Some stories have a message...kinda...

Additional Notes:

WARNING! (The real one)

This story is pretty offensive, it can get graphic and downright ruthless at times so if you don’t like that sort of humor, don’t read this story. But if you read it anyway don’t complain if you get offended, I did warn you and keep in mind it IS only a story.

(Or read it anyway, get offended and leave a hilariously triggered comment, that's fine too.)

Also, don't bother trying to "win" either. You can't. Just heed the moral lessons you may learn.

One musician's tale in a dying world

Additional Notes:

If you’ve read and liked Necromancer, then this might interest you as this story takes place during the same course of events of that story. (Not a prequel, not a sequel, but an equal!)

However, this story is definitely more “story” than “game”. In fact you shouldn’t even bother reading it if you’re intent on “winning”. You can’t. That being said, there is a “true ending” to this story and you’ll probably know if you get it. If you do get it, you can consider it a “win” if you like.

There are a few points in the story where there are links that lead to “Letters to Home”. While not necessary to understand the story, they do provide a little more insight into the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings on various situations.

The last hope for a dying empire

Additional notes:

This story can be very long assuming you're not dying. Years pass and your surroundings will most likely change. You may very well live a life time in the story.

As with any of my writings, the story comes before the game. However while there isn't a complex inventory and all of that, you can technically "win" by getting one of the epilogues.

There are 13 epilogues total.

There are also several points in the story where there are links that lead to more background information on various people, places, things and events. While not completely necessary to understanding the story, they do give you more insight into it.

Carnivals aren't all fun and games.

Additional Notes:

While there is only one spot that contains extra histories for this story, it's basically the background information of all the major characters and factions. It's strongly recommended that these are read due to the fact that your character will be interacting with most of these folks in his attempts to successfully accomplish his task(s).

This story has a very factional feel to it, so choose your allegiances carefully to get one of the better endings.

If you see a bright light, duck and cover!

Additional notes:

I should point out that this story can be very long assuming you're not dying. Years pass and your surroundings will most likely change. You may very well live a life time in the story if you're lucky. You will also experience a completely different adventure depending on how you escaped the initial nuclear strike. (Assuming you do survive it.)

As with any of my writings, the "story" comes before the "game". However, this story was written in a "game like" format. So while there isn't a complex inventory and all of that, you can technically "win" by getting one of the 4 special endings. (You'll know if you get one because you'll get an epilogue)

This one's for the kids, no really!

Additional Notes:

This story has clear cut win/lose endings. There is nothing excessively unusual about this story, it's just a simple "children's story".

(Yes, you can still die in it)

Running the family business isn't easy!

Additional Notes:

In a few places there are links for history or certain characters. While not necessary to understand the story, they do provide further background information.

There are several endings varying in degrees of good/bad or neutral outcomes. Technically there is one very happy ending, but it isn't labeled as such.

Underneath the sickness there's love...

Additional Notes:

WARNING!

This story contains a lot of graphic content, if you are offended by ultra violence, explicit sexual descriptions, tons of swearing, blasphemy, inappropriate dark humor, and brutal misanthropy in general then DO NOT read this story!

Of course now that I’ve mentioned all the things it contains, you’ll probably read it anyway, you sick little monkey.

Well don’t complain if you get offended, I did warn you and keep in mind it IS only a story.

(Or read it anyway knowing it'll offend you and leave an amusingly triggered comment. That's fine too.)

This also isn't really a "win/lose" type story. While there are some endings better than others, this is basically just a tale about a very twisted man and his very twisted lifestyle.

Additional Notes:

This story is definitely more "story" than "game", however there are two distinct paths that can be followed, each with their own pitfalls and additional choices. There is also "one true" ending in which can be considered a "win" (You'll know if you got it, because you'll get an epilogue)

This story can get long, and assuming you're surviving, years do pass in it and you and your environment will change. There are a few points in the story where there are links that lead to more background information on various people and things. While not completely necessary to understand the story, they do give you more insight into it. The text that accompanies some of the pics are also done for similar purposes (Your journal entries, personal thoughts, letters written to you, etc)

Humanity never changes...

Additional Notes:

There are links leading to various background information and your character's current thoughts throughout the story. In some cases these may provide greater insight since some mysterious things can occur in this story.

There are also several endings varying in degrees of good/bad/neutral outcomes. Technically there is one ultimate "winning" ending, but it isn't labeled as such.

Emotions can be wonderful or dangerous...

Additional Notes:

This story has a few bits that are probably a bit on the disturbing side. Not many, but they are there in places. So if you don't like that sort of thing, you probably shouldn't read it.

This story in general is probably a bit odd and less verbose than most of my other stories. There are also several endings varying in degrees of good/bad/neutral outcomes. While there are some endings better than others, this is basically just the tale of a teenager who definitely has some issues.

From humble beginning to infamy and beyond!

Additional notes:

This story is a fully self contained one and can easily be read on its own, however it also acts as a "sequel" to Innkeeper.

As with any of my writings, the story comes before the game. However while there isn't a complex inventory and all of that, you can technically "win" by getting one of the 12 epilogues.

Things would be so much easier if your name was Mary Sue

Additional notes:

This story is a fully self contained one and can easily be read on its own, however it also acts as:

A direct sequel to the "Good Girl" short story in Tales From The Basement.

A semi sequel to the other TFTB short stories, Repression, TRASH, Love SICK and Geek.

A semi prequel to Ground Zero.

As with any of my writings, the story comes before the game. However while there isn't a complex inventory and all of that, you can still "win" by getting one of the epilogues.

There are 16 epilogues total.

Because Basement Dwellers are people too!

Additional Notes:

This story is three stories in one. Your first choice will lead to a separate tale of a different “basement dweller”. Each one is mostly different in tone.

Ebay Escapist is weird and random. It’s the least verbose of the three. (Or my stories in general)

Good Girl is the longest and most descriptive of the three. There is some weirdness going on here too, but is mostly kept much more in "reality". There is a cast of characters link in the beginning to help you keep up with who’s who.

Anime Addict has a lot of offensive language and humor, so if you don't like that sort of thing you shouldn’t read this one.

In all the tales there are several endings varying in degrees of good/bad/neutral outcomes. While there are some endings better than others, these are basically just tales of basement dwellers.

It's an edgelord boogaloo!

Additional Notes:

This story is three stories in one where it follows a different protagonist based on the first choice.

This story is also probably really offensive or something. Probably shouldn't read it if that's not your thing, but feel free to do so anyway and complain loudly in the comments since those are always good for a laugh.

Anyway, there's your extra warning. You can't say you weren't told.

Incel Insanity and Whining Wokie are all new tales, while Film Fanatic is a "reboot" of sorts of an older story called Exploitation Theater. Yes, it's finally here and been greatly expanded on.

As always the story is always more important than the game focus, but also as always, you definitely can get better endings than others.

Three ladies. Three legends.

Additional notes:

This story is a fully self contained one and can easily be read on its own, however it also acts as a connection to Rogues, Eternal and Necromancer.

As with any of my writings, the story comes before the game. However there is an epilogue for each "winning" ending.

Yee Haw! It's a trailer park life for me!

Additional Notes:

This story has a ton of offensive langauge and humor so if you don't like that sort of thing, you probably shouldn't read it. Though given the setting, the language used is pretty accurate.

This also isn't really a "win/lose" type story. While there are some endings better than others, this is basically just a tale about a typical day of a degenerate that lives in a trailer park.

Yes, he most certainly isn't, Ebon gave up way too quickly for anything to happen.

So Kick's a self-loathing tranny, well that explains a lot.

Sounds like one of the paths in Rogues, but you never get turned into a lich in it. You can get turned into a vampire though.

Okay final story. This one is another two parter which appeared in last half of the first main story arc in the Intruder comic. (The one with the Tzara dudes) This is also one I’ve mentioned briefly in passing a few times over the years in the forums. Always liked it.

Also while I haven’t talked much about the games in each these comics much, I will mention the one that came in the comic containing the second part of this story. There was a mini-CYOA version of this story and it even included a few dice roll checks for some of the passages. It of course was a rather easy CYOA since all you had to do really was choose what the main character did in the story if you read it, but there were a couple of different outcomes not in the story.

Anyway let’s get on with this tale.

Mama’s Boy

I like how the reverend didn't correct Morris' assumption that Tony was retarded.

Yep, even in this universe Mormons suck.

Why the hell wouldn't you eat your dessert. The rev's right, they are FOOLS.

Bonus points that they implied there's a whole religious order dedicated to the concept of divine incest

Even not counting the whole "Mom=God" stuff, there's still things like this that make the world a little more alien from ours

The wacky world aside, the comic also does a good job of hitting all the noir detective tropes.

Mom in all her June Cleaveresque glory.

"A simple boy". Yep, Mom just confirmed Tony is indeed a retard. (Well maybe idiot savant given his powers)

Even a wholesome ending.

Well that's it for this round of reviews. The Buck Roger's one I'll get around to later at some point and probably a different since it's one of the more fleshed out comics that TSR was publishing mainly because they were really trying to push the game setting, but more on that when the review thread comes about. Stay tuned!

Got a better idea, how about you just stop bragging about being a chicken fucker?

Or don't and we can continue mocking you. That's fine too.

Please don't talk about your weird fetishes here, there are miners present.

I need to update it at some point anyway. There's been some other stuff that's happened since last time.

Alright once again, I’m going to go a little out of order on these since I’m going to save the best for last. Actually the first one is pretty cool too though. All of these short stories start off with a little narration with Alexandria as the back drop showing the worlds the books contain inside followed by exploring one in greater detail.

Innocent Blood

While this might sound like the title of some faggy vampire story, it’s actually an alternate reality of WW2 where magic shit happens. Well you usually can’t go wrong with Nazis in a story, so magic ones must be even better!

The story is partially told as if someone is recounting past events of the war. (We’ll get to the actual narrator eventually) and it starts off with Churchill contacting Hitler to finally surrender. As you might expect this doesn’t go over well (Though Churchill thought it was a waste of time anyway)

Too bad you don’t get to see Stalin in the comic. I imagine him as some sort of barbaric bear pelt wearing shaman type.

Hitler manages to throw a fireball through this magical collect call, nearly hitting Church in the process and disconnecting. He then proceeds to throw a temper tantrum and complete shit fit that he’s losing the war. The allies are surrounding him just like Churchill suggested. While there is magic in this world, its apparently used in conjunction with regular tech of that time. For example, you still see the American soldiers using grenades and guns (Because come on, it’s America, even if magic was a thing we’d STILL use guns)

So Hitler looks fucked again, however, unlike in our boring unmagical timeline, the Holocaust death camps actually have a good use (Y’know besides the whole genocide thing)

Hitler uses the tortured souls in those camps to summon an actual demon on the earth. Hey, see for yourself!

Totally METAL

Okay, we’re already on part two.

So Hitler has managed to bind this demon into some sort of super hell tank which can just utterly destroy shit. It’s destroying all opposition and actually regaining ground for the Nazis, even Patton can’t beat it. Churchill and one of his war generals are talking about how to destroy it.

And this is where the narrator is introduced (Richard). He’s the son of the war general Churchill is talking to. Church says there is a simple spell that can take out the demon Elmic, but it’s a pretty grim one. It requires someone innocent of soul to sacrifice himself. They’re both really not keen on the idea, but that’s when suddenly the narrator pipes up saying that if it will end the war then he is willing to die for England.

So after a lot of discussion, arguing, examination and grief they send Richard to do this suicide mission. Of course they don’t send him alone. They have a special commando team of wood elves (Hey you got demons and magic, might as well have elves too) to sneak past all the Nazi warmages.

It’s a brutal journey and by the time they even get close to their goal, only Major Woodhame survives to protect Richard. (Also says casting spells the further he gets from his Welsh homeland gets more and more taxing. I wonder if all the Welsh are wood elves in this world.)

Lol

So Captain Joe tells the elf and the Richard to get away from this place now since Elmic isn’t too far away, but they tell him that’s where they need to go since Richard is going to kill him. After some disbelief and explanation, Captain Joe thinks this is a shit plan for an eight year old to sacrifice himself, especially when he REALLY doesn’t know anything about life, evil or anything at that age.

“Ya gotta know what the devil’s about before ya can spit in his eye.”

The major and Richard are determined to see this plan through despite Joe thinking they’re crazy. Major Woodhame gives Richard the holy book and tells him to not look up at the demon while he recites passages. Richard leaves while the Major is whispering his own prayer that he hopes the Lord and Lady will have mercy on their souls for doing this plan.

So Richard takes the long walk… (Going to just post the rest here)

And once again America saved the world

Okay so these next two short stories were in the last two Intruder books, (Yeah the one with the shit main story arc that I didn’t even bother covering as much as I’m going to cover these two shorter stories) These are both a little more on the light hearted side.

Crumbs

It starts off with a bunch of gingerbread children playing and going on about “Meat men” and the “Meat world” prompting their grandmother to shut up about it or else they might wake up there.

Their skepticism about this happening prompts their grandfather to tell them tale…

Wholesome!

So he mentions how he just suddenly woke up in meat world AND he was naked! Fortunately he said there was a cloth person nearby he managed to get clothing from since they seemed dead anyway (It was just a doll)

Basically Gramps as a boy woke up on the streets of early 1900s America. After getting dressed he’s basically nearly killed several times. Chased by a dog (A furry meat beast), nearly stepped on, (By the giant meat men), nearly crushed by a carriage, a drunk breathes on him (The alkie mentions getting drunk before prohibition kicks in, so this might place the time in December 1919 which makes sense due to the Christmas theme) and just in general trying to avoid death.

He then sees a beautiful gingerbread girl in the window of this shop. Of course this is a bakery he’s looking into. He immediately goes in to try to save her. Now I should say gramps says a really asshole thing here. One of the grandchildren asks “Even more beautiful than grandma?”

And this ginger dickhead says “Even more than grandma.”

Like what the fuck is that to be saying to your grandkids, never mind the fact that his wife isn’t all that far away where she could have easily heard him.

So he gets in the bakery and tries to save the gingerbread girl only to find that she’s dead, along with a shitload of other ones on a cooking sheet. He’s horrified by all this, but with another meat man approach he doesn’t have time to hide so he pretends to be one of the proper cookies.

He unfortunately gets scooped up and given to a little girl who looks like Alice from Alice in Wonderland (Even dressed like her).

The girl takes him home in a bag and gets ready to Attack on Titan this little fucker.

Plot twist: This whole tale was Alice just tripping on mushrooms and Caterpillar hashish again

So just as randomly as he got to meat world by thinking about it, he also gets home by thinking about that instead.

Just then the grandmother says he finished his story just in time since dinner is ready. The kids go to get seated still skeptical that meat world is a real place, but the you see gramps looking in a mirror fixing his collar and you see a bite mark in his shoulder and him winking to breath the fourth wall.

In any case, he’s not going to be getting any ginger snaps from grandma if she did hear what he said earlier.

Next story

The Toaster’s Tale

Okay this was the very last story in Intruder and they really phoned this shit in. It’s basically a parody of The Brave Little Toaster which granted isn’t terrible and it’s still better than what the main story arc was, but it’s definitely not the best one they could have ended with. (Artwork isn’t that great either on this one)

So it starts off with Tom the toaster talking about a recent event that happened with his owner Simon.

Simon comes home and bangs up his car while parking it. The car wants to get fixed up, but Simon says he can’t afford it and actually blames the car for not looking where he was going. Cut to Simon in the kitchen and now Tom and the coffee pot telling Simon that he should get the car fixed. Simon once again says he doesn’t have the money, the coffee pot points out he’s always got enough money when he goes on a date though. Simon starts getting annoyed and tells them to stop trying to tell him how to spend his money.

The next day, they try to be a little more convincing by burning his food. Now Simon gets mad enough he knocks Tom and the coffee pot around a little. The phone, the tv, even the chair all start trying to convince him to fix the car, but at this point Simon gets pissed enough that he smashes the tv, pulls the phone out of the wall (Hey it’s 90s, there’s still landlines!) and burns the chair to death.

The rest of the appliances now gang up on him, but Simon’s a one man army punching the radio, kicking the toaster and hitting the coffee pot with an iron. Then he cuts the power completely defeating this uprising, stating that if there’s anymore trouble he’s still got a lot more gasoline.

Simon goes to celebrate his victory by taking a bath and expects them all to behave when he gets back. The radio however still has back up batteries and unites with the catcher’s mitt to turn the power back on. The radio then plugs himself in and makes the ultimate sacrifice by jumping in the tub with Simon.

With Simon now gone, Tom says they had to piece back their community and it shows him and some of his buddies at a shop buying another Simon hanging on a rack saying they want a more sensitive model this time.

And that’s basically it for that story.

Alright the next story which I considered to be the best of the bunch I’m going to save for another post and I’ll be posting the entire thing. Stay tuned!

I mean with a name like "kickme" in it, you were sort of asking for it.

Xenia?