This is a good explanation. Fields are really the fundamental object in QED (quantum electrodynamics) and QCD (quantum chromodynamics), the best theories we have for the electromagnetic and strong forces respectively. In fact, that entire branch of physics is usually called QFT (quantum field theory) to reflect that.

I have a life oracle in my party (level 8) and while she can heal for a ton, it often feels like she doesn't have useful things to do. She also hasn't had to interact with her curse very much, but maybe I just need to give them harder encounters?

Either way, it seemed to me like there wasn't much advantage to playing the oracle over a cleric, so I'm looking forward to what happens in the remaster.

For board games, I'm a big fan of Wavelength, Decrypto, and No Thanks!, along with Codenames.

Wavelength is a game where you try to get your teammates to guess a position on a spectrum, like "cold" to "hot" by giving them a clue, like "ice" or "the surface of the sun". Decrypto is a lot like Codenames, but you're also trying to disguise your clues from the other team. No Thanks! is a light, quick game which centers around pushing your luck as much as possible.

I think it would be fun to go back to Irrisen and see how Anastasia is getting along.

Aeon's End is probably my favorite coop game, although I'm still not very good at it. It's a deckbuilder, which is a genre I really like.

The Crew is a cooperative trick-taking game which is an absolute blast and fairly light. Both the original space one and the deep sea version are great.

On the grittier side, I think This War of Mine is worth playing at least once for the experience.

I'm a postdoc, working on laser-plasma interactions and electron accelerators. My PhD work was on ultrafast electron diffraction.