Tag: reviews

Reviews

Flavors of the Multiverse Cookbook Review

Thread of Souls

Our thoughts on the new Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse official D&D Cookbook.

We received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. We make no money off of this product and are not affiliated with it.

The first D&D official cookbook, Heroes’ Feast, came out many years ago. A couple of the recipes we still use today, though we’ve done our own variations on them over time. Flavors of the Multiverse is a follow-up, providing more fantasy-based cuisine for you to try.

The book is quite pretty and quite hefty. There are 200+ pages of recipes, art, and short stories. It’s well thought out and well-composed, making cooking fun for those who are inexperienced at it.

Is it Healthy?

I wouldn’t consider the book as a whole to be a healthy cookbook. Most of the recipes require sugar and fats. Some of their healthier recipes, like the Chopforest salad, tend to be side dishes rather than full meals. It would be difficult to customize most of these meals to be healthier.

Is it Allergen or Diet-Friendly?

If you have allergies such as dairy or gluten, or follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, you won’t find much here. They stick with the stereotypical fantasy genre meal that more has roots in our own imagination of what medieval life is like rather than the reality. Such as the fact that almond milk was frequently used in the Middle Ages, and that meat was not eaten every day because of hunting variables. Of course, this is set in their own universe, so they have free reign over what they consider standard food.

flavors of the multiverse

Is There a Variety of Recipes?

No. As mentioned above, they stick with what stereotypical fantasy cultures should eat. It would be nice to see more dishes inspired by Asian, African, or Latino cuisine. What they do have is some side dishes, plenty of dinner dishes, various drinks, and desserts. Here’s some of what you can expect:

  • Goldenstars: baked pasty pockets filled with sausage, potato, and leeks. Contains: sugar, gluten, eggs, and dairy.
  • Halfling Game Birds: a chicken wing dish.
  • Fried Soy with Vegetables: a skillet tofu and veggie dish. Contains: soy and sugar.
  • Spiced Pork and Orange Peppers: baked pork on a bed of spicy peppers.
  • Fire-Wrapped Golden Fish: fried fish meal. Contains: gluten.
  • Undermountain Alurlyath: a sherry-based drink with lemon and cucumber.
  • Green Dragon Blackbread Muffins: a pumpernickel-like bread. Contains: gluten, dairy, sugar, and eggs.

Will TTRPG Players Like It?

I believe so. Anything that encourages more cooking at home is a useful tool and a great way to bring people together. There’s plenty of traditional and some more interesting recipes in the book to teach people new cooking skills. Whether you want to cook up a full meal for the game, snacks, or just whip up some drinks, there are so many recipes here to choose from. It has plenty of helpful tips and encourages the use of fresh ingredients. Despite the limitations of its breadth, it is still a fun book to have on hand for most D&D parties.

You can purchase Flavors of the Multiverse here.

Reviews

Book Review – Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker

Thread of Souls

Our review of Pete Walker’s book focused on Complex PTSD.

I knew I needed to find new ways to cope with my Complex PTSD, or CPTSD. Diagnosed in 2021 and after receiving some therapy and doing a healing journal, in 2022 I still found myself struggling with the symptoms. Of course, in retrospect that is not a long time! But I wanted to learn more, so I could arm myself better against the symptoms.

I stumbled across Pete Walker’s book while browsing my kindle app. What drew me to it most was that the author himself has CPTSD. I thought I could learn a lot from him, and that it would be good to have some validation for what I experience and feel.

“Complex PTSD” is an overview of the tasks of recovering, and an illumination of the silver linings that can come out of effective recovery work. It is also a map of the recovery process, and contains a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from CPTSD. It is also richly illustrated with examples of his own and others’ journeys of recovering.

Amazon’s Book Summary

The Writing Style

I am an avid reader and writer, but even I did find Walker’s writing style very advanced. It is not something I minded as I love words and discovering new ones. However, the advanced style might deter some from reading it. The sections are laid out logically, and the content flows easily from one subsection to the next.

The Content

This is an all-encompassing book for those struggling with CPTSD. It starts from the basics and works its way through recovery strategies. What I really liked was that Walker began with understanding CPTSD and the different “styles” of it you may experience, based on the Four F’s (Flight, Fight, Freeze, and Fawn). So many times, I found myself nodding enthusiastically, thinking, “Yes, that’s me!”

Walker uses multiple real-world examples from his clients and from himself in how CPTSD impacts daily life, and what to do when a trigger strikes. I found this to be extremely helpful. It has helped me understand why I react to certain things the way I do, and how to navigate those situations.

Walker includes a section toward the end that is useful for therapists and those seeking therapy. It talks about therapy styles and what tends to be the most helpful for CPTSD sufferers.

The Impact

I cannot minimize the positive impact this book had on my life. I still use the strategies and phrases he described, and I understand myself and my emotions better. His section on “emotional flashbacks” was extremely helpful, as this has been the basis for a lot of problems I struggle with.

I cannot recommend enough that anyone struggling with CPTSD reads this book. It will change your life and give you a whole new understanding of your conditions, and a toolset to combat it.

deranged
Reviews

Deranged: A Review of a Gothic Survival Horror Game

Thread of Souls

A dark board game with a fun and frantic energy.

We sat down to play Deranged, a gothic-style horror board game from UltraPro Entertainment and Hobby World. Let’s talk about the way the game is played, the complexity of the rules, and if it is the right fit for your board game nights!

Deranged is designed for 3-6 players and takes between 90-180 minutes to play. It is designed for ages 14+, so this isn’t pastel-colored, light-hearted family fun. It is a semi-cooperative survival game. You choose to be one of a handful of characters that has a small backstory assigned to them. All of you have ended up in a town called Wutburg. What started out as a seemingly harmless rural settlement has turned dark and deadly very quickly. Now your goal is to escape within a set time limit, or become one of the town’s feral Deranged.

The game consists of four quadrants of the town that you explore. You have destinations to search, hiding spaces to run to, loot you can find, and creatures you must outrun. The game is fast-paced, despite the time it takes to complete it. Turns typically don’t take long to resolve and the pieces are ever-moving. You keep track of both your health and your sanity, so there is some “action economy” involved. What are you willing to sacrifice to get your goals? Certain actions are more powerful but they trigger the time to change. And with the game having a set time limit, you may find yourself racing to save your character.

The game is the most fun if you get into the roleplay element of it. This definitely is not necessary, but we had a great time embodying these characters and making their choices. At the end of our first run, two characters survived and two ended up Deranged. There was a tense moment at the end when one character had to decide whether to save himself or go out in a blaze of glory while defending others.

Deranged is beautiful to look at. The art is the right mix of fun and creepy, and the miniatures are very detailed. But if there was to be a criticism about Deranged it is that there is just too much going on. The rules read a bit complicated, and set up took us a very long time. There are too many different card stacks and it left us wishing some things, like looting items, were more streamlined so we only needed one stack instead of three. That being said, what felt overwhelmingly complex at first was actually extremely simple once you start playing.

Deranged has plenty of replayability as it has a handful of scenarios to go through. It also comes with a first-play scenario to introduce you to the game without getting overly complicated.

Do we recommend Deranged? We do! It was dark and creepy fun and by the end of our first playthrough we were scrambling in panic to save ourselves.

We give Deranged and 8 on a d10! You can purchase it via the link below.