As I normally do for anthologies, here is a series of mini reviews for each of the short stories:

Lean In: The Lord of Hell is Coming (Ericka Kahler): I don’t want to give anything away about this delightful story. I will say that it does an amazing job of flipping many tropes on their head and, in a funny way, actually made me rethink the premises behind many of those tropes.

I was a kickstarter backer for this book.

Back when Goldeneye first came out, the only first person shooter I’d played was a few short sessions of Wolfenstein 3D that my dad had introduced me to a few years before. I found it hard and boring and didn’t try to play all that much. When we rented Goldeneye, it was the first time I found myself enjoying the genre. A great deal of that came from the great mix of humor and seriousness in the game. We had a ton of fun playing “slappers only”.

I am extremely late in posting this, but I’ve been incredibly busy in 2026. In 2025 I ended up playing 2 days (48 hours) less than in 2024. It would have been way less if I hadn’t been playing Slay the Spire while exercising. More on that below.

Games Played in 2025

1. Slay the Spire (4 days, 22:42:57): You may remember that, a few years ago, I played a lot of Slay the Spire but eventually decided Monster Train was better. Before going on a flight I saw that this game was on sale in the Google Play store. It joined Gwent as the second game on my phone. Having it available for random moments of play made its play time rise up throughout the year. In fact, on the all-time charts it rose from the 39th position to the #4 position. I’ve been working, without success, on beating the final area of the game (essentially new game +).

Story

After our long rest in the library, Flint suggested we explore further. However, when we tried to go down the next hallway, a powerful wind blew us back. Flint was immediately blown back. Aghell was able to stay there, but became exhausted. Scrabble suggested that killing the creature might remove the spell on the hallway. The crew agreed with that and decided that we would use what we learned to kill the firegeist. We filled buckets from the ship with seawater and hauled back into the room with the monster.

I believe this was the first book released for Starfinder Second Edition. As such it had to serve as an introduction to the system as well as what had changed in the solar system since the first edition. Unlike many TTRPG companies, Paizo likes to advance the story of the world and change things up as time goes on.

However, the best part of the way this book is organized is that the first few chapters are based on the types of campaigns you might run - horror, science fiction, fantasy, weird, and so on. For each type of campaign, the writer suggests planets the GM might go to and some campaign starters whether it’s for a one-shot or a long campaign. Just this section alone is worth getting this book.