On The Road Some More

Welcome to the Stone Soup Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

I’m traveling again! I won’t lie to you, I’m ready to spend some time at my own house. I can tell I’ve been on the road too much because I picked up my suitcase this morning and thought, “that’s just barely too heavy for the airline to accept,” and when I weighed it, that son of a bitch was at 50.4 pounds. Then I picked up my backpack and thought, “that doesn’t feel like it has a charger in it.” I’m on the road too much these days, and I’m not just saying that because of the degree of ire the cat directed at me when I pulled the suitcase out again.

But this time, I’m on the road for something that isn’t work. One of my dearest, most enduring friends is getting married this weekend. I am so delighted to get to be part of this wedding and to get to celebrate my beloved pal and her beloved soon-to-be-husband. Tonight, I’m in a hotel room in a town far from home, rehearsing the words I’ll say when I get to unite them in marriage. What a life we get to live, in which we get to witness and honor each other’s joy and love and promises. I’m just the luckiest guy on earth.

-gailey

The incredibly insightful Alasdair Stuart is a pop culture genius, reviewer extraordinaire, and regular Digest contributor. Be sure to subscribe to The Full Lid for more brilliant pop culture analysis.

A spiritual compatriot of the excellent Coffee Talk series, Tavern Talk gives you a tavern on the edge of a busy fantasy city to run. You talk to your customers, collect the rumours they tell you, and build quests from them. Other customers then take those quests, talk you through how they want to approach the quest, and you make them a drink that will help with their chosen path. You do this here, matching the pictogram on the screen to the one in your recipe book. 

Don't worry if you mess it up, you have basically infinite resources and Andu will drink anything that doesn't quite work. Say hi, Andu! 

The game element of Tavern Talk is both elegantly simple and pleasingly obfuscated. There is a Bad Ending. There is a Good Ending. There's another couple as well and all of them are accessible based on the choices you make. It's not impossible, the beauty of these games is 'be nice' normally leads to nice things. But it's an elegant means of mapping the alignments of classic TTRPGs onto a story and while there's never much jeopardy there's always a little.

Starting with Fable, an extremely novice nonbinary elf, a parade of great characters stop by for a drink. Zephyr is a would-be angst-ridden rogue whose name changes every time you see him. Jade is a prosthetic-armed bounty hunter who isn't unprincipled but has very different principles to everyone else. Rhea is a dwarven blacksmith who is reluctantly babysitting Kyle, a very excitable vampire. Melli is the world's greatest detective. And a kid. And a cat. And her parents were eaten by zombies.

Say hi, Melli!

She's ADORABLE and recruits Zephyr as her assistant and somehow gets even more adorable. The tavern is open to everyone and the game’s inclusive, welcoming approach maps onto the innkeeper’s own. Una is a magnificent older merlady with, hand to gods, a crochet hook hand. Iniko is the embodiment of cheery chaos and a person of size. Clay (Moor. Yes his name is Clay Moor.) is a barbarian who loves animals. Caerlin is just as large, twice as lupine and working off familial expectations. They and the rest of the cast all feel like actual customers, people whose lives continue once they leave and use the tavern as a place to catch a breath before diving back in. They're all very well written, fun, likable characters and they all open up to you and help you open up too. Because while the innkeeper never leaves the inn, the consequences of their actions do and as the game continues those consequences become apocalyptic.

This is where Tavern Talk does its best work and the third act is one of the best, sustained payoffs I’ve seen. It’s (almost) no spoiler to say this is a game about preventing an apocalypse and it perfectly embodies the exhausted, often funny, mindset of surviving trauma. The third act is full of acts of quiet personal kindness and people covering each other’s backs when it gets too much. That includes the innkeeper, and as the game closes you realise that you’re not just the owner of this sanctuary, you’re the person who needs it the most. This isn’t a virtual novel; it’s a community simulator. One where acts of kindness and forgiveness really do save the world. As well as the occasional magic axe.

Tavern Talk really is a game about how the true way to save the world is the friends you make along the way. It’s very clever, intensely sweet and emotionally open and I loved playing through it. Anyone who’s stood behind a counter of any sort will love it. Anyone who’s ever leant on a counter will too. Rack them up, Andu.

Tavern Talk is available now on Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows and Mac. If you can, get the bundle which also includes the excellent soundtrack, lore book and DLC.

Steam Page | Gentle Troll Entertainment

Currently Reading: I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown

As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. 

But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years. 

Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew. 

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

Margaret’s rare autoimmune condition has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated and in pain. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can―until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial.

The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital.

Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

If you'd like to support the work of the team that keeps Stone Soup running, you can subscribe here for as little as $1 per month, or you can drop a one-time donation into the tip jar.

In the meantime, remember: Do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

-gailey