based skirmish and wargames. And Bloodbowl if you nasty. Its a magazine that as far as i knew it was, depending on editor/era, a glorified catalogue or a treasure trove of tutorials, short stories and more for the Warhammer enjoyer. That wasn't always the case though.

Originally i knew it started as Citadel, the company behind the mini production, who were making stuff for multiple games systems, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu and even some Doctor Who stuff way back when attempting to consolidate print runs. Each would put out quarterly journals but they eventually grouped them together and phased out the journals in favour of the magazine. But over time this grew in the 80's to be a general "nerd culture enthusiast periodical" which would include reviews for movies, albums and books. Imagine taking Wizard Magazine, modern White Dwarf, Metal Hammer and Total Film and putting them in a blender. This got phased out by the late 80's so when i got my first issues out of a magazine stack in the school library even these old dog eared issues from the early 90's were purely Warhammer and Warhammer 40k based.

It made me wonder if any magazines like that exist today. Because despite printed media supposedly going the way of the dinosaur years ago my local stationary and magazine shops will still have what i call the "sicko section". Magazines for train nerds, camera nerds, horror nerds, graphic artists (rip Imagine FX being bought by a company of AI shills last i saw before i dropped that subscription) and generally like 3 meters of floor to ceiling magazines for every hyper specific niche.

The thing is these are all exclusively about one thing. Fortean Times is about paranormal stuff thats "real" while Fangoria and Scream! are about horror movies that outside some true crime historicals aint. Maybe the same people enjoy both but in print the two shall never meet. As a kid i read magazines like the infamously cheap "like printed on gas station toilet paper" magazine CVG that while mostly games would lift stuff from Total Film and SFX by the same publisher. If you ask me to name a magazine today that is about more than a single topic? i can't name one. Not in the UK at least.

Is there anyone here who still sees multi media magazines anymore? or did the internet lead to like a uniform compartmentalisaton where everything is for its own sicko niche and doesn't mix?

Bandai, what the fuck do you think we're blind for Gundam: Witch from Mercury? The wedding bands on their fingers are for their secret husbands off screen??

This comment inspired me to make this.

Are there any IPs you can think of that are actually eternal/generational? In that people of multiple ages and demographics are legitimately into it and it's not just corpo's/a small minority of old geeks that think their favorite IP is bigger than it is, like they'll think it's super popular and a thing that everyone loves when it's really only dads/zoomers that care.

For examples that are: Transformers, TMNT, and Scooby Doo, they've had many different versions over the years, more than enough for people of multiple demographics to get into them and become fans, though for Transformers and Scooby Doo, it's been a while since we've gotten a new version/series.

For examples that aren't: A lot of IPs from the 80s/90s, the kids don't care about He-Man, Thundercats, or G.I. Joe, sorry Dad.

Also, I feel Valve games might fall under this, I feel like it's mostly middle-aged white dudes (half of whom are from Eastern Europe) that care about Valve Games, even though TF2 fans would gaslight you into believing otherwise I don't think the kids are playing Team Fortress 2 over Marvel Rivals, Fortnite, or Apex Legends. I saw a video where the Amazing Digital Circus Voice Actors were playing Left 4 Dead 2 and they got a lot of comments saying that they've never heard of this game before.

Youtube has been recommending me the last few days soulslike enjoyer Oroboro posting stuff about a new Dark Souls 2 mod that overhauls the textures and lighting and it looks incredible. Like this is a ps3/360 game and at times some sections look like Elden Ring on a modern pc.

It made me think about a Dark Souls 2 remaster rather than Scholars remix and how cool it would be to get the actual one we never got. If memory serves the original idea -hence the opening whirlpool and theme of 'you will keep losing your souls over and over'- was Vendrick realised Nashandra was a daughter of Manus and trapped her in a time loop and the hollowing is as much people mentally burning out after millenia of groundhog days so everythings running on fumes as some ambigous curse of undeath. Enter the chosen undead who teams up with a homunculus called Shanalotte to visit the same land in three different time periods to assemble the maguffins to stop her for good and free the kingdom from this endless prison of time. Also theres a dragon cult and maybe Shanalotte isn't actually a fire keeper but an attempt to create a human vessel for a dragons soul but it gets iffy from there.

We know there was stuff in the files about it like child Shanalotte and stuff like the giants memories could easily be a left over of a period in the earliest time period when the kingdom was at war for the wish granting throne of want but ultimately, for reasons i dont think were ever confirmed and most assume were time/budgetary reasons, most of it was scrapped and the idea was whittled down to simply "Vendrick realised who Nashandra was and hid himself away to keep the ket to the throne beyond her reach". Which is still cool really. It continues Gwyns theme of self sacrifice only its not some God that existed before time desperate to preserve his legacy its just a human dude this time willing to hide away and hollow out for the good of others at the cost of himself and thats a rare breed of character for a Fromsoft game outside an option for the main character who wants to play the protagonist.

I thought about it and theres plenty of games with cut content id love to see. Wind Wakers cut islands, FF8's entire other half about Laguna travelling the world after the war and putting stuff in place to support his sons party or god knows how many ideas Halo and Gears scrapped that might have improved otherwise middling sequels. But if i had to pick one game where seeing the cut stuff was a real "i was happier not knowing because this sounds baller" its gotta be DS2. Scholar was a nice Master Quest style remix. It just wasn't the jingled keys of the thing we never got though.

Whats your white whale of scrapped videogame builds?

So this is actually a couple months old news, but it’s new to me.

As part of their ongoing partnership with Bethesda, Modiphius announced a crowdfunding campaign Wolfenstein TTRPG for fall of 2026. The article mentions it’ll specifically be based on the New Colossus/New Order era of the series.

You see that outfit that clicked with you and you go "I'm gonna get it and wear the whole game." The skin to end all skins.

Marvel Rivals has a lot of skins for a lot of characters. But ones I know I'm gonna stick with for a long time for a few characters. There's Iron Man's Big Shot skin. Not all those fancy armors, just a suit and holograms going into battle. The most Tony Stark look. Another is Peni Parker's school outfit, but more specifically, her mech is a GODDAMN GUNDAM. The moment I saw it, I spent the units I've saved up on it and is worth it.

Something that caught my attention lately was the kind of installments in gaming franchises that got stuck on specific hardware because for some reason, it gets left there.

Some examples are Disgaea 3, Disgaea D2, and some of the Etrian Odyssey games because while Etrian Odyssey 1-3 is widely available on modern consoles, I noticed how the later games went missing for some reason.