My psionic sorcerers are never allowed to do anything because the way it's played weirds out the DMs and my Stormbringer warlocks are never allowed to fight. When I read an article saying the three big unfilmable novels are Don Quixote, A Wrinkle in Time, and Dune I thought that sounded like the perfect basis for a D&D campaign. I wish they would stop renaming things like Dimension Hop to Misty Step unless it's supposed to be a reference to Mistborn (it decidedly isn't) since hey, I just mentioned A Wrinkle in Time plz gib, and I don't want my telekinesis replaced with literal floating hands conjured by loud hand-wavey incantations. Also we should play in Eberron so we have the WWI war robot revolt, I don't want to play black and white deity politics in Forgotten Realms (though the black and white deity politics in Dragonlance manages to be also racist and worse!) unless it means stranding Mystra on Abeir to be torn apart by dragons, elementals, and psions. I have given up on playing D&D games with strangers, since it inevitably leads to the standard renfaire tavern crowd hating me and vice versa, but I shouldn't have been doing that to begin with when I come in like "Have you heard of [insert book here] by Ursula K. Le Guin?" and the only response I get is "Sword of Shannara."
At least there's 40k and Magic: the Gathering for when I just want to play a game where fantasy basically just means more mythological sci-fi like it used to, even if it's not much of an RPG?
Seems like the DM's you play with are forgetting rule number one with DnD. Are you and the players having fun?
OOoooo I've not read Mistborn in years!! I'm surprised there's not been a trilogy of movies or a TV series though with how Hollywood is today I wouldn't want them too.
Ooooo I'll put my hands up and say that I have never heard of her but after a quick google I'll be adding the Earthsea series to my Kindle list so thank you for that.
Have you played Baldurs Gate 3 yet?
I try not to play DnD with strangers. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a small group organised on here tbh since a lot o people seem to be quite like minded.
Every extreme is on the same team! It's the best I could think of for now. It at least gives us somewhere to talk that isn't comments sections in case anyone wants. Will need to figure out how to verify though.
Yeah, I used to play D&D with strangers and it was awful. How would we organize a group though? Overton Window Substack Discord? I can't even think of what to call it besides Overton Window Substack, there's certainly other communities in Substack but I see one that has a lot of just liberals, conservatives, anarchists, and whatever who all mostly seem fine reading each others' things despite their differences and feel like calling that the Overton Window, but it's probably like the Radical Centrists at this point even if it's not so radical, just the political orthodoxy in the US is literally... Soviet communism (not the George Orwell kind of communism even, he hated the Soviets more than most non-socialists.)
And Sword of Shannara, in addition to not being written by Ursula K. Le Guin, is basically the opposite of her whole thing. She's like the proto-MTG author in my mind, as well as proto-Harry Potter and lots of other things. Science fiction fantasy mostly. Very gritty, sci-fi, and not very "romantic fantasy" even if people want to call it "soft" for focusing on sociology and not technology. The first book I picked up by her wasn't even Earthsea, it was Changing Planes because I was like ooh, it's a real book about basically planeswalkers and alternate realities.
The problem for me is that I'm UK based and in the Royal Navy. I disappear for months at a time when I'm on a ship so that's why I struggle to play. My friends allow me to drop in and out as and when I'm actually home.
I feel like the majority of people here on SubStack are like myself. Centrist (who might also believe in God and whatnot) and generally have views that 10 years ago would have been considered normal.
Is Sword or Shannara part of the Shannara Chronicles? I never read it but swear there was a TV series about it a few years back with the lad that played Elvis. OOO ignore that. I just answered my own question with anther Google search. Its early so please forgive me lol.
I hall deffo have to give her books a read. It's always a sham when someone suggests an author and hen you google then you find out that they've died and pretty recently a well.
'I feel like the majority of people here on SubStack are like myself. Centrist (who might also believe in God and whatnot) and generally have views that 10 years ago would have been considered normal.'
Clearly, it's because you're on the wrong side of history! Progress has been made, it's not like things have actually become really bad or anything! You are not normal, it's the new normal! The new normal is rich white people must pay up for their privilege, by which we totally don't mean Jews, and it's racist to make black people look at the clock because everyone knows sufficient levels of melanin cause clock malfunctions!
My psionic sorcerers are never allowed to do anything because the way it's played weirds out the DMs and my Stormbringer warlocks are never allowed to fight. When I read an article saying the three big unfilmable novels are Don Quixote, A Wrinkle in Time, and Dune I thought that sounded like the perfect basis for a D&D campaign. I wish they would stop renaming things like Dimension Hop to Misty Step unless it's supposed to be a reference to Mistborn (it decidedly isn't) since hey, I just mentioned A Wrinkle in Time plz gib, and I don't want my telekinesis replaced with literal floating hands conjured by loud hand-wavey incantations. Also we should play in Eberron so we have the WWI war robot revolt, I don't want to play black and white deity politics in Forgotten Realms (though the black and white deity politics in Dragonlance manages to be also racist and worse!) unless it means stranding Mystra on Abeir to be torn apart by dragons, elementals, and psions. I have given up on playing D&D games with strangers, since it inevitably leads to the standard renfaire tavern crowd hating me and vice versa, but I shouldn't have been doing that to begin with when I come in like "Have you heard of [insert book here] by Ursula K. Le Guin?" and the only response I get is "Sword of Shannara."
At least there's 40k and Magic: the Gathering for when I just want to play a game where fantasy basically just means more mythological sci-fi like it used to, even if it's not much of an RPG?
Seems like the DM's you play with are forgetting rule number one with DnD. Are you and the players having fun?
OOoooo I've not read Mistborn in years!! I'm surprised there's not been a trilogy of movies or a TV series though with how Hollywood is today I wouldn't want them too.
Ooooo I'll put my hands up and say that I have never heard of her but after a quick google I'll be adding the Earthsea series to my Kindle list so thank you for that.
Have you played Baldurs Gate 3 yet?
I try not to play DnD with strangers. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a small group organised on here tbh since a lot o people seem to be quite like minded.
https://discord.gg/HNZyhqSufA
Every extreme is on the same team! It's the best I could think of for now. It at least gives us somewhere to talk that isn't comments sections in case anyone wants. Will need to figure out how to verify though.
Yeah, I used to play D&D with strangers and it was awful. How would we organize a group though? Overton Window Substack Discord? I can't even think of what to call it besides Overton Window Substack, there's certainly other communities in Substack but I see one that has a lot of just liberals, conservatives, anarchists, and whatever who all mostly seem fine reading each others' things despite their differences and feel like calling that the Overton Window, but it's probably like the Radical Centrists at this point even if it's not so radical, just the political orthodoxy in the US is literally... Soviet communism (not the George Orwell kind of communism even, he hated the Soviets more than most non-socialists.)
And Sword of Shannara, in addition to not being written by Ursula K. Le Guin, is basically the opposite of her whole thing. She's like the proto-MTG author in my mind, as well as proto-Harry Potter and lots of other things. Science fiction fantasy mostly. Very gritty, sci-fi, and not very "romantic fantasy" even if people want to call it "soft" for focusing on sociology and not technology. The first book I picked up by her wasn't even Earthsea, it was Changing Planes because I was like ooh, it's a real book about basically planeswalkers and alternate realities.
The problem for me is that I'm UK based and in the Royal Navy. I disappear for months at a time when I'm on a ship so that's why I struggle to play. My friends allow me to drop in and out as and when I'm actually home.
I feel like the majority of people here on SubStack are like myself. Centrist (who might also believe in God and whatnot) and generally have views that 10 years ago would have been considered normal.
Is Sword or Shannara part of the Shannara Chronicles? I never read it but swear there was a TV series about it a few years back with the lad that played Elvis. OOO ignore that. I just answered my own question with anther Google search. Its early so please forgive me lol.
I hall deffo have to give her books a read. It's always a sham when someone suggests an author and hen you google then you find out that they've died and pretty recently a well.
'I feel like the majority of people here on SubStack are like myself. Centrist (who might also believe in God and whatnot) and generally have views that 10 years ago would have been considered normal.'
Clearly, it's because you're on the wrong side of history! Progress has been made, it's not like things have actually become really bad or anything! You are not normal, it's the new normal! The new normal is rich white people must pay up for their privilege, by which we totally don't mean Jews, and it's racist to make black people look at the clock because everyone knows sufficient levels of melanin cause clock malfunctions!
LOL I'm being looked at in my office as I'm chuckling out loud at your comment.
As a straight white male I understand that I have the lowest of privilege and I spend every day self flagellating myself with whips LOL.
You should follow HollyMath Nerd. She wrote about the new normal the other day.
Thanks for the suggestion!