Here's a bunch of things I have read recently. 1 of which I didn't finish. 3 of them are from various Zinequests.
Rise, a solo game where you draw out a dungeon (like, physically on a piece of graph paper), but you do it from the perspective of the evil mastermind. It uses cards to help guide you in what to draw. It's hilarious when you draw the "adventurers/heros" and they come and wreck everything you have been working towards. I haven't actually done the drawing part, but the game was cool. Here's the
Goodreads. And here's the link to the
itch.io page. It was one of 3 by the same author that came in the
zinequest, but the first one I have read. All for 7 quid - I LOVE ZINEQUEST!
I just a few hours ago finished
Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. Really enjoyed it a lot. Loved the fantasy China, and appreciated also the "investigation" angle. Sort of reminded me of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in an ancient fantasy China. Ultimately, about halfway through the book I realized the entire thing was about love in it's many forms - eros, agape, philos, etc - and it didn't decrease my enjoyment one bit
Usagi Yojimbo Homecoming. By Stan Sakai (duh!). Sakai continues to be incredible. The history packed into this one, as well as the musings on how one can't even really go home; and then the great action scenes that he draws in a way that I love. I highly recommend Usagi Yojimbo to anyone, but this one was even a cut above many of the others I have read.
Goodreads.
I recently finished the entire 6-volume adventure path
"War for the Crown" from Paizo. The mix of politics and court intrigue, as well as standard D&D type adventuring makes this a possible winner in the next campaign I run for one of my groups. I'll probably have to do some sort of conversion to 5e, which won't be easy, but will probably be fun. There are two sub systems that I'm eager to try out. One is court intrigue; and the other is having "agents" go around the countryside and the towns and do your bidding and try to influence things in the various factions and individuals in the games. They are both cool, and cover some areas that I think are often glossed over in typical rules sets.
Another Zinequest item - I wrote up my review of
Dungeons and Dilemmas on Goodreads
here. Short summary - it'll give you a different way to look at building dungeons and how they can fit into your world. Also, I recommend it. If you want to buy it, you can get it in pdf from Drive Thru
here, and in hard copy from the publisher
here.
Finally, the item I didn't finish. I backed
Command? Dungeon World: A Solo Game About Learning Games thinking it was a game that told me how to use Dungeon World to do solo adventuring. What it turned out to be was mostly a choose your own adventure game. I guess I should have guessed by the URL; but the
campaign page itself doesn't make that clear. Choose your adventure's cool; but it's not my bag. So I put it down around p14.