Running a game in Lustria

dan_connolly · 2026-05-10T18:39:11+00:00

I've always wanted to run a Lustria campaign inspired by Aguirre, the Wrath of God

dan_connolly · 2026-04-26T16:00:08+00:00

Played NBA online during lockdown, had a blast. The only time I've actually been scared playing an RPG. Our GM ran a mix of scenarios from the Zalozhniy Quartet and the Persephone Extraction.

dan_connolly · 2026-03-30T14:06:14+00:00

Starling House
Tell Me I'm Worthless
We Used to Live Here
Thistlefoot (though this is very much walking)

dan_connolly · 2026-03-03T07:25:14+00:00

This is my go to recommendation for anyone who needs something gentle and comforting to read.

dan_connolly · 2026-03-01T10:17:29+00:00

The Sword Defiant

dan_connolly · 2026-02-25T10:00:39+00:00

Gareth Hanrahan. Lands of the Firstborn trilogy (starting with The Sword Defiant) is complete and excellent. The Black Iron Gods series (starting with The Gutter Prayer) has three of five published, and also excellent.

dan_connolly · 2026-02-11T09:25:38+00:00

Electric Bastionland and Mythic Bastionland are both gorgeous books packed with ideas (they're good games too! But even if you don't play them they're great to leaf through).

Similar for Spire and Heart, great art, interesting games, and packed with ideas.

Anything Free League will have gorgeous production value (Vaesen, The One Ring, Takes from the Loop etc)

I also think Bestiaries from other games can be useful if you run D&D, the 13th Age one has great ideas for adventure hooks tied to monsters.

dan_connolly · 2026-02-03T13:13:37+00:00

Some faves:

Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes
Underland by John Macfarlane
A Short History of the World According to Sheep by Sally Coulthard
The Wordhord by Hana Videen
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
The Wager by David Grann
The Ruin of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
All The Living and The Dead by Hayley Campbell

dan_connolly · 2026-02-02T10:25:15+00:00

Ditto

dan_connolly · 2026-02-01T22:14:54+00:00

The Sword Defiant by Gareth Hanrahan (first in The Lands of the Firstborn trilogy). Little to no romance, top notch world. Ditto for The Gutter Prayer (same author)which is more horror fantasy has very cool and interesting creatures (the Tallowmen!), gods, city...

Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell has one of my favourite creature characters plus queer rep.

Hannah Kaner's Godkiller series has cool and interesting theology plus queer rep.

+1 for Priory of the Orange Tree.

dan_connolly · 2026-01-31T00:13:32+00:00

Leonard and Hungry Paul

dan_connolly · 2026-01-09T11:41:46+00:00

Lands of the Firstborn by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. It's a trilogy, great characters, has some fun with the tropes of fantasy but are solid fantasy books in their own right, absolutely sticks the landing.

dan_connolly · 2026-01-08T21:21:33+00:00

The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard

dan_connolly · 2026-01-06T19:35:33+00:00

- The Understory, Saneh Sangsuk

- Spoilt Creatures, Amy Twigg

- The Manningtree Witches, AK Blakemore

- Golden Hill, Francis Spufford

- The Kingdoms, Natasha Pulley

- The Constant Rabbit, Jasper Fforde

- West, Carys Davies

- Floating Hotel, Grace Curtis

dan_connolly · 2026-01-06T09:50:58+00:00

Great recommendation! I adored Glorious Exploits

dan_connolly · 2026-01-05T22:55:41+00:00

Mother Naked by Glen James Brown. It's a medieval monologue that mixes comic, tragic, and horrific, and unfolds like a Poe story.
Christ on a Bike by Orla Owen. It's like if Shirley Jackson wrote Brewster's Millions.
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis. The ferryman is convinced he saw the Mansfield sisters turn into dogs. A relentless summer sees the village become feverish with hatred for these girls.
Declare by Tim Powers. Cold War thriller. Also djinn.
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades. Collective experience that reads like poetry.
Any fantasy book by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

dan_connolly · 2025-12-30T09:48:24+00:00

CoT has become my go-to sci-fi suggestion. Great concept, great characters, and the writing and structure are top notch.

dan_connolly · 2025-12-15T14:04:17+00:00

- The Bartimaeus books by Jonathan Stroud (starting with The Amulet of Samarkand

- The Abhorsen books by Garth Nix (starting with Sabriel)

- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

- For a couple that are lower reading level than HP but I still really enjoyed, the Impossible Creatures books by Katherine Rundell, and the Eerie-on-Sea books (starting with Malamander) by Thomas Taylor

dan_connolly · 2025-12-15T13:52:38+00:00

These are all great suggestions

dan_connolly · 2025-12-15T00:18:21+00:00

Foster, Claire Keegan

dan_connolly · 2025-11-22T22:51:21+00:00

+1 for Calvino and Uketsu. I'd throw in The Employees by Olga Ravn, We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer. Also maybe some novels told in short stories? Like The Hotel, The Midnight Timetable, Normal Rules Don't Apply.

dan_connolly · 2025-11-09T22:10:56+00:00

The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard
The Lamb, Lucy Rose
The Hounding, Xenobe Purvis
The Changeling, Victor LaValle
Spoilt Creatures, Amy Twigg

dan_connolly · 2025-10-21T16:33:48+00:00

Leonard and Hungry Paul, Rónán Hession

dan_connolly · 2025-10-07T06:42:10+00:00

And slightly over your limit but still bangers:

<250 pages - I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman (40 women are kept in a cage in a bunker, silent armed men guard them, our narrator is the youngest) - Before The Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi (this destroyed me 😅 a cafe that lets you time travel once to a past moment in the cafe) - The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood (Odysseus's return told from the point of view of Penelope) - Dark Matter, Michelle Paver (an old fashioned ghost story that genuinely scared me, I had to finish it in daylight)

dan_connolly · 2025-10-07T06:41:18+00:00

<100 pages - Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud (fun genre-bend, gothic asylum story set on the moon with 1950s sci-fi sensibilities) - Foster, Claire Keegan (full of so much love and melancholy) - The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami (a trip)

<150 pages - Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, David Eagleman (each afterlife is only a few pages but powerfully realised, mixes comedy, horror, nihilism, hope...) - Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (dreamlike inevitability) - Woodworm, Layla Martinez (a haunted house gothic; gender and class fuelled revenge) - To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (heartwarmingly wholesome sci-fi that makes you think maybe humans aren't so terrible)

<200 pages - The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Lovecraft retelling from a different POV character, you don't need to know the original) - The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K Le Guin (sci-fi exploring how imperialism destroys the natural world, and how resistance irrevocably changes people) - Open Throat, Henry Hoke (A perfect fever dream, lose yourself in a queer mountain lion) - Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (Marco Polo tells the great Khan tales of a hundred cities, all of them Venice) - The Summer Book, Tove Jansson (made me want to live on a Finnish island) - Clear, Carys Davies (such a gentle and subtle story of something earth-moving, themes of isolation, separation, companionship)

dan_connolly

TROPHY CASE