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Do you play it as written -- with demi-humans, scarce monsters and magic, etc.?
Or have you put your own twist on it -- banned demi-humans (like Mr. Raggi), import the usual fantasy monsters, etc.?
My group likes regular ol' D&D -- but I want to use the LotFP rules set.
Thoughts?
I play it with most options in the book, and more as "standard" D&D than most campaigns - but I still keep the spell list and try to keep the monsters interesting and "non-stock".
The rules are easy to adapt to whatever playing style your group might have, I think.
I've kept the demi-humans in, but kept them rare; only halflings being common in more urban environments as far as NPCs go. I set my campaign in the real world in the year 1650, despite the demi-humans and some magic being about history has gone pretty much as in real life. Until my players stepped in that is, now the world has some more weirdness to it in certains place across the globe, but is still fairly recognizeable (The Commonwealth Navy has an airship and some van Ooms helicopters, for example).
The rules of the game work wonders with the firearms and demi-humans kept in. A group of 0-level humans with arquebuses in a cleverly placed ambush stand a fair chance against my player characters who usually don't survive past levels 3-5. With the 1 or 2 otherwordly monsters in adventure locations the tone of the game stays creepy, as most of the time ruins are empty of any life save for some traps left behind by whoever built the places ages ago. With the fighting monsters kept to a minimum those times that something IS actually fought become all the more memorable, and the other classes have actual use in play when not all time is spent hacking, slashing, and bowing/gunning down standard fare monsters.
The real world as a location also gives the players plenty of ideas for backstories and everyone knows where play is set at all times, no need for maps and explaining the history of *insert campaign setting here*.
I use demi-humans but consider them a rare and dying breed.
I adapted a fantasy city I made up years ago but forwarded the timeline a few centuries, so the queen's law that had allowed otherworldly beings and demonic cults to settle in the city has been repealed, leaving the Adventurer and Salvage Union able to legally kick down monsters' doors and take their shit.
Firearms are right in.
Monsters are Flame-Princess-Weird, a welcome break from goblins and orc.
We play on "real-Earth" so we just renamed the demi-human classes.
Halflings are now rangers/scout and can't use big weapons because it hinders their ability to hide and move easily in the wild.
Elves are warlock/battle mages. I like how the fact that they now start with only Read Magic in their spellbook makes playing Magic-User an interesting choice over battle mages.
Dwarfs are masons/brutes. Or could be war engineers.
We didn't make any changes to their class abilities. For the rest, we play as written and I sometime use the Random generator to come up with creatures. There's also the possibility to travel to other worlds/settings. For example, in our semi-regular game, the PCs experimented with a special door that opened on Isle of the Unknown. They all chose to go through, leaving treasure behind and convinced that they can always go back to the manor... which is true, but easier said than done...
I use all humans, but I use a point buy for all the abilities, so people can essentially recreate a "race" as desired.
Last edited by Lord Inar (2013-11-04 15:43:33)
I play in a Earth-setting with no demihumans, the classes are there but renamed, and I allow anyone playing them to replace the skill they improve in for another skill. The Elf is renamed to "Magic Born" and are still sensitive to Holy Water, because that's too awesome to leave out.
When I run LotFP as is I run it in a pseudo-historical Earth setting. In that I don't use any demi humans at all. I reskinned the demi-human classes. I renamed dwarfs as barbarians with Climb replacing Architecture. Halflings became Rangers with the change that they can't use any of their special abilities if more than lightly encumbered. I completely reworked the Elf as a dark, sorcerous human class with a modified spellcasting system and a progression of witch marks.
There are a few threads on this forum about converting the demi-human classes to a human only world.
My LotFP game takes place on Adlivun, AKA Pluto, billions of years in the future when the sun has become a red giant and teeters on the brink of collapse.
Demi-humans are allowed. Halflings were the first race of bio-engineered humans, designed for living and working in space, the asteroid belt, etc. There, their small size, superior dexterity and balance, resistance to adverse conditions, and temperament made them ideal.
Dwarves came later, and were designed for establishing colonies on inhospitable worlds such as Mercury, the moons of Jupiter, and Pluto, as well as mining. Moreso than by their physical characteristics, dwarves were defined by their psychological drive to serve. Their decline as a species came when most "old-style humans" transcended their bodies, the speed of light, and other such limitations, and left the solar system (and dwarves along with it).
Elves are post-humans who have chosen to take on bodies, usually ones that they've designed themselves, in order to experience the novelty of life as a physically grounded being. Those on Adlivun have mostly tired of their immortality and have chosen to "go down with the ship," so to speak, living out their last years (millenia?) in their native solar system's final stretch.
Given all of that, humans (i.e., old-styles) are something novel in their own right. Some were created as play-things by the Inuit gods on Quidlivun (AKA Charon), some are descendents of old colony ship crews, some were born from bizarre sects that, for whatever reason, refused to transcend their humanity.
Most LotFP conventions work well in this environment (spells, unique monsters and magic items, etc.). We're currently working through B4 - The Lost City, having exchanged the desert of the module as written for the snow-blown tundra of Pluto's southern hemisphere, which only recently emerged from its decades of complete darkness.
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