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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nellisir" data-source="post: 9572799" data-attributes="member: 70">Ugh. I thought I hadn't really read anything much in 2025 and then I put the "I guess I did read one book" books together and...yeah.Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson is a sequel to The Space Between Worlds which is noted exactly NOWHERE on the the front or back cover, and I wish I would have known so I could have refreshed my memory of the latter. Good book, but read Space Between first.Dreadful, by Caitlin Rozakis. Enjoyed it.Mickey 7, by Edward Ashton. Also enjoyed it.The Last Human, by Zack Jordan. I think I enjoyed it? I should leave myself notes. Book journal.Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I know everyone loves him, but something about his characters leaves me cold. Still good if you like his stuff. Doesn't really break new ground.Despite my firm resolution to try and get the "to be read" pile to go DOWN, the only way you can say I've down that is by splitting it in two.Again. <sigh>On the gaming side of things, I've been really impressed by The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea by David Somerville and Atlas Games. I'm not always in tune with their products - kinda long on talking and short on meat has been my visceral reaction - but they've always seemed like quality. No change in that latter regard here.  This is...something else.  WotC wishes it could do something like this. It's a setting where the gods are just coming about; where the planes aren't differentiated; where reading, writing; and counting above 9 are taboos enforced by something similar to (and as defined as) the dark powers of Ravenloft. But it's also a toolkit for creating that setting, or another setting, or....y'know, I have no idea how many handy little charts are tucked into this. It's...a lot. The author seems to have a pretty impressive resume outside of the RPG sphere, and my initial gut impression is this is what you get when a trained professional takes a year off and actually focuses on a project they're passionate about...and then sends it through a really intense series of reviews, edits, rewrites, clarifications, expansions, revisions, and more. I've barely scratched the darn thing. I would give body parts to have the focus this must have taken.That said...Brancalonia. Brancalonia is, per the blurb, Italian spaghetti fantasy, and there is more flavor in a paragraph than in everything WotC has done in at least five years. It's absurd, ridiculous, crazy, bonkers, madcap, and deadly serious. The translator should get prizes. The writers and designers should get prizes and then chained back to their desks. I laughed. I cried. I speak with my hands now. Brancalonia is the first setting in decades that I might actually run instead of my homebrew.I do think running Brancalonia would require...some care. There are things (many things) that vanish if you look at them to closely. Too...scientifically. The Nonexistent (which are mentioned in the primary book but detailed in the second book, the Macaronicon), are...something. Sentient ideas inhabiting a suit of clothes. Morphic conceits. Passionately devoted para-physical whims.Where did they come from? No idea.How do they handle things? Not a clue.If you take away or destroy all their clothes, where do they go? Haven't the foggiest.How do they come back? By the same means as which they left.How do curative spells work on them? Yes.They're hideously, hilariously sort of meta ur-PC. A character that didn't exist in game until there was a game, and doesn't exist whenever they...aren't there. A nonexistent without something to wear doesn't exist, but they aren't tied to a particular object and they aren't damaged by not having an outfit (armor, clothes, a sock, whatever). They just...aren't there. Until they are. (Honestly, I love the image of PCs frantically disrobing and throwing their stuff into a heap so the fighter comes back). They don't have a background, really - they just come into existence - but they ACT as though they have a background and so they do. Which is really no different than any other PC.Anyway, I know it's been around a year or two, and won a bunch of Ennies, but I'd forgotten it until recently and...wowzah. Good stuff.(Also, and totally unrelated, my daughter is graduating HS this year; was the lead in a big local youth theatre show; is the lead in her HS theatre show; and has gotten into her first choice college only two hours away from me vs the seven hours away she's been for the past...6 years, so I am Over The Moon. I am going to be THAT parent. I have been waiting YEARS for this.)Sorry for the dump; I'm coming out of a bout of shingles and a really hectic few months, and it's literally kicked off some kind of mania in my brain. I'm riding it.</blockquote>

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