It's really fun to have a kid whose intellectual trajectory you recognize - like, at all. I'm also glad that they have somebody to talk to about these things, because I didn't. The vector might have changed in the modern era, but the principle hasn't: you can install entire belief structures at the root of your mind, fully baked, pre-approved. It's easy to find a context where the deployment of shibboleths can allow access to the sanctity of a hermetic cabal. As they have had the opportunity to discover, it gets dark fast when you deviate from whatever the local sacred writ is. I didn't have Reddit or whatever, because nobody had Reddit. There wasn't a Reddit yet. But when a friend asked me if I was ready to pick up a gun and kill in order to create the just society we had been discussing, I wasn't! I wasn't ready. And that was bad, in an apparently unforgivable way.

The terminology changed recently, I don't remember a memo going out. But I don't consider something that has commercials "free" to watch. I'm not trying to be churlish; I just recognize that I'm paying with something. And they know I'm paying with it too, which is why they have the commercials there. You used to be able to buy most content online with this currency - attention - but it's depreciated over time, to the point where you now pay a service to show you ads.

I grew up playing World of Darkness stuff: Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, and some of the weirder ones.  So having a chance to play in a Vampire Chronicle with the inestimable Jason Carl in Seattle By Night is something I still think about a lot.  We occasionally get asked if we'll ever be able to do it again, and I have the most incredible news.  At PAX West  -On Sunday, September 3rd at 11:30am - Seattle By Night returns with new guest, Luis Carazo!  This would be an incredible opportunity for a rewatch, or even a first time through the show.  It's one of the best things we've done.  Check out the description, before it's even added to the schedule:

The beloved Vampire: The Masquerade actual play chronicle Seattle by Night returns! Join our Kindred cast Jerry Holkins, Mike Kruhalik, Jasmine Bhullar, and Luis Carazo live on stage as their vampires attempt to navigate the treacherous undead politics of the Camarilla. The coterie has finally made contact with the Camarilla, but how will they prove their loyalty? Storyteller Jason Carl presides over this new chapter in the undead drama.  

So, AAAAAAAAHHHH!

(CW)TB

Lorcana game seems really cool. The app is also handy, and is a great way to look at all this fucking rad art in the first set and get your head around some of the concepts with its built-in rulebook. But it seems like they no make enough card :(((

It's entirely possible I've taught you a new word with the title of the strip, Gabriel certainly hadn't heard of it. I don't know why I know this word, which sounds like something a person would say when they do know it, and know it very well, and are a paypig. But I really don't remember! I just like words, specifically what might be called jargon: language internal to a given context. The need for specific language leads to words with an incredible amount of conceptual freight. I used to have one of the "apps" installed, not to interact, but because a person's bio on a dating app has so much data encoded into it that it compares favorably with holographic storage.

I just realized that explaining it in this level of detail just makes me seem more like a paypig. And it's supposed to be private! The Serpent Queen's gonna be on my fucking ass.

Here's the last of our bonus Tuesday strips, courtesy of Games Workshop!  It's been a while since we had bonus strips running, and we had a great time with them.  It's always nice to get a project lined up right at the moment it's your 24/7 obsession.

We have a rule suggestion for Games Workshop now that the shiny new 10th edition is out. Let's see how it goes. Oh, and this is the last of the Tuesday @warhammer strips! I hope you had fun, and thanks to GW for the opportunity!#WarhammerCommunity #New40kt pic.twitter.com/b8EzGwpPn7

— Tycho Brahe (@TychoBrahe) August 15, 2023

(CW)TB

We did a few Ziply comics, each expressing various levels of distress or even the rare glint of hope, twinkling underwater. We had considered the whole thing something of a lost cause, and - as is our way - we made comics to get something out of it, anything at all.

I have had a lot of different phones over the years. I’ve tried Android and Apple and even had a Windows phone when that was a thing. I had settled back into iOS and for the last few years I was happy with my iPhone but after seeing a friends foldable, I decided to make the switch.  

Ryan has a foldy phone, a Samsung I think, that opens the way a book does. A very futuristic book to be sure, but yeah. He fucking loves that thing. And now Gorbiriel has a phone which is compact on fully two axes - physically, but also naming… -ly, with the razr+. I remember when the Motorola Razr was the elite apex of cool phones, but it was like… six hundred dollars? For a phone?! That'll never catch on.

Anyway, I have a folding phone too. So do you. It's about fucking mindset.

There's a Gran Turismo movie that is a dramatization of a story you might not know, or don't remember anymore. It got us to thinking about how the dynamics of being "called up to the big leagues" might play out in other genres - the results of our crucial investigation can be found here.

For a very brief time, Penny Arcade - this very website - is going four strips a week, a boon from the new 10th Edition of Warhammer 40k.  It's about painting minis, and it may be hurtful content.  For me, I mean.  I'm in this picture, and I don't like it. 

I didn't even play through the entirety of the early access stuff for Baldur's Gate 3. I started in on it with my friend Eric when it came out, just to see, and here's what became clear right away: sating an immediate curiosity for this game would be the worst possible way to experience the full thing. In the meantime, a lot of communiques have been deployed. Classes have been added, Features have been made manifest, in accordance with the old ways. I tried to be strategic about what I did and didn't look at. In doing so, I missed a novel "feature."

The Child’s Play charity has done a lot of amazing work over the years thanks to your support, and the creation of the Gaming and Technology specialist position in hospitals is one of its best accomplishments in my opinion. 

Apparently, Hello Kitty Island Adventures has descended on the Krahulik house like a meteor - destroying all life. Well, all productivity at least. It's Animal Crossing, apparently, with some light, subterranean puzzle aspects? Gabriel was not familiar with the true breadth of Sanrio's unrelenting offering, but having just returned from Sanrio World Ginza I was prepared to offer the basic tour. I also told him to check out Aggretsuko, for all the reasons you should. Over here, as a true aficionado, Ronia can hold forth on My Melody and Pompompurin, and my eldest has entered some kind of dark-cute phase hand in paw with Kuromi.

I bought Baldur's Gate 3 the day it hit early access. Obviously, I wanted to play the game. I feel like that would be cool. But I also just wanted it to be real in general. When I saw that they'd brought Jaheira back, I was catapulted into a zone of white-hot, near infinite pleasure. If you're doing Baldur's Gate, sure - you do Minsc and Boo for the memes. In the US, it's legally required for Dungeons & Dragons projects to incorporate at least one space hamster. I don't know how it works en Belgique. But you don't get all the way back to Jaheira, don't let us know how she's doing now, unless you give a fuck.

We were asked by Games Workshop to make a few comics for the launch of 10th Edition, and it was the easiest call of all time.  Gabe literally plays and paints with his two boys, and as newcomers to the hobby - which is actually, like, four hobbies - there's a lot to pick up.  We have done three total, and we'll be putting them up on Tuesdays for a little while.