Joseph’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2012)

Joseph’s comments from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.

Yeah, from a tabletop RPG perspective (and possibly even from a fiction perspective), a nine-character party is kind of unwieldy -- probably 3-5 is a better & more manageable size.

I've said this before, but I think Gygax's real genius was grafting LotR's party structure onto Howardian sword & sorcery adventures (which were primarily about lone heroes, or maybe about a hero & a companion or, at best, a pair of heroes).

Clint wrote: "Appendix N purist might disagree, but I am counting ERB’s Lunar trilogy as tethered to Appendix N as it is technically in the John Carter universe. Consequently, I could make the same argument for ..."

I remember bouncing off Moon Maid back in the day; I should probably give it another try, especially since I have the Bison Press edition.

As for Appendix N proper, I think I might end up reading Sign of the Labrys since it's available for Kindle and I believe Margaret St. Clair is the only Appendix N author I've never actually read (even if I haven't always read the specific recommended works).

I'm pretty sure the only author I haven't read is Margaret St. Clair, even if I haven't necessarily read the specific titles listed in every case.

Podcast link:

https://appendixnbookclub.com/

(Myself, I subscribe to the feed on iTunes, but it's also available in the other usual places.)

A couple guys (Jeff Goad and Ngo Vinh-Hoi, plus the occasional guest star) getting together to read & discuss every book and/or author mentioned by Gygax in Appendix N, plus the occasional book that should've been mentioned but wasn't (Zothique, for example).

They're up to 28 episodes now, including multiple Conans (yes, they're reading the Lancer/Ace editions, because that's what would've been available to Gygax) and multiple Lankhmars.

Episodes are usually about half a discussion of the book (from a literary and historical perspective) and half a discussion of what sorts of elements of D&D Gygax might have been lifting from the book.

(And they're both very much into the old-school renaissance/Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics school of RPGing.)

I've really enjoyed all of the episodes I've listened to, and am sad that now I have to wait for new ones to be released. They're incredibly ambitious -- their list of books for discussion has 290 entries, which would keep them going for probably another decade if not more.

S.E. wrote: "Cool. I may ask you to repost in the groupread section"

Happily! It really is a great podcast.

Jason M wrote: "Joseph wrote: " I've also listened now to the entire Appendix N Book Club podcast and recommend it highly. Great,..."

wow, might have to listen to that. where would I find this?"

https://appendixnbookclub.com/ is their website; they're also on Twitter & Facebook. I subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes, but you can also get the episodes directly or through other services, I'm sure.

I had a few days on airplanes for a work trip, so I finished Night's Sorceries, read both of Joseph Brassey's Drifting Lands books (Skyfarer and Dragon Road, both of which were a lot of fun) and started some actual old-school sword & sorcery, the new DMR collection of Clifford Ball's fiction, The Thief of Forthe and Other Stories. (Which, to be clear, only has three actual sword & sorcery stories, and I'd read at least one, if not two, in some of Lin Carter's anthologies; but it's nice to have everything collected and available on my Kindle.)

Richard wrote: "On kindle I'm reading Pass on the Cup of Dreams, which is the sequel to The Mace of Souls."

Mace of Souls is one of those books that's been sitting on my shelf for oh, 25 years and I don't think I ever read it. Was happy to learn recently (from Black Gate) that he's written further novels set in that world, and someday I'll get around to them.

For myself, I just started Night's Sorceries, the fifth & last of Tanith Lee's Flat Earth books.

W E wrote: "They do tend to back up, don't they? "

I pretty much abandoned any pretense of ever being caught up many years ago.

W E wrote: "Really liked the first book in the series, nice mix of grounded realism with an epic scope. The Crown of the Conqueror"

That's another one of those that's been sitting on my shelf (and on my Kindle) for, um, rather a long time. Glad to hear good things about it.

S.wagenaar wrote: "https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/171899...#

Not currently reading, but certainly must read soon..."

That does look tempting ...

Because it's this month's Sword & Laser pick, I just started Night's Master by Tanith Lee, which will inevitably lead to a reread of all five Flat Earth books.

S.E. wrote: "I am thinking Appendix N needs to be a Groupread"

I would be in favor of that.

Also, I've also listened now to the entire Appendix N Book Club podcast and recommend it highly. Great, well-informed discussions about the books both as works of fiction and as inspiration for the game.

Never done one of those, but I did do an escape room (vaguely Indiana Jones-themed) a couple of months ago and had a good time of it.

I ran into the same problem when I picked up a couple of issues of Black Gate in PDF -- PDF is pretty much unreadable on my Kindle, and when I tried to convert, the two-column layout meant I would've had to hand-correct pretty much every single line. Sigh.

I'm guessing it's not practical, especially with all of the interior art, but I'd love a straight text-only (or text-mostly) .mobi or .epub version.

I can't begin to count how many pages I read back in the day with a Mountain Dew in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other. Well, OK, I had the book in one hand while using the other hand for snacking purposes, but you know what I mean.

Time for Niall of the Far Travels Collected by Gardner F. Fox -- I know I read at least a few of the stories back when they were originally appearing in Dragon Magazine.

I watched this sometime not too long ago and yes, it was pretty cool, surprisingly so considering the source.

Nik wrote: "I will check that out. I'm willing to bet their assessment of the ScyFy adaptation (back when it was still SciFi) is not positive."

All I've seen of the SyFy adaptation is the trailer, and that alone was enough to send me screaming towards the horizon.

Nice! I know I have at least some of those, but should probably track down the rest.