Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part III)

Parts I and II of this interview can be found here and here, respectively.

7. In a media landscape increasingly shaped by risk-aversion and corporate IP management, where do small, transgressive publishers like Lamentations of the Flame Princess fit in? Is there still a place for the truly weird? 

I said something a little earlier that's not as true as it used to be. While it is mostly true that people look at the censorship of the past and think it was ridiculous, there's a creeping attitude rising up that looks at some stuff from the 1970s on, wondering how they got away with doing what they did. Like somehow it is wrong these things exist. The '70s were wild for movies. I was too young to see anything in those days (well, I remember Star Wars) but going back ... Blazing Saddles and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salò and Pink Flamingos and I Spit on Your Grave and Wizard of Gore and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now and Exorcist and Death Wish and Last Tango in Paris and and and and and and ... you could just make the most outrageous stuff and somehow there was a way to get it done and get it to audiences. And not just on the lowest independent level, either, there are some major films in just that list there. 

There's a reason I called the second game box, the one after I realized I could do this full time, the “Grindhouse Edition.” This is the feel we're after. Anything can happen, and whether any particular work falls within someone's parameters of good taste is not our concern. 

Whether there is room for that today is entirely up to the public and their willingness to dig a little bit to find it. It might not be on the most convenient platforms. You might even have to order direct from the publisher. That's what allows this stuff to still exist now and into the future in a cultural climate that seems to demand you conform to Group A or Group B's standards in order to have an audience. 

8. Do you think roleplaying games have a unique potential to explore uncomfortable or disturbing subject matter, more so than, say, literature or film? If so, why? 

I think they have less potential. RPGs are all location and situation and setup, and then it's through play that things actually happen. The “emergent story” format of RPGs means that whatever comes out at the end is something of an accident, or the result of a succession of coincidences. 

Literature and film and any medium where someone has complete control over the flow of the entire story means they can take uncomfortable subjects and do different things with them deliberately and drive the point home through narrative and thematic context. 

If the typical RPG group comes across the goings-on in, say, Salò, there's going to be an exploration of a very different kind of violence than the film invites us to explore, I dare say. 

9. Finally, if Lovecraft were alive today, do you think he’d approve of Lamentations of the Flame Princess? Or would he recoil in horror? 

The more interesting question is if Lovecraft were alive today, what would all these people who have appropriated his work and in some cases owe some substantial portion of their incomes to their use of his work, think of him?

Can you imagine Lovecraft stepping through a time portal from the mid-1930s, with all the attitudes from then intact, seeing what's become of his work, and deciding to try to get writing jobs from the publishers selling books based on his work? That would be much more amusing.

As for what Lovecraft would think of LotFP? Oh he'd hate it. He's from a wealthy family that fell on hard times, and apparently carried himself with a sort of upper class manner, thought of himself as a gentleman, and for the first forty years of his life he was deeply conservative, and I'm this racial mongrel (Italians and Poles were two immigrant groups he didn't much care for) kid from the projects who is a fan of and influenced by and I guess producing the lowest of the arts.

And one of those influences is the old pulp author H.P. Lovecraft. I love you, man.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here.

4. Do you feel that the mechanics of traditional RPGs (e.g. levels, hit points, spells) can fully accommodate Lovecraftian horror? Is there a built-in tension between the player agency they provide and cosmic indifference?

Traditional RPGs are the perfect vehicle for Lovecraftian horror. What better way to portray an uncaring universe than a game where the person running the game is (supposed to be) a neutral arbiter and dice decide everything? It's when you start getting into narrative mechanics (hero points, karma, whatever) that this starts to break down.

Thing about an indifferent universe is not just that it doesn't care if you fail and die ... it also doesn't care if you live and thrive.

5. You’ve been an outspoken defender of freedom of expression in RPGs, even when that means publishing work that some find offensive. How do you see that ethos connecting with Lovecraft’s own disregard for popular tastes?

I think this is a bad comparison. Lovecraft had his idiosyncrasies but I don't think much of what he was doing was pushing the boundaries of good taste. The violence, or its aftermath, in his stories weren't really detailed or dwelled upon, and he didn't go anywhere near sexuality or use profanity.

6. LotFP often revels in going beyond the boundaries of "good taste." Is that purely a stylistic choice or is there a deeper creative or philosophical motivation behind it?

Both. I grew up with horror movies and those 70s/early 80s Savage Sword of Conan comics, not to mention Howard Stern. I also grew up with the Satanic Panic and a little later on the PMRC and all the nonsense from the FCC and MPAA throughout my life.

I recently got the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Blu-ray, and I watched it, then listened to the commentary ... and they went on about they had censorship problems because, gasp, the two lead characters were both divorced.

We look at what couldn't be done in mass media in the past and we scoff at it. “How silly they were!” And the people that fought to overcome those restrictions, we see them as important people in the history of their art. Heroes, I'd call them.

But then people act like what is restricted today is serious business and totally justified, and anyone who fights against these modern restrictions are bad people who want bad things.

No. It's the same thing. It is absolutely the same thing.

One of my favorite movies is Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. And when the female lead is introduced, she's been put in the stocks. Her crime? Dancing on a Sunday. And after getting the fancy boxed set version and rewatching it this year, that's become my favorite way to describe what everyone gets upset about.

Oh, you used a bad unacceptable word!

Dancing on a Sunday.

That picture is unnecessarily graphic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You've expressed irresponsible social views!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You made a joke about a sensitive topic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You're displaying a political point of view I find unacceptable!

Dancing on a Sunday.

Remember the whole Janet Jackson Superbowl controversy? Literally dancing on a Sunday!

I don't even like ratings. Ratings change how people create, both in concept and altering a “finished” product after the fact to attain certain ratings, because ratings shape the potential audience. That's not serving an informational function, that's censorship. Fuck em all.

I know I'm on the far end radical about this sort of thing. Everyone's got that one thing they're fanatical about and this is my thing. People should just be able to do shit creatively without being able to worry that they're going to be actually restricted because of it.

A couple of my favorite stories about censorship:

Back in the day, the movie Nekromantik (a movie about necrophilia) was banned in Finland, so a festival organizer arranged a ferry trip to Estonia so people could see the movie. How ridiculous is that? I learned about this story in 2015 when attending a festival in Helsinki to see the movie. Who benefitted from making Finnish people go to Estonia to watch a movie?

For many years the first three Cannibal Corpse albums were banned in Germany, and no songs were from those albums were allowed to be performed live. There were police monitors at their shows. They'd play the songs anyway, just under different names. That ban was lifted in 2006, but just a couple years ago Germany banned the Cannibal Corpse coloring book. A coloring book!

I've got no sympathy for anyone who argues for restricting the availability of creative work. The fact that all of this is still an ongoing concern makes me more confrontational about it. The books, movies, and music that I like pretty much guarantees that some of this stuff was always going to be a part of LotFP, but the fact that there are people who want to penalize people for making up stuff they don't like makes me do it more.

And we do get penalized for it. The first Free RPG Day book we put out was trashed by a number of the participating stores. We were later kicked out of Free RPG Day entirely because some other publisher threatened to pull out if we were allowed to continue to participate. One of our titles got trashed by a British distributor, and we only caught wind of that because one of the distributor's employees publicly complained that the bosses didn't let her look at it first, they thought it was so bad. Our stuff regularly gets denied from DriveThru, sometimes for reasons I can't fathom.

And of course there's the reputational factor, “Oh, they do that sort of thing.” Well yes, but not only that sort of thing. You work outside of someone's comfort zone once and they're going to try to punish everything you do because of it.

I just don't understand the impulse to look at something and decide that the public shouldn't get to decide for themselves whether they accept it or not. And it's the worst when it comes from someone who makes things themselves; it's the basest form of cowardice, trying to argue for caps on imagination and be in favor of more restricted thinking in creative work.

Aarrrghhh I get so angry, even when it happens to something I don't care about, even when it happens to something/someone I don't like. I don't understand why anyone does that, and I don't understand why anyone goes along with it.

And yes, that includes pretty much whatever example anyone reading this is thinking of. Blatant plagiarism is about all I can get on board with restricting.

To me, the first step in doing anything creative is to take down the creative walls so there's nothing but clear horizons on all sides, and then you decide what you want to create. If there's someone keeping creative walls up, how do people not feel like they're being physically crushed? How are they not expending at least some of their creative energy attacking those walls?

Hmm. I got very worked up answering this one. But it is the hill to die on.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part I)

I think it's fair to say that James Edward Raggi IV needs no introduction. He's been publishing old school fantasy roleplaying game materials since 2008, many of which are not only foundational to the OSR but also take inspiration from the works and ideas of H.P. Lovecraft. I asked James a few question relating to LotFP, HPL, and other matters and he very kindly provided with some lengthy answers that will appear over the course of the next two days.

1. Let’s start with the obvious: Lamentations of the Flame Princess has always been described as a “weird fantasy roleplaying game.” What does “weird” mean to you and what role does Lovecraft play in shaping that definition?

Formally it's taken straight from Lovecraft's definition of “weird” from his Supernatural Horror in Literature essay:

“The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

Basically what Lovecraft called “cosmicism.”

I think the best example of this sort of “weird” in fiction wasn't even made by Lovecraft, but by Algernon Blackwood in The Willows. I put some quotes of this in the old Grindhouse box for LotFP that I thought served as the best short examples:

“We had strayed into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin.” 

“You think it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own.”

“There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.”

That's my ideal of what the “weird” should be, but in practical terms it isn't always so. It's sometimes just a slush word to signify some sort of genre crossing, such as mixing fantasy with horror or sci-fi.

REVIEW: A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633

A True Revelation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633 (hereafter Disastrum) by Ezra Claverie may well be the definitive product for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I say "may," because my assessment depends heavily on just you want out of an LotFP product. If what you're hoping for is a clever and, in the best sense of the word, modular adventure scenario you can easily drop into an ongoing old school fantasy campaign, Disastrum is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for looking for an imaginative and well-presented event-based scenario/hexcrawl set in 17th century Virginia, then Disastrum is exactly what you need.

Consisting of three clothbound A5-sized hardcover volumes, Disastrum gives an LotFP referee almost everything he – or should I say she, in keeping with the game line's style guide? – needs to run a lengthy and challenging scenario set in and around the Virginia Colony in the midst of an immense spatiotemporal accident caused by castaways from the Fifth Dimension. This accident has deformed both space and time, warping the landscape and its inhabitants, as well as creating portals to alternate times and realities. 

Anyone with prior experience of LotFP will immediately recognize a trio of familiar elements in Disastrum: a 17th century locale (Virginia in 1633), an incursion by nonhuman "aliens" (the Fifth Dimensional castaways), and the unnatural consequences of their presence (the Warp). Taken together, these elements are the foundation of many (though by no means all) of LotFP's best-known adventures, so much so that I think it's become something of a joke among LotFP fans: "Oh, no! Yet another invasion of historical Earth by beings from another dimension and whose very presence poisons our world and fills me with dread!" I bring this up, because, while true to some extent, these elements can nevertheless can still be used to great effect and so they are in Disastrum. 

Volume I is entitled Jamestown and Environs. At 96 pages, it provides useful information needed by the referee to begin the adventure, including an overview of the events that led to the Disastrum and a timeline of the Virginia Colony, from its founding in 1607 to 1633, when the scenario begins. What sets this volume apart from others of its kind is how practical it all is. For example, five pages are devoted reasons why the characters may have come to Virginia, each of which offers a different frame for subsequent events. There's also an overview of Jamestown, its buildings, and inhabitants, along with random tables for generating colonists, news/rumors, Scriptural citations, plantations, native villages, and more.

Random tables play an important role in Disastrum, as one might well expect, since a large part of the scenario involves traveling through the wilderness of Virginia. Volume I describes the terrain of the region, both natural and unnatural. The latter includes the Warp, where the effects of the Fifth Dimensional Incursion are strongest. For each region, there are keyed encounters, described in Volume II, as well as "omens and oddities" of various sorts – strange objects in the sky, objects falling from the sky, and "disastrumous hazards," which is to say, bizarre phenomena resulting from the Warp, such as gravity bubbles or time speeding up or slowing down. 

Volume II, Lo! New Lands, is the biggest of the three books at 192 tables, describing all twenty keyed encounters in Virginia and twelve alternate worlds or realities accessible through the Eye of the Warp. The keyed encounters vary in both length and strangeness. Some, like the Escapees' Camp, consisting of indentured servants and slaves who've used the Disastrum as an opportunity to flee their masters, are relative simple and normal. Others, like the Speaking Swamp or Factory Fungus, are given great detail and are exceedingly weird – products of five-dimensional beings attempting to interact with a three-dimensional world and only partially succeeding. All of the encounters are compelling, whether simply by presenting the players with an aspect of 17th century colonial life or by challenging their wits against a consequence of the Warp.

Descriptions of the twelve alternate realities, called "spacetimes," take up about half of Volume II. Like the keyed locations, they vary in length and strangeness, though all are fairly strange. For example, there is the Post-Ant Empire, a spacetime ruled by biomechanical ants that displaced the dinosaurs. There's also the City of the Crawling Blood, an alternate London overrun with a strange sickness and the Wilder Wilderness, an alternate Virginia populated with megafauna, among many more. All but one of these is a side trek, a place of interest and danger but without any larger significance to the scenario. However, the Corpse City of the Western Gate, located in 18th century China, is ground zero for the cosmic event whose repercussions are felt more than a century earlier and a hemisphere away in Virginia. It's here that the scenario climaxes, one way or the other, as the character contend with extradimensional beings whose activities have the potential to doom the Earth and everyone on it.

Volume III, Prodigies, Monsters, and Index, is 128 pages long and, as its title suggests, focuses on the strange and unusual effects of the Disastrum. Thus we get more than 60 new monsters, most of them unique (as Raggi intended). Many can be encountered in and around the Virginia Colony, but others are the inhabitants of the various spacetimes to which the characters may travel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Volume III presents random tables to enable the referee to create his own "new people," the name used to describe the fabricated three-dimensional bodies of five-dimensional beings and whose appearances and properties are quite surprising. It's all wildly imaginative and, as I said above, practical. With these three volumes, the referee has nearly everything he needs to run a memorable and demanding weird fantasy adventure.

Disastrum is exceptionally well done. It's the Masks of Nyarlathotep of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, in that it takes all the usual ingredients of a LotFP adventure and sharpens and heightens them to such a high degree that, after playing this long, open-ended scenario, you'll feel as if you've done LotFP. There will undoubtedly be excellent LotFP adventures in the future, but Disastrum has, for me. crystallized the game's essence and unique take on fantasy in a way that will be hard to top. Thats not say it's perfect. The scenario has a lot of moving parts that put a lot of weight on the referee's shoulders, even with all the random tables and examples provided. In addition, the standard edition lacks the foldout hex maps included with the deluxe slipcase edition. The hex maps aren't absolutely necessary, but I imagine most referee's would find them useful. Likewise, all editions (with the exception of the PDF version) are pricey, which might be an impediment to some prospective purchasers.

In the end, none of these mild criticisms should be held against A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633, which is as close to a definitive LotFP product as you're likely to get. It's imaginative, well-written, and well-made and, despite its length, I found myself reading it almost compulsively. The combination of a nicely realized historical setting and fantastically weird encounters and situations seemed, to me, to be a near-perfect fulfillment of what Lamentations of the Flame Princess has, in recent years, striven to be. It's truly excellent. My only regret is that I don't presently have a place in my gaming schedule to run this adventure. I hope others who buy and read it will be more fortunate than I.

REVIEW: The Lair of the Brain Eaters

The first few years of the Old School Renaissance were marked by a renewed appreciation not just of early roleplaying games but also of the pulp fantasy stories that inspired them. This was the time when Appendix N of Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide became a frequent topic of discussion on blogs and forums, much to the satisfaction of those of us who felt a strong injection of sword-and-sorcery was the perfect antidote to what we felt was an increasingly video-gamified hobby (remember: this coincided with the release of D&D Fourth Edition) that had lost sight of its literary roots.

This is the backdrop against which many of the earliest D&D retro-clones – emulations of earlier editions – appeared, including Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Calling itself a "weird fantasy role-playing game," LotFP took seriously the goal of bringing more pulp fantasy-inspired content into fantasy gaming, especially in its adventures, which quickly gained a reputation for being, by turns, imaginative, grotesque, challenging, deadly, and prurient – among many other extravagant adjectives. 

However, as LotFP's creator, James Raggi, found his strange Muse, its adventures moved away from generic pulp fantasy scenarios of the sort one might have found in Weird Tales during the Golden Age of the pulps and toward a weirder, even more brutal version of Earth's 17th century. This new focus on historical fantasy helped LotFP distinguish itself from its fellow retro-clones, but it also, I think, narrowed its appeal somewhat, since most fantasy gamers, old school or otherwise, are looking for adventures they can easily drop into campaign settings other than Earth during the 1600s.

While I am a big fan of LotFP's pivot to historical fantasy, I miss the ahistorical strangeness of stuff like Death Frost Doom, Hammers of the God, or The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. Consequently, when I learned about D.M. Ritzlin's The Lair of the Brain Eaters, I was intrigued. Unlike most recent LotFP releases, this adventure didn't seem to be set in the 17th century. Rather, it seemed more like something from Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age or perhaps Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea – a lurid, necromantic pulp fantasy scenario of the kind we haven't seen for LotFP in a while.

That should come as no surprise. Ritzlin is the proprietor of DMR Books, a small press dedicated "fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction in the traditions Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic writers of the pulp era." Indeed, The Lair of the Brain Eaters shares its title with a short story Ritzlin wrote for the collection, Necromancy in Nilztiria. According to the author, some of the story's details have been changed (and "a great many more have been added"), so this adventure is less directly adapted and more inspired by its source. Even so, it's quite unusual by the standards of contemporary Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

The adventure concerns a cult dedicated to the consumption of human brains. Called the Yoinog – supposedly an ancient term meaning "knowledge seekers" – the cult serves the necromancer Obb Nyreb, furnishing him with a fresh supply of corpses as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death. Nyreb and the Yoinog have established themselves in a network of caves beneath a graveyard of the city of Desazu. Unfortunately, in their zeal for graverobbing, the cult has drawn attention to their master's activities, thereby providing an opening for the player characters to involve themselves in the adventure.

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is short and to the point. The cult's cave network consists of only twenty keyed areas, with Nyreb's chambers occupying an additional nine. Most of them are described briefly, with little in the way of extraneous detail. Do not, however, mistake its comparatively spartan descriptions for a sparseness of ideas – quite the contrary. The florid prose of many adventures is often chalked up to the designer's desire to be a writer of fiction. Here, the opposite is the case: the text's concision signals that its designer is already a skilled fictioneer and understands well that less can be more.

For example, this is part of the description of a "bottomless pit": "This pit is not really bottomless, but it amused Obb Nyreb to tell the Yoinog it was, and they never doubt him." Elsewhere, a kitchen is described thusly: "Grimy pots, pans, and plates litter the floor. A cauldron large enough to contain a man sits in the center of the room, while smaller ones dangle from the ceiling." Speaking as someone whose personal style tends toward the aureate, I admire Ritzlin's ability to convey description, vital information, and mood through so few words. This approach also makes the descriptions easy to use at a glance, which is very helpful in play.

Designed for character levels 1–3, The Lair of the Brain Eaters is challenging. There are a lot of Yoinog within the caves, as well as other creatures, such as the apelike Skullfaces and mutant rats (some of which breathe fire – yes, it's a bit silly, but so what?). Fortunately, the caves contain lots of opportunities for the characters to act stealthily or otherwise use the environment to their advantage. In addition, there's a captive within who, if freed, can aid the characters in navigating the place. These factors, combined with some clever tricks and obstacles, creates a memorable locale for both exploration and combat. 

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is an inventive, evocative, and unpretentious "meat and potatoes" adventure that I'd like to see more of – from Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any other publisher. I think it'd be an especially great fit for anyone playing North Wind's Hyperborea RPG, but it'd work just as well with any other fantasy game that draws inspiration from the pulps. I really enjoyed this one.

Dousing the Fireball

With the possible exception of magic missile – which, ironically, didn't appear until a year after the original game's release – I can think of no more iconic spell in Dungeons & Dragons than fireball. As most of you will no doubt already know, fireball (or fire ball, as it's rendered in OD&D and the 1981 and '83 D&D Expert Sets) first appeared in Chainmail, where it's one of two types of missiles a wizard can throw, the other being lightning bolt. In Chainmail, a wizard can seemingly throw a fireball at will and its function is as a form of battlefield artillery that immediately destroys any target within its area of effect weaker than a Hero. Even if you've never played Chainmail, I hope my brief summary makes clear just how potent a fireball is – and that's the problem. 

When the abilities and spells of Chainmail's wizards were translated into the terms of OD&D, there were inevitably going to changes and alterations, big and small. In the case of fireball, these changes included a slightly larger burst radius and damage that increases with the level of its caster or, as Men & Magic explains it, "A 6th level Magic-User throws a 6-die missile, a 7th a 7-die missile, and so on." These changes explain, I suspect, why fireball became the iconic D&D spell and the one that nearly every magic-user hoped to learn as soon as they were of sufficient level to do so. Taken together, the fireball of OD&D and all subsequent TSR versions of the game is one of only a handful of spells whose damage-dealing potential has no upper limit. Coupled with its large area of effect and easy reach for most characters – a magic-user only needs to be 5th-level (20,000 XP) to potentially acquire it – fireball is a must-have spell when it comes to damage-dealing.

Spend enough time in online D&D circles and the subject of the relative power of fighters versus magic-users will inevitably come up. This is one of those perennial topics that simply will not die, because, unlike many such topics, I think there's some substance to it. Fighters, even when equipped with potent magic weaponry, can never dish out as much damage as can even a fairly low-level magic-user. Over the years, various solutions have been proposed, such as weapon specialization in AD&D, but none of them has met with universal acceptance – quite the opposite, in fact. 

That's why I've lately been thinking about either eliminating or modifying spells whose damage-dealing effects increase with the level of their caster. If you look at the original spell list from Volume 1 of OD&D, both fireball and lightning bolt are odd men out, mechanically speaking. Most of the game's "offensive" spells, like sleep, cloudkill, or disintegrate do not become more effective as the caster rises in level. Any variability they have in terms of damage or overall effectiveness is usually independent of level (there are exceptions). That feels right to me somehow and offers a better model to emulate in rethinking spells in OD&D and similar games.

On the other hand, simply removing fireball, lightning bolt, and comparable spells might be simpler. This is what Lamentations of the Flame Princess did long ago. Many of that retroclone's deviations from OD&D were introduced specifically to strengthen the fighter's role as the most potent combatant and damage-dealer, which is a worthy goal. Furthermore, by eliminating and/or weakening the number and scope of magical damage dealing, this approach carves out a different role for the magic-user, that of a seeker after knowledge and controller of the environment. It's a far cry from the role people now tend to associate with D&D magic-users, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It's closer to the pulp fantasy conception of sorcerers and wizards than to the cartoonish, video game-y vision of them flinging fireballs and hurling lightning bolts.

I don't know. I'm still thinking about this, especially in light of my evolving thinking about magic in Secrets of sha-Arthan. I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on the subject, especially from those of you have regularly play fighters and/or magic-users. How do you perceive their relative strengths when it comes to damage-dealing or do you make changes to rebalance things?

REVIEW: Terror in the Streets

Allow me to say once again, as I always do, that I am a huge fan of historical fantasy. From what I can tell, my fondness for it is unusual, both among RPG players and among RPG writers and broadly for the same reason: the perception that it's hard to get right – especially when there are legions of know-it-all armchair historians out there positively salivating at the possibility of uttering the dread incantation Ackchyually the moment they detect even the slightest deviation from the historical record. Consequently, I don't blame anyone who chooses to shy away from venturing anywhere near real world history in their RPG sessions or products.

Nevertheless, I remain deeply grateful to publishers like Lamentations of the Flame Princess and writers like Kelvin Green for their willingness to sate my peculiar tastes for fantastic adventures set in this world's historical past. Terror in the Streets – no, I won't be using the acronym – is a clever, well-presented and, above all, fun example of just how you can use real world history as a backdrop for a fantasy RPG adventure without either getting too bogged down in pointless minutiae or giving that history its proper due. It's not perfect by any means, but Terror in the Streets is very good.

Before proceeding to the meat of this review, I should add that there are, in fact, two different versions of Terror in the Street. The first (and the one I'm reviewing in this post) is a 96-page A5 hardcover book featuring a cover painting by Yannick Bouchard. The second version, entitled Big Terror in the Streets – no, just no – is a boxed set that features a lot of additional goodies, like a map of the city of Paris in 1630, player handouts, cardboard cut-outs, and a large yellow six-sided Unrest Die (for tracking the progress of civil unrest), in addition to an additional book, the 48-page Huguenauts and Other Distractions. Unfortunately, I don't believe Big Terror in the Streets is available in any form any longer, though there may still be copies of it floating around in secondary markets. That's a shame, since Huguenauts and Other Distractions has much to recommend it and indeed provides worthwhile fodder for anyone who continues to worry that historical fantasy is hard to get right. (If I find that the book is available, I'll do a review of it as well.)

Terror in the Streets is a murder mystery set in early 17th century Paris – "Jack the Ripper, but 250 years early," as the author describes it in his introduction. There's a serial killer of children loose in the city and it's up to the player characters to stop him. Just how and indeed why they might do so is an open question, one of many ways that Terror in the Streets might be called a "sandbox" adventure. Other than a timeline that dictates when and where the killer strikes (along with other key events), the course of the adventure is largely determined by the choices of the player characters, as they investigate, interact with NPCs, and deal with random encounters. 

This is, in my opinion, the only way to structure a murder mystery adventure without resorting to a more heavy-handed approach. Yes, this structure carries with it the risk that the characters might get lost in the weeds, wasting too much time on red herrings – of which there are quite a few in Terror in the Streets – and other irrelevant complications. However, the advantage of this more open-ended structure is that it's much more forgiving to the referee trying to keep track of all the moving parts that make up the scenario. Plus, the timeline, which exists independently of character actions, serves as a useful way to nudge their attention back toward more pressing matters. And there are even guidelines for what might happen if the characters fail to stop the killer, which is quite refreshing.

While the murder mystery scenario is a genuinely compelling one that nicely leverages multiple aspects of real world history, like the tensions between political and religious factions within Paris, it's not the only appealing thing about Terror in the Streets. Equally interesting in my opinion is its presentation of 17th century Paris – its districts, landmarks, taxi service companies, encounters, and, above all, unique NPCs – in effect a mini-gazetteer of the city. Taken together, these elements give the referee everything he needs to keep the characters engaged while in Paris, not just for this adventure but for others as well. It's nicely done and, reading through it, I found myself wishing that LotFP produced more material like this in the future.  

The only aspect of Terror in the Streets that might be considered a flaw is Green's humor-laden conversational style of writing. This is not a book whose author takes himself or the material too seriously. Consequently, there are asides, digressions, and meta-commentary scattered throughout, usually to good effect. Green is quite open about his inspirations and the shortcomings/limitations of the adventure, which is genuinely refreshing and indeed helpful. However, there are also occasional moments of goofiness and sly winks at the reader, like a mad wizard with wild hair and a beard named Alain de la Mare. These don't necessarily detract from the scenario, but I can easily some players and referees finding them off-putting, particularly those who prefer their historical fantasies straight. For myself, I found most of these elements amusing and felt they nicely demonstrated that there's no reason a historical scenario need be unduly solemn.

In the end, though, this is a small thing and Terror in the Streets is one of the best things Kelvin Green has written for LotFP to date. It's also one of the best historical fantasy adventures I've read in quite some time. Reading it, I was left with a small sense of disappointment that I am not refereeing a game where I could easily make use of it. Terror in the Streets is a well written, well presented scenario that is probably a lot of fun to play. I can think of no better compliment.

Never Far from the OSR

I was away in northern Ontario last week. While there, I was surprised to discover that the main street of the closest small town included a game store. Though the focus of the place was clearly on board and card games, there was nevertheless a decent selection of other offerings, including roleplaying games. Most of the RPGs were the usual suspects – D&D, Pathfinder, etc. – but also present were multiple copies of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which, along with some Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics material, carried the banner for the OSR. Not bad!

REVIEW: The Staffortonshire Trading Company Works of John Williams

Roleplaying games set in the past of the real world, whether played straight or including an element of the fantastical, have always been hard sells. A big reason for this, I think, is that gamers, even well-read ones with access to the vast store of information that is the Internet, often lack for practical resources to support play in past ages. By "practical resources," I mean the kinds of things that RPGs with wholly imaginary settings include without a second thought, like appropriate equipment lists, details about law and order, information about society and culture – or maps.

Now, maps might seem like a small thing, perhaps even a relatively unimportant one. After all, we all know what a castle or a mansion or a church looks like, right? Even assuming that's true – which experience has taught me it is not – the matter isn't as simple as it might appear, especially when you're dealing with locales within a specific time and place. One might know what a mansion house looks like in, say, England during the 1920s, but what about the 1820s? What about a mansion house in France or Germany or the United States? With enough qualifiers and specificity, the questions become a lot more vexed and the work of the referee much more onerous.

Enter The Staffortonshire Trading Company Works of John Williams (hereafter simply Works) by Glynn Seal. Written for and published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, it's a beautifully made – and supremely useful – 126-page hardcover volume consisting of nearly 100 maps of 17th-century buildings and sailing vessels from Europe, North Africa, Asia, and the New World. The book's framing device, as presented in its introduction, is that the maps were all made by the Englishman John Benjamin Williams in 1674. Williams was employed as a cartographer and architect by the Staffortonshire Trading Company, a vocation that took all across the globe, from England to North America to Europe and into the Ottoman Empire and beyond. During his time with the trading company, Williams also acted as a spy for English crown, thereby providing an explanation for some of the more unusual places he visited – and created maps for – during his travels. 

The included maps are quite varied, covering fairly mundane locations (shops, houses, churches), more socially sophisticated ones (mansions, colleges, palaces), highly specialized ones (ships, water mill, lighthouse), and the truly unusual (cockfighting theater, mineshaft, whaling station). Furthermore, a number of singular locations also receive attention, such as Dudley Castle, the Kremlin, the Palais de Tuileries, and the Jamestown settlement of colonial Virginia. As you can see, the locales are remarkably diverse, both in terms of purpose and geography. There's naturally a heavy focus on western Europe, with England and France predominating, but that doesn't in any way detract from the utility of this book to anyone playing or refereeing a game set in the 17th century.

All of the maps include a key and a scale and many of them also include an illustration depicting the building or vessel. These illustrations are as useful as the maps themselves, since they serve as visualization aids – something that's very important in historical RPGs in my experience. After all, it's one thing to know what a generic mansion or church looks like, but what did such things look like in the 1600s? Beyond that, these illustrations include significant additional details, like the materials used in their construction, which adds to the sense of time and place that are vital to the success of historical roleplaying game adventures. 

Of course, this attention to detail should come as no surprise. Glynn Seal, the author and cartographer of Works, has previously produced numerous fantasy RPG products whose maps are similarly detailed and useful. Likewise, Lamentations of the Flame Princess products are always exceptionally well made, with superb paper quality and binding. This one is no exception, featuring as it does thick, parchment like paper that adds to the illusion that this is a book from the 17th century. Merely as an artifact, Works is a joy to hold and peruse. That it's also so useful to players and referees of any RPG set in the 17th century, only increases its value.

The Staffortonshire Trading Company Works of John Williams is available in both print and PDF formats. If you're interested in seeing what the interior of the book looks like, Glynn Seal has provided lots of photographs and a helpful video here.

Random Roll: DMG, p. 90

On page 90 of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, there's a brief section that sheds much light on how Gary Gygax viewed the game's economic system. He begins:

There is no question that the prices and costs of the game are based on inflationary economy, one where a sudden influx of silver and gold has driven everything well beyond its normal value.

This is a widespread interpretation of AD&D's equipment prices, so it's fascinating to see that Gygax outright confirms this in this passage. He even gives the rationale behind this approach.

The reasoning behind this is simple. An active campaign will almost certainly bring a steady flow of wealth into the base area, as adventurers come from successful trips into dungeon and wilderness. 

This is an important section, because it suggests that the activities of the player characters are not exceptional. The exploration – and looting – of dungeons is, if not commonplace, not unusual and, therefore, has lasting economic consequences. It also suggests to me that the game's economic assumptions are more akin to, say, 16th or 17th century Spain than the earlier medieval period. Gygax seems to have anticipated criticisms of this approach.

If the economy of the area is one which more accurately reflects that of medieval England, let us say, where coppers and silver coins are usual and a gold piece remarkable, such an influx of new money, even in copper and silver, would cause an inflationary spiral. This would necessitate adjusting costs accordingly and then upping dungeon treasures somewhat to keep pace. If a near-maximum is assumed, then the economics of the area can remain relatively constant, and the DM will have to adjust costs only for things in demand or short supply – weapons, oil, holy water, mean-at-arms, whatever.

In the early days of the Old School Renaissance, a regular subject was the "gold piece economy" of Dungeons & Dragons and how "unrealistic" it was. Many a blog post was written on the subject and a fad of substituting silver pieces for gold pieces in one's campaign arose. Games such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess even incorporated it into their rules. I don't feel strongly about this subject, but, unless my – and Gygax's – understanding of economics is mistaken, the matters he raises in the preceding paragraph strike me as reasons not to abandon gold pieces as the standard coinage in AD&D.

The economic systems of areas beyond the more active campaign areas can be viably based on lesser wealth only until the stream of loot begins to pour outwards into them. While it is possible to reduce treasure in these areas to some extent so as to prolong the period of lower costs, what kind of a dragon hoard, for example, doesn't have gold and gems? It is simply more heroic for players to have their characters swaggering around with pouches full of gems and tossing out gold pieces than it is for them to have coppers.

Gygax here says two notable things. The first is his usage of the adjective "heroic," which he will soon elaborate upon. The second is his assertion that he expects player characters in AD&D to have "pouches full of gems" and lots of gold coins. The latter is especially notable, for it gives us some insight into how he saw the "world" of Dungeons & Dragons.

Heroic fantasy is made of fortunes and king's ransoms in loot gained most cleverly and bravely and lost in a twinkling by various means – thievery, gambling, debauchery, gift-giving, bribes, and so forth. The "reality" AD&D seeks to create through role playing is that of the mythical heroes such as Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Kothar, Elric, and their ilk. When treasure is spoken of, it is more stirring when participants know it to be TREASURE!

We can see here that "heroic" in the previous section was in reference to the genre of "heroic fantasy," what I usually call "pulp fantasy." His references to the protagonists of such tales is telling and a further buttress of my longstanding contention that Dungeons & Dragons is ill suited to epic or high fantasy of the sort exemplified by The Lord of the Rings or even Dragonlance. With one agrees with that thesis or not, one should also take note of the means Gygax enumerates by which loot may be "lost in a twinkling." We see here is that even AD&D's economic assumptions support the idea that player characters are meant to be rascals and rogues.

You may, of course, adjust any prices and costs as you see fit for your own milieu. Be careful to observe the effects of such changes on both play balance and player involvement. If any adverse effects are noted, it is better to return to the true and true. It is fantastic and of heroic proportions so to match its game vehicle.

This is typically Gygaxian in its approach: feel free to change whatever you like but don't surprised if your changes make the game worse. Take note, too, that he reiterates that the game is "fantastic and of heroic proportions." This is another instance where Gygax shows his hand somewhat, revealing his own preferences and vision for the game. Agree or disagree with that vision, there can be little question that it exists and draws strongly on a very particular strain of fantasy literature, one he calls "heroic fantasy" and that I call "pulp fantasy."

REVIEW: The Magnificent Joop van Ooms

Reviewing almost anything James Raggi writes poses unique challenges, but it's his adventures that are particularly troublesome to me. Partly, it's because Raggi's understanding of and approach to fantasy is often so different from my own. I don't think any of the adventures he's written to date are ones I can imagine myself as having written. Mind you, that's a good thing! To my way of thinking, what separates a good adventure module from a bad one is that a good one gives you ideas -- whether in rough or polished form -- that you could never have come up with yourself.

The flip side of this is that I frequently have no idea what to do with these modules, however intriguing their ideas. I recall reading somewhere (perhaps on Google+?) that Raggi says this is a common response to his writing and that he enjoys watching people wrestle with it. That's fair enough and, truth be told, one of my biggest cavils about adventure modules is that they can encourage passive consumption by referees rather than active, imaginative engagement.

Which brings me to The Magnificent Joop van Ooms, an 16-page product written by James Raggi, illustrated throughout by Jez Gordon, and with a cover by Jason Rainville. Though released under the rubric of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Adventures, it's not really an adventure at all, at least not in the traditional usage of that term. Rather, it's more of a collection of settings, mechanics, NPC descriptions, and related ideas that can be used to create adventures, thirteen examples of which are included in the book itself. Consequently, I can easily imagine some purchasers being disappointed by its contents if they were expecting a map-and-room-key sort of product, because The Magnificent Joop van Ooms (hereafter JvO) is nothing like that.

Before discussing exactly what JvO is like, a short digression regarding its physical qualities is in order. As I noted above, this product consists of 16 pages, which are staple-bound and enclosed in a cover with a wrap-around illustration depicting the eponymous Joop van Ooms demonstrating his unique magical abilities. The interior uses a clean, two-column layout and is amply illustrated with superb black and white artwork. The text is small, like all Lamentations of the Flame Princess products, meaning that it is in fact meatier content-wise than its page length would suggest. The book sells for 3.00€ (about $3.80 US) in PDF or 7.50€ (about $9.50 US) for the print + PDF combo.

Like Death Love Doom, JvO is set in the "real world," specifically early 17th century Amsterdam. While the amount of material unalterably grounded in early modern Europe is small (about two pages), I nevertheless find its inclusion needlessly off-putting. It's not that I mind the real world setting; it's that Lamentations of the Flame Princess, as currently written, doesn't really support that setting. There are, as yet, no rules for firearms, for example, and there are too many swordswomen and too much magic (never mind the implicit demihumans) for me to buy it as anything like the 17th century I know about. Now, that said, I think it's pretty clear that Raggi loves the early modern period and wants to make it the game's native setting, but, to do that, there's some work remaining. In the meantime, I think he confuses and frustrates some potential customers of his adventures.

JvO begins with overviews of both the United Provinces (of the Netherlands) and Amsterdam itself. Following that are 50 random encounters adventurers might have "down on the wharf." These encounters range from the mundane (a swarm of street urchins) to the exotic (a mermaid on the prowl) to the downright bizarre ("Everybody dies. Seriously. Roll up new characters, start them somewhere else. Amsterdam is wiped from the face of the Earth."). There are also simple rules for buying and selling on the black market.

This brings us to Joop van Ooms himself -- "an inventor, architect, engineer, painter, poet, and sculptor" who "has broken through to the Void Beyond the World and has seen both the glories and feculence of creation." He also works magic through his art. The book provides many examples of just what he is capable of when painting, writing plays, sculpting, etc. Also detailed are his constant companions and the studio where he lives and works in Amsterdam. The sections devoted to Joop van Ooms and his activities contain almost no game mechanics. Instead, they're simply descriptions and ideas, leaving it up to the referee to implement.

This is the point where I expect opinion of JvO will be divided -- between those who lack for ideas they can riff off of and those who want a complete, ready-to-run product. Bearing in mind my minor cavils, the former group ought to be quite happy with JvO, while the latter are bound to be disappointed. Even the former group may have some issues with this product, since it's ideas are of a very specific kind, rooted not just in the early modern era but also in an idiosyncratic take on a Lovecraftian cosmos. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine almost anyone buys a James Raggi product not expecting these things, so my sympathy is somewhat limited.

In the end, I suspect whether one likes The Magnificent Joop van Ooms will depend greatly on whether one has enjoyed Raggi's previous works. It's very much of a piece with them, so, if they appeal, this one will too. If not, then this product will do nothing to change one's mind and may in fact only encourage further dislike.

Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 5 out of 10

Buy This If: You've enjoyed James Raggi's previous efforts or are looking for a collection of inspirational ideas from which to craft your own weird fantasy adventures.
Don't Buy This If: You're expecting an adventure module you can run "out of the box" or have no interest in weird fantasy set in early modern Europe.

Comments on this post can be made here.

REVIEW: The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time

I find it interesting how widespread the term "adventure module" (or just "module") is among gamers to describe a pre-written scenario for a roleplaying game. I suppose it's yet more evidence of the long shadow cast by Dungeons & Dragons. I have no idea if the term predates its use by TSR which is how the company described its own published adventures, but it was from these that I first encountered it.

Whatever else it does, "module" brings with it the unspoken assumption of interchangeability -- something you can pick up and drop into your existing campaign with ease. Modules were for when a referee needed something with which to occupy the players and he hadn't had either the time or inspiration (or both) to come up with something on his own. Because modules were self-contained, one generally assumed that using one is simple and consequence-free.

Though comparatively few RPG companies describe their adventures as "modules" anymore -- does even Dungeons & Dragons do so in 2012? -- the term still colors how many gamers think of pre-written adventures. For them, an adventure should be straightforward and cause few, if any, lasting problems for the campaign into which they are dropped. These expectations may explain why James Raggi's The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time (hereafter Monolith) is meeting with such strong reactions from many. While I completely understand these reactions, I also think they're a little unfair. Monolith most definitely isn't an adventure module in the traditional sense (though Raggi does in fact use the term). Dropping it into an existing campaign will have long-term consequences; any referee thinking of using Monolith needs to bear this in mind.

Let's talk briefly about the physical qualities of the adventure before getting into its contents. Monolith is a 48-page A5 (148 mm x 210 mm -- slightly smaller than 6" x 9"). The color cover, depicting the titular Monolith, and black and white interior illustrations are all by Aeron Alfrey and have a suitably "Lovecraftian" vibe (more on that later). The book uses a clean, two-column layout and is, in fact, very easy on the eyes. In fact, I'd say it's one of the more attractive Lamentations of the Flame Princess released to date (though the text of my copy was slightly blurred on a couple of pages). The text was written by James Raggi, with a small, two-page section, called "The Owls' Service," written by Kenneth Hite. Monolith is available either as a PDF for 4.80€ (about $6 US) or as a PDF + Printed Book bundle for 12€ (about $15.50 US).

Like it or not, Raggi's adventures have a strong authorial voice. This is particularly true of Monolith, which he describes in his "Author's Notes" section as his "homage to Howard Phillips Lovecraft." He further elaborates that his goal was to make

a Lovecraftian adventure without leaning on the usual trappings of Lovecraft's mythos ... No Cthulhu, no Necronomicon, none of it. Just take the concepts these things were vehicles for communicating, and use those.

With that in mind, he presents "a teleporting, dimension-hopping, time traveling phenomenon" that "can be placed anywhere in any campaign without the need to be adjusted to fit a specific flavor." This phenomenon is the Monolith and the valley that surrounds it. Their mere presence warps reality, creating distortions that change Nature in various ways. Likewise, the valley of the Monolith is home to several unique encounters that reflect the weirdness of the place. All of these distortions and encounters are detailed at some length (16 pages).

Of course, the adventure's main attraction is the Monolith itself, which the characters may enter and explore. Once entered, the laws of reality function differently -- such as the fact that it's bigger on the inside than on the outside -- and the characters must spend some time figuring out exactly what does and does not work while inside. Raggi provides extensive details on how to run the Monolith, complete with examples. This is helpful, as the Monolith is a structure of a very bizarre sort and it's not just the player character who'll wonder just how it functions. There are also a number of specific locations within the Monolith, in addition to a single "encounter."

I hope I can be forgiven for being vague on the precise details of what's in the Monolith and how this eldritch structure operates. Much of the enjoyment of this adventure comes from discovering these things for oneself. What I will say is that, as presented, the Monolith is a very open-ended environment, in that the players have a create deal of freedom in deciding where their characters go and what they can do. Of course, that freedom comes at a price and a big part of the adventure's "Lovecraftian" tone comes from the players' grappling with whether or not they're willing to pay that price or if they can live with the consequences of not doing so.

I think it's on precisely this point where opinion will be divided regarding The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. Unlike most adventure modules from the past, playing this one will forever change a campaign. More precisely, it will forever change the characters in the campaign. Raggi himself brings this up in his "Author's Notes," where he says of the characters will eventually "... realize they cannot win. They are doomed, and were doomed from the moment they got involved." No character who enters the Monolith will escape unscathed and at least one won't escape at all (unless he and his companions are willing to allow even worse consequences to follow).

In this respect, Monolith is a bit like Death Frost Doom turned up to 11. In both, there are dire consequences from the moment the player characters walked onto the scene. The difference, I think, lies in the fact that the consequences in Death Frost Doom are more impersonal -- unleashing a zombie plague on the world -- whereas those in Monolith directly affect the sanity and well-being of the characters themselves, with any effects on the wider world being sub-consequences of that. This is an adventure that will wreck characters, a fact made all the worse because some aspects of Monolith are, once entered into, inexorable. They simply cannot be avoided unless the player characters decide not to participate in the adventure at all.

That's why, I think, the only way to use this adventure without generating a great deal of acrimony and unhappiness is as a location within a sandbox-style campaign. In this scenario, the Monolith is some weird thing placed on the referee's map that the PCs might come across as they explore the world and one that they might, like a dragon's lair or a powerful magic-user's tower, choose to avoid entirely out of fear of the consequences. Simply throwing it at the players -- "Here's what we're going to play today ..." -- is unfair and cruel, because the horror of Monolith lies not merely in the nature and purpose of the titular structure but that, if the characters' curiosity gets the better of them, they truly will have come across a Thing Man Was Not Meant to Know and paid the price for it. Without that initial choice, the rest is meaningless.

I like The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time and think it's largely successful in its aims of presenting a Lovecraftian scenario without the overt trapping of Lovecraft's mythos. However, I also think that it's a "nuclear option" adventure that the referee ought not to use lightly and that, if used, has the potential to change things forever.

Presentation: 9 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 2 out of 10

Buy This If: You're interested in introducing Lovecraftian themes into your campaign and are willing to accept the far-reaching consequences to the player characters and campaign in doing so.
Don't Buy This If: You have no interest in Lovecraftian themes or have no interest in potentially wrecking one or more player characters to introduce them into the campaign.

REVIEW: Death Love Doom

Every now and then, I get something sent to me for review that I don't really know what to do with. James Raggi's adventure Death Love Doom is a good example of what I'm talking about -- not because it's "bad" so much as it's very far removed from anything I'd like have bought of my own accord. I'll explain what I mean by that shortly.

The copy I own is part of a limited print run of 200 and it's not, so far as I'm aware, available anymore. Instead, you'll have to content yourself with a 20-page PDF (plus two pages of maps) that sells for 3.00€ (about $4 US). The adventure looks similar to previous Lamentations of the Flame Princess efforts, using a simple two-column layout and a variety of "period" fonts intended to evoke the 17th century. The cartography by Jez Gordon, is both attractive and useful. The interior artwork is all the work of Kelvin Green and in his excellent signature style, though the subject matter is quite a departure for him.

On the other hand, Death Love Doom isn't a departure for James Raggi. If anything, I'd say it's probably the "Raggi-est" adventure he's written, being both an unrepentant finger in the eye of those who want roleplaying game products to consist entirely of stuff you can show your mother and a creative exploration of some of his own dark feelings. That probably sounds terribly pretentious and I apologize for that, but it's the most succinct way I can explain the visceral, emotional charge of revulsion I felt reading parts of this adventure. What I felt wasn't just disgust at something I found "icky," though. It was something else I couldn't quite put my finger on, which is a big part of why I initially didn't know what to do with Death Love Doom.

The adventure takes place entirely within the house and grounds of the Foxlowe family, who reside in London in the year 1625. That was the first of several curve balls thrown at me when I started reading. Unlike previous LotFP adventures, this one takes place not in a fantasy approximation of early modern Europe but in early modern Europe itself. Why he did this I have no idea, because, to my mind, there's no obvious payoff in having done so. At the same time, there's no difficulty whatsoever in stripping out the 17th century English references and running the adventure as a "straight" fantasy, so it's more a quirky authorial choice than a serious flaw, but it is odd.

At the start of the adventure, rumors are circulating that the wealthy Foxlowes, including Erasmus, the family patriarch and a successful merchant, have unexpectedly disappeared, possibly traveling abroad. The player characters can thus take the roles of either thieves hoping to rob their estate while it is presumably unoccupied or concerned locals looking to discover just what has happened to the prosperous family. Death Love Doom is thus a location-based adventure whose "plot," such as it is, has already occurred before the PCs step foot inside the Foxlowe house. Something has happened therein, something that has turned their residence into a veritable house of horrors, as the PCs will discover as they investigate it.

What they won't discover, at least not easily, is why the terrible things within the house have happened -- why all the members of the Foxlowe family have been killed in horrific ways or, worse yet, turned into even more horrific monsters. It's not completely impossible, but it does require a fair bit of luck and cleverness. Otherwise, Death Love Doom comes across as little more than grotesquerie for the sake of grotesquerie and that, I think, is Death Love Doom's biggest flaw. Reading the entirety of the module, I know what happened to the Foxlowes and why and it's a very chilling tale indeed. But the likelihood that the PCs will discover this is small. To them, there will be no rhyme or reason behind all the dissected children and genital mutilations and people with limbs cut off and sewn back on in the wrong places.

That's unfortunate, since it weakens the power of the module and contributes to the caricature of Raggi's adventures as being twisted and dark for no good reason. There's a very good reason behind the things the PCs encounter in Death Love Doom and knowing them makes this a much more satisfying (and unsettling) adventure. This reason is known only to a handful of NPCs in the adventure and the likelihood that they'll be in a position to share that information with anyone is not great. I suspect Raggi knows this; indeed, I suspect that the "mystery" of it all is part of the point. But, speaking as a referee, I find this a serious weakness.

Even knowing the truth behind the events of Death Love Doom, I'm not sure I could ever run the adventure. That's not a flaw in the module or its presentation so much as a statement of my own preferences. Death Love Doom is not for the squeamish; it's filled with a large number of disturbing images of the "body horror" variety, ably illustrated by Kelvin Green. This adventure is definitely not for the weak of stomach. Those who aren't so sensitive may nevertheless find it disturbing, since, well, it is. This is an adventure in the grindhouse style Raggi loves so much and should be judged with that in mind.

Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 7 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You like your adventures to be disturbing and horrific.
Don't Buy This If: You're squeamish and/or prefer your adventures with a "lighter" tone.

Countdown

As I write this, there's just a little over 24 hours left till the end of James Raggi's "Grand Adventure Campaign" on Indiegogo. Of the original 19 adventure pitches, two have funded so far -- those by Jeff Rients and Vincent Baker -- but several others stand a good chance of funding too, most notably Kelvin Green's "Horror Among Thieves." Kelvin's is a particularly interesting one, not only because he's a great guy and the subject matter of his adventure is intriguing, but because (in the words of Raggi):

If Horror Among Thieves does NOT fund, LotFP will still be publishing the adventure. It won’t necessarily be on the same timetable as if it were to fund, but we’ll put it out.

Anyone contributing $10+ to the campaign will get the adventure PDF, WHETHER OR NOT THE CAMPAIGN FUNDS.

Anyone contributing $20+ to the campaign will get the physical book, WHETHER OR NOT THE CAMPAIGN FUNDS.

Monte Cook also contributed an adventure to the campaign, "The Unbegotten Citadel," and anyone who contributes $100 or more to get it funded will receive a free PDF copy of Cook's Ptolus, which is itself worth $60.

There are several other freebies and special deals for contributors to this campaign -- too many in fact for me to keep track of. If you want to keep abreast of them, your best bet is to head over to James Raggi's blog, where I have little doubt he'll be posting like crazy between now and 11:59 PM Pacific Time on July 31, 2012.

REVIEW: Carcosa (LotFP Edition)

Going back to review a new edition of a product one has already reviewed is often an interesting exercise. A significant part of the interest comes from seeing whether the changes introduced into the new edition have noticeably altered one's opinion. In case of Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, whose original edition was self-published in 2008, and which I reviewed over the course of four posts, I largely stand behind by initial assessment, namely that Carcosa is a frustratingly eccentric work whose primary virtue is also its primary flaw: a rejection of the (often unstated) moral structure underpinning Gygaxian D&D. It's this rejection, I think, that's at the heart of much of the controversy surrounding Carcosa, which attempts to present a stark, even bleak, interpretation of Lovecraft as the basis for a gonzo science fantasy setting filled with serpent men, gray aliens, Great Old Ones, and Jack Kirby-style science-as-magic. Go ahead and read those original reviews, if you're unsure of the basic premise of Carcosa and what it includes.

The new edition, published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and available as both a gorgeous hardcover or PDF, differs primarily in presentation from its 2008 edition, though there are changes, about which I'll speak shortly. Purely as a physical artifact, Carcosa (2011) stands head and shoulders above its predecessor. Indeed, it stands head and shoulders above most other recent gaming products I've purchased. Its cover, which you can see here, depicts a silhouette of the mysterious city of Carcosa after which the book is named. The image is embossed on leatherette that feels right when you hold it, like some ancient tome of forbidden lore. Also right is the fact that the book has no title or identifying marks on it besides the above image and a sigil on the spine. In addition to making Carcosa look like a grimoire (but not in the gaudy way many RPG books have attempted this in the past), I also found myself reminded of early editions of weird fantasy books by authors like Abraham Merritt, William Hope Hodgson, and Arthur Machen, which I suppose was probably part of the point.

The interior of the book is similarly attractive. The pages are thick and off-white in color, again suggesting a libram of black magic. The layout is clear but varied -- sometimes a single column, sometimes two, sometimes more elaborate -- and makes good use of color (green and purple). I'm not especially fond of some of the title fonts, which are occasionally hard to read at small point sizes, but I don't think that seriously undermines Carcosa's esthetics, which I think are nearly perfect. To that end, there are illustrations by Rich Longmore throughout, depicting many aspects of the savage world of Carcosa. I was initially somewhat skeptical of the inclusion of any artwork in the book, feeling it'd undermine individual imagination, but, having now seen Longmore's work, I'll readily admit to being wrong about that. I think the artwork does a superb job of fueling my imagination, in large part because it helps ground Carcosa rather than leaving it to float in some ethereal realm. Longmore is the perfect artist for this purpose, too, since his dark, realistic style provides some much needed weight to elements of Carcosa that might be goofy in other hands, like the dinosaurs and robots.

Carcosa (2011) is an expansion of its predecessor and, for my money, the expansions do a lot to make the setting both more playable and more palatable. Chief among the expansions are the hex descriptions of the Carcosa campaign map. Whereas Carcosa (2008) had terse, often single-line, descriptions like "1 Cthugah's Flame Creature," Carcosa (2011) adds a second encounter or point of interest, which helps, I think, in providing some depth to the setting. Likewise, some of these descriptions include small, off-hand references -- "9 Irrationalist Space Aliens" -- that encourage further development and expansion, something I appreciate in sandbox setting hex descriptions. Also included among the expansions is a starter adventure, Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer, originally published in Fight On! Starter adventures are always useful, since they let the reader know what the creator thinks you're supposed to do with his creation, thereby providing a model to emulate. In a setting as weird as Carcosa's, I think this is essential.

Geoffrey McKinney has penned a new essay, "Humanity on Carcosa," which offers some insight into what it's like to live on Carcosa amidst all its Lovecraftian horrors and extraterrestrial entities. It's pretty bleak stuff, in my opinion, and reinforces the notion that I could never run an extended campaign in the setting. At the same time, I am grateful for its inclusion, since I believed in 2008, as I do now, that a setting like this one demands some "designer notes" to properly get a handle on it. "Humanity on Carcosa" is brief and doesn't explain everything, but it goes a long way toward making explicit some of the thinking behind the setting. A series of random monster tables is another addition in the 2011 version that contributes greatly to playability.

Taken together, Carcosa (2011) is a very impressive package and a good example of where I think an amateur effort was noticeably improved by more "professional" presentation and production values. Purely as an object, I think Carcosa (2011) may be the most attractive old school RPG product I've seen and a vindication of James Raggi's often-eccentric esthetic. As a RPG, I think Carcosa (2012) still remains somewhat frustrating, at least to me, largely because it is written from a viewpoint so alien to my own. That's almost certainly a feature rather than a bug for most people, including its author, but I can't deny that I continue to find Carcosa too bleak and nihilistic a setting for my tastes. It's not just a "hard" setting; it's a hopeless one and, girly man that I am, I'm not much interested in hopelessness in my pastimes. On the other hand, one could reasonably make the argument that its bleakness is in fact a perfect emulation of Lovecraft's worldview, where mankind is cosmically insignificant and knowledge is a double-edged sword. If that's what one wants, Carcosa delivers it in spades.

(I'm going to leave the comments open for this review BUT, as ever, I will ruthlessly delete any comments I consider needlessly intemperate or insulting. Feel free to disagree either with my assessment or with the value of Carcosa all you wish, so long as you do so in a civil, constructive fashion. I didn't allow comments on my original review of Carcosa precisely because of the nonsense it engendered. It's my hope that, in the years since, people have learned to phrase their thoughts and feelings in less inflammatory ways. Don't prove me wrong.)

Presentation: 10 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 6 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a Lovecraft-inspired swords-and-sorcery setting and don't mind a heavy dose of bleakness and amorality.
Don't Buy This If: You prefer your fantasy settings tinged with at least a little bit of hope.

REVIEW: Isle of the Unknown

I find Geoffrey McKinney's Isle of the Unknown an extremely frustrating book. Published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess and available either as a 128 page full-color hardcover book or as a PDF of the same, it's without a doubt one of the most nicely made RPG books I've seen in quite some time, old school or otherwise. By "nicely made," I mean both in terms of its purely physical qualities -- a sturdy cover and excellent binding -- as well as its appearance and organization. At the same time, I think Isle of the Unknown overuses color to the point of garishness at times. The book is so colorful and vibrant that, at first, one can't help but be awed by it. After a while, though, one's initial visual euphoria dissipates, and one begins to wonder how much of one's positive feelings for it are elicited by its substance and how much by its style.

I say that with some regret as this is a book I very much wanted to like without qualification. While nowhere in the text is Clark Ashton Smith's name mentioned, I recall that Isle of the Unknown began as an attempt by Geoffrey McKinney to produce a supplement that evoked Smith's weird tales, particularly those of Averoigne. CAS is a favorite author of mine, as I never tire of mentioning on this blog, and his Averoigne stories have long exercised a powerful hold over my imagination. Consequently, I was very keen to see an old school RPG book that drew on those pulp fantasies. Now, I knew from past experience with Carcosa (whose revised and expanded edition I'll be reviewing later this week) that McKinney's take on Smith would undoubtedly differ from my own, so I expected there to be parts of Isle of the Unknown that didn't sit well with me.

However, that's not quite what happened. Isle of the Unknown still clearly draws some inspiration from the Averoigne tales. The fact that its titular locale is described as having "societies, flora, and fauna ... [that] resemble those of the French territory of Auvergne circa A.D. 1311" is a dead giveaway. Beyond that, though, the CAS influence is thin in my opinion. For that reason, Isle of the Unknown simply comes across as weird, with nearly every one of its over 300 86-square mile hexes home to some oddity or monstrosity, almost all of which are lavishly illustrated in full color by Amos Orion Stearns or Jason Rainville. Of course, that's what you'd probably expect from a book like this. Isle of the Unknown is a gazetteer of 35,000-square mile island that can be dropped into any campaign and, if it didn't provide material of this sort, most readers would be disappointed. That every hex on the island is given an entry -- many of them quite extensive -- is a credit to McKinney and his imagination.

In books of this kind, the problem is most often that the hex descriptions are boringly mundane. Isle of the Unknown has the opposite problem: nearly every hex description includes a magical statue, a quirky spellcaster, or a teratological monster. This is by design, as the introduction to the referee states that "only the weird, fantastical, and magical is described herein." This decision is presented as a boon to the referee, who can thus more easily describe the mundane world based on the realities of his own campaign, but I find this an inadequate justification. It's on par with refraining from describing the "empty" rooms in a dungeon, because all that really matters are the rooms with monsters and treasure in them. Moreover, by describing only the weird, fantastical, and magical, Isle of the Unknown gives the impression of overusing them all. Rather than being spices to improve the flavor of the dish, they become the meal itself.

I find this most troubling with regards to the many monsters described in Isle of the Unknown. Forget Gygaxian naturalism, this is an island populated by over 100 unique monsters: a 14' tall bipedal pearlscale angelfish, limbless serpentine beavers, a 300 lb. koala with suction cups on its limbs, a four-legged pigeon the size of an apatosaurus, and more. Any one of these creatures would be strange enough and might well inspire curiosity but the effect is lost after pages upon pages of them -- and that's without commenting on the frankly ludicrous nature of some of these beasties. Yes, I know there are people who've managed to make good use of "silly" monsters and I also recognize that many hallowed mythological monsters, when looked at with fresh eyes, are pretty ridiculous themselves. But if D&D or Greco-Roman myth consisted only of 22' tall emaciated pandas or four-legged flying kangaroos, I think many of us would be forced to admit that something odd was going on.

Granted, "something odd" going on may be one of the points of Isle of the Unknown. I don't think it's a coincidence that Lamentations of the Flame Princess chose to publish this particular product, as it rather powerfully evinces Jim Raggi's longstanding dislike of "standard" monsters and monster races. There's certainly merit to Raggi's complaint; it's often useful to shake things up a bit by introducing totally bizarre and unexpected monsters from time to time. However, like color or spices, these, too, can be overused. In fact, I only think such monsters work against a backdrop of familiarity and even mundanity, two things that Isle of the Unknown eschews in its presentation, leaving us only with a passel of freaks devoid of any context to give them heft. Instead, they feel, well, random and not always in a good way.

Despite this, I still like Isle of the Unknown. If approached as a smörgåsbord of ideas, it's probably quite useful. I simply cannot imagine using it as a single setting, but I might drop a statue or a monster or an NPC from the book into another locale or adventure in order to introduce a note of inexplicable weirdness into it. What I would not do, though, is use the entirety of the Isle itself; it's simply too much. My feeling remains that fantasy, especially weird fantasy, works best when it can play off well-drawn mundanity and that it's just as much a failure of the imagination not to present that mundanity as it is to stick to haggard fantasy races and monsters without any thought. Frankly, that's what anything drawing inspiration from Clark Ashton Smith ought to do: present us first with a believably grounded "real world" and then, by bits, turn the expectations of that real world upside down. Isle of the Unknown only gives us half of that equation, which is why I find it a frustrating book.

Presentation: 8 out of 10
Creativity: 6 out of 10
Utility: 5 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for a collection of ideas to loot for your own adventures or you like really weird fantasy.
Don't Buy This If: You prefer your setting supplements a bit more "ready to use" or prefer your fantasy a bit more on the staid side of things.