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Yeah it does seem like we're there, but it was a lot of books to get to that point! Personally I think they just need to do a time-skip, (huge spoilers)

I'd personally strongly rate Novik's Uprooted over Spinning Silver. It's got a lot of similar ideas but it executes insanely better on every single one, and is also more unique, and also doesn't have a distractingly insane attempt at apologia for landlords kicking out destitute peasants (one of...

I mean, was there a time when most SF/F books weren't? After the 1970s anyway. Maybe there was a brief window in the 1990s and early 2000s when increasing taste levels combined with more careful use of art so some SF/F books didn't routinely look like the tackiest junk imaginable, but a lot of...

For sure, but that's not really the issue I would suggest. A four-year-old can footle around hitting the easiest monsters (if it's anything but those, they'll be dying a lot, which I doubt they'd enjoy), or monsters made easy because someone else got gear/hearts on the character, and that'll...

I am always interested in excessively long YouTube video essay recommendations! This one has appeared in my YouTube recs before but I ignored it because of the title, but with your recommendation I'll add it to my to-watch.

I'm a little worried about this. Not because I don't think Sanderson is sane, relatively sensible, or organised or whatever, but for two specific reasons: 1) Sanderson has almost no experience in the industry and this is a huge role. Really close to none - basically none - because the only...

BotW is an insanely impressive game but I think it absolutely falls outside the kind of gameplay described because it's a serious metroidvania with a ton to unlock (a lot of which works in intuitive but still complex ways). Even the short gameplay loop I'd characterise as a lot longer than...

Is it? What do you base this on? Do you mean re: other stuff getting called "romantasy"? ??? I'm not trying to - I'm pointing out that plenty of good works get labelled "romantasy" right now (because the genre is very fashionable) so suggesting the whole thing is "trash" in a broader sense...

Yeah it's one of those ideas which is neat, but can very rapidly wear out its welcome. Two movies playing it for laughs, fun! Dozens of episodes of an anime taking it mostly seriously (as even the ones with comedic-seeming premises do in practice)? Not so great.

Good luck with that, tell us if you find one! I definitely get you there - I love roguelike and soulslike games and heavy stories buuuuuut sometimes you don't want any of those! The only genre I can think of which really features that is Boomer Shooters, but I'm guessing when you say "action...

That's a bit like saying "dark fantasy is awful" or "epic fantasy is awful" or whatever though, because it's such a broad sweeping claim about an extremely diverse genre that it just shows you're basically unfamiliar with the genre. There's certainly a lot of romantasy that is both trashy and...

Yes I'm well aware of it sadly.

Isekai just means portal fantasy essentially (most literal translation is "a different world") and includes reincarnation, planar travel, alternate realities, time travel that actually changes stuff, as well as "trapped in a video game" and so on. It's not inherently bad, it's just like...

Technology limits this a bit, implying electronics or at least mechanical devices. I have a whole bunch of kitchen stuff that's 40+ years old and still in use, but I wouldn't call any of it technology (plates, cutlery, etc.). I think actual technology, it's pretty much going to be the Stanley...

I've played loads of RPGs RAW (certainly no knowing omissions obviously there are known omissions and unknown omissions). I'm surprised that you don't think this happens. Though not as surprised as I was by the title I admit... Will we still be playing 100% un-altered rules 20+ sessions into...

I'd agree with this, though I think one can easily overstate how different that story is for each person. I mean, I don't think that's necessarily true. Because I don't think there's the hard contradiction between player agency and story-like elements in all cases, especially because, as you...

I haven't run it but one of the main reasons I haven't is that I felt like the core rulebook was extremely bare-bones (even as someone familiar with 40K since literally the 1980s). Like, it technically provides you with what you need to start a campaign, but it didn't feel to me like it gave you...

I built a Mass Effect RPG from Cortex - it's an excellent system - quite abstract in some ways but the output felt really on-point, and the players seemed to grasp it instantly (faster than I expected - it's always interesting when that happens). We didn't keep playing past a few sessions...

Maybe, but if you're making sweeping statements about a game and how it went and referring to how others experience the game (which that post did, explicitly), you should definitely say if you were playing a quickstart rather than the full rules.

Keeping it short because off-topic - I think it's always been a major issue but the way the press operated before 24 hour news and the internet, it was generally in their interests to play it off as "funny eccentricity" or euphemise the hell out of it - i.e. "He's a ladies man" (meaning "he...