#cparvum

Unfortunately my friend I know many many strange facts but the only way I remember anything is by it coming up in conversation.

(/ ‘ 0′)/ <( but I will do my best!!! )

In the 1980′s before floppy disk drives became cheap, cassette tapes were often used as a standardized way of storing data. They were rife with issues, though, because the reading and writing of data was effected by the recording level. So if the machine reading the tape wasn’t calibrated to the level the tape was recorded at, it might read incorrectly. As well, because data was transcribed linearly rather than on a spinning platter, accessing specific pieces of data as they were needed was difficult. 

In certain parts of medieval Europe, particularly Germany, marital conflicts could be resolved through a duel, just like any other kind of conflict. In these duels the husband would stand in a deep pit from which he could not move, and would be armed with a stick. The wife would be armed with a sack filled with rocks.

Side note: This may be apocryphal, because I can’t remember the source I heard this, but dueling wasn’t just a matter of honor or might makes right. In many parts of Christian Europe, it was seen as a test of divine favor. Because of the belief in divine predestination, whoever won the duel was not just a better fighter, but chosen by God to win, which also meant that the case they were fighting for was chosen by God.

Keeping to the medieval tradition, one of the biggest heretical sects of Christianity that kicked off the heretic hunting hysteria that would later evolve into the witch hunts of later times were the Cathars. They believed that there were two Gods, one good and one evil. The old testament God was the evil one, who made the material world in order to trap us in it. The new testament God was the good one, and blessed us with the knowledge of how to free ourselves. It was pretty antisemitic! They believed that the material world was fundamentally evil, and that the human body was a cage which angels were trapped inside of. Only by a certain blessing on the edge of death could they be set free. I may be mixing up my heretical sects (I studied this in like 2014), but I believe they also advocated against reproduction, so as to cut off the chain of souls being transferred to new cages upon death.

The best ice cream ever made on an industrial scale was produced in the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan, one of the original crew of revolutionaries who would serve under Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev before passing away in 1978, was one of the key architects of the Soviet food system. In particular he had a keen interest in ice cream, because he believed it was not enough for a communist society to keep people fed with the necessary staples, but that there should be things to bring people comfort and joy as well. Stalin once famously joked of Mikoyan during this project that he seemed to care more for ice cream than for communism. Old timers in Russia claim to this day that the stuff made since 1991 just isn’t nearly as good.

There was a rich tradition of romanticizing homoeroticism among samurai. I can’t remember the precise date range because I took this class in 2019 and haven’t read about it since. However, many stories were written that were very popular in their day. In particular they often starred young men falling in love and then committing ritual suicide, because it was seen as noble and romantic to die together young at the height of beauty.

No picture for this one cause I couldn’t find a good one lol.

Depends on whether you you want to play the investigative stuff relatively straight, or whether - as in the source material - it’s just a framing device for teenage/ambiguously twentysomething* protagonists being dumbasses.

For the “relatively straight investigative shenanigans” option, you might have a look at Emily Care Boss and Lisa Steele’s Bubblegumshoe. It’s a simplified version of the GUMSHOE System tuned for the small-town teenage detective genre, which isn’t exactly Scooby-Doo, but it’ll get you within spitting distance. Fairly rules-heavy, albeit in a genre-directed sort of way; it’s not trying to be a realistic simulation of anything in particular.

(Alternatively, if you like the idea of the Apocalypse Engine, but would prefer a more investigative and less murdery take on it, you could check out Tremulus. You’d need to do a fair amount of hacking, though, as out of the box it’s way too gritty for what you want to do with it.)

For the “investigation as framing device for teenagers being dumbasses” option, you could give Spooktacular a spin. It’s a retroclone of West End Games’ long-out-of-print Ghostbusters RPG, so the default assumption is that the monsters are real and not just dudes in rubber masks, though that’s easy enough to adjust. Not much in the way of formal mechanical support for investigative stuff here - it’s more of the “roll on some random tables and then everything explodes” thread of game design, and character creation includes skills like “Screaming”, “Doing Paperwork” and “Unnerving Straights”.

Finally, if you’d prefer to split the difference between the “mechanical support for investigative shenanigans” and “dumb teenagers behaving badly” approaches, and you don’t mind having a reality-TV framing device baked into the mechanics (complete with confessional segments that let you mess with other players’ character sheets!), you could have a look at InSpectres. The biggest potential stumbling block here is that it might be a bit tough to keep things as non-murdery as you’d like them; it’s not a combat-heavy game per se, but it does like to play massive property damage for laughs.

I think focusing on more conventional fantasy RPG gameplay would be exactly the wrong approach. One of Pyre’s standout features is that in spite of the incredibly harsh environment, it’s a basically nonviolent milieu. That core duality - that the world hates you and wants you to die, but the people typically resolve their differences with athletic contests and harsh language because interpersonal violence just isn’t done - is something I’d encourage you to keep regardless of whether your game is set during the Cycle of the Rites.

Of course, I’m assuming you still want some rules-based play, so the question becomes what systems a. can handle the appropriate tone, and b. have a bit of depth to them without leaning on combat for mechanical engagement?

There’s the usual suspects, of course - Fate Accelerated Edition and Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (the latter would benefit from being played in Techno mode rather than the core book’s default Pastoral, so you’d likely want the Techno Player’s Guide as well) - but you’ve heard me bang on about those quite enough in previous posts, so let’s go even indier:

Archipelago

It’s a somewhat more elaborated and largely setting-neutral version of the system employed in the previously discussed Itras By. Less a conventional tabletop RPG and more a set of guidelines for collaborative improv storytelling (also known as a “Norwegian style RPG”), I think it’d be a great fit for the sedate pace and strong interpersonal focus you see in Pyre, if you don’t mind the complete lack of rules for hitting things with swords.

(With reference to this post here.)

Sure thing.

For indie games where the protagonist is a female-coded artificial intelligence, I’m going to consider only games where the protagonist being an AI is actually material to the plot (i.e., as opposed to just because robot girls are cool), and I’ll exclude titles where the fact that the protagonist is an AI would be a spoiler. The latter’s a bigger restriction than you’d think - female protagonists discovering they’re really AIs is a popular indie plot twist!

Apart from The Fall (which is excellent, for those who haven’t played it), I’ve also given Fumiko! and Open Sorcery a spin lately, and I’d recommend both. Maybe ICEY, too; I didn’t enjoy it much, so this one isn’t a recommendation, but it’s an indie game I’ve played recently that fits the criteria.

(There’s also Christine Love’s excellent Analogue: A Hate Story, which doesn’t quite fit the bill because the AIs in question are the dramatic leads, but not the protagonists per se. And if you’re in the mood for one that’s just pure “robot girls are cool”, check out Assault Android Cactus.)

As for indie games where the protagonist is a sapient geometric shape, you’re quite correct that Thomas Was Alone is the major example I was thinking of, but I’ve got a few others. 6180 the moon is a good one; quite short, but if you’ve ever wanted to play as the Moon (as in the actual celestial body, not an anthropomorphic personification), here’s your chance! David’s another one in a similar vein; not nearly so ambitious as Thomas Was Alone, but it gets bonus points for gratuitous Biblical allegories in a game where you play as a square.

The previously discussed (note: two separate links) Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine has probably the largest potential out of any game I’ve ever played for the size of gulf between the power level of the characters and the scale of the action. As the linked posts describe, the basic premise is that it’s about young gods growing up in a pastoral small town; owing to the complexity of character creation, it’s typically played using supplied pregens, among whose ranks you’ll encounter:

The eponymous Chuubo, the Wishing Boy, whose Wish-Granting Engine is quite literally omnipotent, though his wishes are typically along the lines of “I wish I had an ice cream cone” or “I wish I were a seagull”.

Leonardo de Montreal, Nightmares’ Angel, who once sacrificed his own heart in order to kindle a new Sun into the sky, and who now mostly uses his incomparable command of nightmare science to impress teenagers.

Miramie Mesmer, the Dream-Witch, who assembled herself from the broken shards of a defeated world-devouring god-monster, and whose greatest ambition is to own a tea shop.

Natalia Koutolika, the Prodigy, a human child whose peerless martial arts could strike down God Himself, and who spends most of her time angsting about the fact that she doesn’t have any friends.

Jasper Irinka, the Child of the Sun, a primordial god of Hope who’s trying the humanity thing on for size (she’s almost gotten the hang of this whole “sneezing” business).

Entropy II, the actual, literal God of Evil, who serves as principal of the local high school (and also moonlights as a mysterious vigilante, except there’s no actual crime, so he mostly spends his nights fixing potholes).

Other notables include a cosmic blasphemy from beyond space and time who accidentally became a dorky teenage boy and decided he liked it better that way, a straight-up mythological hero, and an ogre whose strength is axiomatically infinite (she teaches social studies).