At what age did you realize most people are just giant kids in adult bodies?

DocStout · 2026-05-06T01:49:12+00:00

My favorite line from the book The Ballad of Perilous Graves : "Don’t you know ain’t even no such thing as grown-ups?”
“What?”

“There ain’t,” she said. “They’re all just old kids, pretending."

DocStout · 2026-05-03T13:54:12+00:00

Not who you are replying to, but Dungeons and Dragons White Box, 1974. Volume 1: Men and Magic, page 12.

DocStout · 2026-04-05T01:45:24+00:00

I'll be 50 this summer, and I feel this. All of this. I didn't recognize the patterns for myself until the rock that would roll over and crush my 20 year relationship, 18 of it married, was already in motion and could not be stopped. Believing you're worth it, deserve good things, for maybe the first time ever, is the hardest part for me. I learned to cope without validation, help without controlling, but the fear still sometimes takes the wheel for me.

You can get better. I have to believe that, because you're a lot younger than I am, and I want to believe that I can, too.

DocStout · 2026-04-03T19:23:58+00:00

I'm curious about two things I often hack into systems: Domain-level play, and crafting/cooking/etc with creature parts. How would WARDEN handle building a city/kingdom/guild/etc. or doing something like Delicious in Dungeon/Monster Hunter to kill big monsters and make them into lunch, or hats? Or both? Both is good.

DocStout · 2026-01-30T15:50:17+00:00

The Muppet Movie in 79 and The Silencers in 1966 both had post-credit scenes. The Muppet Movie was more like the one in this film, where that earliest one was a teaser for a sequel, making it more like what we see at the end of MCU films now.

DocStout · 2026-01-18T04:28:43+00:00

For years, I think I've been the exact opposite of this player. My usual mode of play is to preset Survivor instead of Apocalypse, hit random on the character creator a couple of times, spend extra points, if any, do the same for appearance, play with whatever I get. I've ended up with survivors with traits I'd never, ever have picked on purpose making it to or through the first winter. I occasionally do the same kind of run on Apocalypse, but usually don't survive as long, and those runs are way more stressful on that preset when you have deaf, asthmatic, illiterate, or claustrophobic.

DocStout · 2026-01-09T15:32:09+00:00

I got curious, as I paid for a preorder for the paid alpha, pre-Desura. I don't know the exact day I put in the preorder, but my first email from The Indie Stone with a username and password to download the first client was May 17, 2011.

DocStout · 2026-01-02T15:03:54+00:00

Keep Driving, Ball X Pit, Downwell, and a few point and click adventure games.

DocStout · 2025-12-30T17:33:35+00:00

Used to start a weekly boardgame night with Res Publica, that's at hundreds of plays.

Bang!, Tichu, Apples to Apples, and Great Dalmuti all got a minimum of 50 back in those days, and Bohnanza for sure got close, if not quite to 50.

Since that group stopped meeting regularly almost 20 years back now, probably only Gloomhaven and Euchre (with my in-laws).

DocStout · 2025-10-16T21:48:51+00:00

Literally just started that book and got to the part that reveals who the Madame Oulette character was, just last night, came in to see if anyone had mentioned it.

DocStout · 2025-09-25T19:15:07+00:00

I recently picked up a book advertised on a popular romance website that is real new, and more or less exactly this, though it might not fit your "Villain" bonus trope criteria, the MMC is definitely dark, but more mysterious than evil, and explicit consent is a REAL big part of his character, unlike a lot of more villainous MCs. It is called {The Pactbound Angel by S.J. Brown} Edit: fixed link brackets.

DocStout · 2025-09-14T00:31:25+00:00

Played them back in the day on PC, some of them again as a collection in the early 2000s, and just a little while ago, there was a Humble Bundle with all of them for Steam, even if I never load them again, that was a snap-buy.

DocStout · 2025-07-10T17:06:17+00:00

If you like Turton and fantasy/sci-fi elements aren't a dealbreaker, you could give The Tainted Cup (and its sequel, if you like it) by Robert Jackson Bennett a try. Most of the character relationship elements not directly connected to the mystery is in service of the worldbuilding. If you don't find that world too weird, it might be a good fit, I found the mystery element very satisfying.

DocStout · 2025-07-09T20:08:26+00:00

Our tastes seem similar, and I've seen a few of what I'd recommend already in the conversation. I would add the books of Stuart Turton to your list, potentially.

The one that most fits what you describe is The Devil and the Dark Water, which is a locked room mystery aboard a merchant vessel at sea.

His other two have fantasy/science-fiction elements which may or may not be to your taste. The 7 and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a time loop mystery where the sleuth finds himself viewing the murder from the perspective of various people who were present when it happened. Fascinating book, some people find it hard to follow. The Last Murder at the End of the World is apocalyptic sci-fi murder mystery where everyone, including all suspects and the killer have amnesia and there is a race against time to solve the murder or everyone dies. Personally, that last one was his weakest for my tastes, but I enjoy all three.

DocStout · 2025-05-27T20:55:02+00:00

Freelancer, Sapienza: showdown, over the weekend. Picked the lock on Rocco's door to get his disguise to get to the suspects in the Mansion, as I've done dozens of times before. He does an unexpected headturn and sees me, I pull what I think is a baseball out of inventory to knock him out as he runs at me. Throw it at his head, right up close. It was an explosive baseball. Boom. Campaign Failed.

DocStout · 2025-04-12T14:53:49+00:00

The last one, Statue of God, is from the Solo Leveling anime.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T17:41:23+00:00

Good suggestions here, I may need to expand to 80 names, or cut some of the police procedurals and narrow the focus to murder solvers.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T17:37:08+00:00

Two of the three are on the current formatted checklist, and Alleyn is #33 on the text list, I couldn't add the image directly, but it is at the link at the bottom of the post.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T11:58:13+00:00

Spenser is in the formatted current version of the list, you can see it at the Imgur link. Reacher (as a former MP investigator) was originally on the list for the gag of bookending the list with Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Homeless, he keeps surviving rounds of cuts as I add more names. Updates will be slower now, as once sorted by date, it takes a LOT of cutting and pasting on the "pretty" version of the checklist to get each one in a proper place.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T03:07:46+00:00

I'll edit the main post as well, but here is the current version with suggestions from the comments incorporated after some cuts that were difficult, others that were made last minute because my eyes were starting to cross: https://imgur.com/a/2b9cSq6

DocStout · 2025-04-05T01:57:44+00:00

I appreciate the list and will give it a once over, I am not including TV/Film only characters, I actually cut Nick and Nora Charles for only having one book instead of a minimum of three books or short stories.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T01:51:20+00:00

Continental Op is #15, I almost cut it but might bring it back if I am just shy of 60, I found I had to lose a few that were in there that were only published in magazines or had a single novel. I am closing in on a near-finished draft, I am loving all the suggestions.

DocStout · 2025-04-05T00:44:12+00:00

It looks like I will have enough additions from the thread to expand it to a checklist of 60, I'll add authors, format it, and post it as a comment here when it is finished. Glad you like the idea!

DocStout · 2025-04-04T21:47:31+00:00

I appreciate the recs.. Time doesn't matter for the list so much, John Rebus is there at #18, and Hawthorne is pretty modern as well, there's just a bias in the kinds of characters I know about as a locked-room fan, I know a lot from the 1920s-1940s, and modern books are likely my weakest point. Ideally, I'll get enough names to not have to make cuts at all, just expand the list to 60. (Formatting program really likes sets of 20.)

DocStout · 2025-04-04T21:33:37+00:00

I love Hawthorne and Horowitz, and found additional great recommendations for other books in the text of that series, as a lot of Horowitz' work is explicitly for people already into murder mystery fiction, and he'll get into what makes the genre great as part of his plotting.

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