#lotfp

[digital-meat]

You know it's dead fucking serious when Raggi is wearing clothes.

[lavi1avi]

Lel new release on Itch.io! PDF full of equipment packages for Lamentations of the Flame Princess!

[thydungeongal]

Okay so as I posted earlier, I picked up Holveja & Hirviöitä, a Finnish retroclone/OSR game at the con last night. I do want to write about it in a bit more depth. This post is probably not going to be useful to any of you unless you can read Finnish, because there's probably no way this game will get translated: it specifically exists because the author saw a demand for an old-school D&D clone written in Finnish, inspired by the existence of Legendoja & Lohikäärmeitä (an unofficial Finnish translation and evolution of D&D 5e).

First of all, the full title of the book isn't just Holveja & Hirviöitä. It's Holveja & Hirviöitä: Pelaajan opas, the subtitle roughly translating to "Player's Guide." The book thus contains just the player-facing rules: character creation, combat, adventuring, spells, advancement, and so on. You won't find rules for monsters or designing adventures in this book. The author, Tuomas J. Salo, has spoken elsewhere about the fact that the game is likely not going to find purchase among anyone but people already invested in the OSR, and those people likely already have more GM's books than they need. I understand that rationale, but honestly I do hope he puts out a separate Game Master's Guide, because even in its current state there is a lot to love about H&H and I would love to see it expanded into a wholly standalone game. Also, I want to support Finnish language gaming. Even though I mostly hang out on the anglophone side of the RPG internet, I also happen to think that my first language is pretty cool and it'd be cool to play RPGs in Finnish with my homies.

H&H isn't a direct retroclone of any particular version of D&D nor is it a Finnish translation of any previously established OSR game. It is more like a best-of of the author's favorite elements of the OSR, picked from multiple different games and blog posts. It is most recognizably based on B/X, but it differs from that one too.

Here are some features of the game:

Four classes, corresponding to Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief. No demihumans classes, and in fact no rules for playing demihumans at all.

Characters get a class and level-based attack bonus. Fighters get a full +1 per level, other classes varying slower rates.

No class-based restrictions on weapons and armor, but there are limitations on the use of magic and skills when unencumbered.

To make Fighters (Soturi, warrior) still stand out as the best weapon users, besides their higher attack bonus they also increase all weapon damage dice by one type (a sword that deals 1d8 damage becomes a 1d10 and so on).

Magic-Users (Velho, wizard) are vancian casters, nothing surprising there.

Clerics (Pyhimys, saint) use a spell-casting system based on expending a resource called Suosio (Favor). After casting a spell a player rolls a number of d6 equal to their character's current Favor, and if at least a number of dice equal to the spell's level come up 4+ their Favor stays the same. Otherwise it drops by one. I have no idea how well it works in practice but I like the idea of differentiating between Magic-Users and Clerics mechanically.

Thieves (Taituri, master, expert) are clearly more in line with LotFP's Experts than B/X Thieves. Skills are a 1 of 6 chance by default and unlike other characters they get 4 extra points to divide between "pips" in various skills to increase their chance of success, with more skill points unlocked at each level.

Characters have a single saving throw number (16-level) which is further modified by the highest of two stat modifiers for a total of three different saving throws. If I'm not entirely mistaken, this is also how Sine Nomine's more recent games handle saving throws.

Besides just rules for adventuring and combat there are very specific rules for owning property and investing in business venture to gamble with your character's resources between sessions. These also seem pretty much lifted wholesale from LotFP.

The three alignments are as they always have been, but renamed to work better in Finnish. Specifically, Law isn't Laki which would sound dumb as hell, it's Kohtalo, or Fate. I think Fate vs Chaos is much more evocative, and it also reinforces how alignment in this game is cosmic and not just a shorthand for "is your character good or bad."

All in all there's very little here that I don't like. I mean, except for the fact that unarmored AC is 12 and AC goes up which is just bullshit. Again, there is nothing remarkable about this game in the context of other OSR games, as most of its rules have appeared elsewhere, but the translation of often clumsy gaming terms into Finnish is solid. (I especially love that Hit Points are just called Sisu, a word that would roughly translate into English as "guts, moxie, pep.")

[txttletale]

"unspeakably racist inflation fetish willy wonka parody OSR module" im sorry WHAT

okay so

lamentations of the flame princess is a dime-a-dozen OSR game that was written by a guy who i'm pretty sure to this day defends

~ALLEGED~

serial rapist and predatory shithead zak s. it's not very good and all of its modules are pure reactionary dreck. blood in the chocolate was a lotfp module that won an ennie in 2017 despite being just genuinely horrifically racist and homophobic and using sexual assault for cheap shock value and also being willy wonka inflation porn. i mean to be clear i dont think that last thing is morally equivalent to any of the others but without it this would become a depressingly boring and happens-every-year 'OSR module contains spectacular racism, is applauded by industry' story.

you can read a detailed writeup of why it sucks so fucking much here (cw: sexual assault, racism, homophobia, probably more. it's real bad) but tldr it is about an evil fat latina lesbian sex predator who makes evil chocolate with the help of a tribe of enslaved evil cannibal "pygmies", who Very Cleverly parody the oompa loompas by just being the oompa loompas but way more explicitly racist. the way the evil chocolate works is it gives you horrible curses, most of which inflate you making you big and round. you know. like in willy wonka and the chocolate factory.

and like listen if you and your table of likeminded friends want to play inflationquest, the TTRPG about becoming big and round, all the more power to you. but this is all presented as if it is meant to be played for horror and it's some real piss wizard shit. also i cannot stress enough if you haven't clicked on the article i linked above it's incredibly racist. anyway it got an ennie and nobody noticed or cared until three years later when massif press (the lancer guys) were nominated for an ennie and then loudly withdrew their nomination because they didn't want to get an award from the organization that gave an award to this bullshit. rightfully so. but it's fucking ridiculous it took that to draw any attention to this. dreadful awful stuff

[level2janitor]

i have an irrational dislike for lamentations of the flame princess (unrelated to rational reasons to dislike it such as the creator) because 2 out of 3 times when i meet someone who super-duper can't stand OSR games, it's cause they looked into it to see what all the fuss was about, got handed a copy of LotFP and dropped into one of its meatgrinder dungeons with no guidance, and spent an evening with every player losing 3 or 4 PCs to untelegraphed instant-kill traps. and understandably assumed that the whole thing is just getting killed every twenty minutes for masochists

and then every time i bring up osr games i have to deal with people assuming that's what i'm into and it takes me like half an hour to readjust expectations. it's annoying as hell

(the other 1 in 3 times it's bc of the nazis which, like, fair)

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Hey, what's your opinion on James Raggi IV the writer and publisher of Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

I mean... from some of the posts I've seen from him and things I've heard, he's def an edgelord reactionary, but neither the worst nor the most notable edgelord reacionary from the old Google Plus era OSR circle, right.

I was into LotFP a couple years ago before I found out about the guy's politics and links to notable bigots in the OSR scene, mostly because I liked the whole black/death metal horror aesthetic and because it's one of the few straight-up retroclones that actually have a unique vision for the aesthetic and experience they want to create, (i.e. it tries to be a little bit of its own game with its own unique setting/aesthetic instead of being yet another legally distinct repackaging of an older D&D edition), and I still think the book itself is a good product, but ultimately it's not an experience you can't replicate with a copy of B/X D&D (or your retroclone of choice) plus a couple flavorful metal-inspired sourcebooks, and that unique aesthetic appeal has also now been far outdone by later RPGs like Mörk Borg, so it's not like you're really missing much by refusing to support the guy anyway.

Tho I've gotta say, It kinda surprised me when I first found out Raggi was one of those "BUT MUH FREEZE PEACH" edgelords, because some of the advice he wrote in the LotFP refbook seemed to be directly countering that particular flavor of edgelordism that pops up in right-leaning """"apolitical""""" OSR circles, e.g:

"The Referee shall realize that Rule 0 is for the purpose of establishing the desired atmosphere for his campaign, and not as an excuse to abuse players or a license to be a despot at the game table… The Referee’s role is to challenge players, not victimize them."

"Know your players. Communicate outside of the game, and find where the limits lie. Your job as Referee is not to shock, scare, scandalize, or assault the senses. Respect for the real person sitting before you playing the game comes before any idea for the game you actually have."

Reading that definitely painted to me a very different picture of him as a person.

[fl3dgl1ng]

Was very inspired by Lotfp illustrations

[gallus-rising]

literally why do ppl keep making shit for lotfp there are better games my dudes. move on already

ppl always give the reasoning that they like the killer difficulty and grimdark metal setting and L M A O does MÖRK BORG mean nothing to you

[synttx]

ngl im getting pretty tired of people talking about how you should play rpgs besides dnd and then recommending like. pathfinder shadowdark DCC (a game i actually like) etc because like.

those Are d&d.

when I'm asking my cyberpunk group if they want to play DCC or LotFP or B/X for a session or two I don't say "do you guys want to play DCC?" I say "do you want to play DnD."

WFRP is probably the only fantasy role playing game I can think of that is different enough from dnd that I wouldn't just call it dnd. you aren't actually expanding the styles of play accessible to your group or trying something new, they're just tweaked versions of the same central idea. (there are probably others, like maybe runequest, but I haven't played or read it so I can't speak on its similarity or difference)

blades in the dark also comes up in these conversations a lot, and while I've never played it and it looks a bit too storygame-y for me, it indicates people looking in the right direction of trying something new at least a little bit. It's just fascinating to me how rarely scifi, cyberpunk, or horror (besides CoC) games come up in these conversations, and I really wonder why they're so unpopular (although catalyst flubbing the most recent shadowrun edition and V5 being a mess for white wolf certainly didn't help).

[armsinthewronghands]

Canis Lupus, from the LotFP Discord, lying

From: poikl99 poikl99@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 12:36 PM To: zak smith zakzsmith@hotmail.com Subject: Re: Demon City   Well, I can't seriously say to anyone that I wanted to buy a copy of this new RPG, but one of the authors is apparently running a pyramid scheme, wanna be a part of it? So I'll ask again: is it available for purchase anywhere? W dniu 2022-11-09 o 21:32, zak smith pisze: in most cases, just having 5 more people get in touch—sometimes people have a great counter-offer that's hard to turn down, though.

-Z

From: poikl99 poikl99@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 12:31 PM To: zak smith zakzsmith@hotmail.com Subject: Re: Demon City   What will be the conditions? W dniu 2022-11-09 o 21:20, zak smith pisze: Find 5 people who are interested in getting a pdf (who don't have one) and have them email me. When they've fulfilled the conditions of getting their copy, you get yours!

-Zak

From: poikl99 poikl99@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2022 12:06 PM To: zakzsmith@hotmail.com zakzsmith@hotmail.com Subject: Demon City   Hey Zak, Canis from discord here. You told me to email you about Demon City. How can I obtain a copy?

[digital-meat]

A clause that lets you censor people on your own unchallengeable morality is not open and is only basic-ass censorship. Even if that was different, no company with a big salty vendetta against their competition and even their own fans deserves that kind of power.

[thydungeongal]

Another find I made at the convention: someone's self-published Finnish language OSR game!

(holvi means "vault" and hirviö is "monster" so I feel the game's name is an apt localization of Mazes & Monsters)

Rules-wise this game seems mostly unremarkable. I have seen all of these rules elsewhere in various games, including LotFP, Swords & Wizardry, etc. but it being in Finnish is a big deal for me. The foreword acknowledges Legendoja ja Lohikäärmeitä (an unofficial Finnish translation of D&D 5e) as an inspiration and like as much of a 5e hater as I can be I gotta give credit to the L&L folks for keeping Finnish language RPG culture alive and inspiring others to produce games in Finnish.

Anyway Holveja ja Hirviöitä kicks ass. This is just the player's book, so I can't wait for more.

[hollowfeathers]

My hot TTRPG / OSR take of the night is that you don’t really need something like LotFP to run a more horror/dark fantasy OSR game. Just run B/X, or if you’re feeling really saucy, Holmes, and relentlessly steal as much as you can from King’s Field and Shadow Tower.

[aeronalfrey]

Big Puppet is now available!  This fantastically grotesque and original game plays on themes related to The Grand Guignol, body horror and a very unique take on aliens. The beautifully printed full color thread-sewn hardbound book is fully illustrated by me, so functions as a nice art book for the shelf as well.

US Store: https://us.lotfp.com/store/

The game is releasing alongside a handful of other new games from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Exclusive to the EU Store, If you buy the Deck Of Weird Things enter coupon code WEIRD for free shipping on your entire order! This includes international orders.

EU Store: http://lotfp.com/store/

[slammingthetabletop]

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

As many DMs/GMs do, I spend a lot of time looking for inspiration and ttrpg resources online. Many times, on /r/rpg or /r/dnd, I see posts about a “controversial” game system titled Lamentations of the Flame Princess. These posts are usually multi-dimensional: applauding adventure design and 3rd party supplements, while also bashing the creator and his peculiar design choices.

Immediately, I am intrigued. The name itself is very interesting. Who is the Flame Princess and why is the lamenting?

Here is where the red flags begin. The Flame Princess is claimed to be created based on the creator’s, James Edward Raggi IV, girlfriend.

After being dumped, his creative direction changed to a dark tone.

The red flags continue on from here. In a reddit ama (https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/comments/6b3lgc/rpgdesign_activity_james_edward_raggi_iv_creator/) the author claims that his ultimate dream is to have the Flame Princess drawn by Larry Elmore in a “hot as hell” style. He also says that he has no plans to create a version of the rulebook that is SFW (he also makes a huge blanket statement that children with internet access undeniably seek out NSFW content). Overall, creepy vibes coming from this guy.

But, let’s look at his actual writing. To get a sense of his style, I looked over his adventure “Death Frost Doom,” which the author claims to be his biggest accomplishment.

For reference: I am not well versed in the LotFP rule set, and read this adventure through the lense of a DnD conversion, which is something that is talked about often on dnd subreddits.

That said, I have a few major takeaways.

I’ll start with the good. Raggi has some seriously cool ideas. From the beginning, the uneasy atmosphere the adventure creates reminds me of Lovecraftian horror. 

One of my favorite subtle pieces of horror in this adventure is a painting that takes on the image of the inhabitants of the cabin (one of the main scenes of the adventure) that is thousands of years old. This is something I could definitely see myself taking inspiration from in some of my future DM endeavors. 

My other favorite piece of this adventure (and spoilers: maybe the only way to make it through alive?) is a magical clock that one player can use to rewind or fast forward time.

Now, onto the bad. There’s a lot to be said here, but I don’t want to repeat myself too much. The bottom line is this: I do not possibly see how this adventure can be fun and meaningful for a player. Sure, they have the opportunity to get some gold scattered around, but at the risk of dying in just about every turn they take. To name a few, there is the possibility of raising an army of undead. There is the possibility of waking a giant that would destroy the entire mountain this adventure takes place on. And, although this has less of an impact on an entire campaign, multiple instances of “save or die” poison.

This sentiment is echoed at the preface of the adventure, stating that the 3 times the author has ran the adventure, there were many casualties and more catastrophic events, which to him, is a win.

One thing that I’ve heard about LotFP is that it is mostly a GM powertrip in game form.

To summarize my thoughts, I understand why this system is talked about often and in the way that it is. A lot of the adventure was very inspiring. There was a lot of great time, detail, and brilliant sparks in this adventure, but that is overall overshadowed by the insane masochism that players must have to enjoy this game.

But, don’t take my word for it. Feel free to support the author by purchasing stuff at his shop here: https://us.lotfp.com/store/

[bat-shark-repellent]

My late, first foray into Zinequest! The campaign's got ten days to go. Its an OSR compatible bestiary full of gonzo monsters with retro art by @nota-ghoul