Okay so Mute asked me to do a guest post for her blog and I was like "that's a good idea I'll do that" then I sat around like a bum for a while because I'm terrible at doing things. BUT WHAT HO!? Is this a blog post I see? Something meaty or full of salsa or something because this is a day sometimes related to the humble taco???
Okay that was exhausting, I can't capture Mute's energy but I can write about a game that I like in what sure will be a much drier tone than you're used to. I'm gonna break this up into a couple of different categories to make it easier to digest.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
System
LotFP is at it's heart a clone of the Moldvay Basic D&D ruleset. If you don't have any idea of what that means from a rules perspective let me break it down-
Race as class - You can play as a Fighter, Specialist, Magic User, Cleric, Dwarf, Elf or Halfling. Each of these classes functions differently and the classes that are non-human function sort of like hybrids of the human classes.
High Mortality - Death is a very real possibility. Old school play is meant to be dangerous and thrilling, your character dances on the edge of a knife and has like 2 hit points maybe so it forces you to be clever to survive.
Rules Light- Another trademark of old school play is "rulings not rules" which lends itself to systems that don't spend a lot of time with fiddly rules. I personally love this, because half the time a player asks to do something wild it's not covered in whatever crunchy ruleset I'm playing in and I end up just coming up with something on the fly anyways.
Vancian Spellcasting- The term "Vancian" references Jack Vance, writer of "The Dying Earth" "The Eyes of the Overworld" and numerous other pulp fantasy tomes. He wrote magic to be weird and fleeting and extremely dangerous, and his characters would spend hours memorizing their spells only to have them flee from their minds after casting them. I like this system for magic because its fast and easy. You can memorize so many spells per day and after that, they're gone until you can rest and re-learn them. This can make magic users feel pressure to save their spells for important moments, and creates a decent amount of tension.
Treasure = XP- You gain experience by delving into dungeons and getting treasure, which I personally prefer to getting xp from killing things, it encourages players to think outside the box and resort to all sorts of capers to retrieve their treasure and get their levels.
Setting & Tone
The default setting of the game is 17th century earth, with some extra weirdness like monsters and elves thrown on top of it. I absolutely love this because it gives players an automatic foothold in the world, which if you've spent any time learning about, is just about twice as weird as most fantasy worlds, and 100% easier to explain. I've found it actually gives me a reason to read up on things like "what was Prague like in the 17th Century". This of course is totally optional and the setting is by no means married to the system, hack it as you please without much trouble at all.
As far as tone goes, LotFP is solidly in the fantasy/horror camp. If you dig the overly gruesome and grotesque, blood spewing horror flicks and body horror, this is the game for you. If you don't dig that, maybe this isn't the game for you, use your noggin, you're an adult.
Art
Lamentations art is rad as all get out. On top of that it tends to feature powerful female characters, which is also awesome. I know for a fact that these artists are well paid, which is something you should care about if you have a heart in your chest.
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| Cynthia Sheppard |
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| Jason Rainville |
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| Zak Smith |
Design
Above all things, Lamentations design sensibility is what stands out to me. As a graphic designer I often find myself in physical pain attempting to use a WOTC or other large publishers game book simply because they aren't designed right. I think it was Zak Smith who said that RPG books are more like cook books than anything and it's completely true. A book should be useful at the table and I've found more often than not that Lamentations books are easy to read and digest without much prep. The most shining example of this I can provide is how LotFP utilizes the inside front and back covers of their books.
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| LotFP Player Core Book - Rules & Magic |
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| Blood In The Chocolate - Kiel Chenier |
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| A Red & Pleasant Land - Zak Smith |
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| Broodmother Skyfortress - Jeff Rients |
If you have every run even 10 minutes of any RPG you know how valuable quickly accessible and easy to parse information is. Which is why most RPG design is such a slap in the face. LotFP design is more like a nice kiss on the cheek.
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