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.

I'm sure that Ziply Fiber is perfectly acceptable most of the time, but Mork has a unique talent for finding himself nestled in the deepest, most aberrant statistical realms. Just as an example: he and a friend of his, in lieu of intersecting with a framework that was clearly trying to digest him, managed to enter a parallel universe where .jpegs about the human peepee could be used in lieu of currency.

The coolest thing about Jim Darkmagic - to me, and something that comes up in the book where Jim and Omin meet - is that he thinks of himself as a performer first and a wizard second. Likes: Adoring Crowds. Dislikes: Books and Scrolls. And underneath that is the revelation that he thinks close-up magic and card tricks and shit are way harder and way cooler than yoking the raw power of the universe. In the storied, interdimensional manse of the Darkmagic wizarding family, Magic - like Baseball - is just something your dad is always making you do.

Mork hasn't been able to be on stage for an Acquisitions Incorporated for years, since PAX East 2020, which has sometimes been called The Last Convention. I've tried to keep him up on the occasional lore nibblins, but I know that at the same time keeping up with a game you aren't in… probably just feels bad? I really like playing D&D, and I like making Acquisitions Incorporated shows, but watching them is quite rare. I would say that it is even more rare for Gabriel, who has developed a technique to "un-watch" shows. This year alone, he's seen approximately -37.4 Actual Plays.

November marks Child's Play's 20th Birthday so... we're having a birthday party!

He actually got way the fuck into Exoprimal - long enough to find out that they hid shit in the game. I'm not even going to go into it, except to say that there's shit, and it's hidden in there. It's a sorta Destino, Gambit-like thing for the most part in these early days. Capcom has a super long history of gonzo experiments and whatever else this might look like, Overwatch: Dinosaur Genocide Edition or what have you, it's also them being super weird in a way I always like to see from an outfit that could just coast on Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter. They still got that pervert DNA

Twitter's addictive properties are well known by its warlock owner; he's its chief addict, in addition to whatever else he might be. I use it primarily to let people know about something my friends have done, and that includes the website you are currently reading. Some people use it because they can't not. Reddit is similar. I've never really understood either. I think of these places in roughly the same terms as I would a 7-Eleven. I go in for a specific thing and then I leave with the thing I went in there to get. Some people use Twitter or Reddit as a balm, medicinally, and then - as is quite routine for powerful medication - they start taking it all the time, because the lack of it begins to feel like a disease.

One of my favorite features of the most recent Penny Arcade site update is the “This day in history” window that shows you old comics from the current date. One of the strips for today is our “Grace” storyline set in the Nightlight universe.

Assassin's Creed: Mirage comes with support for something called an OWO, which is a haptic vest. I had seen it mentioned here and there, this specific vest, but I wasn't super paying attention because I had a sense I already understood it. I do think they're cool - even the haptics possible on an iPhone are way more detailed than I expected, and the stuff that comes through a PS5 controller is startlingly detailed, but these are all novel motors wiggling something. This fuckin' vest apparently has "high conductivity electrodes that use electrical impulses" to wirelessly communicate a range of sensations from the prickles of insects to the entry and exit wounds of a bullet. It delivers these things to games via direct support (more rare currently, mostly indie) or mods (for higher profile games like Fortnite or Valorant).