Best posts made by Mariano

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.

I ran into this image online and was wondering if anyone's had experiences with people trying to "outplay" the DM by cheating (either with you as a DM or a fellow player).

In my experience, the closest it's gotten is a lot of min-maxing leading to players just cheating themselves out of fun by doing things out of character just to end up with a "better" result using meta knowledge. Granted, this is also coming from someone who's mostly played DM original stories so there was no book to read ahead on.

@Alexander-Salkin Oooh great question. I think my answer has to be the Dyatlov Pass incident. There's many theories, a couple of them very plausible, but to me it's still very creepy and gives me chills when I think about it.

The gist of it is: a very experienced group went trekking to a Soviet mountain in the middle of winter. Something happened in the middle of the night that made them cut their way out of their tent and leave the campsite either completely naked or almost. All of them died, most of hypothermia and some of physical trauma.

TW: gore (text)/physical injuries descriptions

:::

One victim had major skull damage, two had severe chest trauma, and another had a small crack in his skull. Four of the bodies were found lying in running water in a creek, and three of these four had damaged soft tissue of the head and face – two of the bodies had missing eyes, one had a missing tongue, and one had missing eyebrows.

:::

If anyone wants to hear more about it, I recommend episode 11 of the Chilluminati Podcast, which is where I found out about it.

My next question is: What's the biggest lie you've told and got away with?

@Ezra Definitely always be damp. I'm not about to start forest fires just by existing. Also, there's types of clothing that would make living/using technology possible.

There's something to be said about the scientific implications of each: do I need to eat enough calories for my body to generate that level of heat and otherwise I'll die? Otherwise, it's creating energy out of nowhere and I might help with some sort of science breakthrough. Same with hydration/generation of that dampness. If it means creating matter without a particle accelerator, then that's awesome.

If I do have to balance it out with eating/drinking, the eating sounds more fun, but drinking sounds like it would be less time-consuming considering how damp I'd be vs how much heat I'd be generating.

Would you rather have to turn into a domestic animal of your choice or wild animal of your choice? (Also what would your choice be?)

Lol I feel like I've used up all my Twilight knowledge but let's give it a go:

Long ago, a small community living by the Red Sea (in The Reach, Westeros) stopped praying to the Seven. They realized the only time their prayers got answers was when they prayed to the Stranger, so they completely neglected the other Six. Septons stopped being referred to as such, but rather Strange Priests.

After a couple of generations, the people in this community stopped aging, and their skin glittered in the sun. Upon hearing that there might be a war for the Iron Throne, the village leader, Carlisle, sends his son Edward to Highgarden to court Lady Bella Tyrell and get into high society and have a chance to become the most powerful people in Westeros. Little did Edward know that Bella had a weird relationship with a direwerewolf, Jacob? I think I lost the thread

How about Game of Thrones x Harry Potter next?

@SwampCreature The world of the Pokemon games. It's pretty safe, everyone gets a Pokemon (no chosen subgroup of people), and you can do whatever you want (trainer, gym leader, contest participant, breeder).

@SwampCreature Agree 100%; for such a polished show to have someone so unanimously steal every scene they're in, it really speaks volumes of how perfect Britton was as Kemper.

Also seconding your thoughts on LMOE, pandemic-wise probably fortunate to have ended it in 2018, but I still quote that show to this day. "It truly was a Shawshank Redemption" will live rent-free in my head forever.

@Ezra @SwampCreature Also no inner monologue over here, I can definitely force it out, but by default it hasn't happened at least in over a decade. Most of my thinking revolves around images/videos or just concepts and how they relate to each other making it real easy for me to lose my train of thought when speaking because I found a weird connection that I kept exploring instead of having a nice voice that would've told me what to say.

I wouldn't be jealous though because it's not like it's all nice and relaxing due to its absence: my brain decided to replace it with constantly playing music and it's inescapable. I think I broke my brain in high school the times I had to spend potentially >1 hour sitting at my desk doing nothing (no phone, no book, no sleeping) after handing in an exam, and I figured a great way would be to try to play songs like Stairway to Heaven in my head to see how accurately I could get to the ~8 minute mark over and over.

Now it translates to me at 3am having the bass notes from Super Rich Kids by Frank Ocean echoing in my head, on the verge of tears cause I just want to go to sleep.

@mianngu That's a great question I guess it depends on whether I can repeat it over and over or just one time. I'm going to assume it's a one-time repeat, because if I could do it over and over, I'd have to find a day where I made a lot of significant choices that had instant outcomes (within the same day) all of which I wanted to explore; and I can't think of one off the top of my head.

If it was a one-time chance, I'd choose the time a pigeon flew into the exhaust pipe of our tankless gas water heater and we had a carbon monoxide leak in our house. Everyone ended up being fine, but it was reaaaaally scary (for me who had to drag everyone out) and people had to go to the hospital. I'd appreciate being able to just wrap a nice bow on that story by having the issue solved before it became a real problem. Bonus points in that we wouldn't have had to spend a lot of money in now buying a bunch of electric appliances to replace the now-useless gas ones after they shut the gas line to the entire apartment building (can you believe the entire building wasn't up to regulation? And that it's not common for pigeons to just be able to fly into exhaust pipes? Or to not have vents or detectors?).

If you could have any "traditional" superpower for 24 hours, which one would you choose and what would you do?

Hey! It's me, your friendly neighborhood weeb. 3 months ago I made a topic for the Spring anime season and I figured I could do a new one for the one starting tomorrow

First of all, a spoilered off section, so as not to take up too much space, with brief thoughts about the shows I watched over Spring:

:::

Season 3 of Dr. Stone: A bit different than the last couple, less sciency, more mystery. It worked because they played with a lot less characters than they had available, but it was still mostly just a set up season. 7.5/10

Konosuba spinoff: It was able to still be funny even without the full cast, but a prequel spinoff is usually not able to leave mid territory. Not enough action because of the main character's magical limitations. 7/10

Season 4 of Demon Slayer: I watched Season 3 right before, to catch up, and it was an 8/10. Season 4 rehashes a bit too much of the same formula, but it's still a beautiful, entrancing show. 7/10

Season 2 of Ancient Magus Bride: I started watching Season 1 but my wife tagged along so the pace didn't let me make it to Season 2 still. Season 1 so far is looking like a 7.5/10

Iseleve: Generic isekai, but I'm a sucker for the genre. Some cool decisions like having the powers in the real world too, but not a very deep story that kinda goes off the rails at the end. 7/10

Isenido: Very bad animation, story and essentially everything except the premise, on which they didn't deliver. Still isekai so probably 4/10

Season 2 of Smartphone Isekai: Very harem and now mecha for no reason, they kinda left the action/adventure in Season 1. 6/10

Mashle: Season finale coming out later today as I'm typing this. It started as a hilarious parody mashup of One Punch Man and Harry Potter, but it became more action and less comedy at the halfway point of the season, which I think worked against it 6/10

Heavenly Delusion: Hidden gem of the season, and I think people started realizing halfway through as I noticed ratings rising. Very confusing, but great writing and animation that keeps you at the edge of your seat each episode. 8/10

:::

Summer 2023

Definitely watching

• Season 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen: I've been watching Season 1 for the first time in anticipation and been absolutely loving it, like a light-hearted more shouneny Chainsaw Man.

• Season 2 of Mushoku Tensei: Season 1 has some weird shit in it, but it has one of the best world-building of any isekais that came out in the last decade.

• Zom 100: Seemingly the most anticipated Season 1 of these coming months, so I'll give it a shot.

• Liar Liar: I think the premise is a little tropey but I've personally haven't seen it executed too well in the past, so looking forward to what they come out with.

• Rurouni Kenshin Remake: My wife's a big fan of the original one and the old animation was a big barrier for me, so we'll see what the remake looks like.

Probably watching

• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: I like a magic school trope and the artstyle looks cool.
• Classroom for Heroes: Interesting premise and artstyle.
• Reborn as a Vending Machine, Now I Wander the Dungeon; Am I Actually the Strongest?; My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even at Level 1; The Great Cleric; Sweet Reincarnation : Don't judge me, okay? I have issues. It's just isekai to inject in my veins.
• Lastame: I like the other, more famous "Reincarnated as an Otome Game Villainess" show so let's see where they decide to take the trope in this one.
• Helck: Great premise and I think the manga has some good following.

What are you guys excited about? Watching anything older maybe? Am I missing something cool that's coming out that you've heard about? Let me know how you intend to spend the next three months anime-wise

@SwampCreature Oh wow these are awesome!! I especially love the drawn ones (Goths and Good Luck Everybody are ). I struggle listening to new (to me) music but having so many by one band has to serve as some sort of endorsement, I'll check them out!

@Alexander-Salkin I hadn't ever written for fun until we started an epistolary (+ some prose) RPG and it was awesome! I've had time to try to write for fun here and there, and sometimes it coincided with sporadic periods of focus, BUT if you're giving me unlimited uninterrupted months of those PLUS inspiration?? Then I would love to know what I'd come up with if trying to write a novel.

I know it'd be dogshit but many writers have said you have to get the first one out of the way and this seems like a golden opportunity lol