The Lazy Dungeon Master
by Michael E. Shea
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Lazy Dungeon Master / 978-1073741113
This book was clearly a labor of love and I hesitate to give it a poor rating, but it simply was not helpful to me. Others might find my experience useful when considering whether or not to purchase for themselves.
Some background: I have been dungeon mastering for 10+ years. I have run official modules as well as completely homebrew worlds I made up myself. I have run in-person tables and online games, both in voice/video calls and in text-based forum formats. I am currently running the official Curse of Strahd module in an online game over Discord. I frequently find myself pressed for prep time, and I was hoping this book might help me optimize my preparation so that I could spend less time preparing and more time playing.
First, to start with, this book is VERY oriented around the expectation that you're DMing a completely homebrew world. A lot of the "lazy" guidelines basically boil down to not going overboard on worldbuilding, and to confine your efforts to things the players will actually see and interact with. This is true: if you're building an adventure in Texas, you don't need to nail down everything that's happening in Alaska. But this is also largely unhelpful for anyone running a prewritten adventure, as I currently am.
Second, and similar to above, the authors are extremely concerned that you may be spending too much time building homebrew monsters rather than using ones from published sources. Again, this is good advice but largely unhelpful to anyone already doing that. I don't think I've ever homebrewed a monster; they are correct that there are just so many already published ones. This might be a difference between the 2020s and the 1980s, but in the hundreds of games I've attended as a player, I don't think I've ever seen any DM pull out a homebrewed-from-scratch monster. My experience is that we usually take a prepublished one and tweak as needed. This particular advice may be a bit out-of-date.
Third, and continuing this theme, there is a LOT of emphasis on not spending too much time fleshing out NPCs. The authors recommend taking characters from popular books, movies, and other media and using them as templates rather than trying to build new personalities from scratch. This isn't a terrible idea, but it's overly belabored here: there are actual *lists* of characters that the authors like from popular shows. It feels like filler material to flesh out the book and (again) this isn't helpful to DMing a written module.
A lot of the advice is very geared towards short 3-5 session adventures, which is fine but definitely not necessarily the norm in this post-Matt Mercer world. (My own Curse of Strahd adventure has been going on for years.) Their key rules for "Five-Minute Adventure Preparation" is shortened to "three simple questions": "where does your adventure begin, to what three areas might your adventure lead, and what are your three notable NPCs up to?" These aren't awful questions when homebrewing a new world, but they are not useful for my prep session today, which is about finishing out a boss fight with a lich.
Moreover, a lot of the "advice" in this book is heavily centered around implementation gimmicks rather than concepts. The authors are obsessed with the number "3" and with 3x5 index cards. Instead of telling the reader to keep their NPC list short and manageable, for example, there are litanies of 3s: three notable NPCs, three adventure locations the PCs might discover, three scenes that they might encounter. Instead of "don't go overboard fleshing out the person/place/event and keep your notes short", there's an insistence that it all needs to fit on individual 3x5 card for each item. I've tried that method before, it's fine, but it's not for me (I will always prefer typing to handwriting) and having to wade through pages of implementation advice, rather than exploring the underlying concepts of simplicity and how to achieve it in all forms, is tiring.
I've mentioned that my prep session today involves finishing out a boss fight. The things I need to do for prep include: Remind myself of what happened in the first half of the fight, including damage dealt and initiative order. Brush up on monster abilities and what each character can do on their turn. Familiarize myself with the (premade) dungeon map in case the PCs want to explore more after finishing the fight. Reacquaint myself with the existing NPC personalities so that I can improvise when the PCs talk to them. Have at hand my DMing tools: dice, initiative tracker, calculator, and damage counters.
All of the above can take me anywhere from one to three hours, which is why I was hoping a "lazy DM guide" might help me. But nothing in this book helps to condense this work; heck, nothing in the book even acknowledges that prep time *contains* this stuff. If I were a new DM reading this book, I would think that 95% of weekly DM prep work was making NPCs and monsters and rooms and places and events and scenes from scratch. If you're running an official module, almost all of that stuff is already done for you; if you're running a homebrew, all of that stuff still isn't 95% of the weekly prep for me. It's very strange to me that the book not only doesn't have advice for the "nitty-gritty" of the weekly prep I've done for 10+ years, it doesn't even *mention* it. DMing is so much more than putting, ahem, "Walter White from Breaking Bad" on the NPC cast list under a new name.
I am confused who this book is for. The advice to not go overboard on worldbuilding is useful for new DMs but the introduction says "This book is intended for experienced dungeon masters who had run dozens, if nor hundreds, of Dungeons and Dragons games. This is not a book for a novice." The introduction also includes an inspirational quote from Chris Perkins (credited here as "senior producer of Dungeons and Dragons and dungeon master for Acquisitions Incorporated") saying "I don't have to do much prep at all, I just kind of wing it", with the implication that this is an ideal way of DMing and, with a little practice, you can too. But to be honest, I don't see how any advice in this book addresses the concept of games that aren't short sessions designed to either be a single 1-shot or maybe 3-5 sessions at the most. Improvising and "winging it" works fine for snappy dialog, but it's not going to familiarize you with how, for example, Night Hags interact with the Ethereal Plane and whether they can take people and objects with them and whether the PCs will be able to use the Heartstone to do the same. I suppose the 1980s answer would have been to just make up an answer on the fly (rather than grind the game to a halt to consult the manual), but again in this post-Matt Mercer world, plenty of people at the table have a decent enough understanding of The Rules and The Lore that they might well find this off-putting and immersion-breaking. Most of the players at my table are *also* DMs, and they understandably expect me to know my stuff and not just "wing it" all the time.
Maybe that means this book is just a product of an older era, I don't know. Obviously a lot of folks have found the book to be incredibly thoughtful and useful, so take this opinion with a heavy gallon of salt. I hope my experience helps you to determine whether this book is for you. Happy gaming!
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Lazy Dungeon Master |
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Review: Depraved |
by Harold Schechter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer / B0036QVPJ0
How is it that I live in Chicago and like learning about historical serial killers, but had never heard of H.H. Holmes until he was mentioned in a very terrible movie we watched while sick? Inconceivable, but Schechter is here to rectify my ignorance with "Depraved".
I say this every time but it bears repeating: I am a big fan of Harold Schechter's historical true crime books. While the questionable covers and book subtitles seem sometimes a little over-the-top, the actual contents of the books are top-notch in my opinion. Schechter writes in a very engaging style that is accessible to the audience, and handles the facts of the case in a chronological order as an easy-to-follow narrative. He is careful to cite his sources as he goes and is very clear when we encounter gaps in the record where we don't know what happened. Any speculation on his part is marked plainly and we are walked through the logical steps. I appreciate that in a crime author, as too many authors are willing to blur fact and fiction.
This book covers the life and death of H.H. Holmes, the first official serial killer of America. He was contemporary to Jack the Ripper (but not the same person) and you may have heard of him because he built a "castle" in Chicago that had all kinds of trapdoors and gas vents and acid pits until the city had to tear the thing down on account of it being (a) a notorious murder-pit and (b) so badly designed it was about to fall down anyway. They turned it into a post office, I think, which is kind of a delight to me: from about the worst possible building you can imagine to one of the most useful and good.
This book is fascinating for all the usual reasons a Schechter book is good: lots of historical detail and background and I learned a lot about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, which I was not expecting to learn about. Very interesting stuff! But Holmes is also interesting from a serial killer perspective because he doesn't really fit the usual mold. A lot of his victims were close to him before their deaths, mostly mistresses and various business associates. His motives tended to be selfish ones that centered around money, either keeping it (from the mistresses) or making it (at least one business associate was murdered as part of a life insurance scam). He is a very different sort of serial killer from, say, Earle Nelson and the usual image of a stranger who picks out someone to die merely for personal gratification.
All the usual trigger warnings apply here: Holmes was a serial killer who targeted people who were close to him, especially women, and did not hesitate to kill children if he thought they would be a witness against him or a loose end. He additionally liked to make money off his victims by selling their skeletons to medical colleges, which was horrifying to read about. (If I understand correctly, all the skeletons were eventually recovered and given a proper burial when he was caught, which was a relief.) There's also discussion of alcoholism here, since Holmes' business associate struggled with alcohol abuse.
If you're interested in historical true crime and/or serial killers, you definitely want to read this book. There's a lot out there about Holmes but since he was a grandiose liar who liked to exaggerate his own misdeeds, the truthfulness is hard to gauge. Schechter does the hard work of sifting through the claims and presenting what is definitely true, what is completely false, and all the in-between claims and how likely they are.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Fatal |
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer
by Harold Schechter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer / B009NHBJJ2
I am a very big fan of Harold Schechter's historical true crime books. While the questionable covers and book subtitles seem sometimes a little over-the-top, the actual contents of the books are top-notch in my opinion. Schechter writes in a very engaging style that is accessible to the audience, and handles the facts of the case in a chronological order as an easy-to-follow narrative. He is careful to cite his sources as he goes and is very clear when we encounter gaps in the record where we don't know what happened. Any speculation on his part is marked plainly and we are walked through the logical steps. I appreciate that in a crime author, as too many authors are willing to blur fact and fiction.
This book covers the life and death of serial killer Jane Toppan, an "angel of death" serial killer who targeted her patients as a nurse, as well as occasional friends and family members. On the topic of female serial killers of the time period who used poison as their weapon of choice (who knew that was such a large category? Not me!) the book also devotes some time to the chronicles of Lydia Sherman and Sarah Jane Robinson, in order to set-up commonalities and compare and contrast their methods and motives. (And we get to read the newspapers' breathless comparisons to Lucretia Borgia, which was of course terribly unfair to her since she probably never poisoned anybody! #historical pet peeves, I guess.)
The usual trigger warnings apply for this book, being about serial killers after all, including sexual assault of victims and child death. There's also the added aspect here of patient-nurse abuse and targeting sick and elderly victims. I really appreciate Schechter as an author because he treats these delicate topics with care and respect, and affords the victims dignity; he isn't crass or irreverent or flippant like some crime authors are.
One of the things I enjoy about Schechter's books is the historical context. Toppan operated in a time when arsenic was available over-the-counter at general stores as rat poison, and when autopsies after death were the exception rather than the rule. A shocking number of her victims were chalked up to various illnesses--even ones that hadn't previously been diagnosed in the patients before--and it's a wonder whether or not she would have been caught if she hadn't gotten sloppy and started going after young healthy people in the prime of their lives. The details on how bodies were examined for poison in the early 1900s were especially interesting to me; her victims were autopsied *after* the bodies had been embalmed, which complicated the situation since the embalming process used arsenic.
If you're interested in historical true crime, or if you'd like to read more about female serial killers (which are of course considered a rarity... but this book convincingly argues that maybe they shouldn't be) then this is an excellent read that I highly recommend. Oh! There's also a really interesting dive into the assassination of President McKinley and how utterly terribly the medical personnel handled the situation, none of which I'd ever heard of before, so that was VERY interesting to learn from this rather unexpected source.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Bestial |
Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster
by Harold Schechter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster / B00383YJFI
I am a very big fan of Harold Schechter's historical true crime books. While the questionable covers and book subtitles seem sometimes a little over-the-top, the actual contents of the books are top-notch in my opinion. Schechter writes in a very engaging style that is accessible to the audience, and handles the facts of the case in a chronological order as an easy-to-follow narrative. He is careful to cite his sources as he goes and is very clear when we encounter gaps in the record where we don't know what happened. Any speculation on his part is marked plainly and we are walked through the logical steps. I appreciate that in a crime author, as too many authors are willing to blur fact and fiction.
This book covers the life and death of serial killer Earle Leonard Nelson (sometimes known as Ferral instead of Nelson) and styled in the press as "The Gorilla Man" and "The Dark Strangler". Nelson is believed to have murdered at least 22 people and to have perhaps attacked twice that number, and holds the dubious honor of "third most prolific serial killer in American history." Most modern readers have never heard of him, and I certainly hadn't, so this was a very interesting and engaging read. (Wikipedia tells me he was a source of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film "Shadow of a Doubt". Who knew? Not me.)
I never quite know how to trigger warn on books that are about serial killers, because obviously the material in here is going to be pretty grim, but I should note that Nelson's crimes included sexual assault and he also killed a few children who crossed his path, so be aware of that if you have associated triggers. I will say that one of the reasons I like Schechter so much as an author is because he handles delicate topics with care and isn't irreverent or flippant or jokey about the victims. He gives them grace and dignity, which I appreciate.
Another aspect I like about this book is seeing the historical context of detective work. I hadn't realized that fingerprinting crime scenes was something already doable in the 1920s; for some reason, I had thought that came later in the timeline. It's interesting to see how serial killing of Nelson's sort was only possible once cars became widespread; he had to stay mobile and move from town to town in order to keep from being caught. The witness statements are surprising in their detail (people used to pay more attention to clothes back in the day, or police were better trained to elicit detail from memory??) and the police are... well, some of them are good, and some of them kept insisting that women were committing suicide and stuffing their own dead bodies into trunks. So, you know, a mixed bag of competency. I did find it interesting that Nelson might not have been caught if he hadn't fled to Canada: he didn't know the words and mannerisms to keep from being identified as an American, so he wasn't able to blend in the way he'd done in America.
If you like historical true crime at all, I really recommend this book as a fascinating deep-dive into a strange man who really did seem to be some sort of real life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Gamedec |
Recommendation: I was recently gifted a game on Steam called "Gamedec". I haven't finished it yet, but I can't speak highly enough about it so far. It's a sort of point-and-click adventure where you play a game detective, a futuristic private eye hired for cases that involve gaming. In 22th century Warsaw City, gaming is Serious Business and involves Virtual Reality couches. Gamedecs are a sort of amalgamation of medic, hacker, and influencer, and can be called upon to do things like find missing people in games (if someone cheated or ghosted you) or deal with game disputes or mediate other issues that might not be legal crimes but still need an expert problem-solver. The gamplay involves examining (very large) scenes and talking to people and making choices.
Your first case is: a rich man's 16 year old son went online in his private couch 4 days ago and hasn't logged back on. His system has been tampered with so you can't locate him by his unique login code, and you can't safely pull the plug without risking brain damage. Normally even a seasoned gamer would have surfaced by now, if only to eat some food. He is therefore either unable or unwilling to log out, and you have to find him and decide whether or not to save him. This actually ends up being a very difficult moral choice! There's a lot of moral complexity in the world, but not in a depressing way, at least not for me. More of like...of the two of these options, which one will improve the world best?
World-building-wise, there's discussion of people who've lost their body due to inaccessible healthcare and now can only "live" online as a disembodied consciousness. There's social stratification between the rich and the poor, and exploration of the social injustices of capitalism. The first area is a game called "Twisted and Perverted" and I was afraid it was going to be an anti-BDSM screed but actually the game is more of a "Mad Max Thunderdome" sort of setting where anything goes, and the BDSM people just moved in and made a little thriving subculture inside.
There are so many little details that rub me exactly the right way. For example: in one game, someone takes on an idealized white-imagined avatar of a Native American woman and you can point out that their choice is inappropriate. In another place, you can talk to a man and find out he is pregnant in real life. My character apologized and said, "Sorry! I didn't realize you have a uterus." NOT I-didn't-realize-you-were-a-woman, but just that HE (still male!) didn't have a uterus. The guy then corrected my character again and explained that his pregnancy is in an exowomb. He's just a cis guy who is really hyped about the upcoming baby he's buying diapers for. The womb is hooked into his online sensory system so the baby can "hear" him the same way a baby in a uterus would. That's so cool!
The second mission is about underpaid sweatshop workers being forced to farm lootboxes in Farmville. It's so so good. I don't want to spoil any more but it is really so good. Oh, and I'm playing a guy and I have had two VERY gay relationships so far. Although one of them ended tragically for plot reasons, so uh. Be prepared for that, because it made me sad. But when this game is sad, it makes me sad in a GOOD way, like a really good book or movie tugging just so on my heart-strings. I haven't beaten it yet, but I cannot remember the last time I got so immersed in a game. Like, hours went by without me realizing.
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Review: Honey, I Joined a Cult (Steam) |
The dark humor and cartoony graphics combine well if you're into that sort of thing (and I am). But the game suffers from a common problem that plagues many sims: once you have a good routine down, you're just grinding resources until you earn enough to cash in for an ending. My last game clocked a total of 14 hours, but I had most of the "therapy rooms" built at around 5 hours, and the remaining 9 hours was just letting the game run on autopilot in the background until I racked up enough resources to win the game. There are options to grind for upgrades to the therapy rooms, but they aren't very excited and just boil down to either "more decorations" or "more earned money" for each room. So a large portion of the game felt a bit of a slog, and I'm not seized with a desire to replay another cult flavor (the current options are Peace & Love, Aliens, and Darkness) because I can tell not much will be different in terms of core gameplay.
I will say, the game author(s) seem very much aware of this problem, but I don't really like the solutions they're trying out to combat the issue. For example, every so often protesters will show up to picket your cult and you have to figure out which cultists are best to send out to talk them down. The problem is, the entire premise of the game is that you (the cult leader) see all your followers as interchangeable dupes, so it's a bit off-message to suddenly have to pour over which one appeals best to Logic and which one values Emotion in order to vibe best with the picketers. Another attempt to jazz up the game can be seen with random events that happen during missions; the problem with these is that I hate doing missions and the funny random events didn't really make them feel any less of a hated obligation.
If I could make a wishlist for the game, I think it would be:
- Give me a bigger compound to build in. Some of my members want private bedrooms, but there's no room for anything but big barracks-style housing and a huge privacy-free bathroom where everyone does their business out in the open. Maybe we could upgrade to a bigger compound over time, as that would give me something to do with this pile of money that I sleep on every night.
- The "decor" category is huge and unwieldy to scroll through. It needs sub-categories for things like statues, tables, novelties, etc. They also start to feel pointless when all they do is increase the "status" of a room. Can you implement some kind of stat-boost for specific items in specific rooms: "important documents" speed up research, while the "teapot" speeds up cooking in the kitchen? Etc. Speaking of, give me fewer things that take up precious floor space and more things that I can hang on walls, please!
- I cannot give a 5-star sermon to save my life. Adjust the requirements for this to be less unforgiving, please? Speaking of unreasonable standards: 100,000 Influence points for a Steam Achievement is insane. Did you mean 10,000? Because I spent 14 hours on my last play-through and got 26,000 Influence by the end. I didn't want to sink another 42 hours into that save file just to snag the achievement, you know?
- The therapy rooms are interesting, but I want more of them! It feels very limiting that we only end up with half a dozen types of rooms. I wanted more rooms and (possibly) to have to choose which sorts of rooms my cult would specialize in. Picking my cult flavor only gave me one new room (the Maypole Dance room, which was admittedly VERY COOL, nice Wicker Man!) whereas I wanted so much more. There's so many flavors of 1970s chicanery to choose from--magnets, spoon bending, psychic card decks, blurry photographs, faith healing, and so forth--and it just feels very disappointing to be limited to maggot baths and yoga mats.
- The writing in the random events is extremely strong and I enjoy them very much. I would perhaps expand that concept to occur outside the missions as well. Police could show up to tour the compound and the player's answers could affect whether your political Heat goes up or down. Family members could visit the cult members and that could affect Influence or Public Relations.
- Speaking of public relations, I want to be able to throw events at the compound, even if it's just a text box on the Mission screen. I kept expecting the PR missions to evolve from more than just radio appearances. Admittedly I didn't do very many of those because they kept increasing my Heat for no good reason and Heat is hard enough to manage as is. I would balance that a little better; going on a radio show or throwing a charity event or hosting a gerbil-adoption day shouldn't increase political heat like that!
- [Trigger Warning: Sexual Coercion] I was not planning to use the "Free Love" room at all and was a little annoyed to find that it was mandatory in order to receive the Peace & Love finale. It might seem silly that I'm cool with playing a game about exploiting free labor from victims of religious abuse, yet I draw the line at sexual coercion but I do. The room is a cool game mechanic (letting cult members share positive traits and stats after "learning" from each other...in bed) but I would *strongly* recommend implementing a statistical possibility wherein the chosen pair refuse to use the room because they're Just Not That Into Each Other; this would make me feel like they have a *choice* in the matter and are actively consenting when they do use the room. I have similar feelings about the incense room, for that matter.
Anyway, I have rambled enough and this is getting long. I enjoyed the game a lot, but I enjoy the IDEA of the game more than the implementation right now, if that makes sense. I hope that future implementations feature a little more variety and a little less slog.
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Review: Oxygen Not Included (Steam) |
That said, holy cow this game is HARD. You need oxygen? You'll install an algae terranium to turn carbon dioxide (which your sims keep selfishly exhaling) into oxygen. But they produce polluted water, which means you need to invent electric wiring, manual hamster-wheel generators, and a water sieve to turn that polluted water back into clean drinkable water. Which you need because your crops (and algae) keep drinking all your water. But those generators are heating the colony air over time (so much running, so much exercise!) which raises the ambient temperature in your gardens, which means your plants won't grow. Time to either starve to death or invent a complex system of hydrogen-based cooling and air ducts to cool the place down. Whoops, you're out of clean water because your crops were thirsty while you were inventing all that!
Seriously, this is the most realistic space-building sim I've ever played. It's adorable and addictive and I am *very bad* at it. I hate it so much, lol, but I highly recommend it for people who are, well, smarter than I am. I'm going back to lurk in the dark ages with my medieval sims who never ask me to invent anything higher than the Iron Age.
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Review: Unpacking (Steam) |
One: the rooms you're unpacking stuff into *aren't empty*. You have to try to jam the heroine's stuff in around other people's things. So it's not a beautiful clean slate that you paint with belongings, but more like a messy jumble of someone else's things that you have to work around and hope they don't mind. Some items are even locked in place and can't be moved! I was actually surprised by how much stress this triggered, and I wanted to call a house meeting to discuss the toilet paper situation.
Two: many of the items are tiny, blurred, or otherwise unclear what they are or where they go. I would have preferred the interface have a label and location for what something is when you pick it up. Turns out the game has Strong Opinions on where you can store certain things. Can I put the tiny guitar in my bedroom under the bed? NO. It must go in the living room. Often it's hard to tell where something goes because you can't tell what it is. I had to google how to get past the first level because a cute little purple notebook was actually a *diary* and I had to put that in a secret drawer rather than on the shelf with the other notebooks. I'd foolishly gone and filled the drawer with erasers and rulers and scissors, but those are supposed to go on TOP of the desk, which is how I know that the devs don't have cats.
I quit when I moved back into my childhood room and I was supposed to know that one of the photos wasn't supposed to go on the corkboard with all the other photos but was instead supposed to go in a cabinet where the heroine won't see it (unless she...opens the cabinet??). I was supposed to realize that the tiny photo was of a romantic ex because there was a tiny thumbtack through his tiny face, and I was supposed to guess that instead of "throwing it in the trash" or "storing it in a file folder" that the right answer was to lay it face-up on a cabinet shelf where it will be seen every time the she opens the cabinet. Intuitive!
Three: The story. There isn't one, not really. We're supposed to construct a story ourselves based on wild assumptions regarding the things our heroine owns--it's like walking into a stranger's house and trying to construct a Sherlockian narrative over why they own what they do and then calling that a "story".
Whilst consulting google to figure out what to do with the previously-mentioned photo, I was startled to realize that I was supposed to assume that our room occupant is a world traveler because she collects tiny Eiffel Tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa figurines. WHAT?? I had just assumed that she liked those places! Maybe she collects the figurines because she *can't* afford to travel (if you can't see the real thing, you can at least see the replica) or maybe her dad travels for work and brings back souvenirs for her. I used to have an impressive collection of shot glasses from around the world for that very reason; it doesn't mean I've ever left the country!
We're apparently supposed to chart the "changed interests" of the main character based on which belongings she keeps and which she trims out of her life over time, but having just lost a lot of personal items of my own to a basement flood, I am too aware of how many factors other than "loss of interest" can cause a beloved stuffie or photo to leave one's life. It's strange and frustrating to feel like I'm supposed to access the story through a series of unintuitive logic leaps. Maybe the heroine kept the pink pig stuffie and trimmed the other animals because she loved that one best, or maybe the others were destroyed in a flood, or the thumbtack ex threw out her things, or maybe one of her roommates accidentally stole the stuffies during a move out when they packed them by mistake. Sherlockian analysis is a myth, as Sir Terry Pratchett demonstrated far better than I ever could:
"Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who'd take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, "Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times," and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man's boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he'd been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!" --Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
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Review: Unavowed (Steam) |
Unavowed is what every modern adventure game should be from here on out, just in terms of game mechanics. (My opinion, of course! Ymmv!) You don't have to cycle through cursor options like Look/Talk/Walk/Handle; you point at something and the cursor changes automatically based on how you would normally interact with the item. It's so easy and convenient and I love it. Pick-up items are few and far between (and almost always stand out well from the environment) and they disappear from your inventory between chapters, so you don't have to do the adventure game dance of rubbing the screwdriver from Chapter 1 on every item in Chapter 9 hoping that the plot will unlock. In fact, most of the puzzles are solved by talking to people with new information you've uncovered since the last time you talked to them. I love it.
Story-wise, the game is very dark. A year ago, your character was possessed by a demon and went on a very disturbing killing spree... as well as doing a few other horrible things that don't quite make sense but which caused harm to innocents in the city. A group of community-minded magical creatures who call themselves the Unavowed have tracked you down, exorcised the evil spirit, and now you've joined them as they try to undo all the harm your demon did. You're able to help them with your wits and your fleeting memories (or really more like unwanted visions) of what the demon did whilst in your body.
If you don't mind the dark themes (and I watch CSI and Law & Order for fun, so I mean) then there's a really deep and emotional game under the hood about identity and redemption and morality and choices. Each chapter culminates in a complicated moral decision about a magical creature run amok in New York, and your companions are thoughtful and gentle in their advice to you. For example: A muse has lost her supernatural powers and absolutely does *not* want them back, but your demon imbued those powers into a guy who seems genuinely nice and likable BUT he's using his new muse powers recklessly and getting people killed. Do you (a) insist that the original muse take her powers back, even though it will make her miserable, (b) extend trust to the old man that he'll try to do better going forward, or (c) make it so that *nobody* holds the power of the muse, which could have rippling repercussions on artists in the future? Each situation is thoughtfully engineered so that there's no obvious "right" answer, and your companions wrestle with the ethics of the situation without "blaming" you if you choose differently--everyone recognizes that this stuff is complicated!
Representation-wise, too, I really love this game. One of the characters is a Brown woman of color whose magic comes from her Jinn father (and her fighting prowess was taught from her pirate mother). The white man in your group is a long-lived mage who misses his family who for their own protection thinks he is dead; he's the definition of Team Dad and I love him. Your ghost-whisperer is a beautiful Black man paired with a ten-year-old spirit guide named KayKay who is a DELIGHT; he wrestles with problems with addiction that is exacerbated by the strain of having to help people through their death trauma day after painful day. A cop joins your group and, yeah, she sees the cops in a positive light after being raised in a "cop family", but the game itself has a LOT of critical things to say about the police and their tactics. There's a lot of beautiful diversity here and I love it so much. You find yourself talking to the characters because you *want* to know them better.
All in all, I am just very thrilled with this gentle and loving game which takes the darkest parts of the crime genre and asks, sincerely and without judgment, how to make the world a better place.
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Review: Project Hospital (Steam) |
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Review: Planetbase (Steam) |
If you can get past the first 20 minutes, then it's basically autopilot from there. You can build almost all of the buildings available in the first hour of play and after that you're just keeping an eye on things while they zip along at 4x speed. There's no way to upgrade buildings or build vertically; you just have to sprawl outward. There's almost no luxuries for your little people, so you don't really come to care about them. It feels like this needs more content, somehow? Luxury lodgings and vertical buildings, maybe. Something to make your colony seem successful. As it is, the only difference between a starting colony of 10 and a city of 300 is how much space you're taking up: everyone still sleeps in bunk bed dorms located a single hallway away from their day job location.
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Review: Yes Your Grace (Steam) |
That said, it should be noted that there's an overarching plot that you have very limited control over. Several times your options as King are basically "Yes/Yes, but". Especially early on, you are crowbared into several decisions that I simply would not have made, and it was particularly frustrating when the plot came back around to chide me for those "choices" that I didn't want to make in the first place. And in the last third of the game you're basically locked into whether you want to be nice to the invaders or nasty to them; the game even *says* at several points that you need to be 100% Nice or 100% Nasty in order to get help from 1 of the 2 available nobles you're courting for help. Not a lot of wiggle room for role-playing.
[Spoiler Note / Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence] To elaborate on how little guidance you have on the plot: Early on, you have no choice but to marry your 13 year old daughter off to a young prince who will then go on to beat her and ultimately burn her at the stake as a witch. You have zero option to help or save her; you can't even *try*. This is the story the devs wanted to tell and I respect that, but as a survivor of domestic violence it was really brutal to witness *bruises* on my daughter and have literally zero option as the king to do anything about it. I would REALLY like a DLC option (for which I would pay!) that gives you the chance to launch a rescue mission with one or more of your agents. It just feels railroad-y that this terrible tragedy must happen so we can all be sad over it. Sigh.
Those issues aside, I enjoyed this game. But I don't think it has any replayability value whatsoever after you've made it to the ending in one piece. You're basically on a single plot-rail the entire time, so the only "choices" you really get to make is how to manage your gold and food supplies. While that affects whether the plot goes well or not, it doesn't really unlock new content, if that makes sense.
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Review: Kingdom Two Crows (Steam) |
How much gold do you have at any given time? You don't know; there's just a picture of an empty/full purse to give you a vague idea of your resources. If you get too much gold, it spills over into the water and is lost, so spend spend spend! No point in saving up for an expensive resource! At night, little purple ninjas try to steal your crown which will "kill" you but there doesn't really seem to be any penalty for that. Your silent workers keep on plugging, gold keeps pouring in, and your fingers get sore pressing the side-scroll button and wishing your horse wasn't a purebred snail.
Several people mentioned they play this game as a brainless timekiller in class? That's the only way I can see getting any enjoyment out of this game.
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Review: Project Zomboid (Steam) |
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Review: The Seven Towers |
The Seven Towers
by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Seven Towers
Patricia Wrede has been one of my favorite authors for years. I recently re-read Seven Towers in a fit of nostalgia, and reaffirmed just how much I love this story and its characters. Amberglas, the absent-minded sorceress. Vandaris, the mercenary aunt who refuses to put up with nonsense. I adore them both so much, and every other one of this ensemble cast.
This is an epic multi-kingdom spanning story of war and politics, and I love how it manages to be beautifully complicated while still being accessible to the reader. Though I should note that I was reading this together with my spouse and he had some trouble keeping the names of the foreign countries straight, so I may have been aided with the help of my nostalgia and childhood memories.
I'm so pleased this is finally available on the kindle. I noticed a couple of very minor errors, probably as a result of the conversion to ebook, and otherwise the book was perfect as of my reading in 2022. (I can't speak for content prior to this date, obviously.)
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Eichmann In My Hands |
Eichmann in my Hands
by Peter Z. Malkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Eichmann in My Hands
I remember reading this in college and being entranced by this factual first-person narrative. I've just finished reading the book again on my kindle and am once again blown away by just how much information is in this book, and how accessibly it's all arranged and written.
When I was younger and reading this book for the first time, I didn't even know who Adolf Eichmann was, but Peter Malkin anticipates this issue and carefully lays out who the man was, what he did, the vast extent of his war crimes, and why his capture was so important to Jewish people and Holocaust survivors. This book is... I won't say the narrative isn't heavy in parts, because it is, but it's got a hopefulness to it that keeps it from being inapproachably sad. Malkin has a bright hope for humanity in his heart, despite everything he's been through (and there are times when his leaders do not come off well at all), and I greatly respect him for his outlook on life.
I highly recommend this book and think it is valuable for understanding the Holocaust and its impact.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: At Wit's End |
At Wit's End by Erma Bombeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
At Wit's End / 0449211843
As a child, I picked up several of Erma Bombeck's books at a used bookstore and read them again and again. Picking up At Wit's End was like returning to the home of an old friend where everything is comforting and familiar, and you can laugh at old jokes together. I was delighted to see that this kindle edition retains the artwork from the paper version, all of which I remembered with fondness.
Most of the essays here are still very very funny. There are times when Erma dips more deeply into sentiment for me than I want from my humor books--the deep sorrow she feels as time passes and her children age hits too close to home and I read those parts very quickly to get through them--but obviously this comes down to personal taste. There's an undercurrent here that I didn't remember from childhood of, hmm, holding men to lower standards than I'm comfortable in my current feminist life, which just shows how far we've come (yay) but made me profoundly sorry to Erma for some of the stuff she felt she had to put up with (boo). If buying this for a young person, expect to have to explain a LOT about the outdated language, the setting, and the culture it was coming from.
I'm happy to have this in my collection, but it's hard to say if I'd ever read it again. Maybe I might just pull it out from time to time to give my 'old friend' a hug.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Belles |
The Belles
by Dhonielle Clayton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Belles / B071XNWRHC
I'd heard in advance this book was amazing, and even pre-ordered the Kindle version, so I was excited beyond words when the publisher sent me an ARC to read in advance. I meant to read it a little at a time (I'm trying to break my marathon-reading habits) but ended up devouring the entire book in a day. SO GOOD.
The people of this world are afflicted with a mysterious curse which drains them of color. But a few girls are born with color and a mysterious magical gift: they can provide beauty (any color! golden hair? sure! red-rose lips? on it! honey-brown eyes? here you go!), moderate moods and temperaments, and grant musical and artistic skill. These girls are called Belles and their entire purpose in life is to serve the people of Orleans and beat back the graying curse with constant vigilance in the form of beauty treatments.
...which are expensive.
...and very painful.
Camille, one of the latest batch of six graduating Belles, longs to show the people their inner beauty. She wants to *enhance* their loveliness and help them accept how wonderful they are. But life is about to take a sharp turn when she arrives at the capital and realizes that what the people *actually* want has nothing to do with natural beauty or self-acceptance and everything to do with a desperate scramble to the top of a treacherous and deadly social ladder.
If you liked HUNGER GAMES but wanted less running in the woods and more Capitol politics, clothing, beauty regimens, and rich people murdering each other--and President Snow as an evil princess with a miniature pet elephant--then you will like THE BELLES.
---Spoilers and Trigger Warnings--
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Review: Good Luck With That |
Good Luck with That
by Kristan Higgins
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Good Luck With That / B077CNXY2B
[Trigger Warning: Fat Hatred, Eating Disorders]
I want to say upfront I did not finish (DNF) this book. There are 39 chapters and a prologue, so 40 chapters total. I read the first 7 chapters, 2 chapters in the middle, and the last 4 chapters--13 chapters total I read, or almost a third of the book. I also heavily skimmed the parts I didn't read. I was looking, as close as I could, for something that would make this book stop being hurtful. In the beginning, in the middle, and in the ending, I only found more hurt.
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Review: D'Lish Deviled Eggs |
D'Lish Deviled Eggs: A Collection of Recipes from Creative to Classic
by Kathy Casey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
D'Lish Deviled Eggs / B00AZKUERY
I love this cookbook so much and I keep coming back to it again and again. I know that seems silly, like, what more can you do with deviled eggs than the basic recipe? But this book has the best base recipe *plus* awesome variations with pulled pork, buttered corn, pimiento cheese, and a zillion other flavor combinations. For someone who really likes deviled eggs and has a lot of picky eating issues, this cookbook is great because it's good at presenting ideas (with gooooorgeous pictures) and letting you experiment with those ideas. "Hmm, what if Classic Picnic with Bacon Cheddar?" WHAT IF, INDEED.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll