Thanks to a recent sale on the PDF versions, I have recently bought quite a few LotFP supplements. For those of you who have spent the last two years on Mars, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) is a weird fantasy role-playing game, which is part of the "Old School Renaissance" (OSR) movement. However, contrary to most OSR fantasy role-playing games, whose sole aim is to re-create that 'dungeon' feeling from our high school years, LotFP has a few innovations of its own, which I'll detail in this post. These are much more important in my eyes than what LotFP is usually only known for: a general taste for adult themes and illustrations.1. To me, the most important innovation is that LotFP adventures, for all their 'dungeonness', are definitely different from those 1980s modules: they are usually designed for low-level characters, and there is only one major opponent within the 'dungeon' -- the rest of the dungeon is there to unnerve the PCs through its many traps or weird encounters.
2. Another peculiarity of LotFP is that its default setting, although never really described, is more of a 15th-17th century Europe than an imaginary Dark Ages quasi-European fantasy world. Again, this makes for grittier adventures where the enemy is not an exaggerated 'monster' but a cunning, evil enemy that has laid out a careful plan to trap unwanted trespassers.
3. Yet another peculiarity is that LotFP adventures tend to be light on stats and heavy on description. A creature's armour class, for instance, is never given as a numeric value but always as "as unarmored man", "armor as leather", etc. Movement is likewise always rendered as a multiplier of an unarmoured man's movement value.
As a consequence, LotFP adventures are surprisingly adaptable to The Celestial Empire. I have started penning conversion notes for No Dignity in Death, The Tower, and Tower of the Stargazer. Since I don't want to spoil these adventures, I won't write anything here. Just PM me or let me know in the comments if you are interested.
I'd be interested in seeing your conversions!
ReplyDeleteOK... Maybe what I'll do is post them in white over a white background so that readers who don't want to be spoilt won't see them.
ReplyDeleteActually they are more like cultural notes to make sure the adventure does fit in a Chinese milieu rather than 'mechanical' conversion notes. I have posted two of them.
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