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The way the Shadowrun books used that commentary to add an additional layer to their books really helped make the world feel alive. You could have a pistol with standard stats, but then a bunch of posts from people complaining about it breaking all the time. It was no longer just a generic...

Having NPCs be the star of the campaign is a big no-no. And yet, people do that all the time. I suppose when you have NPCs with goals and agency, it can be easy to shift the spotlight too much to them, leaving the PCs in the dark.

I think all that's the determination of the GM and the style of game everyone wants to play. Is replacing the mayor an achievable goal? Would the rest of the group be okay with one of the PCs suddenly having that degree of authority and responsibilty? I've moved away from D&D and its published...

I finished reading Sterling's The Artificial Kid. Liked it more than Schismatrix, but my favorite of his novels so far is still Islands in the Net. Now I'm reading Victor Milan's The Cybernetic Shogun. I can say so far that the covers to this series (see also The Cybernetic Samurai) deliver...

Would totally agree. I'd also add that in current D&D, there's very little bad that can happen to your character other than death, and even that is rare. When you look at older editions and other games, there's a host of dangerous conditions beyond just getting killed. Older editions had level...

Making space for the PC's actions to matter is an important part of a setting book. Having dozens of plots and schemes without the ability for the PCs to get involved is just as bad as just having nothing to do there. The biggest crime for a published setting book these days is for it to be...

Back in 2e, when I moved away from my gaming group, I ended the campaign with the party closing their bar up and going out to search for the one PC's missing father. Sometimes it's okay to end the story on a mystery. Something that hints at having one more adventure to tell, even if you never...

Chicago by Night (at least the first one) does a great job of having 1 - NPCs that are doing stuff and 2 - things for the PCs to do in it. So many setting books do a great job at describing the locale, but don't actually give you a reason to go there or any good hooks for the GM to use.

Back-in-the-day Docs were legendary for being horrible to break in, but lasting forever.

That's the thing with NPCs. Is it useful to know their stats? Sure, but it can be more useful to know what they know, how they are situated in the world. Jakandor is a hole in my collection and knowledge. Probably should fix that one of these days....

I remember when I was young and starting out on my career, I'd buy those cheap $20 dress shoes, and sure enough, I'd be replacing them in about six months. But that pair of $150 shoes, they're still glossy and going strong years later.

I'd vote for Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It gives a lived-in feel to Waterdeep, full of rumors that might be true, or might not be. Making Volo semi-unreliable allows for the DM to take the best inspiration from it and discard or alter what they don't like. Two DMs can start with a location in...

There have been many writers that have raged against the unfairness baked into society. But the way Sir Terry articulates it is so on-point. You can feel Vimes in those words. He's a little cynical about it, but also so very angry.

Ah, that would have been a perfect ending to the series. Alas!

A nigh impossible choice, but I went with my favorite, The Fifth Elephant. Honorable mention might have to go to Men At Arms, for articulating the Captain Samuel Vimes Boots theory of socio-economic unfairness.

I finished reading Effinger's The Exile Kiss. The final Budayeen book, it's such a shame he died so young. The world he wrote was so compelling and interesting. Now I'm reading Bruce Sterling's The Artificial Kid. I'm 1:1 with Sterling's books so far, so we'll see how this one goes. Anyone...

I enjoyed the heck out of that trilogy when I was younger, and on re-read a few years back, still enjoyed it. It's also provides a great view of what life in the Underdark is like, in all its variations.

It really is. Fury Road is a movie that does not let up, from start to finish. I could spend an hour praising it, easily. It was a movie in a series that had been fallow for decades, and it came back stronger than ever. That's the thing I struggled with. Conan the Barbarian is a movie I dearly...

My list: Blade Runner Fellowship of the Ring Jaws Ghostbusters The Princess Bride Mad Max Fury Road Night of the Living Dead (even if Dawn of the Dead is my favorite. And that's an important distinction to make. For example, Conan the Barbarian is probably my favorite movie, but is it a perfect...

Like the spells, it's not so much that these were entirely new concepts, but that they functioned very differently. Being able to detect secret doors on a roll of 1 in 6 by just passing within 10' of them was a direct benefit of playing an Elf. Being able to Find Traps was an active feature of...