What are you reading in 2025?

[overgeeked]

About halfway done with No-Prep Gamemaster 2E. I liked 1E with a few caveats so wanted to take 2E for a spin. Some of the problems with 1E were fixed, some not. What’s expanded from 1E is mostly good. I like and agree with most of his advice so would recommend the book. The major flaw is despite repeatedly talking about how important player agency is he also suggests the atrocious for player agency quantum ogre as a solution for making sure prep doesn’t go to waste. Ugh.

Finished this last night. A peppering of decent advice through the second half of the book. Worth the read to reinforce what others have said better. Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying and Return of the Lazy DM have far more detail and far more actionable material that covers the same ground. The closest thing to “unique” advice is read a lot of books and watch a lot of movies and TV shows to fill your head with cool scenes and situations you can steal. And that’s advice as old as the hobby.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thanks to recommendations here I've now finished Fever Beach, Carl Hiaasen's latest, and it is pretty good, and very up to date (it came out in May and is set in 2026, leading up to the midterms). He's as funny and acerbic as ever, and it's even fairly upbeat at the end.

(Twilly Spree is a slightly annoying overly effective protagonist and in that he's a worthy successor to Clinton Tyree, who at least was never the protagonist, more that GMPC who comes and saves the PCs when they get in over their heads.)

Yeah, I am over Skink at this point. He was a cool weird character the first few times, but overstayed his welcome long before he showed up in one of the YA novels.