FICTION

1. Alliance Rising by C.J. Cherryh & Jane Fancher (science fiction).
2. Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh (science fiction). I felt the need to re-read this after reading the new ‘prequel’, Alliance Rising. It is still a great book, but it is very noticeable now that the tech is paper printouts and paper ID documents instead of reading stuff on a screen.
3. The Farm by Joanne Ramos (science fiction).
4. Damnificados by J.J. Amaworo Wilson (mainstream/magical realism). This is lovely. Funny, poignant, political and with touches of magical realism now and then. It was an impulse buy at an Eastercon, and I’m so glad I did. The author doesn’t seem to have written any other novels, which is a shame.
5. Four Days to Veracruz by Owen West (thriller).
6. The Bear & the Serpent by Adrian Tchaikovsky (fantasy). Vol 2 of Echoes of the Fall.
7. Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky (science fiction). Loved this.
8. Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky (science fiction). Curiously unengaging. Possibly a combination of the narrative structure and the fact the hero spends most of the book trying to avoid getting involved in anything?
9. Hidden Sun by Jaine Fenn (science fantasy). Vol 1 of the Shadowlands Duology.
10. Broken Shadows by Jaine Fenn (science fantasy). Vol 2 of the Shadowlands Duology. I’d like to read more in this setting.
11. The Last by Hanna Jameson (science fiction). The blurb on the book makes it sound like it is a serial killer picking off victims one by one. It is really not that at all! Nice portrait of people over-reacting and going a bit weird at the end of the world.
12. Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon by Gavin G. Smith (horror). The Soviet Union starts the zombie apocalypse in the 80s. Fun when its character stuff and a bit of action. Gets dull when it is page after page of zombie-killing.
13. Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells (science fiction). Confluence vol 1. Interesting in bits, nice ideas, but heroine too much of a Mary-Sue in other bits, and does that REALLY annoying romance trope of having the hero and heroine almost become a couple, then stop that story arc dead in the water so the author can spend the whole of the NEXT volume doing the will-they-won’t-they thing all over again. So I’m not going to read the next one!
14. Song of the Night by Zoe Burgess (fantasy/romance).
15. Rosewater by Tade Thompson (science fiction).
16. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (fantasy). Broken Earth vol 1. Reading too much sub-D&D, comparable to Tolkien at his most ripped-off, lost heirs to the kingdom, put me off fantasy for decades. It is books like this one which are proving to me that fantasy is actually worth reading. Lovely writing, interesting characters, doing stuff with timelines and narrative which I can’t mention for fear of spoilers. I finished it and immediately ordered the 2nd volume from the library. Then the library shut due to Covid-19, so I couldn’t pick it up! Oh noes!
17. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (fantasy). Broken Earth vol 2. Since I couldn’t get the library copy, I bought the second volume!
18. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (fantasy). Broken Earth vol 3.
19. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (science fiction). The Expanse volume 1. Re-read this in preparation for running some one-offs of The Expanse RPG.
20. Caliban’s War by by James S.A. Corey (science fiction). The Expanse volume 2. Ditto.
21. Scatterstones by Fiona Lane (science fantasy). Set in Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu Mythos universe.
22. Breathe My Shadow by Storm Constantine (science fantasy). A Wraeththu Mythos novel.
23. Blood, The Phoenix & A Rose by Storm Constantine. A Wraeththu Mythos novel.
24. Citizen Andri by Philippa Sidle (science fiction). Spaceforce Vol 3. Philippa complains that she’s had her title ‘Spaceforce’ gazumped by Donald Trump and now by the Netflix TV series, so she’ll have to re-brand the series.
25. The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan (fantasy). Vol 3 of the Memoirs of Lady Trent.
26. In the Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan (fantasy). Vol 4 of the Memoirs of Lady Trent.
27. Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan (fantasy). Vol 5 of the Memoirs of Lady Trent.
28. Updraft by Fran Wilde (YA fantasy). Bone Universe Vol 1. Someone recommended this to me, but I almost gave up on it. Mainly because it does ‘Boot Camp’ TWICE in one fekking book. First the heroine is training to fly and be a trader’s apprentice, then, just when I’m going ‘Thank Grud that’s over, hopefully we’ll get to the plot now’, she gets sent off to start training to be in the ‘police/priesthood’.
29. Love Beyond Body, Space & Time: An Indigenous LGBT Sci-fi Anthology ed. by Hope Nicholson.
30. Starters by Lissa Price (YA science fiction/dystopia).
31. The War of the Worlds:The Anglo-Martian War of 1895 by Mike Brunton. A spoof military history book from Osprey.
32. American War by Omar El Akkad (science fiction).
33. People of the Canyons by Kathleen O’Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear (prehistorical).
34. Abandoned by W. Michael Gear (science fiction). Donovan vol 2.
35. Pariah by W. Michael Gear (science fiction). Donovan vol 3.
36. Act of Grace by Anna Krien (mainstream).
37. Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahon (horror/crime).
38. The Exile Waiting by Vonda McIntyre (science fiction). It’s been reprinted, with a short story set in the same universe.
39. Daughter of Kura by Debra Austin (prehistorical).
40. The Last Wave by Rick Vancey (YA science fiction). Vol 3 in the Fifth Wave series.
41. One of Us by Craig Dilouie (science fiction).
42. The Eagle & the Raven by Pauline Gedge (historical). Another book I recall being fantastic when I first read it, but on a re-read is just okay.
43. Stasi 77 by David Young (crime).
44. How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang (historical).
45. The Sentinel by Lee Child & Andrew Child (thriller). Jack Reacher vol 25
46. The Survivors by Kate Furnival (thriller). Was on the recommended shelf in the library. Set in a displaced persons camp in the aftermath of WW2. I’ll probably see if the library has her other books.
47. The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths (crime). Enjoyed it but it is a sequel to another book I probably should have read first!
48. The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey (YA science fiction). First in a series.
49. Dune by Frank Herbert (science fiction). Re-read it after enjoying playing the quickstart version of the Dune RPG. Still enjoyable, but I’d forgotten (or not noticed) all the problematic bits, like Jessica being purchased as a sex slave for the Duke, and all the gay and bisexual characters are eeeeeevil. I wonder how they are going to deal with that in the new movie?
50. All That’s Dead by Stuart MacBride (crime).

NON-FICTION

1. Complete Guide to Acrylics by Lorena Kloosterboer.
2. Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind by Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen.
3. A Concise History of Sunnis & Shi’is by John McHugo.
4. The Price of Altruism: George Price & the Search for the Origins of Kindness by Oren Harman.
5. Insatiable: The Rise & Rise of the Greedocracy by Stuart Sim.
6. British Battle Tanks: Post-War Tanks 1946-2016 by Simon Dunstan.
7. Grimoire Dehara: Kaimana by Storm Constantine.
8. The Horse: A Biography of Our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams.
9. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
10. Sisters in Arms: Female Warriors from Antiquity to the New Millennium by Julie Wheelwright.
11. The Happy Brain by Dean Burnett (neuroscience). Why isn’t some of this stuff common knowledge?

GRAPHIC NOVELS

1. The Terrible Elizabeth Dunn Against the Devils in Suits by Arabson.
2. The Nightly News by Jonathon Hickman
3. A Shadow Within: Evil in Fantasy & Science Fiction by Francesca T. Barbini (ed.)
4. Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day’s Lost Chapter by Robert Venditti, Kevin Maurer & Andrea Mutti.
5. Unnatural Selections by Gary Larson. Okay this isn’t exactly a graphic novel, but this is the best section to put it in…
6. Cows of Our Planet by Gary Larson.
7. The Far Side Gallery 3 by Gary Larson.
8. The Prehistory of the Far Side by Gary Larson.
9. Orphans 1: The Beginning by Recchioni & Mammucari (military science fiction). THIS is how you do Boot Camp – skip over it and then flashback to any bits of it which turn out to be relevant.
10. They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Eisinger, Scott, Becker.
11. You Brought Me the Ocean by Sanchez & Marsh.
12. Love the Lion by Brremaud & Bertolucci
13. Orphans 2: Lies by Recchioni & Mammucari (military science fiction).
14. Orphans 3: Truth by Recchioni & Mammucari (military science fiction).
15. Orphans 4: Winners & Losers by Recchioni & Mammucari (military science fiction). Not sure if this is the end of the series, or if there will be another.
16. Snowpiercer Vol 3: Terminus by Bocquet & Rochette. Didn’t realise it was Vol 3, but it is a stand-alone story.

BOOKS I DIDN’T FINISH

1. Edges by Linda Nagata (science fiction). Inverted Frontier volume 1. I was fooled into buying this by that “volume 1”. It isn’t – it’s a sequel to another series. So it is written as if you know who these characters are (I didn’t), what their backstory and relationship is (I didn’t), and therefore care about it and them (I most certainly didn’t). So do I want to spend several hours reading about smug, irritating guy? Or find out if his relationship with famous but personality-free woman will rekindle on this dangerous mission? Nope, I don’t.
2. Invisible Ecologies by Rachel Armstrong (science fantasy). Nice writing, neat ideas. But the poetry chapters did nothing for me. And the prose chapters were all character portraits with very little actual plot. I wanted something with a bit more drive and grab for my lockdown reading.
3. Future Perfect by Katrina Mountfort (YA science fiction). Dystopian society where everyone has to be Body Perfect, must only be interested in shallow celebrity culture, and sex is banned. Started okay, but it lost me when the heroine – who has banged on about how no-one is allowed outside the city dome and how much she’d like to know what it is like out there – get sent outside with hunky romantic interest and hardly reacts at all to the experience because the landscape isn’t pretty. This is not the author being ironic or doing character development.
4. Metrophage by Richard Kadrey (cyberpunk). I kept this, so I obviously liked it back in the 80s when I originally read it. This time round I just didn’t care about anything that was happening or who it was happening to.
5. Wolf Wind by Jane Wade Scarlet (western). Plodding and with characters displaying sudden changes of opinion for no reason. One minute a person is saying “we must be kind to this poor boy” and the next they hate him.

RPG BOOKS READ IN 2020

Your Best Game Ever by Monty Cook
Kids on Bikes
Bite Marks
Hack the Planet
Scum & Villainy
Judge Dredd & the Worlds of 2000AD
Cortex Prime
Ghost Ops
Tribe 8 (re-read to run a campaign for the Tue group)
Paleomythic
Liminal
Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk
Alien
Legacy: Life Among the Ruins
Worlds of Legacy: Primal Pathways – worldbook for Legacy RPG
Cortex Prime – the very, very late kickstarter finally turned up
Mythic D6
Terra Oblivion - worldbook for Mythic D6 RPG
The Company - only just started reading this one.

 Stabcon this year just hit the spot for me. I always enjoy it, but this year it de-stressed me nicely. 

Friday: I played the worker placement game Evil High Priest. Liked it a lot and may buy it. There was enough variety of stuff to do that I never felt I got stuck, or had to waste workers on pointless actions.

I then scooted off to run Vampire the Masquerade 5th ed. Only 2 players*, but that made little difference to the scenario. They steamed efficiently through the investigation, recruited some supernatural assistance and headed off for the big showdown. Lots of comments from one player about how he liked the new VTM5e system - hunger dice, 3 round combats and so on.

Saturday: In the morning, I ran Summerland 2nd ed, using the published Fire scenario. I was worried that the scenario was a bit rail-roady in places, so I'd added a few extra elements to diverge from the main thread, and I rolled with the flow and let the players invent a derelict Little Chef to pillage for supplies. While the 2nd ed system (Open d6) is far better than 1st ed, I'm not convinced it fits Summerland's mood. Twice Roger's character killed someone with one punch, which feels more martial arts/superhero genre than 'eerie post apocalypse with mystical elements'. 

In the afternoon I chatted with folk, but lack of sleep on the Friday night (too much caffeine, too much heat) meant I wilted mid afternoon and retreated to my room to grab an hour's sleep.

Saturday evening was the fantastic Valkyrie 9 adventure for The Cthulhu Hack, run by Simon Burley. We were all maintenance robots on a moonbase, wondering where all the humans had gone. This is hands down the most fun I've ever had in a Cthulhu adventure. 

Sunday: The morning session I ran United Earth Defence: You are the Resistance, with one no-show out of 5 players.**  I was worried that a resource based game mechanic (if you roll a dice it is spent) might be troublesome if the players didn't grok it and ran out of dice. However, they pounced on the opportunities to do tactical stuff and rack up bonuses before they rolled, so they made every spent dice count. Plus they scavenged for more supplies etc, to refresh some of their dice pools.

A lunchtime chat with one of my best friends, then I scooted off to play the military science fiction Operation Felix run by John Parr. I was the only player to turn up, so it ended up being a one on one game. I had a whole platoon to myself, so it played out as part RPG, part skirmish wargame, and was great fun.

I was staying the Sunday evening after the con was over, so I met up with Peter and we went to a local pub - the Puss in Boots - for an evening meal. Good food, nice staff and a nice chat about roleplaying, Ancient Greek mythology and a novel Peter is writing. 

I love Stabcon. The organisation is a well oiled machine. Michelle and Hammy who run it are lovely folks. A good pool of RPG players and a metric ton of boardgames to play if none of the RPGs take my fancy. The hotel delivers pub food with very generous portions to your gaming table and the staff are all great. 


*Lack of players seemed to be a feature of this year's Summer Stabcon - several RPG games with few or no players. Perhaps fewer RPGers are coming? I think it clashed with Volcon, so that might be a reason.

** No-one had signed up in the reserve slot, which again makes me think there were fewer RPGers than normal at Stabcon. 

Cross-posting a re-edited and expanded version from UK Roleplayers...

Cold And Dark Roleplaying game: a science fiction horror game from Modiphius/Wicked World Games
Did some pre-gens and ran a one off. Overall a decent game, but with some minor speed bumps (see below). I think my regular Monday group would like this game, and I'll run a tweaked version of the scenario at Summer Stabcon.

THE RULEBOOK
Pro: Atmospheric art.
Con: Bit too much boobplate for my liking, and there is one topless woman. However, as she fits into the 'mad as a sackful of stoats' category, with an axe-murderer vibe, it can sort of be forgiven. Sort of. Funny how it is never menopausal women with saggy tits who appear topless in RPG rulebooks?!

Pro: Generally a good layout. A few typos and a couple of things I'm putting down to translation errors. The in-game fiction is well-written and actually interesting! Bonus!
Con: They slacked off and went to the movies on the day they were supposed to be cross-referencing or making a decent index. For instance there is stuff you need know for combat in the skills chapter (what strategy does) and in the Health chapter (what a critical hit does). And it took me ages to find out where they’d hidden the base Durability stat for armour – it’s in the Gear chapter, but NOT as a stat for the different types of armour, or in the descriptions of the different designs of armoured suit. As a result of all this I’ve been pencilling in the margins and on the index, and have post-it notes scattered throughout the book to help me find all the stuff I need. Plus I did some cheat sheets.

Pro: Nice spread of character templates from social types to techy types to shooty, stabby types. There are even two different kinds of engineer, and a xeno-archaeologist. Character gen is simple points spend until...
Con: ...you get to the bit about all the gear and gadgets your environment suit (COG) contains. That requires constant flipping to and fro in the rulebook and would be a nightmare if you have lots of players and only one copy of the book. I’ll be racing to photocopy those pages if I ever run a campaign of Cold & Dark.

Neutral: Not sure why they decided to have so many stats (aptitudes) – there are 8. I was perpetually confused by the difference between Quickness and Reaction. Quickness is only for physical stuff (basically it is dexterity), whereas Reaction can be a speedy physical or mental response. But given that Gut Feeling (hunches and instinct) covers that speedy mental stuff and is also used for movie style crazy stunts or risk taking (e.g. Gut feeling + Driving would pretty much be the only skill used in a Fast & Furious movie), then I think Reaction is a bit superfluous. The other stats are Attention, Brains, Brawn, Clout and Cool.

Con: They really, really like their TLAs (three letter acronyms) in this rulebook. Thank grud there’s a glossary, as I was losing track at times of all the diseases, corporations, organisations and technobabble. One of my players asked why he had a skill in Greater London Council (GLC)! That’s Ghost Line Calculation, or as we mortals know it, hyperspace navigation.

GAME MECHANIC
Pro: I like the core mechanic – it’s simple and has some nice twists. It’s a d8 dice pool system with 7 and 8 as a success. 1 success lets you do the thing you intended. Extra successes are amazingly worthwhile in combat (extra damage) or in time critical tasks (cracking the safe before the security guy turns up) but don’t really do anything in most other situations. There are 2 mechanisms for an automatic success – spending a story point (called a Save point) or having a dice pool of 7 or more in a non-stress situation.

Pro: Cold & Dark also gets over the buckets of dice problem that many dice pool games have, by saying you never roll more than 8 dice, no matter what your pool size is. So if you have 10d8 in your pool, you roll 8 of them and the 9th and 10th dice count as two extra successes if you make the dice roll. I really like that mechanic.

SKILL ROLLS IN ACTUAL PLAY
Pro: No-one failed a non-combat dice roll in my trial scenario. Even Brian, whose dice traditionally hate him and do their best to fumble in every game he plays. If the PC is doing the thing they are good at (e.g. the medic is doing first aid), they’ll likely have about 6 (or more) dice in their pool and the probability of rolling a fail is small. If they do fail, then they have 3 Save points to spend to retcon the failures. Or they can spend the save point in advance and not even bother rolling, and instead narrate how they succeeded. On top of this, every character template has a skill which you’ll get bonuses for and which you cannot botch.

I’m totally happy with the above. But one of my players (not Brian) was complaining that he’d never failed a roll! It takes all sorts, I suppose!

Neutral: The never failing thing also applied to Cool rolls, which are the sanity mechanic, earning you first Cold points, then Dark points. The rules read as if the game should be constantly chipping away at your stiff upper lip (Cold), and eventually tip you over into paranoia and delusions (Dark). However, since:
(a) All it takes to make the roll is a single success,
(b) Mr Average will have a dice pool of 4d8, and
(c) Your character can get Cold points back by spending 5 minutes in a safe place...
...then I think this must be a campaign thing, not a CoC going stark raving bonkers in a 3 hour, one-off, con-game thing. For con-games I might house rule that you roll against Cool, not against Cool x 2, as is normal for an attribute roll.

As a side note, a large source of sanity rolls in my scenario was when one of the players decided to systematically murder everyone in the colony on the grounds that they might be infected with chestburster type aliens… despite the fact that the Medic had a tricorder/scanner which could instantly prove the NPCs were/weren’t infected!

COMBAT
Pro: Is quick and fun. We only did really did firearms combat in the scenario I ran, with a smidgen of alien creatures pouncing on people. It did become clear that the standard stats for NPC human beings makes them waaaaaaay tougher than some of the alien gribbly things. Mainly because they have oodles of hit points (14 + Brawn score, so Mrs Average is 16), and take no dice penalties until they’ve taken 8 points of damage. Some of the gribblies, wolves and big cats only have 12 hit points, and most of the PCs take dice penalties at 6 points of damage. I guess the critical hit rule – you can do an instant kill if you do 10+ damage in one hit – is the way they get around slowly whittling down the HP. Some of the gribblies have the special ability that they are immune to critical hits.

So if it had come down to a knife fight or bar-room brawl, I think combat would be more of a grind. It certainly took several shots with a pistol to kill unarmoured NPCs. If you want to kill the Queen Alien from Aliens, bring anti-tank weapons with you!

Con: One discovery was that it doesn’t take much armour to render most pistols and knives (almost) useless. This is because of the damage mechanic – getting 1 success does base damage (e.g. 2 for a wimpy pistol, 4 or 5 for a heavy pistol), and then each extra success would add +1 or +2 to that. So the marine PC who had armour value of 5 requires 6 damage to actually hurt. That means you need 5 successes with a wimpy pistol. Since the marine’s defence subtracts from the attacker’s dice pool, Mr Wimpy Pistol Owner needs a minimum dice pool of 7 to damage the marine… and in reality the probabilities mean that Mr Wimpy Pistol requires 10+ in their dice pool. My players quickly switched to fully automatic and using unfeasibly large amounts of explosives!