Three books and future reading

Last night I finished "Madness in London Town", the Goodman Games Call of Cthulhu module that I had been reading for a couple of days. Then, because I ended up having more time than I thought, I read the Legacy of Fire Player's Guide in preparation for reading the adventure path shortly. But, before I do, I wanted to finish the 3.5 compatible adventure paths, stand-alone modules, and Chronicles books all at the same time. I had six of each. Rather than starting immediately with the adventure path, I read the next Chronicles book instead, Into the Darklands, since it was mostly aligned with the last adventure path after all. In fact, I've got two more to read still before I get the Katapesh one, which is aligned with my current adventure path that I need to start. I'll probably round robin the three trawls, with their six portions:

Chronicles:

1. Into the Darklands
2. Guide to Absalom
3. Dragons Revisited
4. Dark Markets: A Guide to Katapesh
5. The Great Beyond
6. Dungeon Denizens Revisited

Stand-along modules

1. Treasure of Chimera Cove
2. Hungry Are the Dead
3. The Pact Stone Pyramid
4. Clash of the Kingslayers
5. Blood of the Dragonscar
6. Beyond the Vault of Souls

Legacy of Fire adventure path

1. Howl of the Carrion King
2. House of the Beast
3. The Jackal's Price
4. The End of Eternity
5. The Impossible Eye
6. The Final Wish

But before I read any more of either of these, I want to pick up a few other things; I want to read my hard-copies that I got recently of Occult Adventures and Horror Adventures during October while they fit seasonally. And I also want to read the next SPCM campaign, in four chapters, Dark Worlds before reading the Paizo adventure path. That'll keep me hopping. UPDATE: I'm enjoying Occult Adventures less than I thought that I would. I'm still reading it, but I want to get something else in there after all. I'm also considering doing Legacy of Fire before Dark Worlds after all. I think this weekend, I want to read "Treasure of Chimera Cove" and then decide once and for all whether to try and slam through Dark Worlds as fast as I can, or defer it until after this run of D&D 3.5 compatible Pathfinder stuff is finished, after which I can roll over all Paizo trawls to PFRPG compatible ones. Not that that makes much of a difference, given that the two systems are basically the same other than a bump in complexity of running your character and a power bump. Reading the adventures of 3.5 vs PFRPG, you can barely tell the difference, and even then, only if you get into the weeds with the stat blocks of the NPCs and monsters anyway.

I do have some non-gaming book in my queue too. I'm about halfway through my Celtic mythology/folklore book, I've picked up my copy of Pride & Prejudice, and I've got the next three books of the James Silke Horned Helmet books on the short list. I don't know how fast I can read all of this or how long it will really take, but I've at least got a list of things to do.

I really like how Paizo took the Underdark concept and made it, in most respects, more Lovecraftian. In fact, they specifically in a small side-bar, made that comment, that it was largely based on a combination of the underground stuff of "The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath" and "The Mound" with some Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs (Journey to the Center of the Earth and Pellucidar) thrown in too. And the Shaver mystery stuff too, especially with their redone derro. I like the skum as a kind of replacement Deep One, although honestly 5e's interpretation of them as a slimy much more aberrant, aboleth like creature rather than just a "fish man" is even better.

The book talks a lot about the drow, of course, and in the wake of the OGL crisis a few years ago, Paizo seems to have decided that they don't even have drow in Golarion at all anymore. That seems really extreme; they took the skum and renamed them ulat-kini, and they took the aboleths and renamed them alghollthu. Why couldn't they just rename the drow as svartalfar or dokkalfar, maybe make an update or two to not be "too D&Dish" and keep them? Weird.

I don't necessarily love the drow. They were cool until they got a little bit over-exposed, and now I'm a little over them, but I have no reason to dislike them either, I'm just a little tired of them and not as interested in seeing them as I used to be. Let them stay. Change the name, if you really need to. But you shouldn't. Drow comes from Scottish folklore. But if you do need to, then like I said, svartalfar or dokkalfer is already out there in mythology too.