This week's reads:
Dogs in the Vineyard by D. Vincent Baker: My work on my Lore24 setting caused me to pull this one back out and give it a proper read. It's quite clever in a lot of ways - the worldbuilding is solid, the voice to the reader is open and generally explicable (though sometimes I had to double back to make sure of something), and the dice mechanic is neat. I think as with many experimental games it gets caught up in its own dice mechanical games where the mechanic itself becomes the game, but I'd need to play it to see. I know I've run into that problem myself sometimes. Still, by making the players think about storytelling and how they interact with the game differently, Baker did great work here.
A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett: These are some? Most? All? of the "lost" Pratchett stories that he had alluded to from his days as a newspaperman. And they're cute. They're not much more than that, and they don't try to be. They are made to raise a smile, maybe a chuckle, take up several column inches, and then you move on to read about trade negotiations or Cold War tensions. But in them you can see the flashes of brilliance and the bare bones of storytelling that will eventually grow into Sir Terry. If you're a fan of the man, these are worth the time.
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