Acceptable Losses: A Grimdark Podcast

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​Welcome back to Acceptable Losses. Today, DK and Kirioth are venturing into the most brutal, unforgiving, and controversial campaign setting in D&D history: Dark Sun. ​Set on the tormented, sun-scorched world of Athas, this setting is what happens when pulpy Sword & Sorcery collides with the grim entropy of the Dying Earth genre. We're talking about a desolate wasteland completely devastated by uncontrolled magic, where gods are unable to see the world, and the very sands want to kill you.

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Terraces was conceived in 1984 by Mick Jackson and Barry Hines as a predecessor to the famous post-apocalyptic movie Threads. It was a bleak, hopeless drama set in a Northern English terraced housing estate during the fallout of a Soviet-US nuclear exchange. The BBC deemed the script so repulsive and anti-Thatcher that they pulled the funding halfway through production.

Desperate to finish filming, the production company allegedly took private funding from a regional meat-packing conglomerate. Part of the contract stipulated that the set, crew, and lead actor of Terraces had to shoot a promotional commercial for British Pork. That viral, unsettling advertisement is actually the only surviving footage of the Terraces set.

If you look closely at the ad, the actor isn't playing a happy father; he is still entirely in character as the lead of the show, a murderer and a cannibal. The intense, unblinking eye contact, the aggressive way he wields the carving tools, and the stilted, unnatural delivery of lines like "Fred's got plenty... Arthur's got plenty" were written as a dark inside joke by the crew. The meat on the table was heavily rumored by the crew to be a prop from the show's butchery scene, not actual pork.

The most sinister part of the ad is the repeated, menacing line: "Got what it takes, my wife." Two weeks after the commercial aired on regional late-night television, the lead actor was found dead in his kitchen. His real-life wife, Helen, was arrested at the scene, but before she could stand trial, Helen died in police custody under highly contested circumstances, officially ruled as heart failure brought on by severe hysteria.

Following the deaths and controversy, the BBC panicked, locked the unfinished master tapes of Terraces in their archives, and scrubbed the names of the crew from their records. The British Pork ad was pulled, only surviving because a few people happened to record it on VHS.

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Welcome back to Acceptable Losses! When asked what the darkest entry in the franchise is, most people immediately point to the horrors of the Mojave Wasteland or the desolation of the very first game. But they're missing a story that didn't have the luxury of a century to heal its wounds. Today, DK, Kirioth, and PancreasNoWork are exploring a chapter where you step out of a Vault into complete, unsettling silence. It's not a wasteland of ancient ruins; it's an abandoned graveyard where the ghosts of the recent past are still fresh. We're talking about the original, vanilla release of Fallout 76.

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In this episode of Acceptable Losses, we stare into the cosmic abyss with special guest TheAmberKing for a complete primer on Lovecraftian lore! If you’ve ever been confused about the difference between a Great Old One and an Outer God, or just want to know why everyone is so afraid of tentacles, this is the episode for you. We break down the cosmic hierarchy, from the sleeping dread of Cthulhu and the maddening presence of Hastur, all the way up to the ultimate nightmare entities residing outside of our reality: Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and the Blind Idiot God at the center of the universe, Azathoth.

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​Welcome back to another episode of Acceptable Losses! Today, we are diving into the terrifying, unexplained, and straight-up supernatural side of BattleTech with our host PancreasNoWork to swap some of the most chilling war stories traded in the deep black of space.

​In this episode, we cover:

How a religious splinter faction unleashed a bioengineered version of Mad Cow Disease on the planet Necromo, causing all higher brain functions to cease and turning the infected into flesh-craving monsters.

The terrifying reality of Jump Psychosis, misjumps that can suspend a ship in time for over two centuries, and horrific legends of vessels being destroyed in hyperspace by giant void squids.

The legends of "Lucky Number 7," a cursed piece of garbage Charger that violently faceplanted and killed its pilot, a haunted 13th Zeus that seemingly caused its pilot to hold vivid conversations with his dead sister, and Great Gaffa's Ghost—a green Star League Highlander that miraculously appears out of nowhere to save doomed MechWarriors.

And the ultimate cosmic horror of BattleTech, The Dark One, a pristine, jet-black Marauder with no serial number. Is it just a machine piloted by a psychopath, or is it an extradimensional being bleeding into our reality, eating souls and punishing mankind for breaking the rules of physics?