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Lamentations of the Flame Princess » Posts by Beedo
I had the sense it was an island
Edit (board ate the post) - I had the sense it was a lost island, "out of time" - island in a bottle, lost world type of place, with some archaic cultures. If that's still true, I like the idea of using it as a place where "modern" folks get blown off course and shipwrecked (by modern, that could be Renaissance or early modern).
Ogres are cannibal humans, twisted by an ancient curse to grow large and misshapen; you can make them totally dissociated from giants.
I'm thinking it's a place to visit, wouldn't want to live there. As such, it's the ultimate place for a dimensional portal or semi-permanent gate to lead. Rather than have to info dump at the start of the campaign, just make everyone visitors from someplace sane. I'd use a regular campaign world, so a Carcosan sorcerer could be a villain there, but the crashed ship works well too.
My head exploded with the awesomeness of a 16th century Weird D&D game in America - you've got border forts and small isolated colonies, foreign intrigue, hostile natives, and a whole wilderness frontier on the door step - and an area amenable to a blend of 'sandboxing' and 'urban crawling'. You've got piracy on the high seas about to enter its golden age in the Spanish Main, and the exploration of distant jungles in Central and South America. Decadent Europe is about to crumble under the weight of religious strife.
The "end-game" for such a campaign would need to be quite a bit different than standard D&D (look, we built a castle!). It's not hard to envision lots of one-shot adventures in that kind of setting - I want to think a little further about how such a campaign could be structured.
Pretty interesting direction for LOTFP. Treading more and more in Call of Cthulhu's space with period settings and weird horror stories, but with mechanics that are familiar to a much larger audience. Makes sense to me, I've felt this game is perfect for a low key Lovecraftian campaign (regardless if you use Mythos creatures or 100% custom HPL-inspired creatures).
Will we be seeing a LOTFP historical setting, or will the tweak to the direction just be more strongly implied in the future modules?
I treat them like detectable auras and not allegiances, as well. I use good and evil in Gothic Greyhawk, but it's not related to alignment and has no game mechanic tied to it (it's purely for story).
I like that explanation, Jim, I had been comparing recently using something like LOTFP versus dark fantasy BRP games like Cthulhu Invictus or Cthulhu Dark Ages, and the campaign answer is a good one. But LOTFP are not so over-the-top like standard D&D not to be threatened even with modest progression.
Nice! I used to live in Boulder, I loved Tacticon. (Unfortunately, I moved East a few years ago, miss the West). Good luck!
I forgot, I had a similar idea recently about taking all the Lovecraft Country supplements from Chaosium and making a sandbox out of them - voila, instant weird fantasy setting (assuming we switched the time to the 16th cent):
Nice job, I enjoyed those write-ups. One of my upcoming projects is probably going to be a Weird Rome, and something like the Wall from Game of Thrones would be great as a Hadrian's Wall and your frozen north.
Over at my blog, I've been building out a campaign setting for a ruined alien city (inspired by At The Mountains of Madness) on an island in the frozen north, discovered by Vikings. It's pretty weird, has some horror, but is still slanted more to adventure than horror. But I do think LotFP could work for a stronger horror themed game, too.
Yeah, that's a good point - I tend to use a ton of houserules for basic D&D (applied to LOTFP as well), but giving the dwarves and elves a combat boost was the only LOTFP specific one.
A few other common ones include first aid (can recover d4-1 hp immediately after a combat), "chop when they drop" - a cleave house rule for fighters, and allowing characters to be brought back from negative hit points (when you go negative, continue to lose -1 hp per round at which point death is irreversible; if enough magic healing can be applied to bring the person to 1 hp or more, they're still alive).
Wow, way to kick off the Gamer ADD, Omer. Thanks for nothing! 
Seriously though, these ideas could be an awesome campaign idea. I have all the Lovecraft Country books from Chaosium (Return to Dunwich, Arkham, Kingsport and Innsmouth) and they make a nifty "Call of Cthulhu sandbox".
So how awesome would it be to reskin those from early 20th century to the Renaissance, and have the group tooling around Renaissance versions of Kingsport (The Terrible Old Man, The Festival), Arkham (Dreams in the Witch House... has a familiar ring to it, that one does...) and of course, Dunwich. ACK, I'll need to write a gamer ADD blog post just to get this out of my head so I don't keep thinking about it.
Anyway, I'll visit back and see how to kick in ideas from time to time.
That Don Kenn blog is awesome - his work is really creepy and charming at the same time.
We allow dwarves, elves and halflings to advance partially in fighting ability - +1 attack bonus every two levels instead of every level. Fighters are the best, demihumans fight half as well as fighters, and clerics, magic users and specialists bring up the bottom. (Although specialists can turn themselves into nasty ninjas by pumping points into sneak attack).
A future house rule I'm considering is adding 1-2 new skills for specialists - something to cover music or performance and something to cover legend and lore - so the specialist can pinch-hit as a skald or bard in certain settings.
The idea of giving other classes some skill points here and there is pretty intriguing.
Thanks sir! I didn't notice any font issues myself, on a cursory sweep through the docs.
I have a similar question - to Wulfgar - are there plans to do an art-free version free PDF like there was for the deluxe edition?
We're in the midst of an edition discussion and this would be good info to know. Thanks man!
My box with Vornheim/Grindhouse hasn't arrived - hopefully it's any day now.
What's the story with the 100 pre-orders - I got to work late (stupid east coast Northeaster) so drop a line if the 100 is still in play.
If these other fine folks don't work out, I'm glad to help out.
I don't claim editorial experience (though I do have a Lit degree) but am critical on gaming materials, structure, mechanics and organization and would be glad to make you defend your choices. Just saying.
Duh: I noticed James's post was from a year ago - I'm thinking he has an editor by now. 
Discuit, you could use the ability scores to help you adjudicate the success of actions, even when you're not applying any mechanics to a roll - the strong guy might automatically lift up a heavy barrel that the 9 str guy couldn't budge.
I try not to use "skill checks" as much as possible, but one thing I've done is using 2d6, 3d6, 4d6 etc as a roll and having the characters roll under their ability. That's mainly for cases where there's a real need to randomize and I feel it can't be handled purely through a ruling.
Let's say they have to walk across a narrow beam over a chasm - maybe it calls for Dexterity type checks to avoid falling. If the beam is a few feet wide, maybe I have everyone roll 2d6 under their dex (folks with high dex won't lose their balance at all); if the beam were only a few inches wide, maybe it'd be 3d6 under dexterity - much higher chance for the average people to slip.
I like 3d6 because the curve puts most of the results around 9-11, as opposed to a straight d20 which is linear, and turns it into a percentile roll. A dex 16 person would have an 80% of making across the beam on a straight d20, role, but like a 95% of being lower on 3d6.
It's always good to get the perspective of the designer.
I tend to agree with you about the cleric; the super fast experience progression offsets a degree of slowing the spell progression. I think the issue is more of expectation, and (old-time) gamers knowing how those tables have worked for 30+ years.
Here's an example that lays out my concern about the base attack progression. (James, this example isn't so much for your benefit, I'm sure you live and breath this stuff, but rather for folks that might have only skimmed the rules and haven't chucked any dice or seen how it plays at the table). For the example, take an 8th level party and throw them up against a classic monster like red dragon. The standard red dragon (AC -1) would be AC 22 in LOTFP terms.
Our 8th level fighters would be +9 to hit, I'll assume they have a strength bonus and some +2 weapons by 8th level, putting them at +12 - they need a 10 or better, 55% chance to hit, good odds; as we know, fighters are the backbone of the party.
Every other class would be a +1; assuming some +2 items as well, they'd need a 19-20 to hit. For the cleric and magic user, they have better things to do than melee. The specialist is probably trying to backstab at +4 (+2, and +2 for sneak attack).
The demi-humans, on the other hand, can no longer carry their weight if they can only hit on a 19+, since they're no better at fighting than magic users. The WFRP rules have some nifty combat options that fighters, dwarves and elves can all use, so the "press" option provides an additional +2 at the cost of some defense.
One obvious solution (and one I've followed from time to time) is to normalize AC so that most monsters will fall into a 'realistic' AC range - extreme negative armor classes from other systems get pushed down in the AC 20 or worse range.
Another solution is to hand out tissues for the crying. It's a humanocentric game, sorry you picked a demihuman. (That one wasn't popular at the table when I suggested it).
My players have been petitioning that I give the demihumans a partial attack bonus progression - not as good as fighters, but something that lets a dwarf (fighter) attack slighly better than a magic-user or cleric of equal level. Like maybe at level 4 it becomes a +2 bonus, a +3 bonus at level 6, etc. (Basically half of the fighter's bonus, rounded down, minimum of +1).
Just thinking out loud at this point - wanted to see how it's worked out with other folks.
We switched from Moldvay/LL to WFRP back in September, so we have a few months of drive-time with the system (this isn't armchair quarterbacking). There have been a few areas where the player's have grumbled about some of the changes.
The group's cleric just hit level 3, proudly announced that now he would get his first level 2 spell, and when I directed him to review the modified cleric spell progression, he cried shenanigans. (If you've never matched them head to head, you may be surprised - the WFRP progression is a bit attenuated).
The other complainants tends to be our dwarf and elf players, who look at the fighter's to-hit advantage and rend their shirts in envy. (Those who play the fighters are smugly satisfied with the status quo).
I'm not unhappy with the cleric's state, but am considering giving the dwarf and elf a +2 attack bonus instead of the standard +1 - it would make a dwarf (fighter) at least marginally better at attacking than a magic user.
Looking for insight from other folks using the rules.
Hey Irda this has been a good discussion, it's helped me formalize my thinking, and you've hit it on the head with this point. Thanks!
The reason we have a thousand religions on Earth is because you never get any definitive answers, just prophets who say stuff but cannot be confirmed. Spells like Commune or Speak With Dead need to either confirm the existence of each God's existence, or be non-committal either way. Because the truth will out, if truth be revealed.
I couldn't agree more. Commune and Speak with the Dead should give answers, but as interpreted through the lense of human experience, its possible the actual truth gets occluded and the objective truth remains elusive.
For instance - one approach could be - when the exalted being(s) taught the first holy men how to unlock their 'clerical powers', said holy men went off and started stories about sky gods able to throw bolts of lightning; they started a cult; over time these myths evolved separately to become Zeus, Odin, Wotan, Marduk... separate regional religions evolved, with antagonistic traditions. But somewhere beneath all the folklore and crap that humans made up, were common elements that pointed towards a unified origin. (And the exalted being here certainly doesn't need to be a god...)
Why couldn't speak with dead be the same; the dead person had a clear idea in mind what the bad place or good place would be like after they died, and when awoken from the sleep of the dead, their description is part self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforcing the folklore. Folks that have communed with a higher being fill in the dots based on their own cultural biases. (Kind of like how medieval art depicts biblical events with medieval looking people wearing medieval clothes...)
The DM would never tell the players one way or the other that 'god' was an ancient alien or the afterlife is the dead person's own wish fulfillment; the difference is that at the start of the campaign, the DM says, here is how stories say the cosmology works, or this is how people believe the cosmology works, instead of saying this is how the cosmology actually works. It's a really simple switch to flip, with profound implications. (And the DM doesn't have to say up front, that believers are all deluded schizophrenics...)
Okay - this is a funny position to defend - since plenty of campaigns I've run have had 'real' deities and religions, deities that intervene and zip around like costumed super hero meddlers. Looking at you, Forgotten Realms! But keeping it vague and ambiguous whether the gods and religions of the world are real is truer to the tropes of Lovecraft and weird fiction.
Seems like a good way to breed ennui at the gaming table, if you establish that a Cleric's power is directly proportional to his descent into his own schizophrenic delusions. D&D is supposed to be fun, IMO, and that's depressing.
So, you're just figuring out this thread was about taking a Lovecraftian and Weird Fiction approach in a D&D game?
Kidding aside, I'll take your complaint about subjective belief systems head on. Let's say the DM is kicking off his new 'Heroic Age' campaign, he explains to the players how the gods live up on Mount Olympus, dead people go to Hades or the Elysian Fields, and the world was created by Rhea. One of the players chooses to be a cleric, a priest of Apollo. All is right with the world, from their perspective.
Later they run into some Babylonians, start gabbing about cosmology and how Rhea created the earth, and the Baylonian priest starts yelling at the characters` - wrong, wrong, WRONG! Everyone with a lick of sense knows that Marduk created the current world from the body of Tiamat...
The priest of Apollo can do spells, so clearly Apollo is real, and the priest of Marduk can do spells, too, so clearly Marduk is real. (The DM is thinking, wait until they run into some Teutons and hear their story...)
Point is, the real world is already full of conflicting mythologies and cosmologies. The gods of one myth cycle are the demons of the next one. Does the DM need to reveal any objective truths to the players about the real cosmology? But this sense of ambiguity about how two different religions function in the same world would require schizophrenic delusions?
Mechanically, the only issues come into play with higher level spells like commune and plane shift, but there's no reason a player character couldn't contact something, or travel somewhere... just not what they expected...
fmitchell wrote:There's also the Eberron solution: clerical abilities are manifestations of belief, irrespective of whether the object of belief actually exists, or has godlike power.
This is the system I used for a bit. But the errors quickly became evident.
From the PC's point of view, it's no different than having "real" clerics, because all real (i.e., spellcasting) clerics are true believers. There are no agnostics or atheists who can do clerical magic.
But on the other hand, guys who believe in ancestor spirits, or totem poles, or Greek pantheons, are just as effective as the guys who believe in all-powerful monotheisms, and they can't all be right. If ten different Gods all claim to have created the world at some point, and they all grant spells, then clearly there's something crazy going on.
Which would lead any sane non-cleric to conclude that (1) since it's impossible for all of the Gods to exist, and no one God is clearly in control, perhaps none of them exist, and (2) Clerics are really just crazy people (perhaps Chaos-touched), and their craziness is what allows them to tap into some source of power.
Which would pretty quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because in a world where ten competing philosophies all claim world-creation responsibility, and they're all staffed by true believers, only more frothy-mouthed true believers will join the ranks while anyone with even an ounce of skepticism will quickly wash their hands of the whole thing.
I guess I'm not seeing the problem with this approach - if fake cult A believes the world was created in 5 days, and fake cult B believes it evolved through a billion year process, and both of them have clerics capable of casting spells, and no one in the world can authoritatively prove that one god is real or fake compared to the other, then it's exactly the kind of ambiguity you need for Weird Horror.
I'm not interested in a cosmology that makes objective sense, where the players feel like their actions are part of some cosmic struggle of good vs evil; that's not really part of the source fiction for Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, or REH.
Sure, my regular D&D game has a good deity, evil ones, the whole supernatural struggle you expect in fantasy; the thought exercise here was how to keep the cleric class in the game while having a vast, impersonal cosmos where there are no (real) deities that are interested in humanity; the folks of the world just made up whatever it is they believed in... Zeus, Thor, the Celestial Teapot... whatever.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess » Posts by Beedo
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