Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
Here is a link to T Kingfisher’s website.
Here is the transcript of the show.:
Speaker A
00:00:01.600 - 00:00:32.680
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience.
I'm your host, Eric Jackson of K Square Productions, and I'm here with three new book club members, Petra Jackel, Colleen Noctreb and Roger Alex Goudreau. And today we journey into a fairy tale land created by author T Kingfisher in her book Nettle and Bone.
We hope you enjoy our trip into this story that blends homey pragmatism, macabre hope, punk, and a hefty dose of rage against the patriarchy. Let's get into the conversation. Conversation.
Speaker B
00:00:35.660 - 00:00:40.052
I'm going to start with patron and say, Pedro, would you introduce yourself and tell us about.
Speaker C
00:00:40.076 - 00:01:40.170
Your name is Petra Jackal. I've been gaming for a very, very, very long time. I probably started when I was around 14 or 15 years old.
Been consistently gaming since probably the. One of the most transformative game experiences I had actually was some very early years of carnage. I ran a. I didn't run.
I was in a game Dresden Fiasco. And it's the first time I had been exposed to the Fiasco system.
And I absolutely fell in love with it and I bought one immediately and I learned how to play and I started playing in the concert In New England, GMing the game and discovered I'm one of the few people who actually game the Fiasco system. And I've been doing this now for years. And I am absolutely in love with the game.
And it's been some of the best experiences I've had as a game master is doing the Fiasco system.
Speaker B
00:01:42.870 - 00:01:47.598
All right, fantastic. Colleen, do you want to take up your introduction next?
Speaker D
00:01:47.654 - 00:02:44.060
Hello, I'm Colleen and I'm an avid gamer, tabletop gamer, video gamer, and also game designer. I've played with Petra. One of my favorite games was a fiasco game that she ran at a mini housecon. And everything just went perfectly.
It felt just like a movie. We were doing a casino heist. I was a little lady with her walker and her cigarettes, and the whole place blew up.
And in a glorious fashion, very much like the most heist ever.
Everyone was just on point, playing off of each other, giving each other different leads, allowing people to make mistakes in her scene so that we could play off different conflicts. It was just the most fantastic game a Fiasco ever played. So I also play Fiasco. I play a lot of indie games.
I also play D and D and other more popular and more modern games. Generally, anything you can put in front of me, I'll play it.
Speaker B
00:02:45.480 - 00:02:49.552
Okay, Roger Are you up? You ready to take your swing at bat?
Speaker E
00:02:49.616 - 00:04:11.154
Absolutely. Hey everyone, I'm Roger, last name is Alex Godreau. Like others, I have been playing since I was 13 years old.
So I've been playing D and D for 44 years and change absent some gaps in there where we tried other things. I've played every edition of D and D and I have loved them all, each for their own special quirks.
In the dark gap between second and third editions, I played a lot of Earthdawn and Shadowrun and that was a lot of fun. And I've dabbled with far too many games to mention across so many genres.
I have at least a dozen RPGs on my bookshelves that I have read and are unlikely ever to get to play. And I'm really interested to try the Cipher system. And one day I will convince my regular gaming group to give it a shot.
In terms of a fun gaming experience, I think I'll say the finale of the first full length third edition campaign that I ran. And honestly, it was the first campaign that ever got to a full and satisfying conclusion.
It was a full weekend of 25th level epic D and D play with massive battles and clashes between heroes and signature villains. And there were emotional deaths and sacrifices and the final defeat of the campaign villain. And everyone loved it. We. We just were having so much fun.
We completely blew off a bunch of other stuff that we were supposed to do and it was glorious.
Speaker D
00:04:11.202 - 00:04:13.750
Was it a wedding, Roger? Did you blow off a wedding?
Speaker E
00:04:14.410 - 00:04:16.150
I did not blow off a wedding.
Speaker B
00:04:16.589 - 00:05:37.542
Yep. My name is Eric Jackson and I'm the host of this show. And my main claim to fame is that I'm the host of this show. My.
My gaming anecdote is that I started this podcast because I love books and I love gaming and I steal so much of my current games from worlds that I have read about that I was like, okay, well, we need to make a podcast about that. So here I am and that's what I'm doing. And today we're going to talk about Nettle and Bone.
Nettle and Bone tells the story of Mara, a princess nun, rescuing her sister from an abusive marriage.
The author, T Kingfisher, uses the bones of the mythic fairy tale and combines it with homey pragmatism to create a charming and macabre piece of hope, Punk, where good people work together to triumph over oppressive structures.
The plot moves Mara through the gathering of companions in strange fey places, ending in a dungeon crawl through a labyrinthian crypt to break an Ancient curse. The writing deftly balances the grim circumstances with humor, heart, and a hefty dose of rage against patriarchal injustice.
That's my summary of the book. Does anybody want to pipe in with anything in particular in that summary that I missed?
Speaker E
00:05:37.686 - 00:05:59.742
I think I don't recall if you, if you said it. I was checking my notes.
I think I would highlight the deft use of moments of humor and sort of the bonedog in particular, but the deft use of humor to weave it in to kind of blunt the edge of the criticism just enough to make it easy to consume.
Speaker C
00:05:59.806 - 00:06:20.490
And the hope that she kind of sprinkles in with the relationships between the main characters, sort of dulled the edge at times of the kind of oppressiveness of the patriarchy and the dark happenings that are occurring for the main character, Sister. She does a great job with balancing that stuff within the. Within the contents of the story.
Speaker B
00:06:20.610 - 00:06:22.330
Go ahead, Colleen. Did you have something to say?
Speaker D
00:06:22.370 - 00:06:50.148
Oh, just. She's just an excellent author in how she forms dark fairy tales. She has several books in that genre as well as horror.
So it's definitely someone worth picking up because just. Just a new twist on how to approach any kind of fairy tale or like what Petra was saying.
She weaves the relationships between these characters very, very well. They all play off of each other and it's just a delightful way, but would be indicative of how you'd see players playing at a table.
Speaker B
00:06:50.324 - 00:07:48.860
For those of you who are less in the book world, the Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is one of the T Kingfisher books, as well as there's an entire series of Romantasy books by T Kingfisher, which is the Paladin series. But T Kingfisher is a prolific fantasy person and they. You should read everything that they write because it's all good.
Now that we've talked about this idea of this dark but hopeful story working against injustice in a fairy tale based structure.
So my question is, if you wanted to run a game like that, if you wanted to, if you wanted to put your players into us, into that state of mind and run them through something very similar to what happens here, what game system might you want to try that in? I'm going to start with Roger first on this one. Roger, what do you think?
Speaker E
00:07:48.980 - 00:11:56.276
Well, I have two thoughts. Having played D and D for the majority of my life, my first thoughts are how do I do this in D and D?
And so naturally I tend to think of how would I represent the main characters? Because as Colleen said earlier. It's like these are people sitting around a table playing these characters and thinking about representing them.
My first thoughts are that like the Dust Witch is a sorcerer with necromancy focused spells. I see Aunt Agnes the fairy godmother as a warlock. She's clearly got a Fae pack. She obviously has Bestow Curse as one of her spells.
Fenris is a warrior. I'm a little uncertain on Mara. I could go like kind of rogue. But she also builds magic items. So maybe artificer. I don't know.
I'm not, I'm undecided there. Obviously the Dust palace is a dungeon, right? And the Goblin market is just an amazing encounter. There's a lot of great things happening in there.
That whole negotiation scene is like a skill challenge for sort of 4th edition terms. But since I have this burning desire to play cipher system, I thought maybe I'd try capturing this in the cipher system.
And for those who don't know, the Cypher system is kind of a generic. It's meant to be generic. It can apply to any genre. And the core conceit is that you can describe your character in a single sentence.
Basically you are an adjective, noun, who verbs. So three components of the sentence have game mechanics. So the noun which describes your character's type. There are four main types in the game.
Warriors, obviously combat types, adepts who are magical characters, blurs who are like rogues, rangers, that sort of thing. And then speakers, they are the more social oriented. And each of these types has a particular name, a flavor in whatever genre that you're playing.
And so then your descriptor, the adjective, you know, gives you some additional flavor based on whatever you choose. You kind of layer in some additional capabilities to your character. And then the last piece, your focus, gives you some special and unique powers.
And so the game has a whole bunch of predefined descriptors to go along with the four core types. And then like a thousand different focuses. It's crazy. Each with some pre built lists.
But then there's guidance for the game master on how to take something that your player wants to do that isn't defined in the book and devise a set of mechanics around that. And so the thing I love about the cipher system is that it neatly encapsulates anything.
So D and D in my opinion, like one of the strengths of D and D is it sort of gives you this pre built framework. Right here are a bunch of classes. They encapsulate a bunch of core ideas and subclasses give you ways to sort of tweak them.
And they really help particularly people who are newer to gaming in my opinion, really take the fantasy they see in their mind or they see on TV and think about how to package it and start playing it.
The cipher system, not to say that it's like a more advanced game versus a less advanced game, but the cipher system is so open ended that it really depends on the player's ability to, to encapsulate the essence of their character in that one sentence.
And so thinking about the main characters in the book, you know, like I might for example, describe the Dust witch as a strong willed mystic who consorts with the dead or who commands the dead. I chose, you know, strong willed and consorts with the dead because they are specifically defined in the cipher system rulebook.
So they're supported, they don't require anything out of the game master to adapt. And the, you know, the mystic is basically a fantasy version of an adept.
Whereas by comparison on Agnes the, the, as I mentioned earlier that the fate, the Fey Pact Warlock, she would be a jovial hedge witch who defies her evil nature. Right? So by describing your character with this one sentence and then tagging game mechanics to them, you can build virtually anything.
So Fenris I would say is an honorable warrior who seeks redemption.
And then Mara is like an unassuming ascetic who pursues justice or who crafts wonders depending on which aspect of the character you want to, to focus then with those characters in mind, like then you go off and you run your adventure.
Speaker B
00:11:56.388 - 00:11:58.500
Colleen, do you want to take up the gauntlet?
Speaker D
00:11:58.580 - 00:12:31.840
Well, I can. I also just wanted to call out that I love that system, the Cypher system that Roger just called out.
Like Petra and I are actually playing an old Gods of Appalachia cipher system game and it is a very smooth game to play. It seems to be pretty easy to run.
And I think just to his point, like there's, there's tons of these attributes and focuses that you do that could be applied really easily this game. But I just, I can't say enough good things about the Cypher system. You should go check out Old Gods of Appalachia.
Speaker E
00:12:32.000 - 00:12:33.152
Color me envious.
Speaker D
00:12:33.296 - 00:12:34.608
Oh my God, it's so good.
Speaker E
00:12:34.744 - 00:12:37.632
Not only cypher system, but Old Gods of Appalachia. That's great.
Speaker C
00:12:37.736 - 00:12:43.344
It's a lot of fun. But even the setting is just great and the cipher system is easy to use.
Speaker D
00:12:43.432 - 00:15:12.302
I actually got it for myself so that I could run Call of Cthulhu type games without running Call of Cthulhu because I Find Call of Cthulhu's percentile type.
Like, that's not the kind of story I want to run, but the cipher system is a little bit more open ended and I can actually run the type of horror stories I want to with Old Gods. Also, I'm totally a big fan of the podcast. On my end, when I read an Old and Bone, I thought of Built by the Apocalypse.
More specifically, Dungeon World, just because Dungeon World already has a bunch of setting information to play off of and spells to play off of. The reason I picked that system was because of the playbooks that you could generate to create the different characters that you see in the book.
So like the Dustwife could be a wizard or you could do a cleric, but you could skin any of those playbooks to make up those rules. And I think it's a really easy system kind of skin. The playbooks are set up in a way that you're trying to embody a vibe of a character.
So, for example, the fairy godmother, you know, in Nettle and Bone, you either do good magic where you. You bless your child or you are really good at cursing them.
And depending on how you talk, it can change the outcome of the magic, which really builds into how Built by the Apocalypse sets up their moves.
You could have a curse move or a blessed move, and then based on how you rolled your dice, if you were above or below that, narration of how that occurs could change. So the player really has a lot of control in Built by the Apocalypse over the narrative if they succeed.
And I thought that could lend itself really, really well to using the Melon Bone story and storyline, especially when they were in like the Goblin market doing their negotiations. Just like Roger is saying, like, that scene could play out really well with different moves they create.
I also find, like, the times that the characters fail in the book also reflects how failure mechanics kind of operate in Apocalypse. I also chose Dungeon World because I've skinned Dungeon World before to make an adventure time game Cartoon Network show. So I'm really.
I'm fairly comfortable with it. But I could see you. You could take Monster hearts as well, although that has a more romantic spin.
And there's only really one core romance and an abusive relationship going on in this book. So maybe not that one.
Speaker B
00:15:12.406 - 00:15:13.610
Yeah, maybe not.
Speaker D
00:15:15.670 - 00:15:42.696
No. But you could have a playbook that would be Bonedog, right? Like, what if you're a golem or a creation?
So I think you could do a lot with playing off of the characters just to focus on their relationship and telling those narratives and giving those players more control over how they want to explore the world that is from Null and Bone, but that's what I would take. I really loved the godmother twist. Awesome.
Speaker B
00:15:42.808 - 00:15:45.540
All right, Petra, step up.
Speaker C
00:15:46.480 - 00:16:59.360
So, you know, just a level set. Literally the only game I run is Fiasco. So I play lots of games, but the only one I run this fiasco.
And for me, rules aren't that important as much as the role play aspect of a game. That is much more important to me than. Than actually what dice I'm rolling or. Or what. What rule system I have to go by.
I'll go with any rule system basically. But. But really the role play is, is the most important thing for me.
So when I was reading this book, really kind of what I was hit with as far as the system because of the kind of creepy vibe of the book in at times was CoC. Call of Cthulhu. I like Call of Cthulhu for the system in the sense that it's easy and it doesn't get in the way of my role playing. So.
So I can easily play the roles and, and that's great.
I could just easily see the demon hen being in CoC as well as, you know, Agnes, who starts off as a kind, caring character who also can turn into a full blown cursed godmother. She could easily work into the Call of Cthulhu system as well. The dead catacombs with the thief wheel.
Speaker B
00:16:59.440 - 00:17:01.056
Oh, the thief wheel. Oh, good one.
Speaker C
00:17:01.128 - 00:17:01.664
Oh my God.
Speaker D
00:17:01.712 - 00:17:01.920
That.
Speaker C
00:17:01.960 - 00:17:27.400
That. That is straight out of a Call of Cthulhu game, right? I mean, that thing is super creepy and Bonedog was great.
I mean, he's one of my favorite favorite characters in the book, I have to say. So if I were going to translate into. Into some sort of system, Call of Cthulhu was one of the first thing that came to mind.
Fate 2 came to mind for me as well for the open endedness of it. And the characters could easily get. Get fit into Fate as well.
Speaker B
00:17:27.940 - 00:19:38.620
All right, great. I'm gonna take a little bit of everybody's here.
It turns out I, I didn't think it was going to work out this way, but that is part of what we're talking about. I haven't played the cipher system, but I knew that part of what Roger was going to talk about was some Dungeons and Dragons.
There's a old school cool essentials system, has setting called Dolam Wood that's very similar, has a very grim fairy tale feeling to it as a possible piece there. Fate has a system called Loose Threads, which is also has that same sort of grim fairy tale piece.
I had considered Call of Cthulhu, but two that I actually ended up really being very focused on. One is called Girl Underground by Hedge Maze Press.
And this is very specifically based around the idea of a young girl going somewhere and gathering companions. And they all have playbooks for each of those companions and they go on a quest. So that was very close to what this was.
Except, of course, that Mara isn't a young girl. But that one reminded me a lot of what Colleen was talking about with the Powered by the Apocalypse and the playbooks and such.
And then the last one that I. Nobody brought up. So I'm glad I have something unique to contribute, is a Blades in the Dark adaption by the Evil Hat Productions.
They put out a game called Girl by Moonlight, which is technically a Blades in the Dark adaption for Magical Girl games. But I thought that one of the things that was in that, that made it really interesting. First off, there's.
In the story, there's this real feeling of time is running out. We need to go get this. We need to make this happen. Because time is progress.
And the clock system in Blades in the Dark really reflects that feeling very well.
Also, there's a process in this World by Moonlight transcendence, where your character becomes more of who you are and you discover your true self, which is, of course, a Magical Girl kind of stories. And I thought that could be pretty well adapted to some of the more hopeful aspects of what was happening here.
So those are my takes on systems that could be used for us here in Nettle and Bone.
Speaker D
00:19:38.770 - 00:19:51.208
As Girl by Moonlight was like a second choice I had. I was so glad you talked about that game. I've been itching so bad to run that game. Yeah. Well, this one actually fit really well.
We should try running it. Yeah.
Speaker B
00:19:51.384 - 00:20:07.984
All right, awesome. So I'm gonna jump right to Petra. You already mentioned one thing.
Items that if we weren't gonna run the whole game, but things we might steal to put into games that we run. And I know Patreon already mentioned the Thief Wheels. I figured that would be something you would want to talk about.
Speaker C
00:20:08.152 - 00:21:29.828
Well, Thief Wheel is super creepy.
So, you know, just the thought of the composition of what's in the Thief Wheel and the fact that it can kind of pick you up and absorb you and you can't escape is kind of. It's just very disturbing when she's. You know, it was really kind of a lost soul that was just. It wasn't given Enough direction and.
And it was just kind of had lost its way also. I found fairly poignant and I kind of enjoyed that aspect of it.
But I have to say that favorite pieces that I would want to incorporate into a game personally would again be the Demon Hen and the Bone Dog. Those two pieces were just. I really enjoyed them in the story. I mean, not that the demon hen said anything, but just that it existed. Right.
Existed as a demon stuck in a hen and you know, and that the dust wife had this demon that just. Just basically stuck with her the entire time was just. I just really, really enjoyed it.
And I think both of them would be super fun to put into any kind of kind of game, honestly. And so much could be done with them, really. Really.
I found her creative use of these kind of pieces in the story just gave it such a full flavor and so easily transferable to whatever you wanted to do.
Speaker E
00:21:29.964 - 00:21:41.360
I will say the demon chicken, I agree, may not have said anything, but you always knew what the demon chicken thought about whatever situation was going on, which speaks to her ability to present that character so beautifully.
Speaker B
00:21:41.940 - 00:21:47.720
Roger, you want to pick up the thread and is there anything else in the books that you would include in your game?
Speaker E
00:21:48.340 - 00:23:29.270
Yeah, absolutely. A bunch of things. I'll second Bone Dog and Demon chicken. Absolutely. They were phenomenal.
I think while reading the book, at one turn I like broke out in laughter and my wife asked me what I was laughing at and I turned her and said, a character in this book is a chicken possessed by a demon. She likewise laughed. I love the thief wheel. It was like a gelatinous cube, but that didn't dissolve you, but like held onto your soul.
And that is such a creepy feel. I love that the wooden puppet that like attached to the innkeeper and like leeched away her. That puppet was amazing. Yeah.
I don't remember what it was called, but that stuck out to me as something that I would love to use in the game.
Sometimes I think the nettle cloak, like in D and D terms, obviously that's a cloak of unkind, is a beautiful adaptation of that concept right into the world. Speaking of the cipher system, so one of the things in the cipher system is tons of one shot items.
And the first thing that leapt out at me like that is the moth in the goblin market. Right. That Mara bought to go to lead them to whatever she needed. It was a perfect example of that kind of a thing.
But I think one of the most clever things for me was the tapestry map of the. Of the palace, the dust palace. And how the royal godmother gave it to Mara only because she didn't know what it was. Right.
So the royal godmother couldn't. That's how she sidestepped her own curse.
And then Mara walking around through this thing, realizing she has the secret to finding their way out and it depended on her being a weaver. So something like that, where some seemingly innocuous prop turns out to be the secret to some key mystery. I'd love to do that in a game, so.
Speaker C
00:23:29.310 - 00:23:36.410
Well, yeah, it really. It really was great. It will definitely show up in some of my games. No doubt.
Speaker D
00:23:37.070 - 00:24:08.970
Yeah. I love that puppet. I love that it's consenting magic. Right. She can't get rid of it. She doesn't want to. Just want to get rid of the puppet.
I just thought that was just a really interesting take on magic. I really love the take on magic in general with the wordplay around how curses and blessings work.
Like Roger was saying around sidestepping language in order to get around certain kinds of structures. I think that works really easy for stealing, for any kind of game that has any kind of fairy plot or fae.
Speaker C
00:24:09.790 - 00:24:26.394
And in that vein, Colleen, it was very apparent in the. In the way that the godmothers blessed their. Their.
The children, how important the language was to what they were saying and how that weaved in with the magic, you know, in that scene.
Speaker D
00:24:26.442 - 00:25:42.258
Yeah, exactly. I absolutely love that.
So, like, taking some of that language and being very careful with it sounds like something I would definitely try to add to my games. The setting, just the setting and the descriptions of some of these places were so different and real. Like just where.
Even when the book starts, where she's out in that thorny patch trying to put the bones together to like a boneyard and there's. There's just this oppressive kind of danger all around her where she's kind of like this outsider. I would take the harbor kingdom.
I loved the harbor kingdom, Northern kingdom, Southern. I liked the differences between those places.
So I could imagine that working really well for like a burning whale setting or anything where you're doing world building with people setting up this conflict between these two kingdoms. And like Yuri in the middle at this very key place, like, everybody wants the harbor. So I would. I would definitely take those pieces.
But just how they described even like the nunnery that she's in and the rules around that is clearly not any religion that exists, but it has some of those undertones. I think I would take those pieces. The thief wheel is super creepy.
Can't put it in the Dread game now, because Patre plays all my dread games and she just. Because it would freak her out even more. She's like, I know what this is.
Speaker B
00:25:42.314 - 00:26:25.146
Yeah. The problem with sharing one of these talks with. With your. With your players is always, oh, well, there goes some of my secrets.
But as for settings, Roger did mention the. The solution to the labyrinth in Maze, but I thought that the.
The one last thing that I want to add, because you guys have already covered so much great stuff. The. The actual labyrinth under the Dust Castle and how it was described and the remaining souls that were there.
The Forgotten Consort, Just a nice little side piece. Probably could have been edited out, but it just felt so. Made the place feel so absolutely. For a dungeon lived in. It was amazing, I would say.
Speaker E
00:26:25.298 - 00:26:39.728
As an aspiring author, I loved the references whenever she was in the palace of the Northern Kingdom about how drafty the place was, despite all the tapestries. And you're like, there are clearly secret passages everywhere in this building. She just didn't know that yet.
Speaker B
00:26:39.784 - 00:27:43.620
Yeah, that little bit of foreshadowing. Okay, we're gonna move on to our last section here, which is we're gonna talk about other media. T.
Kingfisher, as we've already said, has written a lot of books, and obviously, if you're interested in her style, you've got a lot to pick from. But are there. There are other books out there. I'll start this off just to get us rolling.
I have two books that would work really well with this book, and that is Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Naomi Novik does a great job with her fairy tale retellings and also has a little bit of that darkness to it. So I think she's a great person to.
To follow. And the classic of classics, the Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, also has a lot of this.
This deep mythic fairy tale aspect to it, with the gathering of heroes and the going to the castle and all of that. I think the. The Last Unicorn is the great progenitor of this book. Pedro, do you have any media that you'd like to talk about?
Speaker C
00:27:44.240 - 00:28:03.432
Yeah, so I went more towards the creepy side. I. I felt that this book kind of engendered the. Feels that I got out of the House of Usher.
I mean, the House of Usher was a little darker even, but it was for me. It kind of gave me the same sort of vibe when I was reading. It gave me that. The thought of the House of Usher.
Speaker B
00:28:03.496 - 00:28:05.048
Great. Colleen.
Speaker D
00:28:05.224 - 00:28:41.200
I went humorous and I went back to my old favorite, Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series when he's talking about the witches, trying to actually remember the book. But there's a bunch around the Wizard School or the wizard of the Wizard's Tower.
And those witches just remind me a little bit of some of the Godmother and the Dust Wife's banter back and forth. I know it's not quite as creepy or dark fantasy, but if you want to get the tongue in cheekness of the tit for tat, these characters have.
Terry Pratchett is an excellent read, Roger.
Speaker E
00:28:42.020 - 00:29:28.522
So I have a couple of recommendations here. I think for me on the sort of accenting, the more the creepier side of the story, the darker vibe right to the magic.
Reminded me a bit of BE Schwab's Shades of Magic series, which starts with A Darker Shade of Magic. It's a trilogy and I really, really, really love that series.
So if you were looking for a similar sort of like creepy dark magic element, I'd go with that.
Flip side, a happier sort of fantasy story that's focused where this is about a young woman on a quest to save her true love and has to do a bunch of miraculous magical things. Brandon Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea. I thought that was a really great book and reader people who like Nettle and Bone might like that one.
Speaker B
00:29:28.626 - 00:29:34.218
Is it possible, Colleen, that the book that you were looking for are the Weird Sisters? Is that the one?
Speaker D
00:29:34.274 - 00:30:03.360
Yes, I love that one. It's been a while. I do have some other books, but they're not as. They're not as dark fantasy.
They're more like the Midnight Circus has some interesting plays on magic, but it's not like it's not a dark fantasy. Dungeons, things like that. And I wanted to say Shadow and Bone, but Shadow and Bones also. I actually enjoyed Six of Crows more and I saw. I was.
I got embarrassed going to Barnes and Noble and finding out it's in the young Reader and I was like, oh.
Speaker B
00:30:03.520 - 00:30:06.060
Never be the best YA is for everyone.
Speaker C
00:30:06.770 - 00:30:39.268
I'm also reading a series that's kind of a little bit in the same genre. It's not as dark though. It's more tongue in cheek. It's called Loves, Lies and Hocus Pocus by Lydia Shearer, which has just been a lot of fun.
There's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of them. And it's about this. Basically an English librarian who does magic and her cat talks to her.
So it's also kind of in the same feel. It's just not. It doesn't have that dark. It doesn't have the dark aspect.
Speaker B
00:30:39.364 - 00:30:44.840
I'm sensing an animal companion trope with your reading there, Pedro. That's. That's.
Speaker C
00:30:45.340 - 00:30:49.780
I do. I do enjoy that. When it's. When it's well weaved into a story. I do.
Speaker B
00:30:49.900 - 00:31:00.640
I don't know if anybody else has other things that they want to promote in the gaming or book space, but I do know Petra wants to promote a con that she's working on, so I'm gonna let her do that.
Speaker C
00:31:01.420 - 00:31:40.388
Yes. So me and a group of friends, we decided to do a thing and create a con, which we did. It's in our four years now. It's Rising Phoenix Game Con.
It's held in April in Milford, Massachusetts. It is fantastic. You should come out and see us. Rising phoenixgamecon.com for the website. And again, it's in Milford, Massachusetts.
It's a community of gamers and it's predominantly tabletop panels, miniatures and board games. Heavy on the board games and RPGs, but we do have some miniatures as well. It's a really good time, so please, please come check us out.
Speaker B
00:31:40.444 - 00:31:45.540
And I. I'll be running some games there as well as some panels. Does anyone else have anything they want to promote?
Speaker E
00:31:45.620 - 00:31:52.404
I'm just saying I am revising my first novel so I can't promote it yet, but I will be happy to do so at some point in the future.
Speaker B
00:31:52.492 - 00:32:00.432
We have to have you back on then to do another discussion when that's ready to rock and roll. Colleen, do you got anything that you're working on that you want to promote here?
Speaker D
00:32:00.536 - 00:32:15.440
I am not working on it presently, but my friend Paul Siegel did publish his Fearful Ends rpg. It's a horror tabletop game, pretty easy to pick up. Small book did some of the art and helped with the art direction for the book.
But you can check it out.
Speaker C
00:32:15.480 - 00:32:20.336
Fearful ends.com it is also a very, very enjoyable game.
Speaker D
00:32:20.408 - 00:32:24.180
It has cards that help you slowly go mad.
Speaker A
00:32:26.370 - 00:33:11.040
And that's our discussion of Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher.
You can find a complete transcript of today's book Club discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-squareproductions.com GMBC and you can follow us on bluesky@gmbookclub BSky Social. You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Eric Jackson, and K Square Productions.
Thanks to this week's Game Masters Petra, Roger and Colleen for all of their amazing input. Thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our theme music.
Later, gamers, and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising AP.