1/2 systems-agnostic tight and informative GMing essays with contributions from half a dozen GMs dropping knowledge bombs dense with decades worth of GMing experience — 1/2 Rifts-specific stuff that I skimmed through but could be mined for some ideas.
A bunch of short articles on various Savage Worlds-related topics catering more towards GMs.
A monster manual with some information on opposing factions’s mooks and bigger baddies that PCs can run into working for the Tomorrow Legion. This book also includes a few simple missions that you can run in a pinch or use as a starting point for more complex sessions.
The Savage Worlds roleplaying system smashed together with the Rifts Megaverse setting (a post-post-apocalypse kicked off by the cataclysmic return of magic on Earth and the opening of inter-dimensional portals all over it) seems like a match made in multi-planar heaven.
A wacky absurdist one-shot roleplaying system that would be impossible to improvise but running a premade one-shot might be a lot of fun.
The most avant-garde of avant-garde artists, named X, dies. X’s wife investigates her mysterious past and writes her biography and that’s the book you’re reading.
Victor and his robot companions live an isolated life in the forest with the Victor’s father Gio. Victor regularly ventures forth into the nearby scrapyards to salvage parts despite Gio telling him not to.
One day, Victor discovers something that changes the course of his life forever. Hijinks ensue.
A woman working for the Ministry of Time is tasked with helping assimilate a sailor pulled through time, who more than a hundred years prior was on a doomed Arctic expedition and would have died otherwise. Hijinks ensue.
Professor Xavier fanfic set in a 1984-esque dystopia by way of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
An unmarried woman comes back home after a night out, only to find a strange man in her home.
He claims to be her husband and she confirms this…
And there’s more husbands where he came from (the attic). Hijinks ensue.
Eight translators travel to Poland to translate Irena Rey’s next novel. Hijinks ensue.
The tabletop roleplaying game that inspired so many others (through their Powered by the Apocalypse branding) including games I’ve played and enjoyed like Blades in the Dark.
I’m a big Doom head. An academic game studies / history book about Doom is right up my alley. 3/4 of the way through it so far and I’m enjoying it! It’s getting me excited to play the original Doom levels again and giving me some ideas on how I could go about writing about Doom levels.
Sorcerer is a tabletop roleplaying game by Ron Edwards. It is an explicit precursor to Apocalypse World, being mentioned in those rules several times (and by extension, all of the Powered by the Apocalypse games).
Can our ragtag crew of loveable space scoundrels kill God and save the universe?
Ummmmm probably?
Dark Avant-garde OSR module that would be a perfect fit for the bleakness of a system and setting like MÖRK BORG.
The PCs will delve deeper and deeper into the madness of a drowning village, a broken dam and an ancient evil that’s underneath it all.
OSR RPG system that cleaned up the Ennie awards in 2024. There’s a succinctness and clarity to the rules which also seems to cover all the bases unlike other OSR systems I’ve read. I’m excited to finally do some old school dungeon crawling with these rules.
A Delta Green scenario about a viral video of a woman disappearing in thin air and the small town cult that might be responsible.
Interviews with a bunch of science fiction writers. It’s great if you’re interested in getting to know your favorite author’s perspective or if you’re interested in getting recommendations from them.
A sci-fi horror tabletop RPG with some of the most evocative RPG modules I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to play this!
An ancient Sumarian/Babylonian bromance for the ages. Its fragmentary nature forces readers to imagine what stories these missing pieces might tell.
A loosely related sequence of epic poems about transformation(s) inspired by Greek mythology written by Ovid more than two thousand years ago, translated by Stephanie McCarter in 2022.
A man dies and is reborn over and over again retaining the memories of his past lives. He’s not alone. Hijinks ensue.
“You’re not alone. I hear you. I see you. You’re a valid person. Autism is an intrinsic part of you and that’s not something to ever be ashamed of.
Lola, 27, England
Thanks Lola, it means a lot.
Take a shot every time Chiang brings up God (Tower of Babylon, Division By Zero, Hell is the Absence of God), writes about characters trying to be or become God-like by breaking through some kind of barrier, mental or physical (Tower of Babylon, Understand, Story of Your Life, Seventy-Two Letters), a scientist does science/deep-thinking, maybe discovering some new technology, and tries to convince the reader that said science will completely change everything they know to be true (Understand, Division By Zero, Story of Your Life, Seventy-Two Letters, Liking What You See: A Documentary).
You will plastered out of your mind.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s conclusion to her fantastic Earthsea series. Once again, she manages to create a fantasy world where violence doesn’t solve everything. Her characters engage in the mundane activities that real people do most of the time: chat, make friends, think about their loved ones, cuddle with their pets, etc. The way she writes these mundane scenes makes them feel just as important and interesting as they really are.
A cat goes on a journey of self-discovery, teaching and being taught the philosophy of Zen Buddhism.
The art is great, the text is well written. It’s a philosophical picture book for all ages. What’s not to like?
The king was pregnant.
An anthropologist-like character lands on a planet with people who exhibit sexually differentiated physical characteristics, male or female depending on the circumstances, for a few days every month. Hijinks ensues.
I love food and I love reading. This book is an encyclopedia about food. I like it.
The most well put together rendition of the Tao Te Ching I’ve read with commentary and thoughts throughout from my lord and savior Ursula K. Le Guin.
You can’t go wrong with this one.
Stanislaw Lem pops off once again. I’m blown away at how he can integrate all these disparate emotions and ideas into one novel.
I appreciate the depiction of the alienation Miranda feels towards others caused by her chronic pain which is invisible to everyone else but very real to her.
It rings true to me as someone who struggled with chronic pain for a long time.
Madeline Miller, the first and the greatest of the authors writing Greek mythology fan fiction, like the hammer of Hephaestus, strikes again.
Circe rewrites the story of, well, Circe who you may have seen in Homer’s Odyssey. It was fantastic and I’m excited to read her previous novel, the Song of Achilles.
The first novel in Terry Pratchett’s City/Night Watch series featuring the drunk and depressed Captain Vimes, the human who thinks he’s a dwarf Carrot, the everyman Nobby and the boomer Sergeant Colon. They act like a tight knit four man improv group, bouncing off each other really well and provide a great foundation for the humor, action and hijinks in the novel.
The best “second novel in a trilogy” that I’ve read in a while. To no one’s surprise, Adrian Tchaikovsky is responsible.
Eyes of the Void clicked for me when I realized that Adrian Tchaikovsky is an avid tabletop roleplayer and this novel comes alive because he’s basically role-playing (to perfection) all of his characters.
He’s thought about (and nailed) the way each character thinks and speaks based on where they’re from, who they are, their culture, etc. He’s great at this and you can see this in all of his work but The Final Architecture series feels built for him to flex his ability to write great characters.
José Saramago refuses to use quotation marks, question marks and exclamation marks in his writing.
José Saramago mostly rejects the idea that paragraphs are a writing tool that exist and can be used to make a text more readable.
José Saramago mostly refuses to name his characters and chooses to refer to them instead by their job, title or some aspect of their appearance (eg. The “doctor’s wife”, the “girl with the dark glasses”).
Why does José Saramago do this?
Xiran Jay Zhao strikes again. I was blown away by her YA novel Iron Window a few months ago so when I saw her next novel Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor on sale, I snatched it up.
Once again, Xiran has interwoven ancient Chinese history and mythology seamlessly with an anime inspired aesthetic (Yugioh in this case whereas Iron Window was very Darling in the Franxx) serving it all through a genre appropriate lens.
It’s heartbreaking. I’m tearing up by page 4. This series is advertised as a story for kids but it’s written in such a way that it’s just as interesting reading through it as an adult. A younger reader wouldn’t catch all the subtext (and there’s a lot of it).
Another Jose Saramago banger. In All The Names, we follow the story of Senhor José as he works in, navigates through, and subverts, the bureaucracy of the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths.
Every paragraph screams Saramago, if you know you know, if you’re into that, you’re into that.
This novel suffers from middle book syndrome. It continues the story set up in the first book and, hopefully, sets up the third and final book.
A great space opera by the king of writing alien aliens. It’s a fantastic romp where we follow free adventures of a ragtag group of scoundrels doing their best to save the universe.
What could have been just “another one of those” is greatly elevated by the Adrian Tchaikovsky touch.
Fantastic genre-bending sci-fi.
My mind’s eye has never been very good so I rarely latch on to descriptions of the spaces that characters find themselves in. But, the descriptions of Solaris’s space station and the planet it’s orbiting were so vivid and interesting that it elevated the story for me.
The space station’s color scheme of white combined with stripes of vibrant colors lit by the alternating blue and red hues of the system’s both suns was breathtaking.
The Light Brigade is a story about breaking people down and putting them back together again, both mentally and physically, to turn them into perfect soldiers/monsters.
It’s a wild ride that kept me hooked all throughout. It subverts many of the science fiction tropes you’re familiar with to keep you guessing.
An incompetent wizard is tasked with protecting a visitor visiting from a faraway land. A fantasy novel for people who don’t like fantasy novels.
MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world.
WICKED ONES is a Forged in the Dark tabletop RPG about a group of fantasy monsters building a dungeon, launching raids on the surface to gather a hoard, and pursuing your nefarious master plan.
A collection of thoughts on the practice of bouldering, bringing it into conversation with arts and sports as varied as architecture, dance, skateboarding, painting, parkour, martial arts and gymnastics.
Heart: The City Beneath is a tabletop game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process. It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world. Weird but in a good way.
Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs— it’s more relevant than ever.
The Odyssey is a classic and there’s more stories that have been inspired by it than I can count. After reading it, you’ll be able to see it echoed everywhere you look.
Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths is more of an encyclopedia about everything related to the Greek myths rather than a pure retelling of the myths themselves. It’s not meant to entertain, it’s meant to inform. Although, if learning everything there is to know about Greek myths sounds entertaining to you then this is the book for you.
Junji Ito’s best work. Suffers a bit from the serialized format that most manga is created in (not all chapters are created equally). It’s great overall though.