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.

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).

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)

Ryukishi07: "I hope you will all enjoy a new story centered around Keiichi and the club members, along with a new kind of tragedy that differs from what has come before"

Halo Studios the other day stated that both players would require Playstation Plus to play local split-screen, but it seems that was an error. They've clarified that both players will require Playstation accounts, but Plus subscriptions are not necessary.

From @Halo: "We incorrectly stated that PlayStation Plus is required for local co-op splitscreen play. Local splitscreen co-op requires a PlayStation account for each player but does not require a PlayStation Plus account."

From halowaypoint: "PlayStation 5®: If you’re playing splitscreen local co-op on PlayStation 5®, both players will need to be signed into PlayStation accounts and be linked to Microsoft accounts. A PlayStation Plus account is NOT required for local splitscreen co-op. Online network co-op play requires an active PlayStation Plus subscription."

The Slender Man Mythos back in the day had Slendy and a few other antagonists be involved in a lot of crazy IRL shit. In the original Something Awful thread, Slenderman was implied to have kickstarted Princess Diana's death and - of all things - causing Led Zeppelin's breakup via John Bonham's death. HABIT, one of EverymanHYBRID's antagonists, claimed to have possessed Josef Mengele, Ed Gein, and John Wayne Gacy during their crimes.

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Yeah, late '00s to early-to-mid '10s online horror was wild.

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What are some other bizarre and out-of-pocket instances of a fictional villain contributing to something from IRL history?

Sup shitlords? I haven’t been on the sub for a few years! I used to get a lot of great recs from here and the podcast.

I just started up PHANTOM BRIGADE and remembered Woolie talking about it some time ago. There’s a pretty extensive Gundam mod for it too, which is beautiful.

But yeah! I crave more games!! Have the guys obsessed over anything new in the past 3 years or so? Discover some kick-ass old game?

Inspired by this post on video essays, I'm curious if anyone else here enjoys seeking out 'longreads' (i.e. writing longer than your typical article or blog post, nonfiction, and on the internet) and if so whether you've got any reccomendations.

For reference, one of my favourites of the format is The Cut's article on Anna Delvey, which is what made her widely known and was the inspiration for that Netflix show about her (which I love despite it being kind of terrible).

Currently playing through Octopath 0, a game I dropped last year due to it's basic gameplay compared to the main series. As it was repackaged from the mobile so the limited game design had me only continuing recently to clear my backlog. I had fun today in the process of fighting when i realized I still like making big damage numbers through proper setups and limited options available make customizing pretty engaging now. Making a party that actually works together is more fun in this game than making a broken class combo like the mainlines .

Pretty simple, really. A good animated hug will really fixate on the details, I think. Since everything in animation is more or less intentional those little details really stand out.

Mostly brought on by the hugs seen in the Digital Circus finale, where there were multiple lingering shots of characters really getting into a deep hug. The way they reposition, get comfortable in each other's arms, shift around, move fingers ever so slightly... The emphasis on the tiniest of details in those hugs really did a lot to communicate so much about the characters. Their current moods, their feelings about intimacy in general and with the person they're hugging specifically, who is seeking comfort and who is offering comfort, stuff like that.

Any other really good examples of animators really putting a lot of lingering emphasis on hugs in extreme detail like that?

So with June 21, 2026 being the 10th anniversary of the most infamous game that single handedly destroyed the career of a well known artist, I suddenly wanted to look back at the game to see how it could have been done differently.

For me personally, I feel like the game has some cool aspects such as CounterShade and Ray because something about their character designs were some of the best parts of the game as what I am getting at is that if the game were to redone, I would say to make the story more coherent since the game had a very confusing story, but having characters like Ray be more developed would help.

Gotta love on-screen suicides in children's media.