Sometimes being a teacher means you have to have some tough conversations with your students. I think of them as dialogue wheel options, Bioware RPG style, when I’m standing in front of my freshman writing class. Every day my options light up depending on the topic to be taught, the […]
Lee Hibbard
26 posts
This past Saturday night, after a long summer hiatus, I sat down at my desk with my dice and my computer and ran a session of my digital Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Shards of Aeridas. The game lasted five hours, all of which I spent frantically typing into chat windows […]
The following contains spoilers for the plot of the Balance Arc of The Adventure Zone. Last week, I spent my Thursday night pacing around my apartment listening to the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts, The Adventure Zone. After three years and 69 episodes, the D&D comedy podcast […]
As I write this post I have two weeks left in my first year as a PhD student. I have a daunting pile of assignments waiting for me after I finish this post, all due at various points before my summer can begin, and the boss fight finals week feeling […]
Last night I completed my first playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda. This post isn’t particularly about that, my thoughts on that game still need some processing, but as I watched the end credits roll after a difficult but satisfying end-boss encounter, I found myself reflecting on the other game that’s […]
One of the things I enjoy most about writing for Not Your Mama’s Gamer is the sense of anticipation I get when a new game I feel particularly passionate about is released. There are always games to write about, of course, but something about knowing that a game I’ve been […]
I sit at my dining room table, surrounded by hand-drawn maps and coloured pencils. My laptop is open to Discord, where my friends pester me with questions. They send me detailed descriptions of character history, ask about dragons and gods, allies and enemies. I have books open to carefully calculated […]
(This piece contains a content warning for anti-semitic commentary present in some of the links and images) Anyone tuned into the YouTube community who hasn’t been living under a rock in the last two weeks is aware of the current controversy surrounding Disney and YouTube pulling their support for popular […]
I’ve always been a sucker for worldbuilding. One of the reasons I play tabletop games like D&D is the opportunity for intense integration of history, legend, and lore, and most of my favorite video games have similar functions. Whether it’s reading up on the extensive codices found in the Mass […]
I’ve written about my old undergraduate pastime of playing Dungeons and Dragons before, though working towards a PhD has made time a precious commodity I can rarely spend on social gaming. I did get the chance to do a little tabletop gaming over winter break, and, as it always does, […]
I’ve always appreciated games that operate under a simple premise. Anything that involves solving a puzzle or accomplishing a simple task appeals to the part of my brain that was solidly addicted to playing Tetris on my Gameboy Pocket when I was ten, always striving to reach the next level, […]
It’s no secret that I have depression. I’ve been chronically depressed my entire life, and even though it’s impacted by external events and forces, for the most part it’s just a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes me wake up mid-afternoon instead of when my alarm goes off at […]
I’ve written about coming out as trans before, and I suspect this won’t be the last time I write about it either. Not necessarily because I love talking about my own experiences, but because of the nature of coming out as a constant experience, something that never truly happens once. […]
I spent a large portion of my winter break on the road. I went up to Minnesota to visit my parents for a week, and as soon as I touched down in Indianapolis I began my drive South to visit my partner in Kentucky and my friends in Alabama. Other […]
I spent my Christmas up in Minnesota visiting my parents. I didn’t grow up in the small town where they currently reside, as we moved around a lot thanks to my Dad being in the Navy, but their new house still has all of the pictures and knick-knacks I saw […]
When I wrote my first post for Not Your Mama’s Gamer three months ago, I didn’t anticipate writing a follow-up about Blizzard and representation so soon. I admit, my cynical expectation would have been that if I were writing a follow-up, it would be my continued criticism of their abysmal […]