Reading updates

Council of Thieves... coming soon!

Some of the personal life issues that were really, really stressing me out are finally resolving, and reasonably satisfactorily. I'll be busy; I have my daughter and her family in town on Friday for a week, but otherwise, I'll probably start doing a little better on reading. Thought it might be a good time for a little update on my reading plans. I always do these as a kind of freeform brainstorming session, where I talk about my plans as as I write, they mature, develop and evolve. As noted recently, I just had a couple of big finishes; I finished the 250+ page Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting and decided that GOLARION REMIXED is going to be less systemic than EBERRON REMIXED was, and I might utilize it as part of my efforts reading their adventure paths rather than working through the setting book, as I did with Eberron. I'll talk about modifications that I'd make more in the context of how I'd use the adventure paths as I read them. Speaking of which, of course, that's the single biggest and most "intimidating" trawl in my reads. But I'm taking a brief break from it to finish some other stuff before I dive into the next adventure path, Legacy of Fire. Also, as I read Legacy, I'm going to leapfrog adventure path modules with stand-alone modules, and I'll finish the D&D 3.5 compatible adventures in both trawls at the same time. Of course, since PFRPG is almost identical to 3.5 except for a slight power scaling upwards and a few other minor details, I doubt I'll really even notice the difference. 

But before I read that, I'm reading Silver Marches. This is a hard one to read. Way too much detail, and little of the detail is super useful; I read the chapter on cities last night, and found my attention wandering; I'd look at a page I just read and realize that I had no idea what it just said. When I get to later chapters that have small adventures in them, I think I'll do better, but I'm not really loving this product. In fact, I'm not really loving the 3e FR at all. It's very much living up to exactly what my expectations were for it, i.e., there's some good stuff, but it's couched in a context of cozy, Canadian liberal high fantasy that I don't care for, meaning that I'm just not really digging it, honestly. Also, before I turn to Legacy of Fire, I want to finish that book, the next (very similar sized) book in the Eberron Trawl, Five Nations, which I haven't ever read before and I didn't buy when it was new because it sounded like it kind of retreaded a lot of the same material that the campaign setting had already done (although I'm sure that that won't actually end up having been true when I read it.) I'm also reading "Bastion of Broken Souls" which is the last of the pseudo-adventure path adventures for 3e. There are, of course, more adventures for 3e, but up to this point, they had been level set so that they could in theory have been played back to back. That will no longer be true with the remining 3e and 3.5 adventures, which are more explicitly stand-alone after this. The little free adventure "Caves of Shadow" and the Level 1 adventure "Fight at Tristor" are both short and will come next after the pseudo-adventure path. But finishing the pseudo-adventure path will certainly feel like the end of a chapter, and I'll probably "rest" that whole trawl for a little while after I do. 

I'm not really close to finishing off any of the trawls, but I do have some trawls where I'm close to hitting a major milestone and finishing off a "chapter" if you will of the trawl, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. 

Meanwhile, I've been doing so many gaming books that I haven't been reading any of my novels or other fiction books, which I kind of miss. I've got the next three of the Death Dealer James Silke series queued up. I've got the three Timothy Zahn old-fashioned post Return of the Jedi Star Wars trilogy. I've got Dracula. I've got the first five John Carter books in an omnibus. I've got three Robert Ludlum classics in an omnibus. I've got the Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (not actually complete, as it doesn't show the stuff that was credited to someone else but he ghost wrote. But I recently read a compilation of all of that stuff anyway.) Ever since I read the Dark Elf Trilogy earlier this year, I've been kind of in the mood to read Icewind Dale trilogy again too, even though I did about three years ago. I've got the Von Carsten trilogy in an omnibus. I've got the Mathias Thulman trilogy queued up and haven't read that in sixteen or more years. I've also still got the rest of the "T. H. Lain" D&D 3e iconics novels to read. 

Trying to decide which physical game books to read in the nearish term too. Like I said yesterday, I've already got three in my backpack, Monster Manual III, Into the Darklands and Dark Markets: Guide to Katapesh. I also want to read Horror Adventures and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in the relatively near term, as part of a "Halloween read" if you will. After that, I still have, of course, Monster Manual IV and V and the Draconomicon for monstrous books, and the full complete series to read, as well as the psionics stuff. Those are all relatively short term 3.5 books that I've got targeted to read, but by short term, I mean between now and the end of the year and maybe even a little bit beyond.

I see that Occult Adventures is priced pretty low; less than $20. I'm tempted to scare up a hard copy of that book too.