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.

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!