It’s pretty rare for me to find an anthology in which I love every story, but this one really hit it out of the park! Here are my per-story reviews:

Intro: Getting Martha Wells to write the intro is an amazing get! She also does a great job pointing out what we are saying about ourselves (humanity) with our AI/robot stories. (Mostly related to slavery) It reminds me A LOT about recent discourse about alien invasion narratives and what that says about collective guilt about colonialism. Brilliant intro and it resonates even more in 2026.

Free TTRPG Day Experience

This was my second year participating in Free TTRPG day. Last year I was in New York at the time and visited a shop in Brooklyn. This time I was home and decided to visit on of my local shops, Games and Stuff. The line had been long in 2025, but the shop in New York was tiny so I assumed the line, if one manifest would move rather quickly.

Our Game

How did things go?

The party started off by trying to hack into the charging station from the lobby. There weren’t really any ports there for them to interface with. They then wanted to go up the elevator, but the warning about the effects of the Aballon Sun up there deterred them. Satisfied that they had taken all the precations possible, they entered the main area. There they were greeted by Shalalamula (a seksevariak) artist who enjoys using mind-altering substances to enhance his worship of Triune. Nitpick, the hacker witchwarper of the group attempted to cobble together an interface between his comm unit and the professor’s plinth, but it was unsuccessful. He went outside and bought a dongle to convert the different interfaces. Nitpick’s hacking skills failed him and Jadaena was able to help gain access. From there the party was able to learn about Tierny’s suspicions and the fact that someone else had attempted to gain access to his backups. After that, Nitpick opened the chamber and they discovered Tierny’s body and note. After distributing the contents of the commercial null chamber, they did some more investigating. Nitpick tried to hack into the cameras in the room and once again needed Jadaena’s help. They were able to see Tierny enter, but after that the image was glitched.

Story

We are bringing the White Wargs Reavers a Longboat and Trollkin. (Although there was a fight among the crew as to whether to murder the Trollkin before presenting them to the dwarves) As we row ashore, a female dwarf greets us. She tells us that the dwarf we were seeking Knudstoneson is dead.

Trollkin stole an albino wharg puppy (named Snowball) from the village, a sacred animal to the village. While the pup is missing they cannot help us. We tell her what we learned during the interrogation:

After the flyting contest, we are hired by a ship merchant who wants us to help them. They need us to take the remaining ship to Wolfheim to find their cousin Knudstoneson (dwarf). From there we need to head to the White Warg Village north of Wolfheim. Once there, we need to convince him and his crew, the White Warg Reavers, to see if they can help this person. We are offered 500GP to do the job were given a crewed ship to get there. Before leaving, I (Scrabble) went carousing and developed a contact within the village.

We hauled all our treasure onto the ship and gave the captain what was due as members of the ship.

Ghada tries to intimidate the pirates to get to keep more of the booty. The captain smiles and says “no”. The rest of us split our booty - 132 GP each.

As we get closer to the shore we see that the Port of Stannisgard is on fire. A red dragon came and attacked the city. (Visandred is name of dragon)

Our Game

How did things go?

The party started off by going to the vending area and buying some food and medical items. They also found a credstick used for unlimited food from the university’s cafeteria. They then went to the clinic and got some free mods.

Afterwards it was time to head to Club Magenta. The group realized they couldn’t get into the VIP area to see Vazylyza, whom they had a had a lead on as someone who’s spoken to Professor Tierny about First Ones relics. There Jaedana went to the small stakes tables to try and win enough money to play at the high stakes table to perhaps get a chance to impress Vazylyza. Jaedana did a great job and attracted the attention of Lucky Compilation of Numbers, who related that he lost his job after gambling away some First Ones relics in a game with Vazylyza. Eventually, Nitpick hacked the casino systems to make it seem like Jaedana had enough money for a bet at the large stakes table. There he won big and was admitted into the VIP area.

I got a copy of the book free as part of Goodreads Giveaways.

I’m a big history geek. Anyone who talks to me long enough has heard me make reference to history, whether relatively recent or in the distant past. So when this book came up on Goodreads Giveaways I already had it in my To Read list and figured it was worth a shot at getting the book for free.

For the last 6 or so months I’ve been saying all over the internet (this blog, enworld, Blue Sky) that the Cosmere TTRPG’s use of the 3 action economy had piqued my curiosity in Paizo’s 2e *finder systems. This last Friday, I FINALLY got to run the Starfinder adventure that I’ve been dying to run for my Cosmere group for the past few months - Murder in Metal City. (Buy it directly from Paizo if you are part of Paizo Plus and want the points OR want to bundle it with the PDF or Buy it directly from FoundryVTT’s marketplace). I have to say that I was not disappointed.

I was an early adopter of KDE’s activities when they were first introduced in KDE 4. From what I read of various blog posts by KDE developers I’m in the minority. It’s hard enough for folks to get the concept of virtual desktops (although now with both OSX and Windows including the features maybe more folks are getting used to it), but activities creates an orthogonal virtual set of desktops. I wrote a blog post back in 2015 where I spoke about how activities helps me focus on my computer. Nowadays, I might make an analogy to Vivaldi’s workspaces and tabs (which has recently also been adopted by Firefox and Zen).