What books/movies/TV series etc. have you been enjoying recently? Whether it be gaming “research” or not.
I’ve been reading Jack Vance Dying Earth novels, which are decent. I love getting to say “That’s a DnD thing!” when I see the wizards do magic.
I watched The Wind Rises a few days ago and enjoyed it. It’s an animated biopic by Studio Ghibli about a Japanese aerospace engineer. It was really cool to see Miyazaki’s soft-ish worldbuilding in a real-world setting. It emphasizes the (almost) naive and introspective nature of the protagonist. It’s also a very heartfelt story.
I’m also making my way through The Sopranos for the first time. Very good. Only about 8 episodes in. No spoilers please!
I’ve been working my way through Appendix N: Weird Tales From the Roots of Dungeons & Dragons, which is a fun anthology of some of what was in Gary Gygax’s original D&D appendix N, as well as some related stuff (Jack Vance is also in there, though I haven’t gotten to his story yet). It’s a great survey, even if a few of the stories (like Moorcock’s Elric) I’ve read elsewhere.
Simultaneously, I’m also working my way through some TSR novels, mostly because they’re (mostly) fun reads and can largely be had for pretty cheap online. At the moment I’m like 75% of the way through Gary Gygax’s first “Greyhawk Adventure” novel, Saga of Old City. It’s enjoyable enough, though I think it’s more successful as “read your way through a Gary Gygax campaign” than an actual fantasy novel. Every chapter feels like a new session at the gaming table in the same long-running campaign. Paradoxically, the title references Greyhawk, but most of the story seems to occur in the lands beyond it, like you’re getting a survey of the world.
I am on Book 6 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series (The Bonehunters). I’m enjoying the series tremendously but holy moly, it is a PROJECT. I feel like my list of books read in 2024/2025 should have an asterisk because each one of these should count for like 3!
It’s pretty good modern lovecraftian stuff, a bit more on the naturalistic side. I think I find that approach towards weird fiction more compelling than some of the stuff that is like, establishing a specific Lovecraft pantheon
I’ve been reading Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, by Michael Sellers. It’s decent so far, I’m very much an aesthetics-based designer, and I’ve been wanting to shore up my systems/mechanics based design skills, and I’m not quite sure this book will fulfill my goal entirely (in contrast to just making prototypes), but I am continuing to learn, so its worth it!
I’ve also been reading The Word Hord by Hanna Videen. This is a kind of survey of Old English words through the everyday life and culture of the peoples who would have spoken it, and is very much up my alley. I am having a great time reading it, and will likely jump to her second book, which is an Old English Bestiary after.
I have a big stack of fiction books I need to read, but haven’t decided which is going to be next.
For television, my partner and I have been slowly making our way through the Hulu adaptation of Shogun. I watched the NBC miniseries when I was young, and eventually read the book. Both of which have a LOT of problems. I don’t think the new series is perfect, by any means, but it doesn’t fall prey to as much of the caricature of the former. I think as a piece of drama, its fantastic. Of course its taking liberties with history and such, but I’m fine with that.
For video games I’m still making my way through the amazing UFO 50 by Derek Yu and co., and cannot recommend it highly enough, especially for anyone who lived through the 8-bit era or has an affinity for those kinds of games. I also played the remaster of Slay the Princess, which has a lot of interesting ideas with dialogue-tree based games, but I’m still not sure I understand what the game is trying to say, despite “beating” it four times now.
Recently listened to the new audiobook for Fellowship of the Ring. I don’t need to tell you how great that book is. My book club may be taking up the next Wheel of Time book, which I am looking forward to, but with the normal trepidation of such a tedious if lovingly-written tale.
Meanwhile, I am most of the way through my reread of Once and Future King (which is beautiful) and starting Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf (which I’m not deeply invested in yet. I assumed it would be in verse.)
I’m mostly making my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude again. I read it for the first time at 16 and I can remember a lot of the plot itself, but the writing didn’t stick as much. My project for this year is to avoid English writing as much as I can, since last year I read only 1 book in my own language.
September last year I also started reading Gundam the Origin, but I really lost track of all of the comics I was reading. The last week of december I had a (very shitty) trip, first week of January was recovering from that, and the following 2 weeks up until today I had to take care of the house and dog by my own; a dog which loves to wake up 3 hours earlier than my usual waking time, so that’s been fun!
With videogames I’m hopping all over the place honestly. I set up a bunch of games, got a new controller, but then I got too obsessed with my current TRPG thing, plus getting into 2 other games, that I haven’t been playing as much. Before it, I was making my way through Dragon Quest 2 (I don’t think I can go back to it though since I lost track of where I’m supposed to be going and lord knows it’s too old a game to tell you straight), getting the courage to restart with Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, and making my way through Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp too. Then I downloaded Sheep Raider, Opus Magnum, and some other games to “chill out when I can’t think too hard about anything” and ended up not playing any of them
I listened to those books for the first time in late ‘23 / early ‘24, and I found Andy Serkis’ performance a bit… too well-acted? It’s weird to explain, but I generally don’t like it when audiobook readings resemble screen acting, the voice is way too breathy and grunty. So I switched to the other version and loved it! I LOVED Rob Inglis’ voice on the songs. Particularly his Tom Bombadil, the second verse has this strange, eerie and otherworldly feeling like the whole world is spinning around you… really great stuff.
I’ve played Slay the Princess once and found it a bit… lacking. As in, from start to finish, after meeting the “last” incarnation a few times and having the final confrontation and such.
I liked it fine. Found it decently written, very well voice acted, reactive, but the more I understood of the plot, the less interested I got. The characters aren’t THAT well defined or endearing, and I feel like it got a bit “too big, too fast”. I didn’t care enough about anyone there for the ending to carry much weight at all.
The ending is mostly a barebones, Sartre 101 existentialism attempt. You can even call out the game for not saying much at all and it basically responds “yeah well, that’s because words are fallible”, which isn’t interesting at all for me.
For these “looping” games, I found that I Was a Teenage Exocolonist does it better. It’s kind of a spoiler for the game because it doesn’t advertise itself as such, but it has that same element, except one playthrough goes over like 2 hours, you meet many characters, you see them change, and every loop has many more interesting choices and possibilities; I ended up caring a lot more about what it was trying to say than anything Slay the Princess had to say.
I definitely get what you mean about audiobooks that venture into outright voice-acting. Three years ago, I tried to listen to an unauthorized LOTR audiobook that clearly had each character speak in an impression of their movie counterpart’s performance. (I also later learned that that audiobook was secretly abridged, to my dismay.)
To be honest, I’ve listened to some atrociously-read audiobooks, which has probably inured me to Serkis doing all his voices. At least he’s good at it, you know?
Oh yeah for sure, I did listen to quite a bit of the second book with his narration so he’s not bad. Still, Middle-Earth now just sounds like Rob Inglis to me =P
I have been slowly working my way through The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, but between life and other distractions that has stalled out again. Absolutely fascinating read though for anyone who cares about the history and background of TTRPGs as an activity.
On the watching front, my partner and I recently watched the new Goosebumps anthology shows on Disney+. She’s been trying to get more comfortable with horror, so we’re doing baby horror first, and these were a good fit. Also, I gotta say, genuinely decent TV all things considered.
Gaming wise, aside from tabletop stuff I’ve gotten deep into Diablo 2 Ressurected. I bought it on a lark since it was at a massive discount around the holidays, and it very much reminded me why I love this game so much and have spent so much of my life playing some version of it.
Watched a really interesting doc on Netflix last night, “Join or Die.” TLDR: Most of what’s wrong in culture can be traced back to the decline of social clubs, organizations, and associations. Really well-done… and a great reminder that in-person RPGing is literally good for you, on multiple levels. Highly recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKgQr6fhbxE
Let’s see…TV-wise, just finished up the second season of Silo, which was pretty solid. Watching Severance as well. We did a “unexpected parenthood animation” double feature this past weekend with The Wild Robot and Ultraman Rising. Both were fun watches.
Books…recently finished City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett, which I liked (though not as much as City of Stairs). The series has definitely given me some things to think about with regard to an adventure I’m slowly writing, specifically with regard to dead/absent gods. I also started that Appendix N book. I haven’t actually read a lot of the pulp stuff from that era aside from some Howard and Burroughs, so I’m looking forward to it.
Vidya - Drova was a lot of fun, and I’m finishing up Metaphor: Refantazio. Also recently introduced my 4 year old to video games, so we play some Mario Wonder, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, or Mario Kart every now and then.
Finally finished that Gary Gygax Greyhawk novel, and my suspicion that it was essentially a campaign in novel form were confirmed when Gygax added an afterword detailing the characters’ D&D levels and proficiencies. Definitely better fantasy to be had, but I enjoyed it enough, all the same.
Gygax is definitely not an amazing writer, but I do enjoy quite a few of his novels. I remember enjoying the Anubis Murders series, in addition to Gord and Old City.
Yeah, totally agree. I’ll have to check out some of his other books after I get through my mini backlog of incredibly cheap (and incredibly satisfying, in a junk food kind of way) TSR novels sitting on my bookshelf: Spellfire, Prophet of Moonshae, Crusade, the Dragonlance Legends trilogy. My cup runneth over!
Yeah, I bought the collected Dragonlance Chronicles (all three books in one giant paperback) a while back and finished it a few months ago. Never read it as a kid, so it was totally new to me. Enjoyed the books a lot, despite the common gripes that folks have (and I mostly share).
I also bought the similarly collected Dragonlance Legends, but haven’t cracked it open yet. I know it’s widely considered the next best Dragonlance series (to the point where I feel like some folks recommend I just stop after those first six books), and the main characters are easily my favorite part of the series, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, whenever I get there!
When I started looking into which D&D novels to look for, I found this listicle quasi-helpful, although some of it was guided by what I could find cheap on Thriftbooks or at The Last Bookstore. Ya gotta start somewhere! https://gamerant.com/best-dungeons-dragons-novels/
