I’m about done with Winter, the last book in the primary Lunar Chronicles quartet. It’s been a really great read thus far, like the rest of the series. I’m excited to see just how the big bad gets their comeuppance, as well as what becomes of the cast of characters. Then I’ll be on to the two addendum books to the series - the first is a series of short stories, but I didn’t know how they relate yet. The second is a novela about the backstory of said big bad, which should be intriguing.

Wait… But what buttons are missing that you actually use?! Maybe I’ve just gotten too used to my remote, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted for another button on the remote, aside from maybe a source button.

I finally picked up Cinder by Marissa Meyer last Thursday. I knew immediately that I was going to want to read the whole series, so ordered them to be shipped to my house. Unfortunately, I finished the first book on Friday, and my package still hasn’t arrived. I was able to check out the 2nd through Libby, but I read that in 2 days as well, and the 3rd is checked out through my library, so I’m stuck waiting for the shipment.

In the meantime, I started reading Top Ten Games You Can Play by Yourself In Your Head - I found it through a random role playing game blog, and bought it on a whim. While I support expanding your imagination, and the games and structure included do seem pretty entertaining, the author has managed to write the most pretentious book I’ve ever encountered - it’s insane.

So, to take a break from that, I’m rereading The LEGO Book - LEGO’s retelling of their history. I’ve read it once before, but it’s been a while, and it’s a pretty fun walk through the history of the company, from tiny wooden toy shop to globally dominant construction toy company.

I just started Ordinary Monsters, by J. M. Miro. Too early yet to have any real opinions, but it feels like it’s setting up an intriguing story, so I’m looking forward to getting further.

Very much so, although the author manages to make it much more poignant than I expected, but it was for good reasons.

Yeah, H.G. Wells. I finished it a couple nights ago. It’s very… Pompous? It’s so over the top that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was actually supposed to be satire… but I don’t think it was. I’m glad I read it, but I highly doubt I’ll ever pick it up again. Oh, and it’s The Time Machine, not Traveler - sorry for the brain fart.

On Monday, I finished The Winter of the Witch, the last in Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy - it was absolutely fantastic from front to back. Last night I picked up The Time Traveler - I got a physical copy for super cheap from a second hand book store. I’ve never read it, so I’m excited to see how it reads. So far, it’s pretty good - a bit pretentious in some of the word choice, maybe, but I suppose that’s kind of to be expected.

Nope. They push the yeerks off of Earth, and then chase them out into space

As someone who read all 54 core books last year, this is factually incorrect

I finished The Bear and the Nightingale a bit ago, so moved onto the rest of the series. I pretty quickly pushed through the second book, The Girl in the Tower, and have just started the last book, The Winter of the Witch. It has thus far been a fantastic series, and I’m very much looking forward to a certain character finally getting his well deserved comeuppance (and it had better really hurt…)

I’m taking a break from Animal Crossing to try and finally finish Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. We’ll see how far I get this time. It’s got a lot of classic RPG feel that I really love, and the Ghibli animated cutscenes are gorgeous, but I’m really not used to having to “watch” my games, so we’ll see.

The oldest system I have would be the NES. My brother received it sometime before I was born. I’m just holding onto it for him, though - it doesn’t get played right now. I actually intend to clean it all up and retrobright it before sending it back to him… eventually… The oldest system I have that still gets occasional use would be my Gameboy Color, which I received, with Pokemon Red, for Christmas when I was 8 or 9. Unfortunately, I need to find a better plastic polish, to take some light scratches out of the lens, and until I do, it will remain disassembled… I’ve also been contemplating using the board for a complete boxypixel overhaul, but there’s something about still having my full original GBC that I’m having a problem getting over…

Continuing with my wizard’s island in Animal Crossing, although I’m more just putting my daily time in right now. I finally worked up the drive to continue on my Minecraft chateau build, so that’s eating most of my creative energies right now.

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.

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?

That’s pretty much what I expected, which is really cool to see. The next number I would love to see is some sort of price per weight comparison. As @edgemaster72@lemmy.world pointed out, the next common argument is that LEGO sets have a lot more smaller pieces now, so if the PPP has stayed roughly the same, the price per weight should have gone up.

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…