WilloftheWest

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.

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

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

Welcome back everyone, to the seventh meeting of our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing Hypnos and Azathoth.

Our reading for this week is two more short stories: What the Moon Brings and The Hound.

What the Moon Brings was written in June 1922. It is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist here. An audiobook version is available via LibriVox here

The Hound was written in September 1922 and is the last dream related story written by Lovecraft in 1922. It is available in PDF format via the same link given above. I cannot find a LibriVox recording so I once again link to a reading by the talented HorrorBabble here.

Image credit Carole Raddato

Welcome back to our adventure into the Dreamlands as described by H.P. Lovecraft. In this week's thread we will be discussing the reading of last week, The Quest of Iranon and The Other Gods.

This week we reach the "midway point" in terms of stories read in the Dream Cycle, though the stories in the latter half tend to be weightier volumes. We will be reading two more tales: Hypnos and Azathoth.

Our first story, Hypnos was written in March 1922. It is found in PDF format via our friend the Arkham Archivist here and in audio format via LibriVox here.

Our second story, Azathoth is the shortest of our tales thus far and is reportedly the beginning to an incomplete novel of Lovecraft. It can be found in PDF format via the same link above. I failed to find a LibriVox audio recording, thus I rely once again on the talented YouTuber HorrorBabble. A link via piped is available here.

Image Credit Carlos Palma Cruchaga.

Sorry for a couple of late submissions. The previous one was due to my brother's stag, and this week I'm visiting the in-laws.

Welcome once again to our investigation into the world of Dream as defined by our favourite horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. In this thread we will be discussing the reading assignment for the past week: Ex Oblivione and The Nameless City.

Our reading assignment for this week is two more short stories: The Quest of Iranon and The Other Gods.

The Quest of Iranon is another of Lovecraft's tales explicitly inspired by Lord Dunsany. The story, written in February 1921, is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist here. Unfortunately, LibriVox does not have an audio version of this story available, thus our audio recording for this week is via the YouTuber HorrorBabble. The video, filtered through Piped (a privacy friendly alternative YouTube Frontend) is available here

The Other Gods is also heavily inspired by Dunsany's Work. Written in August 1921, the text of the story is available via the same link above, and a LibriVox recording is available here

Image Credit Mert Genccinar

Hello Everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club! In this thread we will be discussing the reading assignment for the past week: Celephaïs and Nyarlathotep.

For this week we have two more short stories to read: Ex Oblivione and The Nameless City.

I can't find much information on when Ex Oblivione was written, though considering it's publication in the March 1921 edition of The United Amateur, it has been given a writing date in the range of late 1920 to early 1921. It can be found via the Arkham Archivist's trusty PDF here and in audiobook format here.

The second story for this week, The Nameless City was written in January 1921. Though it is only tangentially related to the Dreamlands, it is fantastic Mythos reading. It can be read in PDF format via the same link above, and can be found as an audiobook here

On a side note: it's great to see that the community is becoming active.

Image credit Joao Sergio