What are you reading?

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maximus
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by maximus »

Currently reading The Treason of Isengard. Looking for another good historical fiction or fantasy series. I tried the first book in the Arthur series by Bernard Cornwell, but only got through a bit before putting it down. It was disappointing compared to the Last Kingdom series, which I loved.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Persimmon »

Nice; I've tried reading a bunch of the Appendix N fiction the past year that I hadn't read before, but I must admit that I haven't been crazy about much of it. Recently read the first five John Carter novels and found them to be basically Vin Diesel movies in print. Lots of crazy action and set ups just leading to chase scenes. Then I read The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson and that felt like one of The Avengers movies. Tons of characters, convoluted plot, some cheesy romance, super powers and over the top fight scenes. Still cool to see where all these RPG tropes came from.
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Kayolan
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Kayolan »

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor. I'm reading it mainly for the lore.

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Re: What are you reading?

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How is this version of Blackmoor? What system is it written for, if any?

I liked the DA module series, again because I thought the lore was pretty cool. Only "Temple of the Frog" was really good as an adventure.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Persimmon wrote:
Sat Feb 27, 2021 3:51 am
How is this version of Blackmoor? What system is it written for, if any?

I liked the DA module series, again because I thought the lore was pretty cool. Only "Temple of the Frog" was really good as an adventure.
This was put out by Zeitgeist and then in partnership with Goodman Games. It's a fun book once you read past the 3.5 specific content. I'd say about 30 percent of the book is crunch, the rest is lore. I ran Temple of the Frog as my first C&C adventure way back as a tribute to Arneson after he passed. It was quite a lot of fun. There's a Zeitgeist version of Temple of the Frog as well that I haven't checked out yet, I've heard that it's pretty good.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Julian Grimm »

So my current reading list is:

Dune
Shogun
Dark Force Rising
The Quick and The Dead
The Secret Teaching of All Ages (This is gonna take awhile)
Lord Skystorm

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by dachda »

Wish me luck I just started Edward Gibbon's classic "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". I have the modern library's three volume unabridged version. So far very interesting and the archaic language is definitely forcing my brain to fire up all cylinders.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Persimmon »

dachda wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:31 pm
Wish me luck I just started Edward Gibbon's classic "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". I have the modern library's three volume unabridged version. So far very interesting and the archaic language is definitely forcing my brain to fire up all cylinders.
Nice; I cheated and read the 1100 page single volume abridged version back in the day. Re-reading The Silmarillion now.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Ancalagon wrote:
Sat Jan 30, 2021 6:06 am
I'm reading The Accursed Kings series. Good stuff! I'm ready to begin book 4.

The Accursed Kings (French: Les Rois Maudits) is a series of historical novels by French author Maurice Druon about the French monarchy in the 14th century. Published between 1955 and 1977, the series has been adapted as a miniseries twice for television in France.

Set during the reigns of the last five kings of the direct Capetian dynasty and the first two kings of the House of Valois, the series begins as the French King Philip the Fair, already surrounded by scandal and intrigue, brings a curse upon his family when he persecutes the Knights Templar. The succession of monarchs that follows leads France and England to the Hundred Years' War.

American author George R. R. Martin called The Accursed Kings "the original game of thrones", citing Druon's novels as an inspiration for his own series, A Song of Ice and Fire.
It took a bit longer to get started than I planned but a couple of weeks back I finished The Royal Succession, book 4 of The Accursed Kings series. It weighs in at 308 pages with historical notes expanding it to 325 pages. I can absolutely see where GRRM got some inspiration for the Queen of Thorns in his Song of ice and Fire series!

From the back cover of the book:

Louis X is dead, poisoned, murdered, by the hand of Mahaut d'Artois. Her plan is simple - to clear the path to the throne for her son-in-law, Philippe. However, there is the small matter of Queen Clemence and her unborn child.

As the country is thrown into turmoil, Philippe of Poitiers must use any means necessary to save his country from anarchy. But how far is he willing to go to clear his path to the throne and become king in his own right?


Good stuff, The Accursed Kings! I'll be starting book 5 fairly soon.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Just finished "Empire of the East" by Fred Saberhagen. Now I'm back into "The Hobbit," which I'll follow with LOTR, of course. I used to read them nearly every summer & I realized that I hadn't read them since before the LOTR movie trilogy came out, though in that interim I have read all the posthumous stuff edited by Christopher Tolkien. And since I backed the new One Ring RPG KS which will be released in late fall, I thought it would be fun to re-read the books that got me into RPGs in the first place.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Reading the Book of the South, a compilation about the Black Company. Not bad so far.

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Re: What are you reading?

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Just started the Wheel of Time Series. I had read the first book 20 years ago and thought it was okay, but I was abroad at the time and getting English novels in Taiwan wasn't cheap. So I never continued. Upon re-reading I'm enjoying it more now, at least the first book. Hopefully I'll make it all the way through the series. It has given me some cool ideas for how to incorporate some of the quirkier Adventurers Backpack classes into my game at least.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Persimmon wrote:
Thu Jul 08, 2021 2:50 pm
Just started the Wheel of Time Series. I had read the first book 20 years ago and thought it was okay, but I was abroad at the time and getting English novels in Taiwan wasn't cheap. So I never continued. Upon re-reading I'm enjoying it more now, at least the first book. Hopefully I'll make it all the way through the series. It has given me some cool ideas for how to incorporate some of the quirkier Adventurers Backpack classes into my game at least.
I liked this series a lot. There were a few books in the middle that got tedious, but the series had a strong finish. The world as a whole is a great example of a population concentrated in a few big cities and towns, and lots of sparsely/uninhabited wilderness. Jordan handles magic much different than Vance. I like blend of these styles in my C&C games.

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Re: What are you reading?

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Only made it through the first 4 books in Wheel of Time before bailing. Currently reading "Swords Against Death" by Fritz Leiber.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Persimmon wrote:
Sun Mar 06, 2022 1:29 am
Only made it through the first 4 books in Wheel of Time before bailing. Currently reading "Swords Against Death" by Fritz Leiber.
I just started reading Leiber again too

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Re: What are you reading?

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dachda wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:31 pm
Wish me luck I just started Edward Gibbon's classic "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". I have the modern library's three volume unabridged version. So far very interesting and the archaic language is definitely forcing my brain to fire up all cylinders.
I've been working my way through Gibbon for for 12 years. I recently reached 36% completed.
tylermo wrote:Your efforts are greatly appreciated, Buttmonkey. Can't believe I said that with a straight face.

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Re: What are you reading?

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Just got "The Nature of Middle Earth," which is apparently a collection of the last of the fragments Tolkien wrote. Definitely for the hardcore completist, but some interesting material in it nonetheless.
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Re: What are you reading?

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The Silmarillion and The Fellowship of the Ring... What can I say? These never get old!
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Re: What are you reading?

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Finished the Tolkien book and just started Sailing into Disaster: Ghost Ships and other Mysterious Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie, I've always been fascinated by this stuff. If you haven't seen the Great Lakes in person, you really should. I still remember when a friend of mine from college visited and said, "Holy shit! That's huge. What's on the other side?" "Canada," I replied.

North coast of America, enough said.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Persimmon wrote:
Sun Mar 20, 2022 3:51 pm
Finished the Tolkien book and just started Sailing into Disaster: Ghost Ships and other Mysterious Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie, I've always been fascinated by this stuff. If you haven't seen the Great Lakes in person, you really should. I still remember when a friend of mine from college visited and said, "Holy shit! That's huge. What's on the other side?" "Canada," I replied.

North coast of America, enough said.
What part of Lake Erie? I'm close to the PA bit.

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Re: What are you reading?

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I'm from the Cleveland area. The suburb of Mentor, to be precise.
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Re: What are you reading?

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I know where that's at. It's about an hour or so from me.
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Re: What are you reading?

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Decided to dip into Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series again, so I picked up the Camber of Culdi trilogy and finished the first volume today. Rather better written than the first Deryni trilogy, although a slightly hurried and anticlimactic conclusion. I’ll take a short break with something different then carry on with the rest.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by serleran »

The last time I was at a B&N store, I found an exclusive titled "Native American Myths and Legends." I had not opened it. I did today and going through it. There are some interesting stories one could base adventures around I think I just might.

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Re: What are you reading?

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By the Grace of the Gods (nobles scheming and sabotaging superiors); The World's Strongest Rearguard (an interesting take on dungeons); I Reincarnated but will try to live without using my cheat abilities (politics & nation founding...big time!); Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary (just adventuring brain candy); The Best Assassin, Incarnated into a Different World's Aristocracy (skullduggery-not just the nobles but also the goddess); and about a dozen others with various dungeon aspects, political nuances, and just plain for fun. Lots of spell, item, and monster idea fodder as well.
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Re: What are you reading?

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I'm about half way through Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. It's book 2 of the Stormlight Archives. I just wish I'd had known that it wasn't a completed series when I started. Robert Jordan taught me that I should wait for the series to be finished before I read it.

Seriously though, it's a good read and if you like Sanderson's work, you should read it.

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Re: What are you reading?

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The Return of the King and A Storm of Swords
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Re: What are you reading?

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Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett

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Re: What are you reading?

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I just finished the last book in the Star Trek: Coda series. Well written, but seriously depressing.

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Re: What are you reading?

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Magic User: Reborn in Another World as a Max Level Wizard Ran across this Web Novel that Seven Seas took over publishing from circa 2016. WAY OP Wizard...but the guy comes up with some way cool uses of his spells...and of course the world is in peril from an insidious enemy. Honestly, this is rife with campaign fodder and game ideas. Great characters, cool setting...and kingdom building from the perspective of someone used to Dungeons & Braves (D&D play here no question). Well worth reading. First 108 chapters can be read on Novelupdate site. 3 books out...with a 4th due in December.
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