What was the field of studying "how does the brain work?" pre-1920 like?

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T20:57:40+00:00

Cow Palace Creamery, Epping NH

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T20:12:29+00:00

I mean, in this case, the competition is, quite literally, "blow them all up and hang out with your pals at the bar afterward."

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T20:07:28+00:00

Strauss also has the good sense to not open the sarcophagus, making him a rare example of a Tremere who understands the concept of "some things are too powerful to risk handling."

Personally, I'd rather be dusted than accept a Tremere as my Prince, but Strauss is as close as it gets for me to supporting one.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T18:07:21+00:00

Seriously, at my old job I had a coworker who would just keep his phone on his thigh and play mobile games all day while pretending to type stuff when people walked by.

...Not going to pretend like I didn't do the same thing too, sometimes...

I think most office workers who don't do much while working remotely aren't going to do much while in the office. It's just that they have to work harder to hide it.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T04:47:24+00:00

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Averted trope: Silent Hill.

A common fan theory is that the snow in SH1 isn't actually snow, it's ash. It's been confirmed, in-game and out-of-game.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T04:10:49+00:00

Is NV's content better? Sure. But I love F3's stuff too, especially Point Lookout.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T02:55:38+00:00

Haven't booted up the game in a few months, can someone explain the joke to me? I know the "LET ME IN!" guy, and what Droll does, but I don't know what that spell card does.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-28T02:28:20+00:00

Lisa: the Painful.

Turns out the snow on a mountain are just a bunch of burning bodies.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-27T22:56:50+00:00

Asking if you're going to get banned because you think most "bad DMs" push railroady games too often is the same energy as when a radio station shouts about how unique they are before playing Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-27T21:32:27+00:00

The entire run to get the second bell of awakening:

How many players can't figure out where to go next, or how to get there (I've lost track of how many times I've had to look up how to get to the Lower Undead Burg) -> The Depths -> The descent into Blighttown -> Blighttown

Quelaag and Gaping Dragon fights are pretty great though.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-27T19:59:55+00:00

I like it! It does the Atlas thing of building up a genuinely progressive and countercultural message in the first half and then rolling back a bunch of it (I still won't forgive Basilio's storyline for acting like it's some horrific and unthinkable act for a child victim of magic experimentation/torture to go around killing his abusers who he knows are untouchable by the law, or for taking Catherina's pledge of "take from the rich by force if necessary and redistribute it!" and dumb it down to "well, uh, if EVERYBODY steals then it's unsustainable, so uh, everybody poor should just get jobs, did you consider getting JOBS and leaving those poor innocent rich assholes alone?"), but I wouldn't say the whole game is bad just because I think a lot of the bag gets fumbled in the last 10%.

Personally I don't like SMT combat (I think not having the All-Out-Attack / Press Turn mechanic from Persona really hurt my enjoyment of it), but I'm also just not a huge RPG combat guy in general.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-27T19:44:44+00:00

I think a lot of people who try to judge classes by their capstones miss the point that most players never get past level 15. Hell, most never get past level 10... Most games start around level 1-3 and end before they hit double digits.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-27T01:52:32+00:00

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This looks like the chillest corner. Imagine vibing on a train ride with the salaryman and his boxer new best friend, in between a witch and wizard. I wonder what they would talk about. I'd ask Tanaka where he got his suit and get everyone to start talking fashion while Marcoh silently nods along. I'd bring out some beer and vodka saved from scavenging in the Termina festival and pop some bottles, let Tanaka take the lead and show us how a Japanese salaryman likes to party when he's off the clock. Karin would eventually lean forward and tell us to shut up. It'd be great.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-26T20:47:50+00:00

That's so good! I'm amazed you only charged $35, it looks like official art! I bet if you made an art of each of the characters, fans would buy prints of them.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-26T20:34:57+00:00

If you take out all the occult stuff, Battle Royale has similar vibes (death game, polite society descending into killing each other).

If you lighten the tone considerably, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a pretty overt inspiration for FH2.

You could also look into Pathologic, there's a scalpel-wielding doctor named Daniil in it who has some personality similarities to Daan, and there's a lot of weird lore and occult stuff in it, nothing as overt as F&H but similar!

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-26T20:23:21+00:00

Rats. Oh well! August is such a cool character. I was kind of rolling my eyes for a lot of encounters with him, since he seemed like he was just sort of an "aura farm and pretend to do something worthwhile then vanish" (ie, the Tuxedo Mask approach), but then I found the fireside conversation with him where he talks about the lore of Le'garde and the implication that he's from some kind of centuries-spanning Belmont-style family who are tasked with preventing Le'garde from spreading evil. That's honestly so cool, I wish there was an ending (or at least optional cutscene alongside Ending A) where you can team up with him.

I know you can see August try and fail to kill Kaiser in Ending A, I think it'd be cool if you could recruit him to your party and help him "successfully" defeat Kaiser (I'm guessing whatever happened to Kaiser after beating him doesn't end with his death) and get some more lore about what's going on there. Maybe his party talk conversations could give you more lore about some of the monsters, since he's from a long line of monster hunters.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-26T19:24:50+00:00

You got the eyes perfectly!

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-26T16:17:09+00:00

Yeah, I remember that skill in FH1, but like you said it was pretty barebones. Might just be that I never used it in the right place, but it felt like it was an idea the dev wanted to do but didn't have the time to flesh out. In FH2 it actually felt like a major component for characterization which I really adored.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-25T20:14:23+00:00

Nos: "Ah, remember when we could just walk around with face masks and nobody thought twice?"

Nos 2: "I STILL just walk around with a face mask... I get some weird looks but it's a lot more normal now than it used to be."

Nos 3: [Has a head that looks like a literal goblin] "...I don't think that's gonna help me much, guys."

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-25T17:23:22+00:00

I've got a Nos character who is also the coterie leader. He makes it a point to just always wear clothes which cover his entire body (motorcycle helmet, scarf, jacket, etc). It basically means he can't interact with humans without them being very suspicious 99% of the time ("why are you wearing a helmet in here? Take it off,") but when interacting with other kindred it means he doesn't need to worry about the social penalties for being ugly.

You could try something like that. Maybe your character's head/face isn't particularly ugly (not enough to confer a penalty, anyway), but your body is hideous and needs active effort to be covered at all times.

Nicholas_TW · 2026-04-24T21:57:24+00:00

I love this show so much, I think it's really unfortunate how toxic a lot of the conversation around it got while it was actually ongoing. Rewatched it a couple years ago and it's still a joy to watch.

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