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: 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: LotFP WFRP Grindhouse Edition

Let's cut to the chase: Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition is a very good old school fantasy RPG with a very long name. Last summer, I wrote a lengthy five-part review of the Deluxe Edition of the game. Rather than repeat myself -- a first for me, I'm sure -- I recommend that anyone hasn't read my earlier review do so before proceeding with this one, which will concentrate on where the Grindhouse Edition differs from its predecessor, both for good and for ill, as well as on my further thoughts about LotFP WFRP. I'll endeavor to keep this review as grounded in specifics as I can, but, by necessity, there will be a certain amount of "philosophizing" in what follows, since I think the publication of this game marks a turning point in our little section of the hobby.

Taken purely as a physical artifact, the Grindhouse Edition (hereafter GE) is an improvement over last summer's Deluxe Edition. Gone are the four staple-bound booklets, replaced with three perfect-bound ones. GE's three books cover the same ground -- Tutorial, Rules, Magic, and Referee -- as the earlier versions but Rules and Magic have been combined into a single 168-page volume that contains everything a player would need to play the game. That's potentially a shrewd move, if publisher James Raggi ever decides to sell the Rules and Magic book separately from the boxed set, something I'd personally recommend, given the 32.50€ (about $45.00 US) plus shipping cost of GE, which is more than twice that of the softcover editions of, for example, Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry, the two old school fantasy games with which GE can be most reasonably compared.

On the other hand, GE is most definitely a slicker, dare I say, more "professional" package than either of those games, which is meant neither as a compliment to GE nor a criticism of Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry. What I mean is that GE is, at least superficially, much closer to the kinds of gaming products we've seen put out by game companies with more than one employee over the last decade or so. It's cleanly laid out, well edited, and nicely organized (though I could have done without the long s we see in its interior titles). It's also copiously illustrated throughout by a wide variety of illustrators, none of whose work looks amateurish or, to use the favored euphemism of our community, "hobbyist."

Of course, even a cursory look at the artwork of GE quickly makes it clear why I said that it was only superficially closer to the RPG products we see outside the old school renaissance. True to its name, GE is filled with lurid, violent, and often bizarre artwork, some of which borders on the prurient and the puerile. This is clearly a deliberate choice on the part of Jim Raggi, reflective of his own tastes and it definitely does give GE its own unique look and feel, in much the same way that, say, Labyrinth Lord's exclusive use of Steve Zieser for its revised edition did. And, as I discussed earlier, it's pretty clear that Raggi believes that at least part of the hobby's early popularity was due to its notoriety as "dangerous," something he hopes to evoke through the visceral esthetic to which he's attached LotFP WFRP.

In a similar vein, GE carries an "Ages 18+ Explicit Content" warning on the back of its box. Again, I'm pretty sure that this is at least partly an attempt to harken back to days before roleplaying came to be viewed as a harmless, "kiddie" game, when it was still primarily an adult pastime. I certainly don't begrudge Raggi his decision to go this route and perhaps he's on to something, since GE has a print run of 2000 copies, compared to the Deluxe Edition's 600. Unless I'm woefully uninformed, that's a pretty sizable print run for any RPG these days, never mind a deliberately old school one. If Raggi actually sells through that many copies, it's an unambiguous triumph and a vindication of the approach he's adopted.

Like the Deluxe Edition, GE's Tutorial book is lengthy and takes obvious inspiration from the 1983 edition of the D&D Basic Rules, right down to the inclusion of not one but two choose-your-own-adventure style introductory adventures. My feelings about such adventures aside, I can't deny that I found them jarring in a game carrying an explicit content warning. Granted, that's a prejudice on my part; there's no reason why an adult coming to the game wouldn't find adventures of that sort helpful. The same might also be said of the other basic topics covered in the Tutorial book, including the example of play that takes up more than 20 pages of its 96. For myself, I continue to question the utility of a Tutorial volume as extensive as this one in a game aiming for an adult audience and find it remains my least favorite part of LotFP WFRP by far.

The Rules and Magic book, on the other hand, is even better than before, which is saying something. Just about everything in the original versions has been further polished and refined. There are little tweaks here and there, as well as some new additions, but, at base, the rules haven't changed noticeably from the Deluxe Edition; they're just more clearly and attractively presented. I'd be hard pressed to cite any specific changes from last summer's release rules-wise, so that ought to tell you how compatible GE is with its predecessor. The same can be said of magic. Raggi's rewriting of standard D&D spells remains one of my favorite things about LotFP WFRP and it's once again used to good effect here, with (I believe) the inclusion of a few more spells. I should note that the artwork in the Rules and Magic book very strongly reinforces the fact that Raggi, like Gygax, prefers the Early Modern period to the medieval. There's a strong 16th-17th century vibe in the illustrations that called to mind both Howard's Solomon Kane yarns and the Old World of Warhammer. I am certain this was intentional.

The Referee book is, I think, improved over its Deluxe Edition predecessor. For one, there are now some example magic items included, so as to provide models for neophytes in the creation of their own. Likewise, to make up for the loss of the two adventures included in the Deluxe Edition, there's a well-done scenario called "A Stranger Storm" could easily be used to kick off a campaign. Like all of Raggi's adventures, it's moody and potentially deadly but, moreso than some, I think it better illustrates the kind of setting he imagines for LotFP WFRP. Of course, there are still no fully statted examples of monsters in the game, nor is there a mini-Random Esoteric Creature Generator included in this book. I fully understand that Raggi does not approve of "generic" monsters and feels they weaken the game's evocation of the weird, but, even so, I don't think it's unreasonable to provide more tools to aid referees in this regard, especially in a game that exerts so much effort elsewhere in holding the hands of newcomers.

Esthetic considerations aside, my biggest continued gripe about Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing is that it wants to be a game that might appeal equally to tyros and to experienced players but doesn't quite strike the right balance to do so in terms of its content. At times, the tone and subject matter feel very unduly pedagogical, while at others it seems as if Raggi assumes beginners should be able to understand things, like monster creation, that even some old hands have difficulty with. Now, I'm deeply sympathetic to Raggi's situation here and I don't think any of the decisions he made are catastrophic, nor can I think of a RPG in print today that succeeds where he fails. But GE is a very good product, a terrifically accessible and complete old school fantasy game, so it galls me all the more that it leaves a man stranded at third when, with a bit more refinement, it could have brought him home.

Ultimately, GE impressed me most because it shows that it is possible to create an affordable and complete boxed RPG in today's market. Likewise, it's also possible to create one that favorably compares to the products of larger companies without having to compromise one's creative vision. Whether one likes it or not, GE is the game that Jim Raggi wanted to create and I can't help but applaud him for having done so. His vision is not my vision, though, nor do I suspect it will be that of all old school gamers, but that's not a bad thing. The one thing that GE is not is bland; it's chock full of flavor. In addition, I think it definitely raises the bar when it comes to production values within the old school renaissance. One can reasonably argue with how Raggi chose to present his game, but one cannot deny that he executed that presentation very well -- so well, in fact, that I'm surprised that GE's release hasn't triggered more discussion about the importance (or not) of high production values in old school renaissance releases. I hope it does, because I think it's a discussion well worth having.

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

Buy This If: You either don't already own the Deluxe Edition or are looking for a well-presented and complete old school fantasy RPG.
Don't Buy This If: You either already own the Deluxe Edition or have no need for yet another old school fantasy RPG, no matter how well-presented or complete.

Look What Came in the Mail Today

I spent the better part of this afternoon poring over the "Grindhouse Edition" of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and Zak Smith's Vornheim, both of which I was quite happy to receive. I'll have lengthy and detailed reviews of later, but my initial reaction, based on an admittedly cursory reading, is very positive. While I still retain a number of reservations about the tack Jim Raggi has taken with this second edition of LotFP WFRPG, I also can't deny that it represents a clear improvement over what was already a very good game. Vornheim, meanwhile, demonstrates quite handily that innovation in presentation is probably worth more than almost any other type of innovation trotted out to "fix" some perceived flaw in our games. Vornheim isn't at all what I was expecting, which makes its virtues all the more noteworthy.

Expect more on both these releases once I've had the time to read them more carefully.

Raggi Grabs Headlines -- Again

In case you haven't heard, James Raggi has again announced some very interesting news, namely that he will "will be releasing the Vornheim City Kit by Zak Sabbath of “Playing D&D With Porn Stars” and The Escapist’s "I Hit It With My Axe." Here's Zak's sales pitch:

The Vornheim City Kit will be a guide to the city that my campaign is based around, but way more than that, it'll be a tool for running open-ended city adventures anywhere. I'm not going to be Mr. PR here and claim I'm sure it'll have 'Everything You Need To Run A Campaign In A Fake Medieval Urban Setting' but I am sure it'll have everything I need, because this is actually the stuff I use when we play.

The Vornheim City Kit will feature: oddities of the city; maps of major locations; a souped-up version of the "urbancrawl" rules for creating fully-stocked labyrinthine streets while players are actually being chased through them; and loads of tables for creating taverns, merchants, libraries, decadent aristocrats, and other accoutrements of urban living in a split-column format allowing the DM to generate functional details on the fly or mix-and-match results during adventure prep in order to create more individualized environments.

The emphasis will be on creating instruments you can actually use, rather than burying the DM under masses of pre-imagined information. This won't be a big, fat, where-the-fuck-did-I-put-that-bookmark encyclopedia of every loose toothpick and manhole cover in the city. This will be a little book that you can put on your table and say to your players "Ok, it's Friday night in 1200 AD, what are we doing?" and be confident that you have an environment ready to roll with any punch the party throws. The pictures will be helpful, the maps will be clear, the tables will be fun to roll on, and it will all be easy to find."

The kit will also include notes and commentary on how the tools in the kit can or have worked out in actual play from James Raggi, Zak Sabbath, and the 'Axe' girls.

Look for it Winter 2011.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this sounds like a really intriguing product, one I'm looking forward to seeing, if only because urban adventuring is a staple of swords-and-sorcery stories and it's not been well supported in the hobby in many years.

If the book is even half as good as it sounds like from Zak's spiel, then it's going to be very awesome indeed. I also expect this announcement will raise yet more eyebrows among those who were already clucking about Raggi's plans to publish Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa in an expanded, deluxe edition next year. Looks like 2011 is going to be a hopping year for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Here's hoping other old school publishers can produce some similarly cool stuff.

McKinney and Raggi Join Forces

As announced today, James Raggi of Lamentations of the Flame Princess has come to an agreement with Geoffrey McKinney to release not only his upcoming Isle of the Unknown project, but also Carcosa in "an expanded, deluxe edition." McKinney and Raggi both have very strong visions for their respective old school projects, so the idea of the two of them joining forces in this fashion is certainly one of the most intriguing bits of news I've heard coming out of old school gaming in some time. I have decidedly mixed feelings about Carcosa, as is well known, and, from what I have gathered, the "expanded, deluxe" version will use the unexpurgated text of the book, so I suspect we may be in for another round of discussion when this new edition is released next spring.

Regardless, it's already looking as if 2011 will be every bit as interesting as 2010 -- which is saying a lot.

REVIEW: Hammers of the God

Of all the products James Raggi has recently released, it's not an exaggeration to say that his adventure module, Hammers of the God, is by far my favorite. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that it's my favorite product he's ever released, eclipsing even the supremely excellent Death Frost Doom. In almost every way, Hammers of the God is a step up over Death Frost Doom, which had already set a very high standard for contemporary old school adventures, making this a very good adventure indeed.

Before getting into the meat of the module itself, let me first discuss its physical and esthetic qualities. The cover, by Dean Clayton, is moody and mysterious, setting just the right tone for this adventure. However, the cover is dark, which makes it difficult to read Lamentations of the Flame Princess logo, which I think should have been printed in white or even purple like the bottom half of the illustration. The interior black and white art, by Laura Jalo, is likewise superb, as it always is. My only complaint is that there is not more of it. Ramsey Dow's cartography is clean and, most of all, useful, which is the standard by which all maps should be judged. Raggi's dense text is presented in two columns, spread over 36 pages; it's well-written and edited and, best of all, evocative, imparting the adventure with feelings of melancholy and shame, two emotions one does not usually associate with fantasy roleplaying adventures, especially dungeon delving ones.

Hammers of the God is a location-based adventure intended for a party of characters between the levels of 3 and 5. The location in question is an ancient dwarven stronghold, long since abandoned, and reputed to be filled with great riches. There certainly is wealth to be found within its halls, including one of the hammers from which the module takes it title, but the most important thing to be found is knowledge. The ancient stronghold holds the key to many secrets of dwarven history, secrets so shameful that they are vehemently denied by those few dwarves who still know them -- secrets they would rather no one ever know.

It's here where I think Raggi is at his best. Other writers could very well have come up with a secret for the dwarves that was worth keeping hidden away from other races and even their own kinsmen for millennia, but such a secret would likely have been some Grand Guignol horror show that recast the dwarves as monsters. Raggi doesn't go that route. Instead, he creates a surprising secret, one that is simultaneously true to the default portrayal of dwarves in most fantasy RPG settings and yet recasts them in a way that makes it hard ever to view them in the same light again. It's a remarkable bit of writing that made me regret that my Dwimmermount campaign already has its own unique take on dwarves, one that isn't at all compatible with Raggi's vision. Fortunately, though, most other settings are and one of the greatest virtues of Hammers of the God is the way it could be used seamlessly with most fantasy settings, something that is decidedly not the case with many of Raggi's other adventures, good as they are.

The dwarven stronghold itself is well presented, filled with dangers and dread, as well as hiding oddities that eventually reveal much to those who make an effort to decipher them. Raggi builds slowly toward the revelations the dungeon conceals and this approach serves him well. He's taken great care to avoid a cheap "Aha!" moment that reveals all at once, going so far as to devote 14 of the modules 36 pages to cataloging and describing 100 books found within the stronghold that provide many clues to the dwarves' shameful past. And even these books, numerous though they are, don't paint the whole picture; to make sense of it all the PCs will need to explore the entire dungeon and then face that most difficult of all challenges: making sense of it all.

Hammers of the God is, like all James Raggi adventures, light on monsters to fight and heavy on mystery and mood. Just as Death Frost Doom evoked a sense of creeping dread in the fashion of a classic weird tale, this adventure almost achieves that elegaic quality I regularly claim is impossible with D&D (thereby proving, as some have suspected for years, that I have no idea what I'm talking about). I'm not quite sure he succeeds, but there's no question that Hammers of the God has a mournful quality to it that I found affecting and one that sets it apart from just about every adventure module I can think of. I've noted before that I think Raggi's true strength lies in adventure writing and Hammers of the God does nothing to change my feelings on this score. It's a top-notch adventure that deserves to be widely read and, more importantly, played.
Presentation: 9 out of 10
Creativity: 10 out of 10
Utility: 8 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for an emotionally powerful adventure that cleverly casts standard dwarf stereotypes on whole new light.
Don't Buy This If: You already have your own unique take on dwarves or aren't interested in adventures that are heavier on mood than on action.

REVIEW: Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (Part V)

Before presenting my concluding thoughts on the entirety of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, I'd like to discuss a few other components of the boxed set I've not already covered. First, there's the box itself. Boxed sets seem to be a flashpoint for discussion amongst old schoolers, with some feeling that nothing short of the return of the boxed RPG will herald mainstream success for the hobby. Others simply like boxed RPGs (I fall into this category). Consequently, several OSR publishers have produced their own boxed games recently. What I've noticed is that it's apparently quite difficult to get boxes that are "just right" for RPGs -- at least not without having them specially made for the purpose. I think Brave Halfling's Swords & Wizardry White Box comes closest to "getting it right," but even it feels a bit too flimsy for long-term use. WF, on the hand, comes in what appears to be a mailing box. Initially, I wasn't too keen on it, but, having carried around with me, I've come to like it a great deal. It's sturdy and holds everything inside without any difficulty, so a big thumbs up on the box.

In addition to the four books and two adventures, the box also includes a single sheet OGL statement, some advertisements (for Dragonsfoot and Expeditious Retreat Press), and a satirical warning to the reader. There are also 10 pre-printed double-sided record sheets, 5 pages of graph/hex paper (one on each side), a tiny set of polyhedral dice, and a small pencil. I appreciate that all these things were included; they ensure that the game is "complete" in a single box, but one wonders whether, for example, the pencil was really necessary. Also included was a 12-page "Recommended Reading" booklet that provides capsule biographies of many important pulp fantasy authors, in addition to a list of other noteworthy influences on WF. I really like this booklet, though (of course) I do wonder why the entry for Robert E. Howard drew attention to his suicide or why the Lovecraft entry did the same for his racism. It's a small point, I admit, but one that rankles nonetheless.

As a complete product, WF is certainly one of the most impressive things to come out of the old school renaissance. In terms of its physical quality alone, it's remarkable -- an attractive boxed set that really does include everything you need to play. Its esthetics are distinctive, obviously drawing on the past but doing so without the need to ape it. Likewise, James Raggi has a strong authorial voice that comes through on nearly every page of WF. He has a vision of what he likes in fantasy roleplaying and he articulates it clearly and unapologetically. More importantly, he does a fine job of giving anyone who purchases this boxed set the tools and the knowledge needed to create their own adventures and campaigns according to his own preferences.

As you've seen in the first four parts of this review, I have quibbles and concerns with various parts of WF, but they're mostly "in the family," which is to say, they're the kinds of concerns one makes only because one is otherwise in broad agreement with everything else the author is saying. And I am; I think WF is a very good game, one that includes a number of genuine innovations -- its approach to "thieves," for example -- that old school gamers will find of interest. That said, I think WF suffers from a bit of a split personality, seeing as its actual audience is likely to be primarily gamers of long experience, while much of its text is written as if the reader is an utter neophyte. That's not necessarily problematic. Others have pointed out that many gamers of long experience aren't really familiar with old school play and WF serves as an excellent introduction to it -- a lengthier "Old School Primer," if you will. At $65, though, WF is also expensive and that may limit its appeal, especially to newcomers. I don't deny that the price is, in fact, a bargain, considering all one gets for it, but it's still a very large outlay of cash.

In the final analysis, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing is a game I cannot help but like, warts and all. It's deliciously idiosyncratic and unabashed about its idiosyncrasies. It comes across very much as a hobbyist production in the best possible sense of the term. It's very "raw" and, for lack of a better word, "real." That is, the game is the product of a single person's love for fantasy roleplaying and that love comes through on every page, perhaps most especially in those pages I least like, where it's speaking to people for whom the wonder of discovering old school gaming is happening now, not thirty years ago. Time will tell just how successful James Raggi will be in introducing new people to old school gaming, but, even if he fails, no one can say he didn't make a pretty spectacular go of it.

Overall Rating
Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 8 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Buy This If: You're either looking for a new take on old school gaming or are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about old school gaming (and don't mind a hefty price tag).
Don't Buy This If: You don't need yet another take on old school fantasy roleplaying.

REVIEW: Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (Part IV)

(I fully expect this part of my five-part review to prove the most contentious of them all)

The ambivalence the Referee Book in James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing elicited in me was also present when I read the game's Tutorial Book. Here, at least, I knew upfront that I reading a book that's aimed at complete neophytes. Consequently, I could judge it on its own terms rather than on any mistaken expectations of my own. At the same time, there are a number of things in this 52-page book that struck me as odd, repetitive, or simply unnecessary. Taken together, I was left feeling that the Tutorial Book didn't hang together quite as well as it could have, even if there was a lot between its covers I found genuinely praiseworthy.

The Tutorial Book begins with the obligatory "What is a Role-Playing Game?" discussion, but it's thankfully short and well done for what it is. There's likewise a discussion of dice and how to use them that's likewise short. A large section, entitled "Your First Adventure" follows, which is a kind of "guided tour" of the game and its rules. It assumes that the reader is playing a fighter and slowly introduces game mechanics as he reads through the structured narrative it presents. This narrative is not a "choose-your-own-adventure" style affair, but something much more railroad-y, a fact Raggi is quite to acknowledge at the end, where he notes that it wasn't "the real thing" where "the possibilities are limitless." As a primer of the most aspects of game play, it's well done, though. My only complaint is the extent to which the first adventure's narrative mirrors that of the Mentzer-edited Basic Rules, but that's probably my bias showing.

"The Second Adventure" immediately follows and it is a full-blown choose-your-own-adventure, as well as more complex mechanically. This second adventure is more impressive, allowing a very wide range of options, far more than is typical for tutorials of this kind. Of course, to do this, it uses nearly 20 pages of the book for a dungeon that consists of only 10 different encounter areas. Nevertheless, I think Raggi nicely ramps things up between the two tutorials, removing most of the "training wheels" and heavy-handed refereeing of the first in order to approximate something that's closer to "the real thing." Even here, he's quite to point out that "this isn't the full experience of the game either." I like admissions of this sort, since they make it clear that these tutorial adventures are just that: tutorials and shouldn't be confused with what an actual adventure session will be.

Raggi then goes on to include brief overviews of other game and rule-related topics, several of which were already covered in the Referee Book. This seems like wasted space to me, but I can't deny that a certain amount of repetition is probably inevitable once one adopts the idea of distinct player and referee-oriented books in a boxed game. That's rather why I don't like that sort of division, one that wasn't present in the little brown books or its immediate successors. But, again, this is a matter of taste, so I can't complain overly much.

On the other hand, I will complain about a 15-page example of play. Again, I think examples of play have a place in games geared toward newcomers, but I don't think they need to be as lengthy as the included here. Now, in Raggi's defense, the example is nicely done; it covers a lot of ground and illustrates many of the potential pitfalls of old school gameplay. Still, I think it could easily have been at least half its current length (if not shorter) and still achieved that same goal.

Introducing someone to the idea of a tabletop roleplaying game when they've never played one is a difficult proposition. I suspect anyone who's entered the hobby and stuck with it will recall that overcoming that early intellectual barrier was, in many ways, the toughest part about playing a RPG. When I entered the hobby at the tail end of the 70s, I relied on mentors already versed in the game to show me the ropes. I in turn introduced lots of others to the hobby, becoming a mentor myself, something I've continued to do with my own children. To my mind, this is the best way to induct someone into this hobby and no book, no matter how well written, will ever be a substitute for it. I might even argue that the shift toward treating RPG books into tutorial-driven technical manuals in the mid-80s was the first signs of rot setting into the culture of the hobby, but that's a topic for another day.

But, if one does think that a book alone can teach one to play a RPG, as I know James Raggi does, how does his Tutorial Book stack up? I think it does quite well, mostly on the strength of its two sample adventures. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure the Tutorial Book includes much that would be of particular help to a true beginner. The example of play is, as I said, too long; Moldvay's famous example of play is about a page and half long and covers most of the important points and does so in such a memorable fashion that blogs are even named after its characters. Meanwhile, the game and rules-related overviews are so brief that I'm not sure they'll tell a beginner anything they didn't already know or that they couldn't have picked up from their referee.

So, even acknowledging that I'm not the target audience for this volume or that I don't share the philosophy behind it, I'm still left feeling that the Tutorial Book doesn't quite accomplish what it sets out to do. It's a very solid step in that direction, but it has a slightly "ragged" feel to it, as if it's a first draft rather than the final word on how to introduce a newcomer to roleplaying. As an integral part of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, I don't feel as if it's useless, although I do wish more of its page count had been used in other volumes of the boxed set. Taken on its own, though, I found it unsatisfying and continue to wonder about its utility.

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

Buy This If: You're interested in some limited but well presented adventures to introduce someone to tabletop roleplaying.
Don't Buy This If: You'd rather learn how to roleplay through actual play.

REVIEW: Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (Part III)

Gaming books aimed specifically at referees are a tricky business. On the one hand, no one is born a referee (or, at least, very few are), so there's an obvious need for "instructions" on how to become one -- a need that's all the more acute in old school gaming, where the role of the referee is vastly larger than in its latter-day descendants. On the other hand, one doesn't become a referee by reading a book, or even many books, no matter how well written. That's because good refereeing is more a matter of instinct honed through experience and, while refereeing books can be helpful, they're no substitute for simply running lots and lots of adventures over the course of weeks, months, and years. Refereeing is a clear case of learning by doing.

That's not to say that there isn't a place for books on the theory and practice of refereeing, but there's a real danger that they'll either be too "philosophical" and thus of limited use in showing neophytes how to handle their responsibilities as a referee or too mired in minutiae and thus of limited use in explaining why a particular course of action is better for everyone involved in the game. When I was a younger man, referee's books veered too much toward the practical, right down to wasting space about deciding where a gaming group should meet and who should bring snacks. Nowadays, the trend is in the opposite direction, with lots of highfalutin talk derived from literary theory or using movies and TV shows as exemplary of good RPG campaigns.

The Referee Book included with James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing commits neither of those sins, but it's still far from perfect. That's admittedly a weak criticism, since even Gary Gygax's magnum opus, the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, is imperfect, but Gygax's tome was published over three decades ago. In a sense, it created the genre of "referee's book" and so its flaws must necessarily be balanced against its trailblazing nature; the WF Referee Book has no such easy out.

Before getting to that, let me begin by saying that the book is 48 pages in length and easy on the eyes. Art is sparse but attractive and the simple two-column layout is one I appreciate. The text is clear and I found few obvious editorial or typographical errors. The tone used throughout can best be called "conversational," though it often becomes more colloquial than I prefer. Some, I suppose, will appreciate this unpretentious style and I admit that it has benefits, but, traditionalist that I am, I still prefer referee's books to have a somewhat more "aloof" presentation.

The Referee Book begins with an overview of the role of the referee and the fundamentals of the game. It also includes brief discussions of "Rule Zero," a term about which I've already noted my dislike, as well as discussions of randomness and the long road ahead in becoming a truly good referee. All in all, it's a promising start and, quibbles aside, I think it does a solid job of elucidating just what a referee does in an old school game. Following this, there's a very good section about "the weird," what it means and how it can be evoked in a game. It's unfortunately a little more theoretical than I'd have liked, but I suppose Raggi can rightly claim that his adventures already provide extended examples of the weird for referees to imitate.

A large portion of the Referee Book is devoted to adventure building and rightly so. Raggi identifies five basic types of adventures: event-based, exploration-based, personage-based, location-based, and sandboxes. Each type gets a brief discussion before he tackles elements common to all of them. He also lays out the elements of good adventures, including appropriate obstacles and rewards, and cautions against the dangers of railroading. This is all very good stuff and broadly consonant with most of what the old school renaissance has been promoting over the last few years. Indeed, it's probably as good a sketch of what old school gaming is all about as any I've read and it does so without reference to contemporary gaming, since it's written with a neophyte in mind.

Another large section details "the campaign" -- meaning primarily the campaign setting -- and it's here where I think the Referee Book starts to fall down. All the usual topics, like maps, religion, laws, languages, etc. are covered but, even from the perspective of a newcomer, I'm not sure how useful this section would be. Perhaps it's been so long since I needed this kind of advice that I can't tell that a very basic overview of high-level topics like this is indeed valuable, but, compared to the adventure design advice earlier, I found the section on the campaign quite flat and uninspiring. Meanwhile, the section on NPCs started off promisingly, but was much too short. I would have much rather seen Raggi talk more about creating memorable NPCs than yet another discussion of cosmology or quasi-medieval social structure.

Since Raggi first made his name with his Random Esoteric Creature Generator, I expected WF to include something similar, albeit in a cut-down or at least more focused version. Instead, we get a mere four pages of rather terse advice on making monsters -- there are no "standard" monster listings in the game at all -- with special attention paid to animals, constructs, humanoids, oozes, and undead. I can't deny that I was disappointed by this, since I remain a big fan of his earlier work (which Raggi references in the text) and which I expected to see used in some form in WF. This section also lacks examples, which I think would have been invaluable in a game geared toward newcomers. On the plus side, Raggi does suggest a good alternative to level drain that I think retains the sting of this fearsome power.

Like the monster section, the discussion of magic items felt underdeveloped to me. I appreciate Raggi's contention that magic items should all be individualized and treated as "unique items of great power" rather than D&D's very generic approach. I am sympathetic to his point of view here and lean that way myself, but, if that is the approach one is going to take, I think it's important to provide more details and examples on how that approach should be implemented. That said, I think Raggi did a better job in this section than he did with the monsters, but I still would have preferred some additional elucidation of how to use the guidelines presented. The book concludes with some practical discussions about gathering a group and maintaining a campaign, as well as how to convert material for other retro-clones to WF.

Before the release of WF, James Raggi was probably most well-known for his superb old school adventure modules and, reading through the Referee Book, it's not difficult to see why. The book is at its best and most insightful when it focuses on the creation and running of adventures. I found it far less useful when it shifted focus to campaigns and campaign settings. Some of that might be because, as I noted, I'm an old hand and so don't see the value in some of the Referee Book's discussions. If so, I think it only highlights the split personality of WF -- clearly geared toward complete neophytes yet often containing "inside baseball" theoretical discussions that probably don't mean much to such gamers. I'll grant that it's a tough balancing act to maintain and that, to be successful, WF, at least initially, needs to attract experienced gamers as well as beginners, so a split personality of some sort is probably unavoidable.

At the end of the day, the Referee Book is a good effort and contains much of value, particularly its discussions of the weird and how to create memorable and exciting adventures. It does, however, feel like a step down from the thoroughgoing excellence of the two previous volumes of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. In terms of both content and utility, it's notably less excellent, even given its more narrow focus. That still puts it ahead of a great many other RPG products, both within the old school renaissance and without, so it's a limited criticism, but it's criticism nonetheless.

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

Buy This If: You're a complete neophyte to refereeing or an experience referee just keen to read another referee's perspectives on common aspects of this game role.
Don't Buy This If: You're an old hand with no interest others' approaches to refereeing.

REVIEW: Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (Part II)

From reading other reviews of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing (hereafter WF) and from stray comments about it, I think people are most impressed with the Referee Book (which I'll review in Part III). I agree that the Referee Book is good, but, for my money, my favorite component of WF is actually the Magic Book. This 52-page book covers everything you need to know about magic and playing spellcasters in the game and manages to do so succinctly but without losing an ounce of flavor. Indeed, one of the more remarkable achievements of the Magic Book is that shows just how easy it is, with a little thought and imagination, to turn D&D's rather bland magic system into something colorful and evocative of the weird tale.

The book begins with an overview of clerical magic, including how to prepare and cast spells. This is fairly standard stuff but it's good to see it spelled out clearly nonetheless. This section also includes rules for creation scrolls and holy water, as well as how to research a new spell. These rules are simple and straightforward and, I think, strike a nice balance between the vagueness of OD&D and the tedious specificity of later editions. There's also an overview of magic-user magic as well and covers much the same ground, along with rules for creating potions, staffs, and wands. Again, the rules are simple and straightforward, making the creation of these items easy enough that a character might conceivably consider doing so and yet not so easy as to make them commonplace. Raggi has found a healthy medium here and I may well swipe some of his rules for use in my own campaign.

Where the Magic Book really shines, though, is in its spell descriptions. The bulk of the Magic Book consists of individual spell descriptions of all seven levels of clerical spells and all nine levels of magic-user spells. These descriptions are much lengthier than those found in OD&D or Swords & Wizardry, though not because of additional rules. Raggi's spells are (generally) just as mechanically simple as their OD&D counterparts. What's different, though, is that he's fleshed out each spell with some compelling details. Take, for example, a favorite of mine, contact other plane:

The stars are repositories of all knowledge. By means of this spell, the Magic-User enters in communion with the star of his choice to receive wisdom and information. The caster asks questions of the star, and the star answers. The stars resent such intrusions and give only brief answers to questions, and they often lie.

The description also includes a chart of possible stars to consult to replace OD&D's rather uninspired "3rd plane," "4th plane," etc. Included amongst these stars are some familiar to regular readers of various old school blogs -- Fomalhaut, Algol, the Hyades Cluster. In WF, contact other plane still works more or less exactly as it does in OD&D, but it's presented in a way that's much more interesting and evocative.

Indeed, I'd go so far to argue that the bulk of WF's implied setting can be found in these spell descriptions, most of which are really well done. Here are a few more examples to give you a better sense of what Raggi has done:

• conjure elemental summons a spirit from the nether realms to inhabit one of the four elements.
• dark vision gives the ability to see 60' in the dark (as per infravision) but transforms the caster's eyes into "demonic pits of utter black."
• hold person "unleashes millions of thread-thin spectral worms on the target(s)," which burrow into his brain and keep him from moving.

Not all of the spells in the Magic Book are flavorful and I think that's a good thing. If every spell had dark and creepy effects, I think it'd be overkill, undermining the uniqueness of the spell's that do have such effects. Nevertheless, I find what Raggi has done here praiseworthy. Simply by providing a new description of old standbys, he's managed to make them feel fresh and new, in the process painting a picture of what he means by "weird fantasy." It's very effective in my opinion.

On the downside, if you're not interested in the picture that Raggi's painting, you'll find the Magic Book less useful. Of course, if you really aren't interested, you probably wouldn't be buying WF and certainly would have little use for the Magic Book, which, underneath all its chrome, is really just a compilation of the standard D&D spells. Well, not all of them. Noticeably absent are spells like raise dead, reincarnation, restoration, wish -- all those powerful spells that make death, level drain, and other nasty afflictions a little less nasty. WF is definitely not a game that coddles its players and that's quite clear in the Magic Book.

In any case, no one should expect anything revolutionary from the Magic Book. It's a great book, but its virtues are in its presentation, not its mechanical originality. This is where Raggi gets to show off his ability to spin gold from straw and, more often than not, he succeeds. Even if one doesn't like the particular sheen of his gold, one can't help but admire his talent and be inspired by it. Magic in my own Dwimmermount campaign is, in general, pretty bland and matter-of-fact and that's by choice; I think it works well within the setting I've constructed. I can't deny, though, that, after reading the Magic Book, I did reconsider my choice, if only for a moment. I suspect I won't be the only referee out there who'll do so after reading the Magic Book.

Presentation: 7 out of 10
Creativity: 9 out of 10
Utility: 7 out of 10

Buy This If: You're looking for an imaginative presentation of the classic D&D magic system and spells.
Don't Buy This If: You prefer your spells less flavorful or would rather inject your own flavor into them.