The Out Crowd is a web video series for a tabletop RPG playthrough. The RPG is set in the small California town of Springfield during The '80s where a group of twentysomethings get involved with the supernatural. Featured on Hyper RPG and hosted by That Bronze Girl
. The last episode aired on May 7th, 2017.
The main characters are:
- Roxy: A former cheerleader turned aerobics instructor who has returned home recently after an affair with one of her professors went wrong.
- Ashley "Ash" Blair: A Goth and, it later turns out, a witch.
- Zeke: A hustler who is an agent of an organization called The Shadow Council.
- Professor Mindy Benton: A teacher at the local college and mad scientist from another dimension.
- Reggie: A stoner who works at the local comics shop who is the inheritor of a curse that causes him to become a giant devilish creature whenever he's upset or angry.
Tropes featured in the show include:
- Agent Mulder: Zigzagged with Alex because they soon find out that her theories are real but in ways different from how she thought.
- Alien Among Us: Mindy Benton who is here to observe as part of a thesis, and has a device to look human.
- Amoral Attorney: Janae, their advocate before the Shadow Court, more concerned with keeping her spotless win record in place than with the group although she does bond somewhat with Mindy.
- Audience Participation: As with all Hyper RPG shows the viewers can give both GM and players bonuses and retools by contributing donations.
- Badass Normal: Roxy until she becomes a Dhampir who seems to have turned aerobics into a martial art.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Mindy mentions that like herself David Bowie is a traveler from another dimension.
- The Casanova: Zeke who hits on every attractive woman he meets except, oddly, Ash and Roxy
- Catchphrase:
- Zeke: "White people", usually while shaking his head.
- "This is my life now", which is odd because, as an agent of the Shadow Council his life was already strange and dangerous.
- Mindy: "I am not a witch! I am a scientist!"
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Ash's mother, Mrs Blair, who seems like a frighteningly stereotypical housewife, complete with a Fargoesque accent, but is actually a powerful witch.
- Goth: Ashley aka Ash has an all-black wardrobe and Egyptian-style eye makeup, and is both a self-proclaimed and actual witch.
- G-Rated Drug: Jimmy snorts garlic powder, Tang and powdered Kool-Aid, sometimes all together.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Alex who in her first appearance relentlessly harasses Ash, later kidnaps her, stabs one of Rick's crew for his blood, and steals a Vespa.
- Humanoid Alien: Mindy's real form is purple, and has antennae and a vestigial tail.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Ashley dreams of having magic powers and it turns out she does, and Alex creates the Midnight Society in order to investigate weird things.
- Insistent Terminology: Mindy is a scientist, not a witch.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Victor Pence is a thinly veiled version of Vincent Price. Except he really is a vampire.
- No Indoor Voice: Alex's normal conversational tone is a hysterical shout.
- Our Vampires Are Different: There are apparently several different types of vampire. So far we've met three: Ricks biker gang vampires who are right out of ''The Lost Boys, Victor Pence's more sophisticated group and the Nosferatu types in the aquarium.
- Secret Legacy:
- Ash plays at being a witch and then finds out that not only does she have powers, so does her mother and so did her grandmother.
- Reggie's demon form is the result of a curse put on his grandfather.
- Shadow Walker: Zeke. He can teleport through shadows and, with enough donations, walk through walls.
- Stepford Smiler: Ash's mother, Mrs Blair who is in serious denial about her witchly past and even more upset about her daughter's emerging powers
- The Stoner: Reggie always has a joint handy. It's also useful for calming him down from his monster state.
- Weird Science: Mindy's specialty is chemistry and she blends this trope with, despite her insistence that it's science, Alchemy Is Magic. She turned someone into a dragon.
