I like the “facts and logic” crowd having their arguments torn down with actual facts and logic. I don’t like cutaway gags, ridiculous hyperbole delivered in an exasperated tone, shoehorned Obama worship coated in an “I’m not saying he was perfect” disclaimer, or recurring meta-gags. This cuts out most snark podcasts which, unfortunately, make up a lot of the most popular podcasts tackling right wing pundits.

Ideally, I want an introduction to the right-wing narrative of the week, and a firm put-down delivered in a documentary fashion. I don’t want hosts who I can see 2 nights a week at Second City or hear on half a dozen other podcasts.

Any suggestions welcome.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing the short story The Dreams in the Witch House.

Our final story in this book club is Through the Gates of the Silver Key, which Lovecraft co-wrote with E. Hoffmann Price in 1932-33. I should note here that Lovecraft uses racist slurs in the final chapter of this short story. The Arkham Archivist didn't include any stories cowritten with other authors in their collection of stories, thus a PDF of the story is available here (sorry about the dodgy looking site. I've ensured that the PDF is legit). A LibriVox audio recording is available here

image credit this week goes to Yuki Sato

Welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club, where we explore the dream based stories and dream-adjacent tales written by H.P. Lovecraft. In this week's thread we shall discuss the final half of At the Mountains of Madness.

This week we will be reading our penultimate story: The Dreams in the Witch House. The Arkham Archivist provides us with a collated collection of stories here. A LibriVox audio recording is not available and so I direct you to a recording by the YouTuber HorrorBabble here

This week image credit goes to Joseph Diaz.

Hello everyone and welcome to the thirteenth week of our book club exploring H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle.

In this week's thread we discuss the first 5 chapters of At the Mountains of Madness, written in 1931. Our reading assignment for this week is the second half of At the Mountains of Madness, from Chapter VI onwards.

A PDF of the short story is found in the collected works curated by the Arkham Archivist here. A LibriVox audio recording is available here.

Very sorry for the late submission this week. My department is hosting an algebra conference and I'm spending my evenings "networking" (read: getting drunk while ranting about the Representation Theory of algebraic groups). Unfortunately, pleasure has to be sidelined by business until Wednesday evening. I'll post comments on the first five chapters as soon as possible but expect significant delays for this week.

On the off-chance that the set of British Lemmy Users interested in Lovecraft and Representation theory of algebraic groups isn't a one-member set, I'm the guy with the beard in a purple mushroom shirt.

Image Credit goes to Deviantartist Zhekan.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. Today we will discuss the final two parts of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Our reading for this week is the first five chapters of At the Mountains of Madness, written in 1931. The first five chapters should put us at around the halfway point of this novella.

I'd call this one Dream Cycle-adjacent, as it features and mentions locations such as Leng and Kadath. It's also an important story in Lovecraft's Bibliography, but we'll cover that during the relevant discussion.

A PDF of the short story is found in the collected works curated by the Arkham Archivist here. A LibriVox audio recording is available here.

Image credit Jagoba Lekuona

I’m just about to start my second full playthrough, and have run through Act I multiple times. Rather than choosing my main three companions and leaving everyone else in camp, I’m wanting to juggle companions. There are three main reasons for this: advancing everyone in the group and keeping them geared; giving each character a chance for their unique personal interactions; and trying to max out all opinion sliders. For an example: Lae’zel offers unique interaction with Kithrak Voss.

I’m hoping we can compile a list of best party compositions for roleplay potential in certain areas. I’ll start us off with all that I can think up from above ground Act I.

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Party Pairings: Wyll and Karlach pair well. Lae’zel and Shadowheart clash. Astarion generally clashes with any companion with a modicum of decency.

Grove:

• Recommended party composition: Shadowheart, Wyll, and Gale for kind interactions, Lae’zel and Astarion for mean/underganded interactions.
• Lae’zel is necessary for an interaction with Zorru.
• Be mean to Zorru to get night 1 romance with Lae’zel.
• Keep Wyll out of your party if you intend to free Sazza.
• Keep Astarion and Lae’zel out of the party if you intend on being kind to tieflings.
• Take S/W/G if you intend on saving Arabelle

Risen Road:

• Recommended party composition: Wyll, Karlach, anyone with high Wisdom.
• Karlach and Wyll are a good duo for confronting the paladins of Tyr. This is a personal quest for Karlach.
• For the gnoll fight, a character with high Wisdom is useful in persuading the flind to fight for you and then kill itself.

Waukeen’s Rest:

• Recommended party composition: Wyll, any other two (I just go Lae’zel and Karlach).
• Wyll has a personal interaction regarding the kidnapping of Duke Ravengard.

Mountain Crossing:

• Recommended party composition: Lae’zel, any other two (Wyll and Karlach for me).
• Lae’zel has a unique interaction with Kithrak Voss.

Blighted Village:

• Recommended party composition: Gale, Astarion (if he has snuck out of camp), any other.
• Astarion has something to say about the boar drained of blood.
• Gale is intrigued by the Thayan necromancer and the book of necromancy. Consider giving this to him.

Goblin village:

• Recommended party composition: Shadowheart, Astarion, anyone else NOT including Wyll.
• Shadowheart has unique remarks about the repurposed temple of Selune.
• Shadowheart and Astarion have a good time watching you bask in Loviatar’s love.
• Wyll struggles to keep his fat mouth shut. Keep the liability in camp.

Teahouse:

• Recommended party composition: sneaky people or people with Hold Person (if you intend on minimising casualties), someone with create water for cheese.
• I just always fight the hag. +1 to any stat is useless as only even stats count, and you should be shuffling the “standard” ability array to get all even stats (including two 16s). The Hag Eye is also a liability as perception is rolled more often than intimidate.
• Sneak and cast Hold Person if you don’t want to fight any of the masked people.
• cast Create Water on Myrina’s cage to protect her. You can usually tell her and Ethel apart through use of Examine, but Create Water results in Mayrina being wet, which doesn’t require examine to discern.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing the first three parts of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Our reading for this week will be parts IV and V of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, thus finishing the story. The text, collated as part of a collection by The Arkham Archivist, is found here. An audio recording by the talented HorrorBabble can be found here.

The image is a portrait of Vincent Price who played the role of Charles Dexter Ward/Joseph Curwen in the 1963 film The Haunted Palace. Art credit goes to Shayu Dan

Just a vibe check of the Lemmy community with a deliberately exaggerated meme.

A reddit post would get flooded with argumentative mini-essays from folks who can’t string together 5 words in-character.

Hello everyone and welcome to the tenth week of our Dream Cycle Book Club. In this thread we'll be discussing Lovecraft's epic novella The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.

This week's reading is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Written in 1927. This is another novella of Lovecraft, weighing in at 104 pages in my copy of his fiction. I'm aware that 100 pages of Lovecraft's often verbose prose can be trying. Thankfully, Lovecraft actually separated this story into parts, which allows for easy splitting up of the reading. Our reading for this week is parts I-III, with parts IV and V covered next week. The text is available in PDF format courtesy of the Arkham Archivist here. Audio is provided by the talented HorrorBabble here

Image Credit Jian Guo

Jesterraiin is doing an amazing job of uploading inspirational posts. Let's get a little community effort going and see what we can come up with in terms of inspirational reading.

Looking at my 2e boxed set, I can't find an inspirational reading list. Here are a set of books that I feel get some aspect of the setting right.

Actual Dark Sun: The Prism Pentad series by Troy Denning. Though considered apocryphal by some (due to the apparently fragile mortality of some key figures in Dark Sun lore), this series offers some decent adventure ideas for a Dark Sun campaign, with each of the five books exploring a different aspect of the Dark Sun lore.

Desert planet: Of course I need to mention the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Nigh omnipotent planetary governors, water scarcity, nobles flaunting water wastage as a symbol of power, and an oppressed underclass plotting rebellion. The Dune series also offers a cautionary tale of grasping power from a dictator only to secede it to a charismatic dictator (however reluctant that dictator may be to exercise power). The Bene Gesserit and the prescient Atreides lineage offer an interesting view into psionics.

Post apocalypse: The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance. The namesake of Vancian magic and Vecna, Jack is one of the first authors to take a glimpse into a far future ravaged by magic and magitech, and the omnipotent sorcerers who bend reality to their will.

Sword and Planet: John Carter of Mars and the Barsoom series in general, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A set of speculative fiction which would become a major influence in the world of early science fiction. The main character focus of the series is John Carter and his later descendants. John Carter is a soldier transported from the verdant Earth to the dying planet Mars, finding that due to the lower relative gravity of Mars he has near superhuman capabilities. A word of caution on this series: it's a product of its time. John Carter, a veteran of the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, goes on pulpy adventures saving the "savage" Martians many times and even rescuing the damsel in distress, whom he promptly marries and sires multiple children.

Hello everyone and welcome to Week Nine of our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week's thread is for the discussion of the three stories from last week: The Outsider, The Silver Key, and The Strange High House in the Mist.

Our reading for this week is a single story, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. It is Lovecraft's first novella-length Dreamlands story and ties together many of the disconnected stories that we've read in previous weeks. The PDF is available via the Arkham Archivist here. Audio is provided once again by the talented HorrorBabble here.

The Silver Key used in the OP was created by the Rhode Island based sculptor Gage Prentiss

Hello everyone and welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing What the Moon Brings and The Hound.

There are only three more short stories until we reach the first novella length dreamlands story. If I'd had a bit more forethought, I'd have loaded one of the last two weeks with a third story, as both featured very short stories. Hopefully this week's reading doesn't prove too much. We have three stories for this week: The Outsider, The Silver Key, and The Strange High House in the Mist.

Our First story, The Outsider, was written in 1921 but is listed on Wikipedia as 1926; this led to me missing it a couple weeks ago. It is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist here, and a LibriVox audio recording is available here.

The Silver Key is our second story this week, written in 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above, and a LibriVox audio recording is available here

Our third story for this week is The Strange High House in the Mist, written in November 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above. I cannot find a LibriVox recording, so I rely once again on HorrorBabble who has narrated the story here.

Image Credit Clément Galtier