I think you could get  aLOT of mileage out of public domain historical woodcuts and paintings and stuff. Epees and Sorcellerie did a good job with that.  I mean, if you can have Carpaccio as your illustrator for free, why not use him?

Oh also:

Some detailed rules/descriptions/playing aids for resource managment (time scale, food, etc.) would be cool.

Like maybe a DM cheat sheet timeline piece of paper for the GM that showed time scales (turn/round/minute/hour/day) with marks for how long the pcs can go without water, food, light, etc.

I recommend you put A LOT of time and effort into a section on dungeon/adventure design.

This would give the game a decent raison d'etre--very few RPGs go into that, although it's arguably the most important thing.

It could include:

random tables
advice on how to use random tables
ideas about when and what to prep and what to not prep
a detailed taxonomy of adventure types
linear vs. nonlinear
etc.

That way the game won't just be a LOTFP retro-clone, it;ll be a treasury of Raggi DM advice.

Also, sub-systems for different eventualities (mass combat, etc.) could be used by anybody.

Also, I wouldn't stint on the snark.  Make it fun to read and even seasoned old-schoolers will like it.

Here are my best examples.  You can ignore the stuff at the beginning...

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 … arned.html

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/20 … y-axe.html

5

(13 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

It looks good.  2 minor points--

"But only the best will win the treasure!" seems a little generic compared to the other ad copy, but it gets the point across.

also, why is "designer's notes" in quotes?  If it's at all like DFD then these are simply designer's notes, straight up.

Seems like you got the whole nine yards out of that module, bat.

7

(13 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

JimLotFP wrote:

If this adventure does not drain every drop of your blood, then it will disintegrate you. If it does not disintegrate you, it will electrocute you. If it does not electrocute you, it will starve you. If it does not starve you, it still will defeat you in a battle of wits.

I feel like the ad copy should highlight this bit.  This part will grab the potential buyer, the rest of it is information you might want once you're ALREADY grabbed.

I say put this in big letters at the top, then have the other copy.

I'm taking this thread as a challenge.

james wrote:

However, they give themselves permission to be brutal, and players forgive such brutality much easier, if using a published adventure. Then the referee is more easily a neutral arbiter, and isn't directly responsible for whatever carnage ensues. Does anyone else notice this?

For me, it depends on the spirit that you went into the thing with:

-if I just grabbed a module so that I'd have something to run that night, then i adjust it like any other adventure (which is not to say I'd necessarily make it easier)

-if the module is some sort of legendary challenge, like Tomb of Horrors, then the idea is to run it totally "straight" and see if the players survive.

-if the idea is to review it or playtest it, then, again, you'd run it straight.

Here's a thread where you can post about how Death Frost Doom went over with your group...

I dropped Death Frost Doom into the middle of my campaign--to see how it went on the day of, check here...

(spoilers)

http://mandymorbid.blogspot.com/2009/09 … -doom.html

(more spoilers below)

A few days ago I ran my first post-Death Frost Doom session.  It was excellent.

At first I was kind of worried about having an undead mini-apocalypse let loose on the game world, but then I changed it so that instead of ghouls, the countryside was overrun with just skeletons.

This made it feel more medieval to me (Holbein Woodcut plus opened up an interesting theme:

Zombies and ghouls, nowadays tend to make people think about fear of conformity (or AIDS), skeleton images, in the middle ages, were often a metaphor for the Black Plague.

So I decided to run with that--skeletons stalk the land, causing mayhem--the cities (and dungeons) are the only "safe" places, where people hole up and hope to outlast the plague.

It gives a nice, isolating post-apocalyptic-yet-still-middle-ages feeling to the thing.  Adventures feel like that Edgar Allan Poe story "Mask of the Red Death".

11

(218 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I'm Zak Smith.  I live in Hollywood.  I'm 30-something.

I played a lot of games when I was, like, 14.  Rifts, Wh40k, FASERIP Marvel etc. & started getting back into games about a year ago.

Me and my girlfriend are trying to get a regular gaming group going here but everybody we know is either a stripper or a porn star--which is a fine thing in many ways, but it does mean that they're pretty flakey and it's hard to get a regular game going.