I recently started The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Its the first book in a trilogy, and while I’ve read - and loved - this book, I haven’t read the rest of the trilogy yet. I’m quite excited - my wife blitzed them and said they were very good.

Come Sail Away - Styx

I own and have played the Gameboy remakes a few times. I would say going 1-2-3 shows the progression of game mechanic development really well - each feels like a refinement of the previous with some fresh new ideas added in. Additionally, though it’s a fairly loose tie , the story across the 3 of them is related. That being said, though, I believe 2 is pretty widely considered to be the worst game in the entire franchise, so… Your mileage may vary. It is admittedly the one I’ve played least, and I probably haven’t picked it up in the better part of 2 decades, so it’s a bit vague for me anymore.

I am but a humble traveling troubadour of Lower Noblesse. Or that is what I would have you believe. In truth, I am an information broker and spy for Steel Anne, the infamous forest bandit, and her band of Jolly Fellows from the Robbin Woods.

Last weekend I just needed something simple for a while, so I finally started an Animal Crossing island on my switch lite. My wife and I have put a bunch of time into crafting an island on our original switch, so it’s been fun to start so over. I forgot just how slow moving the game is, though. 😛 My plan for the island is to keep it standard fantasy themed - my house will be a wizard tower on a hill, amidst a dense forest. There will also be a “secret” fruit forest that you have to quest for. All the houses and buildings will be located in a single, village-like area with some farms

Silver Dragonborn Ancients Barbarian - I wanted to try a tanky build again, after not liking my attempt with paladin. He was Con primary, Str secondary, using a Warhammer and shield, and I was excited to see how the path of the ancients intersected with things like shield Master or sentinel. He was from a tribe of remnant Dragonborn after Abeir split back off. His tribe used to rely on shamans that communicated with their ancestors, but the last one had passed in his grandfather before he was identified as a new shaman. His sister died in a horrible accident, and his communication with her spirit was how he was identified. No one in the tribe knew how to help with his gift, so he went out into the world, accompanied by the spirit of his sister, to see what he could learn. His rage manifested as an icy white cloud rolling over him and falling to the ground, slowly revealing the spirits that accompanied him. I planned for him to notice and get to know more and more of his ancestors’ spirits as he got more powerful - including his grandfather, a taciturn half-dragon, and a happy-go-lucky silver dragon. Unfortunately, I had to bow out of the campaign just as we hit level 3, so I never got to experience any of it. ☹️

I have lots, but the top of the list is probably Cairn - doubly so now that the Cairn 2e Kickstarter is out. It seems like the perfect mix of light mechanics and shenanigans.

Like many others, I haven’t played because my group is in the middle of a multi-year D&D campaign. That, however, got put on a deadline, as our second child will be along later this year, so who knows what the future holds?

Still running around in BotW. I finally beat all of the divine beasts, and am just about to finish up the Champions’ Ballad DLC. After that I’ll do some quest clean up, some dragon hunting (need to get the Wild gear up to max), and then I suppose it’ll finally be time to storm a castle.

Uh, akshually, that’s Lauralanthalasa, “friend”. 😛

I assume this is Laurana from Dragonlance, but does anyone know why the Golden General is wearing all her upper body armor, boots and greaves, but no pants?

Pokemon - I love the whole series for what it is, but if I had to pick a favorite I would probably go with Heart Gold.

Wind Waker - I was late to Zelda games, and this was the first I ever beat. The whole feel of the game still keeps it as my favorite - it’s a lot of light-hearted fun, with gorgeous visuals and fantastic music, but still tells a story that feels grave and important.

I think I shall boot Breath of the Wild back up, and see if I can’t finish soon-ish. I got about half-way through during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday break, but then got distracted by a restart of the Minecraft server I play on. :-P

Okay, so that gets to the crux of the “problem” with d&d, then - characters have fairly easy access to very effective crowd control abilities, so big monsters in d&d need a way to counter those. The answer, then, is to either give the monsters the ability to nullify character abilities, or remove character abilities. One of those things will generally go over better with your players than the other…

I’m not familiar with Dragonbane - if it doesn’t have PC ability nullification, how do “Monsters” deal with PC control abilities? Stunning Strike, Hold Monster, Hypnotic Pattern, etc, all need to be answered in some way, or even the biggest encounters can be trivialized.

Yes, and that’s their goal. They don’t want viable universities for the masses.

IDK. Most of the early games were actually pretty entertaining. I fairly recently played sorcerer’s stone on the gbc, and it was still pretty fantastic.

I haven’t played most of these, but I will gladly add an endorsement to the early Harry Potter games. They often only tangentially related to the movies, but they had some awesome mechanics, and played into the full story really well.

While it never got much past the concept phase, I think it would be fun to play a circle of stars druid as a magical girl. I was thinking this ancient elven man who learned a bit of the druidic magics of his people, but was always more fascinated with the stars. One day he connected with a group of gnomes who invented a flying machine that could take them to the moon, and immediately signed up for the trip. When he got there, he discovered a moon goddess that had been trapped there. They hit it off famously, he offered to help free her, and she turned him into a knight of sorts, giving him the transformation ability. When he transforms, he turns into this young, bubbly, vivacious eleven woman with crazy armor and the standard anime oversized weapon that is based on which form he transformed into. She still has all the same memories, ideas and goals, but with a completely different personality. It would be pretty entertaining.