The New Death And Others

Since half the people reading this are like "Oh man, a book review," and then closing their browser, I'll give you my conclusion first: This book is a goddamned steal at $1, so you go out and buy it right now if you enjoy reading words.


Anyway.


I feel a little sheepish doing a review for an author who I credit as one of my inspirations to start blogging, but two weeks ago none other than James Hutching of Teleleli fame contacted me and asked me to do a review of The New Death And Others. Since this is ostensibly a game blog, and like 100 other people already reviewed it better than I could, I'm going to make a giant list of things in this book that I want to put into D&D games in the future. That being said, many of the stories in the book are really, really good without containing a lot of material to use in a game, and I genuinely enjoyed the book from cover to cover.


ALL THE THINGS FROM THE NEW DEATH AND OTHERS THAT I WANT TO PUT INTO A D&D GAME, AND ALSO THAT I REMEMBERED TO WRITE DOWN WHILE I WAS READING

• The God of the Poor is also the god of Death
• Calling human hearts cut out by a cult "fruit of the spear"
• The entirety of this section from "How the Isle of Cats Got Its Name": It is well-known that cats have the ability to sense entrances to the infernal realms, and the desire to enter therein, in order that they may combat demons and devils. This explains why they spend so much time under houses, and why they often disappear, never to be seen again.
• Witches called "Snake-Wearers"
• A world where there are no humans left and everyone is a monster out of a scary story
• A devil whose job is devising ironic punishments for the damned (On the same note, a Hell that works entirely on pun-logic)
• The face on Mars as an oracular figure
• The Prince of the Howling Forest
• Wolves worship the moon by killing people as sacrifices
• A city where people change their personality based on the moon
• Talking ravens are called "swan of blood"
• A magical grappling hook made from a dragon's claw, which "retained the fierce grip it had in life."
• A gargoyle wearing a cape (Why don't monsters wear clothing more often?)
• A summoned Cthulhu mythos creature that shows up, does some stand up, and disappears
• Trees have their own complicated systems of laws
• Different species having their own anthropomorphic version of Death
• In Legend: The Story of Kevin Marley, Hutching writes about how Bob Marley's brother Kevin gets together with Chloe Hendrix and Dennis Mix-a-lot to make an album. Now I want to run a game of Warhammer Fantasy in which the players are Billy Franz and Frank Gelt
• Robots that ask people logic circle questions as a joke
• "The Death of the Artist" involves the discovery that all writers and artists are controlled by cats. I think it might be fun to make a world where wizards are all secretly remarkably incompetent, and rely on their familiars to make all the decisions
• The entirety of the story "The God of the City of Dust" What is the story about? Buy the book, it is a dollar.
• An idol to whom women are "married" and forced to live around, protected by castratti guard
• Gorillas will only carry things upward, as a matter of tradition