The Gaming Den

What is the consensus of the Den (the...conDensus?) on this game? It's an OSR retroclone/fantasy heartbreaker, it's got some seriously crazy art, Zak S (who as I recall some of you guys don't like) wrote a sourcebook for it. I just got like all the PDFs for it from a bundle of holding offer.

I'm only a few pages in to flipping through it, but I'm already intrigued/cautiously optimistic.

So if you're familiar with it tell me why it sucks or doesn't and why.

Not quite a full review but I have a play report that goes over several key and colorful aspects of the system.

It's a stupid retroclone with no particular redeeming value, that faps to randumbness more than most. Also, a lot of the adventures are gross-out fodder in an attempt to capitalize on the 'adult' tone they want the game to have. That said, I do like some of the adventures; the high-weird-historical setting they default to is pretty neat, and Thulian Echoes has a great concept for a module.

I find only one fault in that summary. The encumbrance rules are actually the best I've seen in any game. Other than that, no redeeming value.

erik wrote:I find only one fault in that summary. The encumbrance rules are actually the best I've seen in any game. Other than that, no redeeming value.

The ACKS encumbrance rules are pretty similar (both are in terms of stones rather than pounds), but I think that they might be better.

@ schwarzkopf

If you have a bunch of friends who want to play a D&Dlike, and most of you are lazy and/or drunk, there may not be a better system for you than LotFP. (That is meant to be genuine praise.) If you do not meet that qualification, then LotFP's greatest virtue is probably that it is quite minimalist and can be hacked with ease. It is not a system meant for long-term play. But that can obviously be changed.

It is also an interesting example of how a small number of changes to the D&D paradigm can alter its implicit feel in surprisingly major ways. Compared to LotFP, I think that ACKS is a Basic D&D hack that better channels what D&D tends to try to be.

If you have a group of players who are willing to accept "rocks fall, everyone dies" as a casual session outcome, then a lot of LotFP's adventures are pretty neat. Red and Pleasant Land is quite impressive. Raggi's dungeons seem a bit linear for my tastes, but his willingness to throw money at people and let them do their thing is admirable.

Terrible.

I'm not familiar with ACKS, but if they're using stones rather than just "items" and "heavy items" then it sounds inferior. I like not giving a damn about pounds or stones.

I guess I will qualify "best" since I think Nexus has a better encumbrance system, but that's because it is just a fleshed out/tweaked version of the LotFP mechanic.

Now to update my lotfp report thread since this post has reminded me in a nostalgic mood.

I did 3 books for it: Vornheim (which got high praise here at the Den)
Red & Pleasant Land (4 Ennies)
and the revised Death Frost Doom.

LotFP itself is mostly like every other B/X clone except twisted a little toward a horror atmosphere and power levels (PCs are more fragile than Basic, magic is harsher and weirder) but is 80% the same.

Conservative gamers complain about the gore in the art but it's pretty much heavy metal standard so if you don't cry or throw up when you watch a Dario Argento movie or look at the posters in a record store you're probably fine.

The real point is the adventures and supplements--the game was originally just a pretext to publish weird high-production-values modules. The adventures have a lot of variety-- Kenneth Hite did Qelong, which is a cool southeast-asian sandbox, Dave Brockie from Gwar did a full-on grossout adventure called 2 towers, storygamer king Vincent Baker did one, the adventures written by James himself tend to combine a lot of historical research with tough-but-not-impossible fucked-up horror scenarios.

There is a lot of randomness which is, of course, excellent.

erik wrote:I'm not familiar with ACKS, but if they're using stones rather than just "items" and "heavy items" then it sounds inferior. I like not giving a damn about pounds or stones.

I've heard of stones encumbrance systems that are only tangentially related to weight, and more like a use of nomenclature where 1 stone = 1 item/bundle.

Oh god he has risen.

I need a flask of holy water, a yogi and a shotgun.

Mask_De_H wrote:Oh god he has risen.

I need a flask of holy water, a yogi and a shotgun.

I thought they had regeneration against everything except Acid and Fire.

Schwarzkopf wrote:Zak S

...and just like that, the narcissist appears.

I actually appreciated Zak's post. David Brockie did a TTRPG adventure, I need to see this shit...

Yeah, that post was actually not a problem at all. Don't drag baggage from post to post, especially when the last flamewar was, what, a year ago? More?

Prak wrote:Yeah, that post was actually not a problem at all. Don't drag baggage from post to post, especially when the last flamewar was, what, a year ago? More?

His particular post was not so bad, aside from mildly misleading praise for his own shit, but that doesn't mean people can't comment on his very existence, if they want. It's not dragging baggage around to make jokes about the monster showing up in any way it isn't also baggage to imply/state that I am very angry. Characteristics of posting usually hold true, and making extremely mild jokes about it isn't something to whine about.

erik wrote:I'm not familiar with ACKS, but if they're using stones rather than just "items" and "heavy items" then it sounds inferior. I like not giving a damn about pounds or stones.

ACKS doesn't define item weight categories as cleanly as NEXUS but they do get into it with their inventory list.

1 stone= 6 lighter items

a lighter item is things like 1 crowbar, a week's worth of rations, a mallet and 4 iron spikes, etc.


----

Looking through Flame Princess and ACKS, ACKS strikes me as more to my taste, though FP seems good for a one-shot to see what horrible miscast kills you/the party, that orky kind of fun.

Zak S wrote:I did 3 books for it: Vornheim (which got high praise here at the Den)
Red & Pleasant Land (4 Ennies)
and the revised Death Frost Doom.

LotFP itself is mostly like every other B/X clone except twisted a little toward a horror atmosphere and power levels (PCs are more fragile than Basic, magic is harsher and weirder) but is 80% the same.

Conservative gamers complain about the gore in the art but it's pretty much heavy metal standard so if you don't cry or throw up when you watch a Dario Argento movie or look at the posters in a record store you're probably fine.

The real point is the adventures and supplements--the game was originally just a pretext to publish weird high-production-values modules. The adventures have a lot of variety-- Kenneth Hite did Qelong, which is a cool southeast-asian sandbox, Dave Brockie from Gwar did a full-on grossout adventure called 2 towers, storygamer king Vincent Baker did one, the adventures written by James himself tend to combine a lot of historical research with tough-but-not-impossible fucked-up horror scenarios.

There is a lot of randomness which is, of course, excellent.

Here are some thoughts on what I've read of LotFP so far. Can't speak to your modules yet Zak, I haven't read 'em yet but I probably will.

I also understand that D. Vincent Baker wrote a setting heavily inspired by Jack Vance? I am so torn about that, because Vincent Baker can eat every dick in existence for all I care, but I am in love with Jack Vance's Dying Earth series.

0) I do think that "roll 3d6 six times in order" is a pretty terrible way to roll up a character, but this is so easy to fix with a house-rule it's almost not worth mentioning. For instance: "You have a pool of 72 points to spend on your six attributes." There, I just did it. Or: "Roll 4d6, drop the lowest die, six times, and assign the results as you please". There, I just did it again differently. So kind of a non-issue.

1) While it doesn't quite completely fix the fighters/wizards problem we talk about constantly on the Den, I feel that giving ONLY fighters any kind of progression to their combat abilities at all actually DOES help bring them closer to overall parity with Magic-Users and Clerics (various Denners will disagree with me on this point using various levels of colorful language). (To anyone familiar with recent editions of D&D, Fighters in LotFP get a "Good" base attack progression, and everyone else never gets a to-hit bonus above +1.)

2) I like the way that the Specialist class handles skill points about ten times better than the way D&D 3.X/Pathfailure handled skills , and about 1000 times better than how OD&D and retroclones like Osric handle Thieves/Rogues.

3) I like how the Wisdom stat explicitly states that it does not actually enable the character to act wisely, that's the player's responsibility. I just think it shouldn't be called Wisdom and there's really no good reason it is besides "old skool".

4) I don't like that the Charisma stat explicitly states that it doesn't make your character's personality any more likeable. That seems like some bullshit for people that want to play charismatic characters but aren't charismatic in real life.

5) I like the way it handles alignments as primarily being a means of tracking how your character is effected by various elemental forces, rather than being tied up with actual ethics and morals.

I haven't really looked at the magic system yet, and since this IS a retroclone which is to say this is basically D&D, that means I really don't actually know much of anything about the game yet.

If you have a bunch of friends who want to play a D&Dlike, and most of you are lazy and/or drunk, there may not be a better system for you than LotFP.

That actually describes me pretty damn accurately, except for the "bunch" part. The friends are less in number than I'd like these days. But the laziness and drunkness is there for sure.

Conservative gamers complain about the gore in the art but it's pretty much heavy metal standard so if you don't cry or throw up when you watch a Dario Argento movie or look at the posters in a record store you're probably fine.

Man, this is so not a problem for me. I myself am not "metal", but every other tabletop campaign I've run is metal as fuck. I mean, I like RIFTS (dear God, not the system mind you, but every sourcebook looks like an Iron Maiden album cover and I mean fuck yes).

Zak S wrote:The real point is the adventures and supplements--the game was originally just a pretext to publish weird high-production-values modules. The adventures have a lot of variety-- Kenneth Hite did Qelong, which is a cool southeast-asian sandbox, Dave Brockie from Gwar did a full-on grossout adventure called 2 towers, storygamer king Vincent Baker did one, the adventures written by James himself tend to combine a lot of historical research with tough-but-not-impossible fucked-up horror scenarios.

I bought Qelong a few years back, thought it was my favorite LotFP module. Really interesting example of a super-hostile setting, though the rules were kind of meh. You could run a bunch of really weird/cool adventures with the hooks provided, though their default reason to wander into radioactive hell jungles feels a little weak.

EDIT: BTW, this might be the bundle that was mentioned earlier https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Lamentations

Yeah, that's the bundle I got. : )

Pretty good deal, those bundle of holding things. I've actually had one of my games in one, so I know that Allen Varney makes out from the deal too.

Frank should talk to Allen Varney about doing an After Sundown/Tome "Best of the Den" Bundle of Holding. I'm at least half-serious.

Schwarzkopf wrote: Lamentations of the Flame Princess...what it is?

It's a shitty OSR clone with some of the most amazing adventures available, and amazingly violent/funny art.



The free RPG day adventure 'Better than any Man' is one of the best adventures I've ever ran, and I really like the LotFP suggested approach of placing campaigns in a magical, twisted version of the real world in history (usually Europe, but there's also an adventure set in Nigeria, ...).

A conflict between catholics and protestants in the thirty years war feel just way more interesting to me than a conflict between X-fantasy-god and Y-fantasy-god, and you can put real events such as the Magdeburger Bluthochzeit (Bloody Wedding) into the adventure.

There's also an adventure about the conflicts between Newton, Hooke and Halley during the writing of the Principia Mathematica, a 'slasher movie' adventure in the 1620ies England, or the trollish 'Fuck for Satan'.

A few adventures are also 'more traditional', such as a dimension-hopping monolith, a Haunted Chateau in France or the nice twist on tomb-of-horror named Thulian Echoes.

Just use the adventure ideas and settings with your favourite D&D-like rule set.

Isn't this the thing that Feist ripped off of?

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Isn't this the thing that Feist ripped off of?

Could you qualify that some? The only Feist I know would be Raymond Feist which doesn't make any sense, and Feist the singer which makes even less sense.

malak wrote:The free RPG day adventure 'Better than any Man' is one of the best adventures I've ever ran, and I really like the LotFP suggested approach of placing campaigns in a magical, twisted version of the real world in history (usually Europe, but there's also an adventure set in Nigeria, ...).

A conflict between catholics and protestants in the thirty years war feel just way more interesting to me than a conflict between X-fantasy-god and Y-fantasy-god, and you can put real events such as the Magdeburger Bluthochzeit (Bloody Wedding) into the adventure.

We'll have to disagree here. I thought that "Better than any man" was one of the most annoying anti-player adventures I've ever seen. Especially the epic level evil necromancer who feels the need to subcontract to newbie adventurers, and the final dungeon that's just there to fuck you.

WTF is up with the call-back to the demon-birthing human from WW in the player book? D:

Longes wrote:

malak wrote:The free RPG day adventure 'Better than any Man' is one of the best adventures I've ever ran, and I really like the LotFP suggested approach of placing campaigns in a magical, twisted version of the real world in history (usually Europe, but there's also an adventure set in Nigeria, ...).

A conflict between catholics and protestants in the thirty years war feel just way more interesting to me than a conflict between X-fantasy-god and Y-fantasy-god, and you can put real events such as the Magdeburger Bluthochzeit (Bloody Wedding) into the adventure.

We'll have to disagree here. I thought that "Better than any man" was one of the most annoying anti-player adventures I've ever seen. Especially the epic level evil necromancer who feels the need to subcontract to newbie adventurers, and the final dungeon that's just there to fuck you.

To be fair, if someone is the type of person to like anything at all about LotFP, then they are also exactly the kind of anti-player idiot who would also like anti-player adventures.