Yeah, I keep in touch. I experienced some deprivation as a kid, so as an adult, I pursue interests with glee. Maybe even to my detriment, but overall I think it’s a positive thing to rush toward interesting things.

The flip side is, really draining sometimes, and I push it away in favour of gratification. Could also be a sign of an imbalance in life, if recovering from work-based responsibility doesn’t happen well enough, and it intereferes with personal life responsibilites.

I have two Hori sticks, the RAP4 (modded) and fighting edge unmodded.

Both work great on pc and playstation. Hori at least had a switch stick, but not sure if any more. It was based on the RAP, which is a fine stick, even out of the box.

If you don’t have budget constraints, ordering a custom could work too, since you could get it to work on the switch and ps. I don’t think many sticks support both out of the box.

If you can leave the switch out, Qanba is real nice. Razer sticks are pretty cool too, very heavy and boxy, but I like that. And Hori is a bit more budget friendly.

The Nacon stick with Sanwa parts seems like a good deal too.

There a youtube channel and a steam curator called Mortismal Gaming who loves CRPGs. Their shtick is also completing games at 100% before popping a review, and they are churning out new material at an amazing pace. Check it out for some decent coverage on the genre.

As for a maybe hidden gem, Age of Decadence looks pretty good. I have not played it yet, but the genre seems to match, and the premise is solid.

Expedition Rome is well appreciated too, even if it leans more toward tactical battles.

Alien RPG has this mechanic in the “cinematic play”/oneshot playmode, and it for the single session of it I’ve done, kt was great.

I ran the introductory adventure with a few modifications (like taking out the android), and giving each player a card with their own goals and motivations. It culminated in a GREAT betrayal at the end of the session, and a desparate, selfish scramble for survival.

I’d love to try it again, say for Vampire or some other “non-good” and rp-heavy heavy game.

Yeah, Addict is great for what it is especially for thr price. Paying that much for basically a nothingburger seems weird?

Just bought a wollen cape for those crispy autumn mornings. It’s nice to lounge around in, but maybe I’ll summon the courage to take it out too.

Kinda feels like a trenchcoat in function, but lighter and with a hood to boot.

If you care about fashion, everything will go out of style every now and then. If you like cargo shorts, wear them. There’s no reason to cater to someone elses gatekeeping. If you think that they don’t fit your look, then that’s a completely different issue.

They are very handy too in all the right ways.

Driving people out because of their past isn’t fruitful. Someone used to have bigoted views but something made them change their mind, and they pushed hard enough to reform their life? Sounds like they wanted it, and are probably a changed person.

I know a few people like this. They help others leave similar situations. Great people doing important work.

I guess when I ran into Aesop Rock, and got absolutely infatuated? I don’t do a lot of rap, so his stuff hitting so damn hard was a surprise.

I remember a few of the other times. Mostly it has taken the right moment, the right mindset and the right artist. A dark autumn evening and a walk in a park for Dark Sanctuary, falling asleep to SunnO))) and waking up to it was a mindblowing experience.

Carpenter Bruts album Trilogy opened up electronic music for me, and Crypt of the Necrodancers soundtrack cemented it.

I just read Nights Black Agents, and they have a similar idea presented in the book, but no rolls.

They give examples of environmental features for different locations, that could be used to up the ante and encourage interactions.

A fight on the streets? Someone gets slammed to a fruit stall and starts chucking melons.

A chase scene on a highway? Two trucks come in between the cars, so you can run on them to reach the other vehicle.

A fight on an icy lake? Cracks form, or maybe the sleeping leviathan sticks its maw out every now and then.

Don’t add more hp pools to dwindle, make the dwindling more interesting and maybe make the environment speed up the combat. You don’t need to kill all the ruffians if you push them into a river, cutting the time of the encounter into half.

Telegraphing options is good too, since playees might need some encouraing examples. Want a swashbuckling scene? Make the bandits swing on on tapestries and chandeliers to give players ideas and feed their imaginations.

Oh wow, it’s still going? I really thought the game got shut down! It’s a cool shooter, definitely fun to mess around in.

Wasn’t this in an episode of Futurama?

Where are the belching robots when you need them? Or even a giant ice cube.

Social work and sex ed with a smidgen of research.

Tinder is very superficial and a hard platform to find people on. The gender ratio is very skewed and it turns against itself, since the competition for attention is so hard. This benefits the app though, since it makes peopel waste money on superlikes and whatnot - so they won’t ever try to fix it.

You definitely aren’t too old to date around and have fun meeting people. Mingling around in real life might be easier, since you don’t have to rely on a single picture and a few lines of text to impress someone.

An aboslutelty wonderful timewaster has been Brotato. Someone described my relationship to it quite well: it’s like solitaire. Whip it out every now and then for a quick timewaster, win or loose, it’s fun.

Boltgun was great too! So much Warhammer-infused fun.

“Dude just talking to people, everyone can do that”.

An absolute wannabe authoritarian brute. The institution pushing back against outrage could (and probably already has) lead to a massive Streisand effect.

Dread Templar was great fun, and a very smooth experience. It even has melee weapons that aren’t crap.

Wrath Aeon of Ruin was a mediocre experience for me. The shooting was fun, but there was a real lack of enemy diversity. I remember the checkpoints being funky somehow?

Og games like Quake, Doom and Unreal hold up really well. They can be modded to your hearts content too. Brutal Doom is just way too much fun

Blood is super fun, but unfairly difficult on the highest difficulty. It kicks your head in, until you learn, but every minute of the experience is fun. Until the maze-like levels and actual mazes make you dizzy.

Cultic is like a modern Blood, but an even more deliberate version. The demo is good fun and the game is cheap.

Poweslave Exhumed is something I remember enjoying as a kid. Iron Maiden themed romp through mummies. It kinda reminds me of…

Amid Evil and Hexen//Heretic. Both feature mystical weapons, mana for ammo and fantastical locations and monsters to kill. Amid Evil is a great shooter with survival modes, a full campaign and all Heretic and Hexen are older, more dated games that will hurt you. But I love them for it.

Dusk was rhe first new retro shooter I played, and it’s fun. It’s slick, has a nice deathmatch mode and the campaign doesn’t overstay its welcome. I hear it has been surpassed by Hrot.

Blood West tricked me hard. It’s not a boomer shooter, but more like a single player version of Hunt, or a wild-west monsterhunting Dishonoured? It’s fun and unforgiving, but not a boomer shooter, even if it has guns.

EYE Divine Cybermancy could qualify, I guess. It’s a trippy grimdark warhammer inspired rpg shooter. Very boomery in it’s visuam style and lack of handholding, but definitely more modern than Quake.

Black Mesa is Half-Life, and it’s good. Nuff said.

Haven’t played enough of Hedon, Project Warlock, Ion Maiden, Incision, Prodeus, Graven or Rise of the Triad to say more than they exist.

Hey, cool stuff! Thanks for the review! I’d love reviews of mid-priced, medium box games that scale well with players, or games that support 6+ players and are not drafting or social deduction.

The huge box games filled with plastic figures are a chore to drag to a game night and are hard to table.

I mean, look at Silica and compare it COD or Battlefield. Smaller indie project, supported by a bigger publisher and filled with heart. It looks like a dream game from when I was a kid.

Battlezone meets Starcraft.