I’ll second Keychron. Almost every keebs enthusiast starts there. I got the Q1 v2. Be aware that if you get any metal version, you may want to open the keyboard and put tiny little pieces of masking tape around where the bottom and top lips meet.

This is called the “force break” mod. I did this and the tempest tape mod to mine and it sounds amazing even with stock gateron brown switches. Tempest tape has the possibility of starting fires if you don’t do it right, though. Basically you cover the whole bottom of the PCB with masking tape.

The break mod alone should do wonders though.

Got these written down in my Obsidian vault (alongside DIVI-DEAD, because I’ll be damned if I forget that one again). Interaction is minor. I don’t really play VN to interact with anything, but its cool if there’s some sort of mechanic.

For example, Kamidori Alchemy Meister actually has fairly compelling adventure, party building, monster catching, shop building, crafting, and shop sales mechanics (much like Moonlighter shop and sales mechanic). Its a huge game with a ton of characters, but still advertises as a VN.

For me, I don’t need all that as long as there’s a compelling story. I know some VN out there literally don’t have choices and just play as… well, as visual novels, lol. Thank you for the list. Pumpkin Eater actually stands out the most to me. It seems reminiscent of analog horror done in a VN watercolor. I like the aesthetic and it already feels unsettling.

If you want some non-VN psychological horrors, my top two are Fran Bow and Sally Face. Sally Face is incredibly good, but Fran Bow is a very VERY close second. They’re more point and click puzzlers, but that’s another favorite genre of mine.

I’ve been pondering Nobara for a while, tbh. GE Proton is already my goto and most trusted runner, and GloriousEggroll is the mind behind Nobara (though I’m unsure if they’re the sole dev or not).

From what I’ve seen, it just sets you up for gaming right out of the box with minimal effort. The post-install welcome menu looks clean. It has everything you need to set up and install in one menu.

A long looong time ago, my gf found one called Saya no Uta. It has H-Scenes (only a few I think), but its pretty well written. I wasn’t as big on it as she was, but that started my adventure down dark mystery/psychological horror VN. To this day its her favorite, though.

I can’t remember everything I played and enjoyed (I wish I could but its so long ago now). I actually had to search for my favorite one because I constantly forget it. Its more dark mystery psychological with only a small amount of horror scenes, but its called DIVI-DEAD.

Again, it has H-Scenes, but thats not the sole premise. There are so many clues and endings. It has a college campus map, so being in certain places at certain times changes everything. I believe you get a time limit of like… 1 in game week to get the best ending? It goes off the rails a bit here and there, but I have fond, albeit blurry memories of it. It feels so dim and unsettling for such an old game. So good.

I’ve also seen that CHAOS;HEAD has good reviews, but I don’t know much about it- only that I’ve seen the name before and I think it got an anime a long time ago. I’ll keep looking and trying to remember more.

Actually just remembered one. Its called Another. It had a fairly popular anime release, but if you haven’t seen it I recommend that one as well. And, of course, there’s the well known Doki-Doki Literature Club.

Use Lutris and install all required languages, fonts, and regions through winetricks. I had it set up once, I gotta do it again at some point.

There’s an article out there in the wild somewhere. Just search for “how to play visual novels in Lutris”. Iirc, I think GE Wine runs VNs better than proton. I enjoy psychological horror VNs and busted ass getting them to work, but they do work and well once you have it set up.

Use one prefix for all your Japanese games so that you don’t have to do it every time. Then just select that prefix any time you’re installing or playing a VN/Japanese game. You can change region locale through Lutris configuration without the need for a third party app, too.

This. I usually default to GE Proton and get the best results without needing to dance around proton versions. I’ve heard of Steam Tinker, but haven’t tried it yet. Normally I just inject it via Protonup-QT.

You can get away with it while having some downtime in a village. The bard is making coin in the tavern and the barbarian is drinking in the same place, the priest visits the local chapel, the warlock looks to spend some coin on magic baubles, etc. This also increases the creativity in which you can give your players their next quest.

But once you’re out adventuring on that quest, you’re a goddamn party. If you don’t want to be a party, then go home and play a single player game.

Edit: I have had good DMs separate the party themselves though, but we always spend it trying to find each other again.

To those who actually use or need a menstruation tracker app, if you use Android there is an open source, free option called Bluemoon on F-Droid.

I used to go to the retirement home in the cul-de-sac down the road. No kids really thought about going there, they’d just stay on their own roads and streets. The old lonely folks there were practically waiting at the door, all outside lights on. My friend and I would make out like bandits every year with big bars, popcorn balls, homemade fudge and cake bars. Literal pillowcases full of top shelf candy and baked goods.

Man, I could go for a refreshing… READMORE right now.

No, you tell them “Guess!”, all excited like you know they’re going to love it. “Just guess! I bet you’ll get it right away.” Then jump on the first guess and congratulate them with a “Surprise!”, even if you hate the answer.

Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu, Cable TV, etc.

The lower class usually get up for their hardworking but ill-paid jobs. The one thing they want to do is go home and turn on the TV and just have their one streaming service work when they’ve been busting ass all day.

The upper class doesn’t really care what the price is, they just have every service stream what they want.

The middle class makes just little enough to not warrant paying that much for a shit streaming service so that they can save up for x hobby, so they’ll pirate all day.

I saved the best of my VHS for a long time. I couldn’t get them for a while as I was moving around. The boxes were in a flood, but the tapes were at the top. Unfortunately, my yearbooks were at the bottom. Anyway, I finally got them out of my mom’s basement where she’d been holding them for me. This was a couple weeks ago.

I was excited to see all those old movies again, but unfortunately I noticed on second glance that the film inside the tapes were either spotted white or completely white. That was the day that I learned that VHS tapes could actually rot. Its a shame…

I had just learned how to shoot a rubber band with one hand at school in 5th grade. 1998ish. Thought it was the coolest thing. I had this teacher everyone hated. She was so self centered and mean.

So from the back of the class, I shot a tiny rubber band toward her. She unfortunately saw me out of the corner of her eye. She immediately went into hysterics and I was sent out of class to wait in the office. My mother was called to pick me up. This teacher was crying into the arms of the principle like some victim of some heinous act.

My mom found out that the teacher was one of her best friends from Catholic school. Was outraged at me. I had no idea wtf they were so mad about. I’ve shot tons of rubber bands in class and never before had they gone so nuts about it. I only find out later that they had told my mother I had pretended to shoot a gun at my teacher.

My mother threw me down two flights of stairs and held me on the wall by my neck, feet dangling. She hissed and spit in my face, telling me how embarrassed she was and how horrible I am. And to this day she doesn’t believe I was shooting a fucking rubber band like kids fucking do.

It happens to layouts. Some people add some small changes to make an alternate layout which makes more sense to them. For example, Colemak and Colemak-DH. DH only changes 3 keys, shifts 3, and swaps 2.

Was going to say. I’ve been lucky. My only experience with Discord has been sudo pacman -S discord. I barely use it, but I have some friends I keep in touch with on it.

Using topgrade without realizing what I was doing. Seemed okay for a few days until my headphones suddenly jacked to 1000 and began some sort of alarm-like buzzing. Thankfully they were not on my head, because it was so loud my gf and I thought there was some sort of fire alarm going off. This was on EndeavourOS.

I tried topgrade again, not knowing that the app was what had done it. This time on vanilla Arch. I was not so fortunate this round and I took the sound full blast into my earholes. I reacted in milliseconds and Hulk-smash threw them halfway across the room. No lasting damage since I was so quick, but fuck me wearing headphones is more dangerous than I thought.

Luckily I’ve learned from past mistakes and made Timeshift restore points before every update. I reverted to before the topgrade changes and my distro has still been holding strong since then. I think I’ll make my own alias for full upgrade and call it updawg.

Lol! Well, you’re probably not wrong.

Yeah, its just a blast of feelings, hard to describe. Shooting stars can usually do it to me. Whether they’re in a game or in real life.

I used to sit in old WoW waaaay back in the day and watch the shooting stars in Arathi Highlands. That and Winterspring were my favorite areas.

Sorry that this is off-topic… but your avatar hit me in the feels. I can’t explain fully. When I first became aware as a kid in school, like… first conscious memorized thoughts, I was staring at the Netscape Navigator loading animation. Now every time I see it there’s this feeling. Like super nostalgic serotonin and dopamine running through my veins.

Such a small thing, but I almost cry every time I see it.

Thanks for this. Its been quite a while since I’ve played, so I was going off of fuzzy memory. I do still have all the books, but haven’t opened them in a long time.

That’s exactly it. You choose what you want your character to do and be within the GM’s world type. Then you have one or two sessions really setting everything up for world, characters, story, progression, etc. After that you’re done with the hard part. Heck, even the GM is done with it. They may need to reference material occasionally, but the game almost plays itself.

It’s much, much more casual and focuses more on story and narrative. Its like if Choose Your Own Adventure was a game, the rolls only being there to add flavor and excitement to your adventures.