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I'll be late if it's the 30th as I have another evening commitment and will also need dinner, but I'll nevertheless join in! 31st I'm completely free

[Folk of the Air]

That sounds really interesting, I'll have to add it to my list of books to read! If you like Chinese alternate history fantasy, I can solidly recommend The Poppy War trilogy by R F Kuang, if you haven't already read them!

My reading this year is going pretty well, I'm over halfway towards my (unreasonably large) goal of reading 104 books this year.

Most notable recent reads:
The Folk of the Air series by Holly Black. YA fantasy based on classic Celtic mythology about Faerie. The plot follows Jude, a mortal girl who is taken to the Realm of Faerie along with her twin sister Faryn and older sister Vivienne, who it turns out is actually fae herself. They're taken to Faerie by Madoc, a redcap and Vivienne's father, when he murders their human parents. Very enjoyable read, but then I almost always like Celtic mythology based fantasy.

Katabasis by R F Kuang (yes the same author I recommended above. I think she's brilliant). A Cambridge PhD student goes to hell with a rival magician in order to rescue their PhD supervisor after he is killed in a magical accident. Borne out of the notion that 'academic is hell', I feel a lot of people here might appreciate the general take on the life of an academic. It should be noted that she wrote this while studying herself for a PhD at Yale and preparing for her wedding. Some people are almost too productive.

Malice by John Gwynne. This one is a classic medieval fantasy, where dragons and giants are awakening and the fate of the world hangs in the balance...Much more complex than some of the other books I've read lately, which was actually rather welcome for me, but I wouldn't recommend getting into this unless you're willing to commit to quite a long book with a complex cast of characters.

Being fathers day in the UK, I know we intend to be away but we should be home in the evening so I will do my best to drop by

I'm afraid I shall be in South Africa visiting my husband's family so I don't think I'll be able to make it. If I can, I will drop in to say hello

Either work for me as well, although I'll likely be a little late if it's on the 26th

Update: I can only be around late on the 12th as my usual Thursday commitment is being extended into later in the evening than normal. Totally free on the 13th though

I have no problems with an earlier than usual pub and am free for both of those dates 

Either works for me 

I will be in the middle of nowhere visiting family with extremely minimal internet access so I'm afraid I can't make any of those! But I hope you have fun!

That works for me 

I could make it later in the evening on the 23rd, am fully free on the 24th and am unavailable on the 30th (I'm going to a queer fantasy event at the British Library - very excited!)

I cannot do the 25th or 27th, so the 26th works best for me!

Glad you worked out the goblin!

In game, there is a clue - I believe one of the books in the library is about goblins and says their favourite food is void mayonnaise  the books are very helpful but you do have to have found them

Ooh very lucky! It's rare but that can happen if you plant lots of the same crops together

My main thoughts, in no particular order, based almost entirely on playing games rather than designing them:

I absolutely despite NWN1-style inventory where you have to organise items based on their shape/how many slots they occupy (with eg a sword occupying 1x3 squares of the available space, but a potion bottle only occupying 1x1). It's not a super common inventory type that I've seen and I suspect it's very out of date as an option, but that was the first thing that leapt into my head. If I want to fit weird shapes into inconveniently shaped holes, I'll play Tetris.

I generally prefer the grid-based system to Skyrim's sidebar. This might just be a skill issue, but I felt like I spent a lot of time scrolling in Skyrim for the thing I wanted. I might just carry too much stuff...

On which note, I'm not hugely keen on encumbrance-type systems as a rule. I enjoy looting places and carrying interesting things I find and in a game like Skyrim, I enjoy having a couple of options for armour/weapons for different situations. With encumbrance systems, I therefore often spend far too much time slowly inching my way to a merchant, which is a drudge, or feeling like I can't carry what I want, which is frustrating. It doesn't really feel like it adds to the player's enjoyment, so much as it's just there to add 'realism', which seems a little ridiculous when one can cram 15 wheels of cheese in one's mouth in the middle of a fight.

I quite like the inventory system used in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. You have a number of tabs for different types of item you might pick up (weapons, shields, materials and so on), and several of the tabs have a limit on how many things you can hold in it (eg you start the game with 5 slots for weapons, 5 for shields and 4 for bows; you are not limited in the number of materials or armor types you can carry, which I prefer). You can also expand the number of slots you have by spending a particular currency. This means you aren't carrying *too* ludicrous an amount of gear and there is still a challenge around good inventory management, and occasionally some hard decisions about what to drop so that I can pick up something better/more interesting, but I don't feel like I spend an excessive amount of time on it.

I also think it is generally useful to have some way of 'quick swapping' between things, such as a quickbar that allows you to assign a couple of potions and some gear (a la Neverwinter Nights and similar) or a quickslot for potions/spells you might need to access quickly in the heat of battle.

Final thoughts: in terms of equipping gear, my favourite system is that found in the Witcher 3, where you assign gear to particular slots (eg you have one for your head, torso, legs and feet, a couple for rings, one for a necklace or similar, one melee weapon, one ranged and so on). It makes it easier to create interesting characters/adapt to situations with particular enemies, at least in my opinion.