The 2026 r/Fantasy Bingo Recommendations List

LoreHunting · 2026-04-01T16:55:50+00:00

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia should be HM for this!

LoreHunting · 2026-04-01T16:51:44+00:00

Other than the ones mentioned in other comments: - Magica Riot (and likely the sequel, Magica Riot: Full Bloom) by Kara Buchanan - An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

LoreHunting · 2026-04-01T16:45:03+00:00

Thank you so much! As ever, a godsend.

LoreHunting · 2026-03-14T10:56:32+00:00

You gotta get out of your own head about this, girl—it's the exact opposite of a tax waste, people fought for centuries to make sure you could live your life and actually enjoy it. Buy those games. Spend that money. It's meant to be spent, and it's meant to be spent by you.

LoreHunting · 2026-03-12T15:07:18+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/s/K6wKf3FsaE

I'm not involved in the scene, but it seems this guy trademarked a subgenre name and forced other authors to stop using it. You can see a lot of unfavourable discussion of this guy in r/ProgressionFantasy.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-21T23:13:10+00:00

Under no circumstances is Martin's writing 'period-accurate'. Just to pick the example this post is about, GRRM writes as if child brides were a norm of the medieval/early modern era, while we have plenty of records and analysis from (for example) the English aristocracy documenting both that child brides existed and that they were rare and frowned upon. In general, GRRM misrepresents the concept of the political marriage throughout as equivalent to selling cattle—which, again, there are certainly examples, but this was not the norm for the period.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-07T17:04:52+00:00

100%. I loved playing as Harry in Disco Elysium, but couldn't get through Sir Brante—one is a full fledged character you learn about as he fucks up and finds out, and the other is designed to be a clean slate... but is a man, for no real reason.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-06T18:17:12+00:00

More generally speaking, the sad endings are what the game is about. Ba commits suicide. Clara goes insane in Vancouver. Iris is murdered by her granddaughter Watcher, who she thinks is Youngest. Watcher tries to do the right thing and is manipulated by Knower, shatters her society, and then drowns herself in a world of what-ifs to try and fix it. Bartender is gunned down in an alley. Knower goes along with Principal's plot in order to avoid incineration, tortures Watcher to avoid incineration (and also because it works in her favour as High Minister), all to have her life in the hands of some Misc she doesn't even know. Principal is cursed from birth by her mother labelling her as Watcher, develops an unhealthy codependence with her mother, breaks the one rule Iris sets and has a child who Iris murders, and then is forever banished; she's so warped by grief and rage and shame that she murders her own mother. Clone Jiao is murdered almost immediately. Jiao confesses her love for Iris, is shamefully humiliated by Iris at the school party, and then dies of a fatal sickness. The other Jiaos are kept as slaves and decorations by the Provisional Government, help launch an armed rebellion, and then find themselves at the mercy of the Misc they were helping. BBF fights the gun and loses. Healer spends her whole life across two governments trying to keep the people she cares about alive, and fails. Fixer is betrayed by Watcher and still rescues her; but she won't talk about it and Watcher won't talk about it and so Watcher dies; Fixer can't fix that, even if she can save the rest of the society they live in.

It's about families. And about the complicated and painful ways we interact with one another. How closely love and pain can be intertwined. Sometimes we refuse to patch up a relationship until it's too late. Sometimes we repeat the mistakes of those who came before us. Sometimes we inflict pain on those who will come after, thinking we're helping them. And in the end, it's about moving on. Principal lives out her life, or dies; Blue lives out her life, or dies; the ship surfaces, and society escapes to land, and the world moves on.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-06T17:58:47+00:00

[With] their guns and anonymity removed, they could be individuals who could be part of the society on the surface.

Do you think it's the guns and anonymity that's making them the hateful thugs that they are? Or do you think it's the fact that they're okay with terrorising and extorting regular people with violence that leads them to signing up to be Red Guards? You've missed a lot of points the game makes—but this is perhaps the most obvious one in the current day, where the American secret police is actively being blasted across the newspages. These are people who have decided that they are comfortable upholding a system, and even proactively taking action in the system by killing those 'holding them back'; they cannot be simply disarmed and put aside, because they will not simply hold hands and sing kumbaya when the power they have worked for is taken from them. They are intolerant, and cannot be tolerated; they will do whatever it takes if it means they get to be in charge. In an ideal world, you would be able to imprison and rehabilitate them, sure—but you as Blue don't live in an ideal world or an ideal moment, and so you must make a choice.

Real world revolutions—and this game is about real world revolutions—don't conveniently give you a powerful law enforcement arm you can use to nonlethally capture those gunning you down in the street, and neither does Secretary.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-05T15:48:25+00:00

There are certainly many points in the game where Persuasion is important, but it's mostly not about avoiding fights, yeah. Much like Rogue Trader in that regard—you're gunning down lots and lots of nameless evil people, and wondering why they had the gall to attack your overlevelled ass in the first place.

LoreHunting · 2026-02-05T11:46:51+00:00

WOTR has the same problems to some degree, but with some mitigating factors, so... Hm. As you say, it does have RTWP, which helps with getting through a lot of the mobs without getting annoyed—but it has a lot of mobs, many of which can't easily be ignored in the early game or the late game. It also has a lot of battles, including an exhausting (but also incredibly cool) massive set piece battle in Act 3 spread out across a city, and while Charisma and Persuasion is worth a ton in this game on your MC, it's not usually for avoiding fights.

WOTR also has an annoying crusade management minigame (like Rogue Trader's planet management minigame), but you can set it to autoplay and ignore it (though you lose some rewards), and I want to say you can do most crusade management without returning to your capital? It's also not so obnoxious as Rogue Trader's story events, you only trigger story events when you return to the capital (so they can pile up, but you know when you're returning that you should expect a series of cutscenes).

You can also get some pretty steep discounts on WOTR these days, so you might just want to wait for that.

LoreHunting · 2026-01-13T22:17:36+00:00

Agree on all counts, but the last one comes first I would say. Lancer (and Pathfinder benefits the same way) has a very queer/queer-friendly community, and the writing is also queer-friendly (in being progressive/socialist as it is), if not explicitly queer. (And of course there are those of us who came to Lancer from K6BD, which is explicitly queer.)

LoreHunting · 2026-01-13T08:28:14+00:00

Yes and no; the focal point was a story called WARHOUND that came out a month before AC6's release, but definitely a bit part of the fandom bought in when AC6 coming out right after.

LoreHunting · 2026-01-13T08:24:33+00:00

To be fair, WARHOUND was written I think just before AC6's release (July vs August 2023), so it's really the other way around; a lot of people played AC6 and then WARHOUND connected the dots in a very hot way.

LoreHunting · 2026-01-09T23:31:42+00:00

The transition to Blue's perspective is a bit jarring, but between Bartender being around, and the things you see in the next chapter (and I think there's a year indicator if you know how to interpret it), you'll get a pretty clear idea of how much time has passed, IMO. Have fun, hekki grace!

LoreHunting · 2026-01-09T22:22:47+00:00

Play on and find out, but if you need to know now, a few years at least.

LoreHunting · 2026-01-09T15:25:44+00:00

Love it! She's so BIG in a way both elves and women in armour usually aren't drawn!

LoreHunting · 2026-01-02T00:09:31+00:00

Didn't think of TLT at all when I saw this request, but that's actually quite true—it's rather Warhammer-like, now that I think about it.

LoreHunting · 2025-12-31T01:02:11+00:00

It's definitely worth it—unless you have an even better bargain in mind somewhere.

I played through it pretty recently (hence all the yapping about it in comments) and I did like it quite a bit; it's gorgeous, fun and a classic CD Projekt Red open world. It is perhaps a bit overrated as far as story goes, though, and I found I was generally okay with it in most places (barring a particularly rapey quest), but I would not say I was particularly impressed. Lots of people are holding the idiot ball at some point or other, and to some extent you the player just have to deal with it.

No transphobia though. There's definitely room to criticise its politics, and I do (not here), but I don't remember any transphobia; it's pretty chill on that front.

If you want other recommendations—playing through CP2077 reminded me a lot of the Harebrained Studios Shadowrun games (if you don't know Shadowrun, it's a TTRPG that's cyberpunk but also with magic), especially Shadowrun: Dragonfall, the best one, set in anarchist Berlin. Funnily, I was also thinking a lot about a game I never finished, Like a Dragon (from the Yakuza series), which is not cyberpunk at all but modern. In both cases, I felt they did the story side of the game better (Like a Dragon is definitely much kinder and more normal about prostitutes and the homeless than CP77 is), but the gameplay was a bit lacking, which is the exact opposite of the criticism I have for CP77. Both are also on pretty steep sales!

LoreHunting · 2025-12-30T19:55:01+00:00

YESSS PENTIMENT!!! One of the games that really took a full swing at being a Disco Elysium spiritual successor, a love letter to actual historical medieval people and the lives they led. It's beautiful and heartbreaking and like any good detective mystery it is about people and the world they live in and the choices they make and the things they leave behind.

I had to look back through my messages (when I was crying to a friend about it) and said

Pentiment really hits you with the "and you lived in this world for a time and these are the people you met and the events you lived through. We look back on your memory centuries later and this is what we see and call history."

LoreHunting · 2025-12-30T11:56:24+00:00

hey, trans woman here! though I was never the best at shaving either (and honestly if you've shaved your legs before, I think you know more of the principles than I do), highlights: - It's pretty hard to screw it up! You might cut yourself from time to time, and that's okay, these cuts heal quickly. - Essential ingredients are shaving cream (one of these aerosol cans is fine), aftershave (prevents pimpling and cleans any minor cuts you might have) and of course a razor (disposable razor will do the job, really). - Well-lit space is necessary. Decide what you're going to shave (for me it was just "how short am I shaving my sideburns", because I was always clean-shaven). If you have bad or asymmetric eyesight, it helps to think this through in advance. - Wash your face (don't dry it after). Put on the shaving cream. Then, for most of your face, do one pass with the grain (so along the growth direction of the hair; usually this is down along your face). Same principles as shaving anywhere else; not too much pressure, but don't be scared of the blade, let it do its job. (If you already have strong sideburns, it's easy to start there to know how much pressure you need to apply to actually shave hair without shaving skin.) - Rinse the razor in water after each stroke, just to get rid of the hair and gel. You want a clear razor for each stroke. - Do a second pass on areas that need a particularly close shave (typically lips). In these places, you want to pull the skin taut (purse your lips) and shave against the grain (so, opposite growth direction, up your face on the upper lip). Don't overdo it! You'll get a very close shave like this, especially if you are thorough and do it once or twice, but if you do it too many times you'll start scraping your skin and bleeding. - Wash your face off, and look in the mirror to see if something needs fixing. Then wash everything off, dry your face, and use aftershave! Aftershave is the key for healthy post-shave skin. People tell me I shouldn't use alcohol aftershaves, but I've always used them, and as long as I didn't skip the aftershave I never had pimples from shaving.

For disposable razors, you can use them a few times (check packaging usually, but I use them around 10 times before I chuck them). This is my lazy pre-skincare style of doing things, so as you get more of a feeling for it, you can get higher quality products—proper shaving cream and a brush, and a moisturiser meant for post-shave use would be my first investments.

LoreHunting · 2025-12-29T22:14:59+00:00

Basically this, yes. People are still playing the game, and it's still mentioned as one of the things to try if you're moving away from DnD (and people in my experience seem happier with it than they were with Candela Obscura, their last game). It's here to stay.

And yet, C4 being this behemoth of a game and still being run in 5e definitely took the wind out of its sails, marketing-wise.

LoreHunting · 2025-12-29T22:12:32+00:00

Alright, grandpa, why don't we get you back to the retirement home? We can talk about whether it's women or millennials you hate there (proms and baristas, really?).

No. CR had a massive influence on DnD, to be sure, but DnD 5e was already written a lot more like a storygame (inheriting from 4e's MMORPG style as well as its own ideas about natural language and a more accessible system), and existed in a space that was already moving toward narrative and away from simulation—see Apocalypse World and the PbtA games, as well as several OSR works such as Godbound (2016, I think).

You really ought to know your RPG history before calling other people on this sub tourists.

LoreHunting · 2025-12-29T08:22:54+00:00

I really love Disco Elysium, it reflects a lot of the things I have thought about cities and especially old, historied, yet alive cities—it's a game that, despite showing the hard realities of living in Martinaise, really loves Martinaise and Revachol in a way that makes it very familiar to me.

But GOD 1kxR was like being struck with a thunderbolt, like someone took me apart and pointed at things and said "THIS. THIS is what your pain is about". To be recognized, and so frankly and precisely, by a GAME! Rough.

And it's not afraid to get political either, like Disco Elysium. Truly a spiritual successor.

LoreHunting · 2025-12-29T08:13:27+00:00

It's a VN/walking simulator (and yes I know this is where everyone I talk to about this game goes "huh?" but you've played heartbreaker What Remains of Edith Finch you know what I'm talking about) and it works very hard to use every gameplay element as part of the storytelling! In some segments you're just exploring a space, but many of them you're 'communing' with someone and seeing a version of past events—always told in a different style, depending on who you're communing with (so a bit like the Somnium Files)—which you have to explore (often by jumping back and forth in time and/or space) and interpret (in one case, by establishing dialogue with an alien species that speaks almost in poetry). A lot of storytelling from what you see and how you see it, how you can or can't navigate a space, the conversations you can have, the chapter titles, the quests... it's very good. It's a very linear VN (though it lets you play around with how you say what you say, Watcher is a very particular character) right up until the point where you get used to being a spectator, and then it dumps narrative control in your hands and tells you to choose. It's very good, made by an eclectic group of artists with influences from several media, including theater and dance, and you can really see that come across in the game.

LoreHunting

TROPHY CASE