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General Category => Role Playing Public Radio Podcast => : clockworkjoe January 11, 2015, 11:21:59 PM
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So, I've worked on Ruin a lot but it's nowhere near done. That's fine, it's a long term project. However, I want to make games and I have 3 ideas I could start on after I finish up Boiling Point. What would you guys be most interested in?
1. Players are trapped in a shared TV universe powered by the emotions of the audience in reality. As an audience member you are aware of tropes and have your own emotions, so you can generate trope effects. However, those eat away at your free will. Lose all your free will and you become trapped as a TV character forever. A gumshoe system reskin, where emotions are investigative skills, sanity becomes free will, and so forth. You ultimately want to escape to reality, although some believe you can become a god by straddling the world of the audience and the world of the screen.
2. A down and dirty mashup of horror/investigative games with the spirit of dungeon crawling games. You fight cults and investigate monsters, not to save the world, but to get rich and gain powerful magic items. Characters are extremely vulnerable so roll a stack of ninjas and professors. Metagame knowledge can be passed on to new characters by writing journals.
3. A card game version of Killsplosion - build up combos to blow up or outshoot your rivals to get the mcguffin and look more badass doing it.
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I'm always intrigued by the concepts suggested with the 1st idea. The whole media meta reality and fiction mixes with reality kind of subject (the kind of thing you'd see in say, a certain recent infomercial satire and the like).
That and I'm curious to see this take on gumshoe.
My vote's idea #1.
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Ideas #1 and #3 sound super cool.
For #1: In addition to Too Many Cooks, there are other potential sources of inspiration you could look into. What comes to my
mind is a particular episode of Supernatural where the characters get stuck in a bunch of TV shows: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1511910/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1511910/)
There's also this old John Ritter movie, which I haven't seen: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105466/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105466/)
Oh, hey, I found the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bs2icpiR1s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bs2icpiR1s)
#3 sounds like a really cool game idea too. I don't have much insight about card games, but I like to play them.
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Absolutely behind idea #2. Playing slimy self-centered adventures is the best.
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#3 gets my vote. A deckbuilder - style game with badass/style points is an instant win
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3. A card game version of Killsplosion - build up combos to blow up or outshoot your rivals to get the mcguffin and look more badass doing it.
This one sounds like most fun. But at the same time it sounds like the most costly one to get to market.
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3. A card game version of Killsplosion - build up combos to blow up or outshoot your rivals to get the mcguffin and look more badass doing it.
This one sounds like most fun. But at the same time it sounds like the most costly one to get to market.
DriveThruCards offers affordable print-on-demand services. A small Kickstarter to pay for the art and initial print-run for backers would be plenty sufficient.
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3. A card game version of Killsplosion - build up combos to blow up or outshoot your rivals to get the mcguffin and look more badass doing it.
This one sounds like most fun. But at the same time it sounds like the most costly one to get to market.
DriveThruCards offers affordable print-on-demand services. A small Kickstarter to pay for the art and initial print-run for backers would be plenty sufficient.
Yes.
But how many of RPPR sales at the moment are PDFs? and how many of those would not be willing to pay for non electronic material (Because it's more expensive)
Also many of those PDF people are live overseas? How many of those people would want to pay for shipping and import taxes?
These are questions I would be asking myself if I was doing the math on this.
But I like the idea of Killsplosion card game. It sounds like an excellent "mess with your buddy" game.
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True. There is always the option of Print and Play, but I have no idea how popular those are.
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From my very outsider to the game industry vantage point I suspect it matters what your end goal is.
If you are looking for a prestige project that not many people will actually play but that could show off some interesting game design ideas/concepts I think that is item 1. I personally like this idea the most but not sure how large an audience it is.
If you are looking for a game that could appeal to more of the general RPG players I think you go for option 2. I am not saying the game will be simple but the one line pitch makes me think it would be more accessible than option 1.
If you are looking for something that could have a chance to be commercially viable on a larger scale then you go for item 3. There is certainly a market for screw your neighbor card games with cute/fun art outside the RPG world. Of course it is not a slam dunk, you need a good game (well maybe not - I think Munchkin is not a great game but it prints money because it is cute) and more than a little luck but it could have a larger audience and maybe put a few dollars into your pocket and who knows if your game is good and you are very lucky maybe more than a few dollars. Could also be interesting from a resume standpoint to get experience in making a card game.
Anyway as stated I personally like option 1 the best.
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1) What is Ruin?
2) #2 interests me the most. You could run with a Conan setting or mildly tongue and cheek modern day or full on Call of Cthulhu Munchkin. It would be interesting if you had some sort of sanity mechanic as well as health, basically two resources you have to balance but I'm just spitballing. I do like the "picking up from where you left off" legacy mechanic you are suggesting with the metagame journals. It feels like a roguelike and I love those.
The idea (#2) very loosely reminds me of the roguelike Occult Chronicles. Programmed by the same guy (one man team) who created the excellent Armageddon Empires.
http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/OC/Occult_Chronicles.html (http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/OC/Occult_Chronicles.html)
It would also be interesting if the team that writes the metagame journal suffers from an insanity that dictates how the metagame journal is deciphered by a subsequent team. For example your team 1 professor suffers from paranoia and writes a metagame journal just before being eaten. Team 2 must solve a paranoia puzzle (or make skill check X) to obtain the metagame data from the journal. And naturally there would be a different skill check or gimmick or puzzle to solve for paranoia, schizophrenia, delusions, etc.
3) Why not Fight Promoter? >:( I want you and Caleb to write a program where you scream into a microphone and your success as a Fight Promoter is measured by how much you sound like MachoMan Randy Savage or Hulk Hogan. Compare those waveforms, brother. Aaron can be Paul Bearer and Tom the Undertaker.
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
The back story of game idea #2 would be roughly "Cthulhu woke up. Everyone who made their sanity check pulled together and kept civilization together, somehow. The survivors all have hypergraphia though, so everyone keeps a journal. Now, mythos threats are a way to make lots of money and power. High level investigators ram a boat into Cthulhu every hour of every day to keep him in check. You go to the bar to find a job from old professors in the corner and then go to the general store and buy tommy guns and dynamite. Complete the job to get paid and maybe a chance to level up. Die and someone else will find your journal and pick up where you left off."
Classes:
Detective - rogue
Soldier - fighter
Reporter - bard
Dilettante - wizard
Priest - cleric
Tribal Fisherman - ranger
Hitman - Assassin
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I like the Dark Souls-style "save point" element of finding the character journals. Although it would be badass if the players had to FIGHT the corpse/spirit of their former selves to prove their worth in continuing the fight against Cuchulu, THEN they get the journal. BUT, if they fail in combat to their former self, then they have TWO corpse monsters they must fight the next time, and so on. Alternatively, they can skip trying to obtain the journal, and wander aimlessly lost and confused being attacked by things.
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I like #2 but I am also a Cthulhu fan so I am in your target demographic. I like the idea because as a GM who hasn't looked over the lightning gun and mi-go living armor in the Call of Cthulhu main book and said "these are really cool pieces of technology, it would be neat to play with them" but you can't give them out willy nilly in a Lovecraftian purist (or even shotguns and dynamite) Cthulhu game.
So you are shooting for a humor-pulp game that is basically Base Raiders and a sprinkling of Red Market's apocalypse-economics on top in the Cthulhu world. Lovecraft would spin in his grave. Sounds cool. Maybe even compare with the (excellent and too short) Day After Ragnarok.
Also I am thinking of rail guns with Shining Trapezohedron sliver ammunition.
Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
The back story of game idea #2 would be roughly "Cthulhu woke up. Everyone who made their sanity check pulled together and kept civilization together, somehow. The survivors all have hypergraphia
though, so everyone keeps a journal.
I laughed. That is terrible, but it makes a kind of sense. I think its a LITTLE corny unless you justify it further, like alienists in the setting have noticed that hypergraphia is the last stage of insanity before heartattack/being eaten by a grue.
Now, mythos threats are a way to make lots of money and power. High level investigators ram a boat into Cthulhu every hour of every day to keep him in check.
Cool. I imagine Cthulhu Splat (patent pending) tours of cruse ships (piloted and voiced by the Payton drunk ferryman from the Dream Factory) taking war tourist gawkers by R'lyeh every hour on the hour. Don't forget your Deep One merchandise from the squamous bulging eyes fellow at the kiosk! Now instead of trying to fit into society, Deep One hybrids spend their human years as salesmen or celebrity entertainers before they take to the water. I am envisioning a Deep One Kim Kardashian but perhaps those butt pics are too terrifying. Also they are banned from Olympic swimming.
If Cthulhu is being kept in check then I imagine R'lyeh itself is an eternal battle ground with boatloads of adventurers arriving continuously like Einherjar. Perhaps with every "death" of Cthulhu parts or all of R'lyeh sinks and the adventurers have to scramble back to their boats with as much loot as they can carry. Every time Cthulhu reforms, R'lyeh rises again, fresh with Star Spawn and Deep Ones. It is touted that one Christmas the adventures and Star Spawn played a game of soccer on an unusual cease fire. Cthulhu's Cephalopods (registered by FIFA) were disqualified for non-Euclidean penalty kicks.
You go to the bar to find a job from old professors in the corner and then go to the general store and buy tommy guns and dynamite. Complete the job to get paid and maybe a chance to level up. Die and someone else will find your journal and pick up where you left off."
Classes:
Detective - rogue
Soldier - fighter
Reporter - bard
Dilettante - wizard
Priest - cleric
Tribal Fisherman - ranger
Hitman - Assassin
Tribal Fisherman better have Favored Enemy : Deep One >:(
I'd argue that Reporter fits better as wizard since they will be writing down everything with hypergraphia.
I like the Dark Souls-style "save point" element of finding the character journals.
This is a good comparison and maybe a good advertising point? Like DarkSouls, my game is.... Buy my book!
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
Will Operate Heavy Machinery be an Investigative Skill in this gunshoe variant?
Player: "I spend one point in Operate Heavy Machinery"
GM: "The Bulldozer is a Caterpillar Model #2309 which was only sold in Europe so seeing it here in South America is certainly unusual. Also they are not normally covered in the blood of creatures from beyond time and space but that is sort of an aside."
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
Will Operate Heavy Machinery be an Investigative Skill in this gunshoe variant?
Player: "I spend one point in Operate Heavy Machinery"
GM: "The Bulldozer is a Caterpillar Model #2309 which was only sold in Europe so seeing it here in South America is certainly unusual. Also they are not normally covered in the blood of creatures from beyond time and space but that is sort of an aside."
It would be a general ability with the cherry KILL IT WITH HYDRAULICS - spend 3 points to guarantee that a usable heavy machine will be in the scene which can be used to fight or block a mythos threat. Feed those Dark Young tentacles into an industrial grinder or stop a Cthonian with a bulldozer.
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
Will Operate Heavy Machinery be an Investigative Skill in this gunshoe variant?
Player: "I spend one point in Operate Heavy Machinery"
GM: "The Bulldozer is a Caterpillar Model #2309 which was only sold in Europe so seeing it here in South America is certainly unusual. Also they are not normally covered in the blood of creatures from beyond time and space but that is sort of an aside."
It would be a general ability with the cherry KILL IT WITH HYDRAULICS - spend 3 points to guarantee that a usable heavy machine will be in the scene which can be used to fight or block a mythos threat. Feed those Dark Young tentacles into an industrial grinder or stop a Cthonian with a bulldozer.
Not to be confused with the cherry GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH, which grants you a 3 point refresh to Operate Heavy Machinery after narrating a brief snippet of your character making use of heavy machinery in combat.
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
Will Operate Heavy Machinery be an Investigative Skill in this gunshoe variant?
Player: "I spend one point in Operate Heavy Machinery"
GM: "The Bulldozer is a Caterpillar Model #2309 which was only sold in Europe so seeing it here in South America is certainly unusual. Also they are not normally covered in the blood of creatures from beyond time and space but that is sort of an aside."
It would be a general ability with the cherry KILL IT WITH HYDRAULICS - spend 3 points to guarantee that a usable heavy machine will be in the scene which can be used to fight or block a mythos threat. Feed those Dark Young tentacles into an industrial grinder or stop a Cthonian with a bulldozer.
Not to be confused with the cherry GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH, which grants you a 3 point refresh to Operate Heavy Machinery after narrating a brief snippet of your character making use of heavy machinery in combat.
(http://i.imgur.com/w5tN5Vf.jpg)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCV:_Battle_Construction_Vehicles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCV:_Battle_Construction_Vehicles)
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Listening to the first Killsplosion playtest on the B-Sides, I thought it was in some ways more a "boardless board game" than a pure RPG. the absoluteness of the settings and definiteness of what could be accomplished in a turn put me in that headspace. I think it could work great as a card game, if you've got the stats to work it out. maybe players would draw from powerpoint decks to keep track of their pools at the start and when they got refreshes in-game, and some of the cards would be wild surprises? I imagine you've given this some thought already.
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Ruin is the architectural horror gumshoe engine rpg I plan to make.
If Ruin happens to be about abandoned places and discovery I stumbled across a couple of news stories in my daily reading that may be interesting/inspiring:
http://www.viralnova.com/explored-office-building-gallery/ (http://www.viralnova.com/explored-office-building-gallery/)
Dude explores an abandoned building that is attached to his town hall and discovers an abandoned dance hall, and below that abandoned jail cells.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/05/travel/gallery/mobile-architecture-homes/ (http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/05/travel/gallery/mobile-architecture-homes/)
New concept houses, including houses on rails (overpriced boxcars).
Also a story. I'm sure you are familiar with every college/university having its share of forgotten places and hidden rooms.
MIT's underground tunnels are likely the most famous. Supposedly they connect every building.
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N36/36orange.36n.html (http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N36/36orange.36n.html)
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/blogs/thenextgreatgeneration/2012/03/school_secrets_5_things_to_kno_4.html (http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/blogs/thenextgreatgeneration/2012/03/school_secrets_5_things_to_kno_4.html)
http://weburbanist.com/2010/04/14/hack-this-eerie-abandoned-roof-tunnel-hacking-pics/ (http://weburbanist.com/2010/04/14/hack-this-eerie-abandoned-roof-tunnel-hacking-pics/)
The last is a great article about Urban Ex around the world.
Now for a couple stories.
UC Irvine was founded in 1965. As the story goes, the UC Regents witnessed the chaos of student rebellion during the 1960s and they were determined to design the university to prevent mass student gatherings from happening. If you look at an overhead map of UCI there is technically no center gathering point. Yes there is a large circle in the middle but that is built on half a hill with rocks and elevation everywhere; no real large place for students across disciplines to gather.
Then there are stories about the tunnels. Those who claim they have explored them say there are empty rooms littered underground with one or two computer terminals quietly humming and a desk. The purpose? In the event of a mass gathering or panic (Ken State sniper, terrorist attack, Russians), these are the go to places for campus security to monitor the situation and deploy from. Trust the UC Regents. The Regents are your friend.
In a university that shall remain nameless there is a six story building. This building was erected five or six decades ago and houses several research labs. On the roof is a lab that is closed. One man on the sixth floor holds the key. As the story goes a lab had need of extra space to carry out experiments with radioactive isotopes. Most labs just have a room for this work, but this lab was important so it got the entire top floor lab. Times change and newer methods were developed for the work that did not require radioactive isotopes. Once the experiments stopped, the rooms were used for storage. Now it lies silent and forgotten, the man on the sixth floor having the only key to the roof. Supposedly there is graffiti of a chemical nature by grad students of ages past on the very top when the lab was open during the 60s.
At UC Berkeley there are secure facilities that take up an entire floor to house small animals for research. One is underground and another is on the top floor of a five story building. I got to tour one once, and they are very maze like, white walls and white doors with few signs. In the frog room (which is deafening) there is this massive kiddy pool, the plastic kind people buy to put on their lawn in the summer, that housed one population of frogs. The other were in these super large open bathtubs, just being frogs. Of course the rumor is one room hold crocodiles some professor was working on, but I'm pretty sure that is a joke.
At Hopkins there are these underground tunnels (they look very uninteresting, just blank white corridors) and balconies that connect research labs with the medical center. I believe I was told they were built for transportation during bad weather and for security since the medical center is in a less than safe area.
Edit:
You probably already know all the details about this, but here is an article about the tunnels under Manhattan.
This may be of interest for Aaron too for his Mordiggian adventure.
Choice quote:
Until that moment, I had only heard tales of New York City’s invisible empire, an elaborate maze of tunnels that goes as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. Under construction in one form or another for more than a century, the system of waterways and pipelines spans thousands of miles and comprises nineteen reservoirs and three lakes. Two main tunnels provide New York City with most of the 1.3 billion gallons of water it consumes each day, ninety per cent of which is pumped in from reservoirs upstate by the sheer force of gravity.
http://www.gonomad.com/1757-six-hundred-feet-below-manhattan-a-visit-to-the-land-of-the-sandhogs (http://www.gonomad.com/1757-six-hundred-feet-below-manhattan-a-visit-to-the-land-of-the-sandhogs)
Now I recall seeing a tv show about the guys who work in these depths. It was maybe 15 years ago and on 60 minutes or 20/20. The most compelling memory I have of the show was that they had to take an elevator down and even with lights some areas had just massive expanses of total blackness. I may be misremembering.
If I recall correctly there is also a Native American myth about the island of Manhattan being supported by a giant pillar under the earth.
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Nice! I've done a ton of inspirational research for Ruin and I've talked about it at some length in our GDW episodes. I'm currently working on a playtest setting based on the Night Clerk AP and I should be able to playtest it at Gen Con this year.
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Hahahaha, I love the news. :'(
I saw the following and had two branching ideas.
Straight from CNN: Dean at Boston high school arrested, accused of shooting student in the head
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/us/boston-dean-student-shooting/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/us/boston-dean-student-shooting/index.html)
A dean at a Boston public high school has been fired after he allegedly shot one of his students in the head.
In addition to his work as "dean of academy" at English High School, Shaun Harrison ran a marijuana distribution enterprise, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney David Bradley said in a news release.
His victim was a 17-year-old student he had allegedly hired to sell marijuana for him, Bradley said at an arraignment hearing Thursday.
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The 55-year-old had been employed with Boston Public Schools in various roles since 2010.
He had been at English High School since January 5, where as "dean of academy," he "provided services like finding housing for homeless students or social services or disciplinary alternatives to suspension," said Denise Snyder, a representative for Boston Public Schools.
His employment has been "terminated effective immediately," Snyder said. ::)
The Rev. Dr. Gregory Groover is the pastor at Charles Street AME Church, where he said Harrison attended services for 10 years before leaving in 2012. He said the allegations against Harrison aren't consistent with the man he knows.
And the police have this on video, allegedly.
So this got me thinking. Let's assume this is a fictional character. Here is a ready made villain easy to insert into Caleb's No Soul Left Behind campaign. A charismatic drug Kingpin-like character who works within the school system to run a criminal enterprise. The fact that the character is a school administrator and reverend are simply check marks on the list for top ballot Hall of Fame bad guy.
Thinking about the cops and robbers aspect a bit further, I was curious why I haven't seen an RPG that focuses on the drama of the legal system.
Specifically, why not design a game that focuses on players in a 1990's Law and Order world focusing on criminal cases. You could have chain of custody questions, tampering (or removing) witnesses all sorts of legal procedures and extra legal shenanigans the players would get up to. Just play this on a loop in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzJm9vTCff8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzJm9vTCff8)
Now a short aside, when the Drunk and the Ugly were playing Wives of March, (http://drunkandugly.com/tag/wives-of-march/ (http://drunkandugly.com/tag/wives-of-march/)) the discussion touched on how brilliantly a Cosmic Horror scenario is weaved on a very compelling Dirty World foundation; where questions of probate, fraud and other illegalities are very important for players to understand and capitalize on.
Part of what makes Wives of March so very cool and different (there are several) is that very few games present the player with a legal problem and encourage them to solve it using legal tools. It is a breath of fresh air and it excites players I think.
So why not design a game for players as humans or minor powered individuals as lawyers or part of the legal system in a 1990's Law and Order sense in a Better Angels world or the Base Raiders one?
Ross has already touched on questions of property damage by superpowered characters in Base Raiders podcasts, and there is character Peter Cottontail (sp? the steam punk rabbit lawyer). Perhaps the players are paralegals in Cottontail's lawfirm. If the state sues the estate of a dead Superhero for damages (say because the State finds the Estate responsible for releasing deathbots into a subway system) maybe the players have to hire Base Raiders or become Raider themselves to repossess equity.
If the main antagonists are Superpowered beings, I think the design would work best if the players are human or lesser powered individuals in order to emphasize a physical fragility to their character which forces them to turn use the law rather than raw power to resolve situations. This, of course, is one of the premises behind Call of Cthulhu and most horror games.
In a Better Angel's situation, Caleb mentioned that in No Soul Left Behind, technology was about a 1980s or 90s level because so much government funding had (fruitlessly) gone into trying to research infernal devices. So if a "modern day" legal campaign in a Better Angel's world resembled a 90's Law and Order situation, that's just parallel evolution.
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I get the sense that Delta Green was written with the intention of games focusing a lot more on the legal system, depending on the approach the investigators take. Unfortunately, sufficient rules and setting info for the average GM to focus on evidence and witness tampering just aren't in there.
Speaking of legal issues, the rabbit lawyer's name is Silvertail.
And while Caleb threw out that bit about 90s era tech, the game then included armed Predator drones and "kids are tacnet" with cellphones, not to mention video games being popular with frat kids (not a thing in the 90s) and Ross's alchemy app for his smartphone (which I'm guessing he wouldn't have thought of if smartphones weren't already a common thing).
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I get the sense that Delta Green was written with the intention of games focusing a lot more on the legal system, depending on the approach the investigators take. Unfortunately, sufficient rules and setting info for the average GM to focus on evidence and witness tampering just aren't in there.
I think Delta Green focuses more on the legal issues of what alphabet soup department (ATF, FIB, CIA, DEA, etc.) has jurisdiction over an investigation and a crime scene, rather than a courtroom drama or preparing for a trial like I was proposing.
DG is more exploitation of chain of custody and probable cause to make evidence/people disappear; rather than serving a shoggoth with a subpoena.
I may totally wrong though. There was a DG convention scenario that Adam Scott Glancy was hosting posted somewhere on RPPR where he mentions at the beginning that one of the reasons DG was developed was to give Keepers a way to start off a Cthulhu adventure other than the repetitive "a relative of yours dies and you need to investigate it;" but I don't recall enough of the episode to know if ASG goes into a specific intention to focus on the legal system.
Revisiting the courtroom drama/investigative type game/system:
I know next to nothing about the American legal system other than spottily watching Law and Order/the Good Wife. But I did learn that in certain cases an Assistant District Attorney would have 3-5 police officers assigned to him to prepare a criminal case.
Naturally, in the back of my mind I'm wondering how this could be turned into a game, because you have management elements and limited resources as both the ADA (limited police to investigate new leads, verify old ones) and as a police (limited time for investigation, various skills that makes some types of investigation more profitable than others) all of which come into play with a very tight deadline of having to bring the case to trial.
I don't know, but I assume that this same arrangement of a managing lawyer and their investigators/paralegals(is it paralegals, what exactly do they do?) occurs in law firms dealing with civil suits.
The more I think about it, the more this mirrors the Mage/grogs set up of Ars Magica.
Going back to a Peter Silvertail's Lawfirm setting, you could play a group of all investigators for a GM lawyer, a group of lawyer/investigators (taking a page from Ars Magica) or even several lawyers and a few investigators in a common pool available to the lawyers where the investigators have to manage multiple conflicting tasks from the lawyers and the player lawyers compete with each other of the investigator player's time.
Speaking of legal issues, the rabbit lawyer's name is Silvertail.
And while Caleb threw out that bit about 90s era tech, the game then included armed Predator drones and "kids are tacnet" with cellphones, not to mention video games being popular with frat kids (not a thing in the 90s) and Ross's alchemy app for his smartphone (which I'm guessing he wouldn't have thought of if smartphones weren't already a common thing).
Oh god. Good catches on all points, sir.
I completely forgot the whole predator drone/beersplosion fiasco. Ross is a monster.