26

(1 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I skimmed that section and have two thoughts:

1) does the book have any safeguards that are triggered? (I didn't see any, but I didn't read super closely.)

2) if it counts as "being destroyed" the pages may reconstitute themselves in another library.

My read on this book is that it can't be destroyed, just divided up. And I'd be surprised that the solution to destroy it is put right there in its pages.

27

(8 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

To each their own, of course.

I think the future of LotFP is heading toward becoming more of its own unique system, with strong old school roots. In many LotFP (and old school) campaigns we never get to play with the higher level spells b/c characters never live that long. The new system allows potential access to all spells right off the bat.

Also, "summon" is perhaps the most popular LotFP spell (and it's first level) so I think the new spell system is trying to emulate that exciting, risky feel with every spell.

If you keep using the original magic system, then VAM and EC make great options for scrolls that any character can try to use.

28

(2 replies, posted in LotFP Webstore Forum)

I don't know, I'm surprised it's not there. Maybe if/when it's reprinted?

(I don't think James responds too frequently in the forums - you might have better luck asking on the Facebook group...)

29

(8 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Eldritch Cock came later and supersedes VAM.

30

(8 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Have you seen the playtest rules presented in Vaginas Are Magic and Eldritch Cock?

If not, I highly recommend at least incorporating the new spellcasting rules before your first game (and including the spells from both of those books in your list of spells for characters to possibly get at first level).

31

(8 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Welcome to LotFP!

I see that wording in R&M (newer version) but I have always played that the INT bonus applies to all magic based saving throws and WIS bonus applies to all non-magic saving throws. I think it's a bit more straightforward and easier to remember this way.

There aren't any attacks of opportunity in LotFP. (Personally, I reroll initiative each round, with one or the other side winning. This means that even if a PC wants to disengage, if they lose initiative, they might get attacked first, if they win, they get away...)

Yeah, the general advice is "don't railroad" and "let the players do what they want." I think that's true to a certain degree, but I think everyone has to be on the same page that it will be a sandbox and the players may just skip entire things you've prepared.

That said, I think it sounds like you and the players are not on the same page. My LotFP group has changed players over the years and I think it has become a group of players who enjoy LotFP modules. They really want to know all the stuff from the module b/c they know how interesting and messed up they are. They risk life and limb (and having to roll up new characters) to explore every part b/c they know there's crazy shit in there.

Your players are playing more traditional D&D and seem more interested in surviving and winning than exploring.

Here's what I can offer:

-Talk with them about it. Maybe negotiate some ways to increase their survivability (like give them some followers or retainers who can take on some of the risk). I ended up giving my players better healing and luck points that allowed rerolls so that they felt more secure to explore areas they knew were deadly. Basically, find out what it will take to convince them to want to explore the areas they are running from.

-Let them read through some of the adventures they've already played (like The God That Crawls) and let them know these are the sort of adventures you're running - there's cool, weird stuff in there and it's always interesting and different. I know after we played Better Than Any Man and I let my players read it, they got really into playing LotFP when they saw all the stuff they missed out on interacting with.

-Find out what kind of game the players want. Maybe they don't like the idea of going through modules or adventures and just want to sandbox, fighting monsters and leveling up (mostly, they probably just don't want to die). You might have to tell them you're not interested in that and want to run some adventures - so maybe a huge treasure and XP boost for completing an adventure, and you alternate a prepped adventure with some sandboxing and character development.

-Give a boost for dead characters. Allow them to transfer some XP, a boon, or some other thing. My players earn "Raggi Points" equal to the level of the dead character that can be used for some extra boons to their new character. You could also allow them to play more interesting or exotic races/classes only after death.

The mentions I see in BTAM are on pages 48 and 72 where it describes its incubation period and then says to look at the Rules & Magic book for diseases. When you look there, it says normal diseases aren't really a part of the game for PCs, but the Referee is free to create them.

I would recommend looking up what the Plague was like during the 30 years war and just creating it yourself. It likely has an impact on constitution and then almost any action PCs take as the infection progresses.

34

(25 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Nice, I am just getting ready to run this for my LotFP group via video play. I'm gonna boookmark this section and check your stuff out! 

I'll add some of my own stuff as it comes up, too.

voyager156 wrote:

Also, rolling for stats often creates NOT perfectly balanced characters - which is interesting in my opinion :-)

I agree! When I play, I love rolling right down the line and seeing what I get - a super low stat is just as much fun as a super high one. It honestly baffles me that someone wouldn't want to do this! XD

So right off, high stats will not save these characters. If you’re running Lotfp modules or other OSR modules, there are save or die instances and in some cases no save, just die.

This makes spending time on point buying kind of pointless. It also leads to increased character investment, which is misleading.

Ultimately if it makes your players happy, it’s not a big deal, but it does show they’re maybe missing the point by asking for it.

Have they read the old school primer yet?

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/matthew … m8y7m.html

If their goal is to be able to play a particular class, they do get to swap two scores. You could also let them bring any “failed” characters (those that aren’t suitable for play per the rules) as 0 level retainers, which may make rolling up characters more appealing to them.

Haha, it seems so against LotFP, so no. But 5E has a system for that, right? I don't see any issue with using that system only for generating stats, and then the rest of the LotFP rules as-is. (Or just using whatever point buy system they are used to.)

https://chicken-dinner.com/5e/5e-point-buy.html

That said, are you running an OSR style game? Or are you running a more "heroic" style game where the characters will live long, are expected to min/max, and such?

Personally, I wouldn't provide any penalties, as long as they had the weapon drawn and ready.

I mean, if you imagine yourself standing in front of someone aiming any of those weapons at you, it's basically all the same, right?

The challenge comes into trying to load, or prepare the next shot in the midst of melee with a large weapon.

It would be crazy to try to reload a gun while in melee combat, and a character likely wouldn't survive that. For the bow, I'd give advantage to the opponent, at the very least taking away the dex bonus from the PC trying to use the bow repeatedly in melee combat.

39

(2 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I've read it repeatedly, and I can't say for sure!

My initial feeling was that the halfling just gets the bonus to their modifier, and the AC bonus is a result from that. But, you could easily make the case that they get both.

40

(3 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

@Gregorius

I have a feeling it will take a LOOONG time, he had to get all new boxes, and has to wait for them to arrive before he can even start packaging, and then he has to transport them himself, then they have to get through a worldwide pandemic. It all basically sounds like a LotFP adventure in and of itself! wink

Have you looked through the PDF of Big Puppet yet? It looks pretty incredible - unlike any other LotFP module thus far. (I'm saving my first read through for when I get the book in hand, though...)

41

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

(Oh, and I can't take credit for the Groundhog's Day idea - I read it on a blog somewhere and thought it was a perfect way to implement the module. I actually think it should have been a suggestion included in the module itself, it seems almost like it was written to use it that way.)

42

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Since you're not using the module exactly as written, you could also have the spider slowly grow in power and level up the longer it takes the party to explore the area.

If there's any chance they would leave Dunnsmouth and go investigate the mountain (DFD) and then come back to Dunnsmouth, you could have the spider fully leveled up and most of the village infected.

43

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

It's been a while since I ran it, but I remember the main threat was the spider cult when my players played. One of them got tricked into entering the location of the spider alone, and it was a high level spider so it infected that PC pretty quickly. The other players did not know this PC was infected, so then I told that player the only way they could gain XP was by furthering the goals of the spider cult. They then tried to trick more players into going into the location of the spider alone (and managed to infect 1 or 2 more PCs, I think...)

In my sessions there was no real threat from the Duvan'Ku cult in Scenic Dunnsmouth as that was something that happened long ago and even the villagers weren't really caught up in it any more. I think Uncle Ivan was the main physical threat to the players, and I think Magda was part of the spider cult and responsible for getting that first player infected.

Getting infected by the spider sucks, so I wouldn't necessarily change things to make it harder for the players. But the villagers could use overwhelming force if the party shows their hand (ie, they realize there's a spider cult) or they could use a divide and conquer strategy if the PCs are foolish enough to investigate areas alone.

44

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Yeah, I like your idea of taking the best parts of the module and running them (rather than only using random rolls from charts, etc.) I'm tending more toward that in some of my non-LotFP stuff.

I ran Scenic Dunnsmouth as a "Groundhog's Day" sort of scenario - if a player died or tried to leave the area, the entire party woke up on their rowboat at the docks with an entirely newly generated Scenic Dunnsmouth. It was fun seeing them try to figure out the constants, and a few of them eventually got infected with the spider cult, and that DID stay from day to day, so they ran the risk of eventually all succumbing to the cult.

Their goal was to find the Time Cube, which would end them being trapped in repeating days.

45

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

DFD has a spot where you can insert a McGuffen, so it would definitely work to have someone in the village (maybe the Duncastor) mention an ancient weapon his family used to defeat the cult but also got lost in the battle. This is what would be found frozen in the goo monster and encourage the players to go up there and retrieve it.

Note that the spider cult has nothing to do with Duvan'Ku - they are two completely different cults.

46

(9 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I think the details of the Duvan'Ku  have been purposely left vague so that they remain a bit mysterious. You'll have to fill in the blanks as you feel best. Although there's definitely a similarity in the names "Van Kaus" and "van'Ku" wink Also, the guy they encounter living up there is a descendant from the town too, I think.

I ran Scenic Dunnsmouth and DFD pretty much as written and it worked fine. When players heard about the "ancient cult up in the mountains" it matched up with what they found when they went up there and explored the cabin. There wasn't much need to provide any detail or connection to Scenic Dunnsmouth beyond that. (Ie, DFD fleshed out the details of the cult  more.)

They are different, but they can interact.

Surprise is determined at the start of combat and can involve anything (not just an attack). It's simply getting to act for free before any surprised opponents.

Attacking from behind is kind of like a surprise, but not mechanically the same as the "surprise" mechanic described in the rules (hence your confusion). Attacking from behind could happen if you also had surprise on an opponent at the beginning of combat, it could happen if the Specialist was hiding and waited for the right time to attack after combat had already started (likely by the rest of the PCs). It could even happen outside of combat if they made a successful sneak roll to sneak up on somebody and stab them in the back.

I would say that the character sheet is just a reminder that your opponent is getting a +2 against you for attacking you from behind (ie, I don't think there's a -2 for you and a +2 for them, I think it's redundant). I think it might be an error to call it "surprise" but I could be wrong about that.

I would rule that all dex modifiers are ignored, including negative ones.

Healing

Low (roll 2 HD, keep lowest)

Tea* (10 servings)     10sp/oz
Coffee*     (5 servings)      5sp/oz
*requires boiled water and mug (1cp)

Medium (roll 1 HD)ǂ

Ale/Beer*                          1cp/pint
Cannabis/Tobacco** (25 uses)                 5cp/oz
Spirits (16 uses)                             8sp/bottle
Wine (6 uses)                            12cp/bottle
*requires a waterskin (1sp), which can hold 2 pints
**requires a pipe (5cp) and tinderbox (1sp)

High (roll 2 HD, keep highest)ǂ

Lucia's Chocolate (*BitCh-p17-18)        
-Milk Chocolate Bar (8)                       8sp
-Box of Truffles (12)                          12sp
-Box of Honey Chocolates (4)                15sp
-Box of Mint Chocolates (6)                      18sp
-Blueberry Chocolate Blossom                 7sp
*Luck 1 = additional effect
**as above, but make a Luck roll for each effect

49

(1 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I haven't run that module, so I just offer my thoughts as a long time LotFP Referee.

-Personally, I would definitely turn all the monsters and factions into humans. I'm not sure what they are vying for, but you could figure out a more appropriate thing for 17th century realism - some sort of resource, even if it's just territory. I would think about how to make each faction unique, again thinking about human groups throughout history, even "similar" groups have very different presentations (think of the Italian Mafia vs the Mexican Drug Cartel - both the "same" as far as what they are, but very different culturally and how they present themselves.)

-There are a lot of small modules that you could fit in there:
A Single, Small Cut
Tales of the Scarecrow
A Random Esoteric Monster or a Slug
Obscene Serpent Religion 2
The Pale Lady

Or, some non-official stuff: There are a lot of great monsters in Fire on the Velvet Horizon that are basically a mini-adventure in their own right if you want some interesting stuff dispersed throughout the land, but then that may defeat the purpose of spreading the caves out.

Finally, my players have always been more interested in running through the LotFP modules than hexcrawling/sandboxing, so I don't have too much advice on that. I sometimes just allow overland travel w/o much incident b/c they are eager to get to whatever the  next module I'm running is, and I'm happy to accommodate them! wink

Maybe now that it's easier to get in and out of Dunnsmouth, the spider cult will try to move out into a better area. Perhaps the cult will pack the spider in a crate and try to buy passage to the mainland.

I placed Scenic Dunnsmouth at the bottom of Death Frost Doom, so the players were able to hike up the mountain and continue on with that module.