u/Amethyst-Flare

Kathy Rain 2 primarily takes place in a fictional American city called Kassidy, and I've been trying to puzzle out where it's meant to be set. A line in the newspaper mentions a regular bus line being set up between the downtown area and Hollywood, but then there's this line:

\"Well, in the old days, that place was a famous site for burning witches at the stake.\"

All of the witch trials in America took place on the east coast, with the very last one taking place in 1878 in Ipswich (and a man was the accused witch in that case.) Further, we didn't burn witches in the US - those who were sentenced to death were usually hanged (or, in one case, Giles Corey was tortured to death by pressing, but he wasn't convicted, and some others died in jail.)

I know this is a fictional story with fictional history and a fictional city, but man these details threw me. Maybe it's because it was made by a Swedish team who didn't know much context about the US.

EDIT:

Apparently, according to the game’s designer, it’s meant to be a fictional stand-in for Kansas City:

>Early in the development I did have Kansas in mind, with Kathy living in Kansas City. To avoid constraints, I later opted to change it and set the game in a fictional state (with Kathy living in a fictional city), neither explicitly mentioned by name. 
"McConnell" ended up sticking, even though it was no longer supposed to directly correspond to its real life equivalent. Same thing with the "KCU" abbreviation at the university, which was originally supposed to mean something like "Kansas City University".
I'll probably clarify all of these points if there is a Kathy Rain 2 :)

My sister and I binged Wonder Man on Sunday, and we were absolutely devastated to hear that it was cancelled. Especially after finding out how it was already going forward, with all the actors excited to continue the story, it really stung.

Even so, I’m glad that if it had to end, I’m glad it did so on such a happy note. It feels like season 1 told a complete story, both of our main characters ended on a happy note, and we can imagine them having a great time together from now on. It’s better than an ambiguous ending where nothing is certain.

I’m really interested in reading any fantasy books that have a lesbian protagonist and/or major ensemble members, ideally with the romantic elements present but not, like, the primary focus of the piece?

Any sub-genre is good. Historical, other world, urban occult, etc.

My question amounts to one of provenance, in a sense. The impression I've gathered with regards to Ovid is that he took stories and myths about the gods and reinterpreted, if not wholly reinvented, them as a polemic in response to his exile from Rome.

To what extent is this impression correct?

For instance, with regards to the story of Arachne's weaving contest, I've never seen anything which indicates that the story predates his telling of it at all. Do we have any indication that he drew from a tradition of storytelling about this that is today extinct, or is there evidence that he created this whole cloth (pun not intended but that is a little funny now that I look at it)?

As another example, Medusa we know does have prior precedent, but the version Ovid writes down dramatically changes the context, painting the gods in a massively less favorable light. Do we know if this was his idea, or had the story evolved these elements before he got to them? Was any of this present in cultic practices?

During a discussion with my sister where we talked about gradations of verisimilitude and "realism" in fantasy literature, I started thinking about types of non-fantastical (ie, not speculative fiction like fantasy, horror, sci-fi, fairy tale, etc) genres. Some of them, despite containing no magical or advanced scientific elements, can sometimes feel just as unreflective of the world as we know it.

If I had to pick the least "realistic" of these, I might posit Action thrillers, especially the kind with very high body counts and virtually zero consequences on the main character. Spy thrillers are also up there. I kind of feel like a lot of murder mysteries hit this vibe as well, particularly the "classic" ones.

(Spoilers for a 2011 Stephen King book. This isn't a full review, either. I just finished it a few weeks ago and had some thoughts about the way time travel works in it that I felt like I needed to expound upon and share. I think it's good until the end, with some caveats, but I want to keep the focus sharp here.)

Ahem. In the novel 11/22/63, the main character of the novel, Jake, inherits a time travel portal from a dying friend of his, along with a mission: save JFK from assassination. Most of the rules of the portal are quickly and elegantly established, and along with that comes the first three costs that the form of time travel in this book exacts.

To wit - the portal always brings a person traveling from the future to a precise moment in September 9, 1958, and on the return trip the time elapsed since entering is always around 2 minutes. The time traveler (and anyone near the portal on the future side, a strong suggestion that this isn't creating alternate timelines) is unaffected by any changes that may occur, but - crucially - every trip down is a reset of the timeline. Changes to the past are possible as a result, but attempting to do so runs into strange and difficult coincidences that seem to push back the more significant the changes would ripple throughout the future.

Thus, we have our first three costs:

1. The time traveler is exempted from the changes, but they still suffer whatever they're going through. All time in the past is time on the clock for their health, lifespan, etc, so if you spend the requisite 5 years until the Kennedy assassination, you'll return 2 minutes into your relative future but 5 years older. All injuries or health problems are permanent.
2. The world doesn't want to be changed. Commiting to a course of action that could result in, say, a family not being slaughtered by their father will throw up obstacles. He has to deal with a sudden illness, a man threatening his life, breakdowns of his vehicle, and other stuff to fight through and make it happen. He partially succeeds once, and works things out a little better the second time before getting ready to face his longer-term task. Trying to save a president and change a major event in American history faces massively greater tolls, with commensurate and permanent damage to him.
3. Every trip is a reset, which means that in order to review the results of his work, Jake has to risk starting over from the beginning every single time. This actually didn't come up much because he committed to the long haul after a couple short trips, but it's constantly on his mind. He knows that, should be succeed in his mission but not like the results, starting over would be difficult if not impossible. Five years for a young-ish man is hard enough, but ten? His friend literally died of cancer in the process of his own attempts.

So far, so great. This is an awesome set of rules that helps to drive drama and gives the reader a sense of the stakes and what it'd take to overcome them. You can imagine, from that, what you might do in Jake's place with that portal and that information.

Where I think it falls apart is in the last few pages of the book, when he returns battered and broken from his mission only to be confronted with a temporal agent who tells him to go look at what he wrought, then to reset it. It's not even that the future he created sucks - that's fine, that's what I would consider a "good" cost for time travel - it's that the universe is literally tearing itself apart.

That's right! A final rule is introduced in the final few pages of the book:

4. If you make pretty much any change to history (via this method, at least,) your actions will result in the utter annihilation of all existence.

So, yeah, ultimately Jake decides to reset and never re-attempt anything.

I know it's not uncommon in thrillers or horror for the final result to be "Well, you never should have messed with it in the beginning, huh?" Indeed, it's almost de rigeur, but it's rare for me to feel quite that cheated. It makes sense to me now why the ending of the 2015 video game Life is Strange happened the way it did, and why it didn't really make sense to me as written. Though the method is different, the result (any degree of time travel causes massive disasters, even if it's not quite as severe) is the same.

Matter of opinion, of course, but I personally think the fourth rule kinda sucked and that the first three rules were sufficient in themselves to make the cost of time travel difficult and interesting.

I've noticed this question comes up with Ryan a lot, and no one ever answers him, and it's frustrating to me. He seems to think that there needs to be some direct and specific motivation for people to lie beyond "It gets them attention."

Sometimes, the answer is incredibly clear, like in the situations where the people involved made money off of book deals or tourism, and I can chalk that up to Ryan just not following up enough to see that the people involved monetized it. Other times, though, he seems bamboozled by the concept that people might tell lies because they're telling cool stories or making up things for attention or to big themselves up or just for the heck of it.

One of my players expressed an interest in playing a Dragon-blooded character in my upcoming WFRP 4 game. Specifically, her character's mother was a merchant who traveled to Shang-Yang in Cathay and came home with a surprise.

For context, she is Chinese-Canadian, grew up really disconnected to her heritage in part because her father was never there, but discovered an appreciation for it later in life.

I looked at the wiki and the existing lore, and it doesn't seem terribly out of line compared to, say, a High Elf. I figured I'd use the same general stat line but change the proportions a bit, maybe come up with a custom talent or two.

Has anyone come up with rules for them yet, or would there be any interest in seeing it if I come up with it?

I know this at least partially contradicts some established canon, but I think the absolute funniest thing they could do with Ind is flip most of the racial assumptions from the rest of the setting on their heads.

Skaven? Rats and mice are hella sacred in Hindu mythology. Make them largely the Brahmin varna.

Beastmen? There are already canonical examples of Tigermen and monkey people being chill. No specific varna, but they come in civil and uncivil variants. Hindu myths have tons of beast people who work both within and without civilization.

Lizardmen? Perhaps the Thousand Gods have come to replace the Great Plan for the ones there. Draw from some of the myths around Makara and the Naga peoples.

The primary form of elves are Dark Elves, and most humans are chaos worshippers or tribesmen who live outside the major cities. More realistically, I suppose humans could be the bulk of the Shudra varna, but that's already the case in Cathay (in terms of baseline humans being largely peasants.)

I know this could not *possibly* work, but it would be so funny to me.

Absolutely loving the game so far! Gorgeous, bringing out that sweet CrossCode gameplay (with a bit more focus on the melee, which I think is fun. I'm still dropping my combos from time to time, but I'm getting the hang of it, and doing more parries than I ever did in CrossCode.

One thing I was wondering, looking at the story after beating the first boss, >!that big wasp!< - do you get the feeling that the gods of the Terryns are going to be a science fiction thing? I'm getting a strong vibe in that direction based on past experience with other franchises. It's giving strong "we have forgotten how our technology works and call it divine" vibes. I can tell that, so far at least, it seems like the Nyx is some sort of alien infestation, an invasive species situation, but my read on the gods and their miracles is weird.

I have a weird request -

I really like scenes taking place at night in JRPGs - or, really, any highly stylized video game, but JRPGs make up the bulk of those in my experience.

By "night scenes", I mean:

• Places with beautiful shots of the night sky (Tales of the Abyss has a gorgeous one with luminous flowers)
• Locations that are only accessible at night or change at night (Treno in FF9. Arguably BoF2 though it was pretty limited.
• Depictions of urban nightlife (FF7 Rebirth's Wall Market was incredible)
• Dark and cool palettes that attractively alter locations (Sea of Stars really could have done so much more with the day changing mechanic! It always looked so good when I turned things to night. FF15 to some degree)
• Night ambiance. (BoF3's camping)

What I'm looking for are people's recommendations for games that have the best scenes or locations that fill any of these criteria! Anything will do, even non-JRPGs, but I picked it for a reason. Any console is fine.

Even keeping in mind that I’m a non-believer and that none of their tools are particularly convincing, the SLS (Structured Light Sensor) always produces the worst results. Every time, without fail, it just matches to A) an object in the environment or B) a box of shadows.

Honestly, sometimes I’m mad at Shane for not pointing out how incredibly obvious and specific it is. I’m sure someone’s mentioned it behind the scenes, but it never comes up in the main show nor in the Debrief.

I get why they use it, since the jittering figures always look very silly, but still.

I'm interested in looking at TTRPGs (or even board games, etc) which provide a mechanical framework for undertaking change to society. I've had in mind a concept that puts the players in positions of authority in an important organization, with social conflicts being the primary focus (ie, combat doesn't matter and is generally something you don't want to get into, "adventuring" isn't a focus.)

I'm aware of Godbound having its Influence/Dominion system, but while that's a minor subsystem to an OSR d20 game (and not really what I'm going for), it's an example of a mechanical framework. Anything will do, just to see what others have come up with.

Minor Edit: to be absolutely clear, I'm looking for systems that have social *change* mechanics, not just social or organization mechanics. (A few good examples have been provided so far, thank you!)

My sister and I were watching Ryan’s 24 hour solo investigation, and there was a big emphasis on his concerns about demons and a whole section where he tried to obtain some holy water, but didn’t. He treated it as “half-blessed” in the debrief, and I’m really confused here as to what framework he has for both of these things.

I’m not a believer, but I grew up Catholic, so I understand pretty clearly that holy water is the way it is because an ordained priest performs a particular ritual over it. I’m also very well-read in the occult. so I’m familiar with how there are as many views on “demons” as there are cultures. Heck, the word “demon” itself derives from “daimon” which just meant any kind of supernatural entity.

Is Ryan Catholic, raised Catholic? What does he mean when he thinks there’s a demon in a place, what is a demon to him? He has some beliefs that seem to emerge from popular culture, like that demons will commonly pretend to be children, where it would be more accurate to say that Christian demons (as opposed to other conceptions) would pretend to be literally anything if it's convincing enough.