What are you reading in 2024?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I finished the Game Master's Book of Proactive Roleplaying yesterday. There was a lot to like about it and a lot of redundancy to some things I was already doing as a mostly open-world sandbox referee. I'd say it's a great all-around resource for referees no matter their style of play. At some point players and/or their PCs will develop goals. Keeping things interesting and building on that can be tricky. This book would definitely help with that if it's not something you're used to. It's doing well on Amazon and is only $10 right now. Definitely worth the cover price.

GinnyD talked about in a video the other week and was really hyping it up. Glad to hear the good stuff confirmed in the wild. I think this one may be going on the list for me.

 

[prabe]

My rhythm continues, despite a book that was kinda sloggy and two more that were varying degrees of disappointing: Playing at the World by Jon Peterson, a dry and digressive but informative book about the history of TRPGs, something of a slog; The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, one of them literary books where things happen in whatever order the author chooses to tell you about them until the author chooses to stop telling you about them, nothing so old-fashioned as an actual protagonist just some POV characters, nothing so prosaic as either an instigating event or a detectable climax; A People's History of the Vampire Uprising by Raymond A. Villareal, a novel that fails to convince on any level--science or character or event--and manages to miss "kalaidoscope" and land on "fragmented" by creative abuse of epistolary form, bailed out after like 150 pages of like 400.

 

[Nellisir]

I meant to read more Dee since now I have more Dee (thank you!), but I'm still stuck on Cherryh. Tripoint, Voyager in Night, and currently Finity's End. ViN is the odd one out; technically Alliance-Union but only by the barest margins. I've still got to get Rimrunners (again), then I'll move Unionside and read Cyteen and Regenisis, then on to (more of) the weirder stuff.

I might do the Faded Sun before Cyteen. Who knows?

 

[Mannahnin]

My rhythm continues, despite a book that was kinda sloggy and two more that were varying degrees of disappointing: Playing at the World by Jon Peterson, a dry and digressive but informative book about the history of TRPGs, something of a slog;

I eventually paused it about halfway through and then when I came back found the latter half more readable and exciting, for the most part. Tons of good information in there, but you can tell it was his first. His later books get progressively more readable. I'm interested to see how much the upcoming revision improves the prose, as well as updating the content based on new information found since this was originally published back in 2012.

 

[Reynard]

I am just about finished with the audiobook of Nuclear War: A Scenario. I am not regretting it, but boy am I depressed and a little frightened.

 

[trappedslider]

I am just about finished with the audiobook of Nuclear War: A Scenario. I am not regretting it, but boy am I depressed and a little frightened.

I'll have to add that book to my list

Something on the same topic: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel

 

[Reynard]

I'll have to add that book to my list

Something on the same topic: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel

I LOVE Command and Control.

 

[trappedslider]

I LOVE Command and Control.

oddly, I have an interest in nuclear warfare,CoG and stuff like that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Service's Winter of Magic's Return. Set in post-nuclear apocalypse Wales, it's about the return of Merlin and magic. I enjoyed it, but the editor could've done a better job - I saw a large amount of the wrong words being used (form instead of from, for example).

Now I'm reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pirates of Venus. We'll see how this holds up to Barsoom.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I just finished Game Wizards by Jon Peterson. My sense after finishing it was that, to maul a quote from All the President's Men, none of Gygax, Arneson, or the Blumes were as bright as they thought they were, and things got out of hand. Not one of them covers themselves in glory in this telling.