Books I've Read in 2022

The one good thing about a daily commute is that I have between an hour and two each day just for reading.

Unfortunately, I've only got the idea of writing down everything I'm reading in August, when I realised that I've been reading Ward for so long that I don't even remember which book I've read before it and when. Therefore the list only contains books since August. But speaking of Ward...

Fiction Books

John C. McCrae: Ward

This superhero web serial is 1 944 784 words long, so I might have actually been reading it since the beginning of the year. And it's worth it. Along with the first part, Worm, it is an incredible study of characters and their motivations, as well as creative powers and power uses. If you read it, you will probably start to question whether you even like other superhero media at all.

Tad Williams: Stone of Farewell

This is the second book in the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, so I've started reading this book series a bit out of order. My excuse is that I've found it in the free books shelf at a train station before a long journey. Anyway, I quite liked this Tolkien-esque story but I have yet to procure the other two books for myself.

Martina Šrámková: Doba krkavců (Season of the Raven)

A dark fantasy about an ex-witch who tries to live a normal life, but cannot escape her past of a royal assassin. I'll return to it shortly.

Vladimír Šlechta: Krvavé pohraničí (Bloody Borderland)
Vladimír Šlechta: Krvavé pohraničí: Šílený les (Forest Gone Mad)
Vladimír Šlechta: Krvavé pohraničí: Orcigard

A loose series of books which share the location and world events, but none of the protagonists. All of them also read a bit like D&D adventures and could easily be adapted into a campaign.

One thing I'm noticing about Czech fantasy is that it's very dark, all of it. The protagonists generally eke out a victory in the end, but usually at an unreasonably high price, while the world keeps slowly turning to the worse.

In Season of the Raven, Jadwiga manages to save the duchess from painful death and her town from total destruction, but she is forced to seduce and kill again, something she has been running from for years. Also the once blooming economy of the duchy is basically gone due to the machinations of the big bad, and it's far from certain that the duchess will be able to regain control of the fanaticized populace.

In all of the Bloody Borderland books, the protagonist achieves a personal victory, but the world is worse off in the end. Bonus points for Orcigard, which is a prequel with a cast doomed by canon, so the "Everybody lives!" ending is rather bittersweet.

Another example might be Na ostřích čepelí (On the blade's edge) by Miroslav Žamboch, which is another author I like. The protagonist manages to get the settlers to their destination, except about half of the settlers are dead, the way back to civilization is destroyed, so they are completely on their own, and the love interest dies.

I don't think that any translations are available, though, so you will have to take my word that the books are worth the read.

Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Resurrection
Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Midnight
Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Bedlam
Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Seasons of War
Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Dead or Alive
Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant: Until the End
Derek Landy: Tanith Low in... The Maleficent Seven

Derek Landy is hilarious and very intelligent, as he never fails to remind the readers in his dedications. To his credit, he's right. ;)

His books are very funny, but also dealing with topics like PTSD, addiction, religious fanaticism, discrimination and racism, or shitty parents.

The books are actually so full of clever jokes and light-hearted snark that one might not notice the darkness creeping in until the heroine is suddenly day-dreaming about getting high the second she comes home, the author avatar has to be mercy-killed because he suffered a fate worse than death and the bad guy keeps winning. Then the protagonist switches sides and works with the bad guy, and then the world actually ends. Then it ends again, in an even worse way.

Yeah, I'm not sure why this series is apparently printed as children's books.

What I wanted to say by these long paragraphs is that the whole Skulduggery Pleasant series is great and you should go read it.

Gaming Books

Andrea Sfiligoi: 4 Against Darkness
Andrea Sfiligoi: 4 Against the Abyss

A solo game with wonderfully light ruleset that will let you play quickly and with a single d6. Though the rules are completely different, the feel of the game is like you were running an old-school D&D dungeon crawl.

If you're looking for a combat-based solo game rather than a narrative one, this one is surly a top choice.

Wizards of the Coast: Dungeons & Dragons 5e: Player's Handbook

I will also have to get the Game Master's Guide...

Swen Harder: Reiter der schwarzen Sonne (Knight of the Dark Sun)

A massive gamebook I've got for Christmas. Very nice so far!

What's on the Shelf

There should be more in a wizard's library than just their spellbook. What about more than 1500 books on magic?

Based on this thread and created using the cool button generator.

Of Monsters and Men

I recently finished reading the Monster Blood Tattoo series by D. M. Cornish, and I probably never saw a story more appropriate to be used as a setting for OSR. Even if you didn't want to read the story itself, the books contain massive Explicarium and Appendices with enough information to run a game in that strange world. Really, I somewhat suspect the author from playing tabletops as he was writing this one...

The world where the trilogy takes place, the Half-Continent, is basically a Victorian Europe caught in a constant struggle between men and monsters. There is an actual metaphysical war between civilization that tames the land by cultivation and "threwd", a genius loci or monster-producing awareness of the wild nature. Humans build cities, each one a hole in the threwd and a bastion against monsters, protecting the surrounding farmland but rarely strong enough to push far against the wilds. Nature responds by sending monsters to fight humanity off.

A nicker.

And yes, there are monsters everywhere. Unless you are within the safe streets of a city, monsters will most likely prowl nearby. All villages are built with a protection of strong walls, all mansions are more like fortresses. Larger roads are patrolled by the military and travellers hire bodyguards. The farther away you go from a centre of civilization, the more common and dangerous the monsters will get. They crawl out from various swamps and muds "impregnated" by threwd, countless in numbers and an ever-looming threat over humanity. They come in every size and shape - goblinoid grinnlings; animal-headed glamgorns, huge umbergogs, aquatic kraulschwimmen, and more, ever stranger creatures. Every forest, river, mountain or marsh will have some, and they will come out at night, invading into the fields, pastures and orchards unless deterred. And should you forget to lock the doors and windows of your fortified house, they may very well eat you.

A glamgorn.

Yet monsters are not mindless killers. They are as intelligent as humans, and very much varied in their attitudes. Many despise humans for their conquest of the wilds, many like the taste of human flesh (or horse meat, monsters are said to love horse meat), but way more monsters would just like to be left at peace. Precious few are even benign, hoping to reconcile monsters and men. And they are also not just disorganized packs or solitary wanderers (quite some are, but not all). The wild lands are ruled over by urchin-lords, monster nobility so ancient and soaked with threwd they basically have psychic powers (there is no true magic, so psychic powers and alchemy is as close as you will get to supernatural). The deep seas then hide the dormant false-gods, gargantuan monsters of apocalyptic powers, inspiring cults (monstrous or human) that try to find ways of waking them so that their false-god can rule over the world.

The Vinegar Sea hides even stranger monsters.

For their part, the people of the Haacobin Empire (a collection of city-states where the story takes place) see monsters as pests to be eradicated, and threwd as a challenge to be overcome. Of course, there are the "heretical, monster-loving" kingdoms that the Empire wages war at, and which maybe live in relative harmony with monsters. But in the Empire, any sympathy to monsters is a capital offense, and even being accused of monster-love can get you exiled into the hostile countryside. And because of this philosophy of "the only good monster is a dead monster", of course there are various monster-slayers and adventurers - how convenient for tabletop gaming!

An undead, man-made monster.

Your usual murderhobo party will appreciate the organised quest-givers, as the number of monster-slayers and monsters to be slain had given raise to the so called "knaveries". A knavery is an administrative establishment where all the hireling slayers, professional killers and freelance murderers can get commission to work on government-declared monster-hunts or private contracts. Monster slaying is rather lucrative business - there are never enough soldiers to keep all the public roads in the country safe, merchants will gladly pay to have their precious cargo protected, and rich land owners or remote villages are always pestered by some troublesome monster. Many cities even offer prize money for every monster’s head you bring.

A monster-slayer.

Monster slaying is also a deadly business. As the average monsters has every physical advantage over humans (even the two feet tall boggles are said to be stronger than a grown man, to say nothing about claws, fangs or armoured skin), monster-slayers need some gimmick to level the playing field. Sure, there are flintlock firearms, but that alone is not enough when monsters may be large and tough enough to shrug off cannonballs. I already mentioned alchemy, though, which is powerful, widespread, diverse and oft-used.

A lahzar.

For starters, there is proofed clothing - clothes alchemically treated to reinforce them against both blade and claw. You can wear a frock coat instead of a chain mail, yet still get comparable protection, and with more expensive alchemical concoctions, better defensive abilities can be achieved. Thus using medieval setting is no longer required to maintain the idea of effective armour, and your players can let their fashion sense run wild as they search for the best-looking armoured embroidery. No one would be caught outside of a city without proofing. Even better, proofing solves the problem I have with firearms in many fantasy worlds - why didn't they quickly spread and made melee combat obsolete? But when everyone is walking around in bulletproof clothes, you can still reliably whack them with a pole-axe or a war hammer.

The Appendices contain explanations
of nearly everything, with pictures.
All of the pictures here actually come
from the books.

But I digressed a bit from actually slaying the monsters. For this, there are many concoctions, acids and monster-poisons - skolds are professional battle alchemists, hurling explosives, combustibles, or caustic and toxic chemicals. Other potions can enhance the abilities of normal humans - leers take drugs that help them to see in shadows or darkness and notice minor details, or use biologues (artificially grown living tools and machines) to track monsters by smell and find their hiding places. There are also the dangerous lahzars, given psychic powers by a combination of alchemy and surgery. And even the common monster-slayer can take advantage of envenomed blade or bullet, and when the job is done they will chug down one of the many restoratives (yes, there are healing potions, or something pretty close).

A leer wearing a smell-enhancing olfactologue.

Alchemy has great many uses, and just as many misuses. While lahzars skirt the line of legality, there are strictly illegal practises of mad alchemists who use human cadavers, butchered monsters and ancient chemistry to create gudgeons - undead made-monsters, Frankenstein-esque brutes and stitched beasts of war. Maybe your players would like the profit that comes from trafficking stolen human bodies and living monsters? Such dark trades can pay really well, as gudgeons are valued both as "super soldiers", and as opponents to  captured monsters in underground fights for the entertainment of the wealthy and aristocratic. On the other hand, monsters see gudgeons as the ultimate blasphemy and will try to destroy them on sight. Maybe the players can find an unexpected ally when hunting such a zombified abomination, or help monsters free their kin from a fighting pit? Either way, they will be hanged if discovered, as smugglers or as monster-lovers.

A single skold against a massive war-gudgeon.

All in all, the Half-Continent would make for an excellent adventuring location. The only thing missing in the books are some forgotten dungeons to explore, if you need those in your game.

I think I might try to adapt some of ideas for OSR...