To add on, at my work we started getting yubikeys for the people who didnt want Microsoft’s authenticator on their phone and found they still need to download the mfa to set up the yubikey in the first place. So its not a perfect solution if you dont want the authenticator to touch your phone at all.

I can also confirm that the help desk members who are not enlightened about Microsoft will ridicule you for not wanting the MFA even if its reasonable to not want Microsoft on your phone. As much as we think all techs are Linux nerds, I have the opposite at my work. Some of the higher up techs are constantly trying to get people to switch to windows 11…

Good ol Billy Shepherd

Am I crazy or does that screenshot have Japan in it? Why would a Japanese company ban a game about Japan in Japan?

This is so cool!

NGL I didn’t read the title at first and thought these were all jack o lanterns

While animals can hear different frequencies, the researchers talked about editing the audio for volume and such. I would assume these scientists, who are already concerned about the audio content/volume, would think about that. All they would need to do is take the clips, put them a spectral analyzer and eliminate any frequencies outside of the range of frequencies the animal making the sound could make. So it would be rather trivial for them to do. Youre also assuming the speakers could reproduce that static but if they’re tuned for human hearing ranges and not really cheap speakers then the chance of some elephant scaring static is low.

Its not surprising. I used to work at one of these places and they would laugh at any viable alternative acting like it would never have a chance. They also were well aware of the fact that some of their distributors illegally kill the returned horshoe crabs and turn them into fertilizer. So any claims that they’re not hurting the horshoe crabs are bullshit. They’ve just offloaded the hurt to contractors who are 50/50 on actually trying to protect the crabs and just using them as bait. Even if they didn’t do that, I’ve always been suspect that the crabs do great in the wild after losing 60% of their blood.

SCP already seems like a great source. Its always fun to catch a glimpse of monsters as a teaser for that sort of game. I think some amount of sci fi can definitely enhance paranormal settings, but I understand not wanting to lean too much into that.

The Simon stalenhag books that the Tales from the Loop setting originated in may be very good inspiration for hooks. They have beautiful art with vignettes and stories from one or a few characters perspectives. Anything that is too sci fi can be swapped out for an equivalent paranormal phenomenon, or completely rewritten. The best part about them is that the stories are very minimal as to not distract too much from the art, this adds a lot of empty space for things to be added, which kinda makes it perfect for plot hooks. Also they art itself is gorgeous.

If you are looking for works functionally very similar to SCP, their sister site the Wanderer’s library is much more fantastical/paranormal. It may be a step too fantastical, but adapting single elements from high fantasy stories is a good way to tease a deeper weirder world.

In podcasts you can checkout the Magnus Archives. It is a podcast about a fiction organization that is like a much less powerful and scientific version of the SCP foundation. Not much else to say than the stories are pretty good and might inspire good hooks.

My final moonshot recommendation would be… Take a stand ability from a weird random Jojo’s bizarre adventure character, slap it on a hybrid of two cryptids, and you have a grade A paranormal creature escaped from a government lab. For example, a moth winged giant ape that can turn dead animals into other animals it can control, or maybe an alien loch ness monster that is appearing in multiple completely disconnected bodies of water by traveling through the reflections of a giant tower at the center of town.

Don’t know if this is helpful or just rambling. Personally I think the tales from the loop setting is at its best when its a near 50/50 SciFi/paranormal so I wouldn’t shy away from using tech to make things even spookier. Ghosts and machines don’t mix well, but in a good way.

Interesting, I was just wondering if I missed some deeper connection. I am unironically that guy who has only really played sci-fi RPGs, not shadowrun though. I don’t inherently associate European tolkien-esque fantasy with RPGs but I can see why others do.

What does this have to do with RPGs?