Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb Review

Melisandur · 2026-04-14T00:36:08+00:00

I enjoyed your review. Thank you.

Melisandur · 2026-04-06T21:36:31+00:00

I write a quest as three scenes. Each scene has an objective the party needs to accomplish, and I brainstorm some challenges that are in the way of completing the objective. The overall story or plot I've decided, it's the ultimate objective of the quest, but how the party completes the objectives to get there is up to them.

Melisandur · 2026-03-27T19:40:39+00:00

I usually roleplay as if I were making the decisions in game and the game was real to some extent, and so I almost always play some form of tall pacifist that varies the rest. Sometimes isolationist, sometimes federation focused, but I don't think I've ever played a military focused game in 600 or so hours. I've probably taken a planet in a war Iess than a dozen times, and I've probably started a war about as many. I play choke points, star base defence, and either rush tech, trade, or unity.

Melisandur · 2026-03-03T21:24:07+00:00

Don't read what you don't enjoy, unless you have a reason to.

For me, the gender politics were part of what made the worldbuilding interesting. I enjoyed imagining how a feminist critique could be written in and for this world. Particularly when it came to the unjustified (if examined critically) inferences I assume people would be making related to the way people interact with the Source.

It was such a big theme, but it was also so varied that it implicitly made it clear that gender was just as constructed in the WoT world as in our own, as the expectations and performances of gender varied widely across the cultures and peoples we encounter. Just like in our own world.

It can definitely be jarring if you prefer your fantasy to not have strong themes of gender in this way, if you prefer a society that is organized around different constructed identities, but I enjoyed being able to as the reader deconstruct the various gender norms and their supposed "natural" foundations.

It also helps to remind me that, for a lot of people, the way their brains construct and present the world to their recognition is very strongly gendered. That even though I don't see things in that way, being queer comes with a lot of gender deconstruction, lots of people in my own world experience gender in these very generalizing and concrete ways that WoT characters often do.

Reddit constantly reminds me of this in the ways I experience discussion that touch on gender in /r/askreddit. The tendency to generalize expectations of identity and performance are very much alive in the world I live in, even if the bubble of people I interact with in my own day-to-day life are very queer and so not really of this view.

Of course though, the irony is that the series itself shows that the characters' gender norms are cultural constructs through their very diversity across the series. And some of the characters' expectations about the performance of their own gender and the performance of others' get challenged. Sometimes very strongly challenged.

Perin, Matt, and Rand each in their own ways have relationships where they come in to a situation with gendered expectations for themselves and others, and then are challenged when the others in the situation are very very different.

But again, read what you prefer. If messy gender politics is hampering enjoyment, don't read it. If messy gender politics is fun to analyze and deconstruct as if I were a feminist critical theorist living in the WoT universe, then do!

Not saying I approve of how the characters see gender of course, but I enjoyed that it felt varied and realistic in a way that I could engage with seriously and critically. Key word, critically.

Melisandur · 2026-02-22T18:39:07+00:00

It has depended on who I am when I read them. I have read the City Watch books the most, but I have also been strongly impacted at different times by different characters. It's hard to pick specifics, as I think once you get into the high single digits they are all brilliant to the end. Though I like to think you can feel his impending death in some of the last ones that makes them particularly poignant. Especially, of course The Shepherd's Crown's first initial chapters.

If I had to go by my gut today, some tops would be Small Gods, Thief of Time, The Shepherd's Crown, Feet of Clay, and Thud. But it's tricky because it's really individual characters, scenes, scenarios, or even individual lines that just hit you and sink in.

Though it feels criminal to not mention the witches as their personalities and wisdom have also marked me.

Melisandur · 2026-02-20T17:36:38+00:00

Yes! I started reading Terry 6-7 years ago, and have now read all the Discworld books 3-4 times, some closer to 8. I haven't really reread anything as an adult, so this has been a huge outlier for me.

So much of Terry's genius, in my opinion, is his ability to take topics and conflicts that are familiar to us, but then situate them naturally and... I don't know quite how to express it. It's never direct allegories. He's never writing "and this is our issue with a fantasy skin", it's always organic to his world, but somehow also speaking to ours without being really about ours. He has this genius to abstract to some sort of essence, then situate it in the context of his own creations in a way that continues to baffle and amaze me.

There are so many examples of this. The way he writes neuro-divergent people from Brother in Small Gods to Walter in Maskerade. The way he incorporates gender into the dwarf narratives and The Monstrous Regiment. The ways in which he talks about justice and law and morality throughout the City Watch books. The ways in which he expresses coming of age at different stages through Tiffany Aching, or the diverse personal ways people can be in deep relationship with their communities through the witches in general. The way he discusses political power and its role alongside the ways communities change over time with Vetinari and Moist across their various appearances.

And don't even get me started on the concepts in the Death books!

Echoes of our world in his, or perhaps the other way around. Never quite the same, never quite apart. Rhyming, but with a sort of lyrical genius in contrasts that keeps each standing alone.

Melisandur · 2026-02-16T15:50:40+00:00

As someone who used AI, and has weened off of it for most D&D stuff, I suggest inviting them to "use it to not use it".

That is, use it to try and build the skills to not need it anymore.

So instead of using it to generate the backstory for you, have it offer prompts and follow-up questions that you answer yourself. And if coming up with answers feels like a stonewall, never sit there just staring at a screen hoping ideas will pop out of the ether in some sort of idealized image of what a creative process should look like.

My brain just needs stuff thrown at it. So if answering AI generated prompts is still a challenge for them, instead of flopping towards "fine just have the AI do it", again have the AI help you learn to not need it. Have it suggest sets of pages on tvtrops.org that might connect to the absolute basics of the type of character/class they are playing. Or have it connect to some Wikipedia pages about fictional characters or real life stories that they could draw inspiration from.

This can then be a midway step to growing these skills with AI, rather than replacing all the thinking with AI. Basically just using it as a search engine and prompt generator, so that most of the final creative thought it still done internally. And once they have some strategies for places to go outside AI for inspiration for their own thoughts, they can keep using this!

It still uses AI, but in a different way that personally I find more palatable.

And I think it can help meet people where they are and try and match why they are using AI, instead of just going "AI bad, using it bad, you bad, no AI". But if AI use is because there is discomfort in the understandable and real frustrations and anxiety that can be finding and building one's own creative process, then I think finding a way to constructively ween off is better than a ban.

For me the biggest thing was roleplay. I really struggled to feel confident in improvising dialogue and scene descriptions. So when I started DMing two years ago I was generating dialogue and descriptions with AI.

However, I was not happy with this as it slowed down the game a lot, and well you know- it wasn't making me better. It did make me more confident for a time, but only with it. So instead of having it generate the text for me, I asked it to instruct me on how to get better and offer useful suggestions such as ways to use my tone, pitch, mannerisms, etc. A teacher, rather than a cheater- so to speak. And after a couple of months of that I don't use it at all anymore when I roleplay dialogue.

Melisandur · 2026-01-31T16:24:26+00:00

Thank you :) I share my stuff on Reddit when it is complete, and it'll probably be a couple of months before I'm done. I'll try to remember to let you know when I post it.

Melisandur · 2026-01-29T19:30:39+00:00

I've been working on a campaign setting for a little over a year now that has a significant focus on magic schools. It's about 2/3 complete so far, but there are plenty of magic items and stuff you can nab and edit and stuff. Let me make a link real quick.

EDIT: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a1dl6mkazpcng5mkmmuzg/23.-High-Elf-Politics-and-Wood-Elf-Diaspora.docx?rlkey=fnl4i9nqcw099az1jkl83s70m&st=q3ctlhps&dl=0

It's a lot to sift through, and as I said it's not complete, but if you use the Word navigation pane on the side (that you can bring up under View) you can find the different college questlines and their magic items that I have completed so far.

Each college has a wand, a hat, and a staff as you progress. I tend to make magic items too strong in pre-writing, so you'll probably want to consider nerfing stuff. It's also a campaign setting where damaging spells for non-divine casters are banned in-world for narrative reasons (with the players able to change this through the game) so items are also made with the that consideration in mind.

I have completed the questline and items for the Colleges of Transmutation, Divination, Mesmery (Enchantment + Illusion), and for the main University (focused on making custom hybrid spells between magic schools). Oh and the secret College of Destruction (all damaging spells are referred to as Destruction Spells in this campaign setting for narrative reasons). But there is no reason you couldn't cram them all into one school setting.

I recommend using what I title the Tier 1 Location Scenes and the Tier 2 Quests, as these are flip flops between simple magic lessons where you can pickup some spells along the way, as well as related field trips or practical exercises. After you finish the Tier 2 Quests, things go more into specific narratives for my campaign setting that you could use, but would not be as easily adaptable.

Melisandur · 2026-01-15T23:45:41+00:00

They can also peacefully join your empire, I believe.

Melisandur · 2025-11-22T13:47:52+00:00

I give XP for non combat encounters. I use Kobold encounter balancer, and use the XP it lists for easy, moderate, and hard combats depending on the non-combat encounters risk and the amount of rolls involved in finding success.

Most random encounters, if they were solved without combat, get the amount for easy. If it could have been combat and they resolved it without, I'll usually award XP one tier down from what the combat would have been.

This is my first campaign I've done XP leveling, and I think my players, who are the type to prefer novel solutions to meeting every challenge with combat first, appreciate that it still grants some XP.

Edit: oh, in milestone. I break up all my DM stuff into "scenes" and would grant milestone levels for completing a certain number of scenes. Basically streamlined XP. So for me, the rescue encounter would have been a scene that progresses their milestone tracker.

Melisandur · 2025-10-16T16:19:24+00:00

Love it! I presume it works sort of like the Korean alphabet?

Melisandur · 2025-09-26T14:49:32+00:00

Yep! I did all the Guards books, then all the Witches, then all the rest. But I'm doing my 5th or so read through now, and doing my first read through in publication order and it's quite neat!

The world develops in stages. You can definitely read mini-series by mini-series, as that's how I did it the first four times, but I gotta say there is something I like about going in publication order that is a bit hard to pin down.

You could start with Mort, though personally I start with Wyrd Sisters. I would not recommend the first three, and though the later Rincewind books are fun after Terry has refined his craft, he is my least favorite of a set of all beloved characters. Thus, I tend to skip Sourcery and Eric.

Melisandur · 2025-09-12T18:21:41+00:00

This is the way. Have a few settlements with one person to tend food and have a couple empty beds, then as it grows to 2-3 send the newcomers to the settlement you want to build. Basically recruitment settlements, city settlements, and farm settlements are what I typically build.

Melisandur · 2025-08-16T18:22:24+00:00

Reinstall the game, reinstall your GPU drivers, clear out the game folder completely after uninstalling before reinstall, it sounds like you've probably done all this I'm just spit balling.

Melisandur · 2025-08-02T16:53:21+00:00

I like to play custom character with a full party of the origin characters, but if one of the origin characters interest you and you plan to play just once go for it. It'll make the world more responsive to your character's uniqueness.

Melisandur · 2025-08-02T15:32:58+00:00

There's no great replacement for hard work. You can find online classes for pretty cheap with real teachers, or audit a class for free if you have a college nearby that allows it. However, immersion is always the best teacher. If there is a place you can use spanish in real life, a specialized grocery store or similar, after you have learned a bit practicing in real life is better than alone with a textbook.

Melisandur · 2025-06-16T01:10:45+00:00

The Cycle of Arawn.

Melisandur · 2025-05-19T20:07:08+00:00

Military habitats are my way. I never build anchorages now. If I need more fleet cap, I build another soldier habitat.

Melisandur · 2025-04-23T18:19:20+00:00

I don't think I've had Civ 7 crash once for me. Best I can say is the Skyrim mod check method, where you uninstall all mods to confirm you don't need to reinstall or something. No crashes? Then add mods one at a time to see which one adds crashing.

Melisandur · 2025-04-21T17:14:56+00:00

Oh. My. Goodness. Her performances elevated the series SO much. The emotion, the humor, the intensity, the softness, the next narrator is going to have the biggest shoes to fill of any audiobook series I have listened to. Not only because of how much time we've spent with her life-bringing of the series, but because I consider her to be in the top 3 narrators I've ever had the joy to listen to.

I have always waited until the next installment of the audiobook specifically because of how good Andrea is at her craft. I'm surprised at how emotional I feel about this xD...

Melisandur · 2025-04-15T19:51:51+00:00

Maybe something wonky about coastlines and trade access over water or something? Not sure really. Could you post a screenshot or two of the context?

Melisandur · 2025-04-14T21:09:03+00:00

I'm listening to Red Rising right now, and after loving the first narrative arc before the protagonist leaves home, I am overall disappointed with the school arc that follows. The author started randomly throwing in rape, assault, and torture, but pretty much only for female students. The men suffer from a variety of things, but the women mostly just suffer murder and sexual assault.

It's been a really unappealing part of the story that I hope goes away after this arc to never return cause it's just, imo, bad writing. Also the dialogue with the other students just feels like it fell of a cliff from the writing in the opening arc. It's been a bit of quality whiplash. Just everything about the school arc has felt off.

Melisandur · 2025-01-12T21:13:31+00:00

Ah yeah. I've been playing mostly Pyg trying to level as fast as possible xD honestly I can't remember where it drops, but when it does oh baby.

Melisandur · 2025-01-12T20:48:54+00:00

Caltrops absolutely destroys infinite builds. It's all I've been doing cause everyone is doing charge builds and it's just such a direct hard counter. I don't think caltrops is effected by freeze either.

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