Oooh my first gaming console was a Sega Genesis, back when I was 4ish. My parents didn't know anything about gaming, so they didn't buy me any games, and my dumb ass didn't know any better either, so it was mostly playing the pre-installed Pong that came with it for at least a year

One day, my older cousin's boyfriend was like "oh you have a Genesis? I just got rid of mine, here's a shoebox with game cartridges" and that changed EVERYTHING. I played a lot of Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat, a Dragon Ball Z fighting game, and some hard-ass Disney games (what's the deal with making them so hard? Aladdin was impossible, Toy Story was unplayable, and now I'm hearing Lion King too?).

But I would say the gaming system that defined my childhood was an old laptop with a dead screen that I hooked up to a giant CRT monitor. I had Gameboy Color and Advance emulators (and for some reason a Genesis one as well?) where I played Pokemon RBY and GSC forever.

No one snitch. Also, statute of limitations.

Most of my experiences playing TTRPGs were in settings where we were seeking to laugh while going through the story. This led to me preferring to play characters that toe the line between dumb and incompetent, where they're not a liability to the party, but it's not far off.

This leads to funny and to-be-expected moments when there's a bad roll, and hype and unexpected lore-wise when the character pops off.

Not having much experience role-playing, I haven't been able to use it as much as a tool per se.

However, I have caught myself when thinking of cool characters I'd want to play, that I subconsciously maybe give them diverse personalities, backstories or physical characteristics, but they always match my gender identity and sexual orientation. So it had to be a conscious effort, but my last couple of characters were all different to me in either gender or sexuality; and that separation has led for me to at least have it be easier to role-play, but also maybe it's serving as self-exploration in the background.

@Alexander-Salkin I love the concept of cooking, I just wish I was good at it without all the work that would go into it. For the most part, I don't mind failing in my journey to learning a new skill, but with cooking in particular, it feels bad to be wasting food and to end up double disappointed when you fail because not only were you not able to do it, now you can't even eat to distract yourself from the failure

Plus, it's also difficult to try to get good at something that takes at least double to make/prepare than it takes to enjoy afterwards.

Hey @Maruvail! Good questions all around, I hope to hit all your points, but feel free to follow up with more if I'm not super clear.

What is a prop exactly?

Props are a bit loosely defined because of how much they encompass. I guess the best way for me to explain it is you have a bunch of "physical" components to a Tale; some of them are Locations (pretty self explanatory), some of them are Characters, and some are Props. Characters have autonomy, where Props don't. Something in a Tale might be a Prop where in another it might be a Character. E.g. A legendary cursed sword might just be that in a Tale (a Prop), but in a different one, you can "inhabit" it as a player and have it talk and shoot laser beams, now that it's gained autonomy.

Props range from tools and weapons to vehicles, to furniture, to spell scrolls, etc.

Do we need to talk about specific items in our submission in order to qualify for these points?

First of all, I would like to say the points and the point system isn't quantitative in that sense. A 60-point Tale isn't any better or worse, or more or less deserving, than a 100-point Tale. And as such, it's not going to get benefitted or damaged by having a different tally.

We have that minimum as a bit of a filter to only have stories where authors went in depth in at least some of the categories, not necessarily all. Once you've met the threshold, the criteria that will be important to select a Tale over another are: popularity among members, creativity, originality and diversity of themes.

The reason Props are separated and given separate points, is to be able to properly reward and keep in the running Tales that are focused around those. If you have an amazing story that revolves around giant mecha fighting each other, you're probably going to go into a lot of detail about the different types of mecha there are, and get a lot of Prop points in the process; allowing you to not go into as much detail about Locations or Characters (maybe you want to just let people bring their own, as long as they're mecha pilots).

That said, if your story has cool items and you wanna go in-depth about them, you're more than welcome, and we encourage it, but it's not necessary. It's more of an opportunity to give points where they're deserved than a checklist item to cross off for contestants.

Would unique monsters or plants qualify for this section?

I would say it depends on the context, like I said with the sword. Monsters will probably more likely be interpreted as Characters, since they have autonomy, and you could have a player playing as an ogre, or controlling all dragons the party encounters.

Plants could be Props for sure, especially ones small or frequent enough to be Props. I'm thinking the concept of a forest or even a giant tree might fit more into Locations. It's really more about the context and its role in the story than anything else.

Hey everybody! I'm making this topic half to see what people recommend, and half to force myself to watch what I'm listing rather than just shove it in my Plan To Watch list forever in my MAL.

Definitely watching

• Season 3 of Dr. Stone
• Konosuba spinoff
• Season 4 of Demon Slayer (I'm a season behind still though)

Maybe watching

• Season 2 of Ancient Magus Bride (I haven't watched season 1 but heard great things)
• Iseleve & Isenido (premises don't stand out too much but I can't say no to anything in this genre )
• Season 2 of Smartphone Isekai (First season was just fine)
• Mashle (premise seems decent enough to at least watch the first couple of episodes)

I have a couple others in sight like Hell's Paradise, Heavenly Delusion, My Home Hero and Dead Mount Death Play, but I don't want to overcommit, so I'll probably wait until I see good reviews or get a personal recommendation.

What are you guys excited about? Is there something clearly missing from my list or should get bumped?

@AGreaterMonster I haven't watched any of the rest of your favorites! I'll have to check them out (though some are admittedly in my Plan-To-Watch list which just grows longer and longer ) Some 9+/10s for me include: Cowboy Bebop, Angel Beats!, Log Horizon S1, Dr. Stone S1, and Death Note (this last one is just insanely nostalgic and so easy to watch for anime noobs like I am, but also was in 2009 when I first saw it)

@SwampCreature Uzumaki sounds so good! I usually try to stay away from scary stuff but I feel like I have to make an exception for Junji Ito

@Ezra Yooo, I have to watch Yu Yu Hakusho, especially since I love HxH so much. And I was the dragged partner in watching Fruits Basket, since it's not my usual type, but I thought it was actually really good! A bit too many characters since I watched it week-to-week every season, so I kept forgetting side characters' names, but that's it.

@AGreaterMonster I guess I'm too pessimistic since I haven't given any recent anime live-action adaptations a chance. Last one I remember watching was Dragonball Evolution and I think it's the reason why I said "never again" (I probably saw it in very close proximity to the Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation movie, so it was insult + injury)

Hey everyone! I was curious about what kind of conversations other people had with ChatGPT to find new circumstances where it's better than just Googling something.

In my case, I'm a big fan of the "second question" factor, where maybe for the first thing I ask, it might be the same as a Google search, but the reformulation digging down on a part of the first answer, I've found to be the most effective.

Last week, I gave ChatGPT some personal info (age, where I grew up, interests) to figure out why I already knew a random song that came up on Spotify, and going back and forth a bit, we figured it out

I've heard of cases where people ask it to make a meal plan without some specific ingredients, and from that list (maybe after asking it to change a thing or two) generate a shopping list of everything needed for all the meals; which I thought was pretty creative and tool-effective.

What do you guys ask?

@Ezra I LOVE mounts. One of my happiest moments of gaming was getting Mimiana in Maplestory (and bragging about it). It was an extreme time investment both to get to the necessary level and to get the in-game money for it but finally seeing my character running around riding it was so worth it.

It's not as much the being able to move 20% faster, but rather I loved it as an optional goal that other players can see and instantly associate it with the accomplished challenge to get to that point.

Bonus points if different classes get different mounts to represent the group of people/tribe.

@Alexander-Salkin It's either been a lot of fun and time is flying, or your players are spending so much time exploring you feel like they're making a third of the progress you'd expected lol

@SwampCreature Last game I've played is Maplestory. I think I'd do well in the first three episodes of this isekai because I've played the lv. 1-30 areas for thousands of hours; but I would immediately do horribly in the rest of the game. Curse my lack of attention span and discipline, why did I have to keep making new characters?

@mianngu Omg I remember renting this movie from Blockbuster thinking it was going to be related to the seasons I was watching on TV and understanding 0% of it

@Alexander-Salkin I love the concept of cooking, I just wish I was good at it without all the work that would go into it. For the most part, I don't mind failing in my journey to learning a new skill, but with cooking in particular, it feels bad to be wasting food and to end up double disappointed when you fail because not only were you not able to do it, now you can't even eat to distract yourself from the failure

Plus, it's also difficult to try to get good at something that takes at least double to make/prepare than it takes to enjoy afterwards.

@Alexander-Salkin I feel the same way! Especially since the leaked footage got released. I'm trying to avoid major bits of news to be surprised by the game itself, so I'm thinking it's gonna get bad once it's out, but we'll see.

I think the reason why Skyrim was so huge is that, more than Bethesda pushing it, it was people playing it that were telling everyone how insane it was (at least that's why my friends and I started playing it), so maybe they're trying to go for a similar approach?

I was REALLY into Skyrim when it came out, so Bethesda coming out with something along the same vein seems very interesting. Are you guys planning to check it out?

@SwampCreature I would bring back 2009 Maplestory. The game still exists but they made a lot of changes that made the game less enjoyable to me. There's a lot of private servers running the old version, but if we can remake it and make it look nicer, it will also be easier for me to convince friends and loved ones to play with me.

@Alexander-Salkin Probably one of the best monster of the week show for kids out there (at least in the mid '90s).

@SwampCreature Understandable reasonings, pterodactyls are the only potentially rideable flying animal out there; in hindsight, it's the coolest Zord.

When I was a kid, I was really into Power Rangers. The first season I remember watching on TV was Lightspeed Rescue; but the first one I was a huge fan of was Wild Force. I think the last one that I really cared about was Mystic Force, though I did later skip a few and watch some RPM. Throughout the years I watched some of the seasons that came before my time, but any time I tried to give the newer seasons a shot, it was just too obvious I was too old to be the target audience.

HOWEVER, a couple of weeks ago, I started reading the Power Rangers comic books and they blew my mind! A lot more nuanced, keeping the good campy part of the series but remaining very entertaining and immersive for adults.

I'm curious about how this franchise intersected with your lives if at all. Any favorite seasons/rangers? Anyone else reading the comics?