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.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (The Glorified Fanfic)

Alright going to start off by saying I’m spoiling this movie mainly because nobody really needs to go see this.

Also going to say, I’m not really a Tolkien nerd that knows every damn detail of Middle Earth history. Hell even The Hobbit movies didn’t piss me off like they drove some into a RAGE around here.

That being said there’s still a limit. Like based on what I know that shitty Rings of Power Amazon show, it definitely sounds like something I wouldn’t want to associate with the work. Orcs having baby orcs and orc families so you’re supposed to feel sympathy for them just isn’t something I need, let alone arguments over “nobody is born evil”.

Orcs can argue with the point of a fucking sword.

So where does WOTR fall on this ever growing scale of LOTR fanfic? Well, for me, it wasn’t the TV level since I at least was intrigued enough to watch it, but that’s a really low bar.

One could say for the LOTR purists this wouldn’t be as bad as The Hobbit movies since it doesn’t alter a whole lot of established canon, but the movie has issues even without that.

So this is basically about King Helm Hammerhand’s unnamed daughter who is apparently called Hera. As you can expect she’s one of those girls that doesn’t want to do any of that princess stuff and is doing other things like feeding giant eagles, playing with swords and generally being a tomboy.

The shitstorm gets started when one of the lesser lords comes with the offer of marrying his son to Helm’s daughter and Helm ain’t having it mainly because he doesn’t like this particular lord in the first place and he wants her to marry someone from Gondor anyway.

Helm realizes he needs to slap this fucker down so he knows his place and he literally one punches the guy and kills him. Naturally this upsets the son Wulf who is already pissed because Hera doesn’t really want to marry him despite the fact he’s been simping for her since they were kids. Of course it’s not just him, she doesn’t want to marry any man because she’s really a big lesbian. (Oh okay, that bit’s not established, but come on we all know what’s going on) He gets exiled along with the remainder of his clan and he vows revenge one day.

Now then, this all might sound like “woke” narrative what with strong independent women and incel dudes wanting revenge because they can’t get laid by the hawt princess, however I would propose that THIS aspect is counter balanced by the fact that Helm, his family and his people in general are all mostly a bunch of Aryan master race folks (Hell his two sons are blonde and Hera’s a red head) with the pure blood of GODS AND KINGS and they’re basically killing a bunch of treacherous mudblood untermensch (Wulf himself has half hill people blood) and darkies (Southern mercs show up later)

So no being “woke” isn’t the issue with the movie and despite the based racism going on, the movie still manages to fuck things up

Anyway years pass and some shit happens, but nothing important until Wulf shows up with an army of wild hill people and a bunch of African mercenaries with hostile elephants. He’s actually making his staging ground at Isengard which confused the hell out of me since I thought that was Suraman’s home, but apparently he wasn’t living there yet.

He even captures Hera and she even offers to marry him in order to stop him from attacking, but he’s done simping and nothing short of mountains of skulls and rivers of blood are going to do at this point.

She escapes and warns her dad with one of her warrior cousins, but he’s an idiot and gets pissed at her cousin for “not protecting her properly” and sends him away. Should be noted that her cousin has also got mixed wild hill people blood so her dad was probably just being racist.

Hera wants to go fight since she’s all into the legends of the shield maidens, but he tells her she’s supposed to stay home and make sandwiches while the men have all the fun killing each other.

Turns out of course, there was a traitor that Wulf had in Helm’s court so the battle doesn’t go as planned and they have to retreat despite initially doing well.

So Eodoras gets razed to the ground (though it managed to get evacuated first) one of Helm’s sons gets an arrow to the neck and Helm himself gets riddled with them, but manages to survive. Everyone’s retreating to a place called Hornberg since it’s a lot easier to hold up and defend from there. Helm’s other son gets captured along the way.

So Helm and Hera are at Hornsberg and Wulf is standing outside with his general and Helm’s younger son in tow. Helm offers to surrender everything in exchange for his son’s life and even Wulf’s general is telling him to take the deal because it’s going to be slog if they have to assault Hornsberg, especially with winter coming soon and all.

However now its Wulf’s turn to make bad strategic decisions and he just executes Helm’s son and tells his general to have everyone start building a big ass siege tower throughout fucking winter.

Now I think it was at this point, the movie just started to lose me since I wasn’t really minding it up to then. It started slowing down and I think the stupid military decisions just started to annoy me too much. Bigger problem is Wulf just isn’t an impressive villain. And granted yeah this is looking at a normal human conflict so he’s not going to be Smaug or Sauron, but I dunno he’s like Kylo Ren level as far as impressive villains are concerned. (Which is more of shot at how unimpressive Klyo was considering he was a Sithlord while Wulf is just some usurper of a minor kingdom.)

So Hera’s dad is in coma of sorts, but despite his wounds he’s still healing up. People in Hornsberg are worrying about supplies running out and Hera’s trying to keep morale up while hoping her dad gets better. Wulf takes the crown even though Helm isn’t dead, but he’s confident that it won’t be long.

Months are passing and winter gets worse and now trouble comes to the besiegers. Someone starts killing shitloads of them which fucks up the whole siege tower construction. Things get even worse when the bodies are later found eaten.

Wulf’s people think it’s Helm come back as some sort of monster. Hera and her folks don’t know what to make of it since they don’t even know how the hell her dad disappeared. Hera ends up stumbling on some one way secret passage and it leads outside so she investigates.

And then she ends up stumbling on something that really wasn’t necessary other than it’s a Lord of the Rings movie so hey, you gotta have orcs in it right?

Yeah she stumbles on a couple of orcs that are picking over the dead bodies. What its established that they’re doing is looking for rings. They got a little bag full of them, and they also got a horned troll with them and that’s the thing been eating the bodies. (Well probably the orcs are eating some of them too)

Anyway the orcs and their troll are about to kill Hera, but then more impossible things happen with Helm coming from out of nowhere and starts fist fighting a damn troll. And wins.

Turns out Helm has been out in the cold for months on end killing Wulf’s men with his bare hands. Also no armor or hell not even protective clothing from the cold at all. And keep in mind this guy is an old man that was severely wounded. Yeah I guess that’s what being an Aryan Ubermensch will do for you

I think my problem with this isn’t so much doing 6 impossible things before breakfast, but more with the fact of if old man Helm can kill half of Wulf’s army (AND a fucking troll) in the freezing cold with his bare fucking hands over the course of several months while recovering from heavy wounds, then why in Balrog’s balls wasn’t he able to just kill Wulf’s entire fucking army while he was in perfect health, armored, and had a goddamn weapon in hand?

I mean this guy is clearly a Chadly demigod, there was no reason to ever retreat, fucking war with Wulf would have been over within the first half of the movie.

Anyway Helm and Hera run back to Hornsberg and she manages to get back inside, but he holds off the army by himself and Wulf’s mongrels aren’t even the ones that kill him. The next day Hera finds her dad standing outside the gates still fucking standing guard frozen to death. Shit, if they’d thought to shove a bear skin through the door opening to give the guy to wear he could have survived.

So now Helm’s dead which means there really is no real reason to besiege Hornsberg anymore, since Wulf is officially the king with no contest now seeing as Helm’s sons are also dead. Wulf’s general advises him that the best course of action would be to pack it all up, head home and start properly ruling. But Wulf as usual has to be a retard.

However, Wulf even acknowledges his retardedness by stating that all he’s got left is revenge and if he doesn’t get it completely then all of it is for nothing. So like a true incel he’s gotta kill the hot Stacy that turned him down, instead of just y’know going back and enjoying being king and fucking a more willing Stacy.

Anyway so the final showdown is Hornsberg getting overrun, but Hera challenges Wulf’s MANHOOD with a one on one battle, winner takes all. Once again, Wulf’s poor general advises him that this is obviously a trick and for him to NOT take the fucking bait.

So of course Wulf takes the fucking bait and gets his ass kicked by a girl. (Facepalms ensue anytime Wulf doesn't listen to his general)

However Wulf being the bastard he is, has no intention of honoring his word that he’ll leave and orders and all out attack. His general though has had enough of this shit and refuses to follow orders calling him a dishonorable coward. Wulf being a dishonorable coward ends up suddenly killing his general and ordering the attack himself.

Chaos ensues, but Hera’s cousin comes in with his army to save the day. Hera meanwhile has one more round with Wulf and she actually doesn’t want to kill him, but he resorts to sneak attacks again and she doesn’t have much choice.

Alright so it all wraps up with Hornsberg getting renamed Helm’s Deep, Hera’s cousin takes the throne since Hera doesn’t want to rule, Saruman shows up to become Isengard’s new caretaker, and finally Hera’s off to see Gandalf since he wants to know more about the orcs that have been looking for rings.

Then the narration states that Hera remained a unmarried lesbian for the rest of her days.

The End

Yeah so that was certainly a movie set in Middle Earth

Well see if they'd lead with that rather than everyone hyping all the gay bear, gay vampire gay etc faggotry, I might have showed more interest in this game.

It was very ambitious for the era. Probably too ambitious given the limitations of tech at the time.

The 6 games were all supposed to inter connect so you could go back and forth between them. There was the City, the Dungeon, the Arena, the Palace, the Wilderness, Revelation, and Destiny. And if that’s 7, that’s due to the Dungeon not even being a game originally. It was supposed to be the sewers of the city, but it ended up getting chopped into its own game.

Of course keep in mind this is before the days of having everything on a hard drive, you would have been swapping floppy disks in and out of the disk drive for all this when you moved into a different area.

Basic concept was you were a human kidnapped by some aliens and shoved you into this fantasy setting (The Alternate Reality) for their own amusement. They did this to a lot of people. Presumably some of the people you were interacting with were other prisoners.

That's sort of another thing you saw a lot more back then, a mix of scifi and fantasy elements together. The 3 major old RPGs on computers (Ultima, Wizardry and Might and Magic) all started with this type of set up so it was more common.

Anyway you were basically trying to figure out how to get out of the system and ultimately confront the aliens. Now the intro cut scene along with the song at the beginning sort of gives away the plot rather than it being a big mystery, though if you were the type to just skip intros, then yeah you might miss it.

The City game was more or less just a sandbox without much actually there. You could run around fighting things and shop for stuff, but there just wasn’t too much to do after a certain point since the other games were meant to flesh things out.

The Dungeon actually was a bit more lively in that if you wandered enough, you’d probably stumble on the major quest that you can try to complete. (There was other stuff too) Completing the main quest actually did allow you to get to the alien ship and you needed a specific item to not get vaporized instantly by the alien overseer.

Get past the overseer and you could explore deeper into the ship, but you needed to insert disk 1 of Revelation for that. So you weren’t getting much further, and it was just a sandbox at that point that you could just run around being a dungeon overlord.

The game notes implied you had several options of how you would be able to deal with your situation, either go back to earth with the rest of your fellow humans (Everyone was in a metal cocoon/brain in a jar type thing I think) get revenge on your captors by throwing them into the sim (or just killing them I guess), or just stay in the simulation and live like a god there.

So continuing with my mention of Alternate Reality RPG, there were plans for 6 games, but 2 only came out. The City and the Dungeon. I’ll focus on The Dungeon since it was more fleshed of the two.

It was really ahead of its time for various reasons, but focusing on the evil path thing, the game actively tracked if you were doing evil stuff like attacking peasants or robbing banks. Also doing combat options like tricking someone to get a bonus first attack was also considered evil for some strange reason (Yes, even if you were doing this to demons) It was definitely a lot easier to be evil just killing and steal from anyone that crossed you. Being good was a lot harder mainly because not being a murderous bastard wasn’t enough and the only way to increase your “goodness” was to do stuff like donating to random peasants you might bump into or things like the Flophouse or the Chapel.

So you had to be reliably rich and throw money around to be good and most of time killing stuff and stealing made you rich, so…Lol

Now it was still the late 80s, so being good or evil didn’t matter all that much in the scheme of things of the storyline. However there were a few consequences which you didn’t see very often in games like that back then.

(And yeah I'm well aware of Ultima 4 which came out around the same time and tracked how good you were being since it was required in order for you to win, but that was just reinforcing the "good path" and eliminating the odd murder hobo shit you could do and still be called a "hero." We're focusing on viable evil paths here)

The first one being the obvious which was you got attacked by the few morally good monsters you’d occasionally bump into like knights and such. Now to be fair, even if you weren’t evil, you usually STILL got attacked by morally good monsters like phoenix or valkyries (A lot of morally good monsters also didn’t like humans for whatever reason) So this wasn’t really a deterrent to not be evil. Also killing them even if they attacked YOU first was still considered evil. Your only option was really to run away if you didn’t want a karma hit.

The second one was certain weapons or items couldn’t be used. Now this affected good characters more than evil ones because there were more evil aligned weapons just laying around. In fact, if you tried to pick up a weapon with a different alignment than you, it would actually scream at you stating it would never serve such a vile bastard/lame do-gooder and you took damage before dropping it. The only evil aligned item I remember you could use without being evil was the Reforged Ring, but that was because it actively turned you more evil over time (But it also eliminated the need to eat or drink…yeah not really seeing the downside)

The third one was guilds. Some guilds were good and some were evil and all were where you could store excess gold/gems in a locker and learn new spells. You wouldn’t be able to join one if you weren’t good or evil enough.

And finally there was the Chapel which not only was the only reliable place you could determine your alignment (As opposed to picking up random weapons and having them scream at you) but there was an option that only showed up in the chapel if you were REALLY good. You got to enter the chapel garden and got some unique magic items that only good guys could get. This was probably the only specific advantage that good guys got.

The Chapel was also a place where you could repent your evil ways so you could reset your alignment to neutral and start again. The problem is you had to give up ALL your worldly possessions to do it which meant everything you were carrying down to your last gold piece. So it usually wasn’t worth it, unless you wanted to try to cheat the system by dropping all your stuff just outside the chapel first, but that had its own risks of your stuff just disappearing anyway (Dropped items never stuck around for very long) Nothing’s free.

Well in the really old RPGs, like 80s and early 90s old, typically there was no "evil path" most of the time. You were usually playing as the designated hero to kill the evil overlord. However due to simplistic design choice (or limitations) there were a lot of times where you were forced to do something that would normally be considered evil in today's RPGs.

Usually this involved like needing to acquire an object or something similar and this could ONLY be accomplished by murdering the shit out of someone that was more or less just some innocent NPC.

I'm reminded of a few of the very early Ultima games, specifically Ultima 2, where you have to go into a town, kill the guards and break into an airfield to steal the only plane in the game (And you have to do this or you're not getting any further in the game)

You also have to do something like this again with stealing a spaceship, but in that case you're in post apocalyptic Russia and this was the 80s so fuck the Soviet Union.

Then again, the overall plot of the game was you were time hopping across the world trying to stop an evil sorceress from destroying it, so I suppose it could be argued that all the innocents you killed were justified and didn't matter anyway since you were maintaining the timeline or something.

Nowadays I imagine there would have been other options like doing some side quest to gain access or bribing the guards or sneaking in without the guards knowing you were ever there in the first place.

Probably the first RPG that I know of that actually did keep track of you being "evil" or "good" was the Alternate Reality series, which is actually deserving of its own post so I'll go over it in a different post in this thread.

That's probably because the default in that setting is evil, so being a bastard was the primary thing in mind with the writing.

Really I think just going 100% villain protagonist like Tyranny did is probably the best way to writing the evil path. (Obsidian just has a terrible habit of releasing games half finished with a shitload of cut content)

Split the thread to preserve the grimdark purity.

Anyway, nowadays I typically play through the evil paths if possible in games (or what exists of them) since I don't really have time to do an evil and good playthrough and I figure most are going to do the good playthrough anyway so I can find out what I missed from someone else.

Still even then, I'm probably never maximizing the evil since I'm probably still treating followers decently because they're useful in a fight or other reasons. Or at least keeping them around as long as possible before they leave because I'm being too much of a dick to everyone else.

Well if you actually knew any fucking thing about Dark Fantasy games, you would have known it was a fucking quote from Darkest Dungeon which I mentioned in the goddamn thread. (Which I obviously was keeping alive since it was a perfectly fine theme)

Seemed pretty appropriate given the topic and you said you were leaving, but okay fuck you too then.

Meanwhile his last three threads have still been active.

I mean from a meta gaming standpoint it’s usually more advantageous to play as the good guy to get the best loot and outcomes since like I mentioned above RPGs rarely bother writing a proper evil path and its usually just half assed most of the time.

Now I think there have been better attempts in recent years, but really playing as an asshole in an RPG is typically just ramping up the difficulty level without actually raising the difficulty level. You potentially cut yourself off from various quests, choices, story, etc. but hey ain't no rest for the wicked.