Demon City, province of Barovia

The funny thing about Demon City is... well, there are many. I firmly believe that it's the best horror RPG ever made. Anyhow, a funny thing about Demon City is how rememberable it is. I haven't played Demon City in years. When I thought about converting the Hickmans' OG Ravenloft to it, it took me a couple minutes of lazy thinking to recall how the stats, the skills, the "classes" (motivations, that is), and the rest of character creation works, without bothering to actually open the book. 

Demon City's stats system is spelled RATPACK. R for Revenue (I thought it was Resources, probably because I love FASERIP, but no matter what you call it it's about how Rich a character is), A for Agility (so that's Dexterity in D&D, more or less), T is Toughness (and it's how well you can hit and take hits, an elegant in-game solution), P is Perception (Wisdom in D&D), second A is for Appeal (charisma, don't you know), C is Calm (v. important in a horror game, and clearly separated here, designers of games who don't have a stat for willpower should be ashamed of themselves and take notes and make better games), and K is Knowledge, don't you know. There's no Intelligence because it's a player stat, Knowledge decides how much information your character can get. 

And the skills give you slightly better chances to do things than the stats do, so if you're strong you can hit hard, but if you're strong and also a boxer you can hit harder. Little reasonable things like that. 

There're skills for all occasions and you can and should come up with new ones if you need them, I'll just throw away stuff like Hacking and Electronics. I'll also replace Firearms with Archery because I don't like guns. The rest is fine as it is, from Athletics to Forgery to Mechanics it's something that fits right in Barovia. 

The character motives don't really need any changing, because they're universal in Demon City, and answer two important quesitons: why are you even on your way to Barovia, and how do you deal with the horrible things that await you there. The Problem is, of course, my favourite though I never got to play it. Ah well, maybe one day. 

I'll get back to this topic once the players get together and throw some cards and make some PCs. In the meantime, I can fill in the My First Conspiracy... fill-in-the-blanks sheet. The Villain is, of course, count Strahd. The Oracle is the vistani leader, I'll call her Madame Magda because it's a better name, and her method of divination is her Tarokka deck. The minions should take some time filling in, and it should be a fun exercise. 

The villain's Task and HQ?  Why, that's determined by the card reading after the game starts. That's what makes it interesting. 

 

I, Strahd, walk the land, and look smashing while I do.  

Illustrator Clyde Caldwell

LotFP Has A Sale And New Free Books

Basically this. 

https://lotfp.substack.com/p/new-books-now-available-lotfp-year

James and Yannick and Glynn and Matthew are all good at what they do (I worked with them). 

Order some good stuff, get some good stuff for free, I can't think of a better deal. 

 

James Raggi introduces the Nebulith

James describes it as "Zak's best work". Also as something that you, the audience, should buy as soon as possible. 

And here's why.  

 

The Nebulith is here.

 Remember that book about fantasy Okinawa that was in the works for the past couple years? 

Well, it's here now. 

And it looks gorgeous. And soon (like, today or tomorrow) available from LotFP European webstore, and also at Ropecon and Gencon. 

 

And more about it here.

Second to last F. Paul Wilson's book...

FPW is one of my favourite authors, ever. If you just count those who are alive tomorrow, he's definitely in top 3. 

The Keep was one of those books that defined fantasy to me. And then I discovered Repairman Jack, and the idea of an urban mercenary who is forced to fight the unnamed horrors from the pages of Secret History of the world was cool. And there were bits of real life in the stories that made them better - the dirty secrets of modern "psychics" and cults. 

The Upwelling is the penultimate book that he had written. 

The last one should come out this autumn. 

It's like those tales about master swordsmiths who create their finest blades before retiring forever. The Hidden duology is F. Paul Wilson's last. 

It might turn out to be his finest. 

Anyways, you can now buy The Upwelling, first book of The Hidden. 

And keep your eyes open for the second book, Lexie. 

Thinking of more LotFP-compatible stuff...

Fact: Ursula Le Guin was one of the great ones. That goes without saying. 

Fact: Le Guin's magic in Earthsea is cool. It is very non-Vancian mechanically (in the D&D fire-and-forget meaning), but also very Vancian in the mood (wizard of the Dying Earth desperately try to recover lost spells, out of which only about a hundred are still known; wizards of Earthsea spend years finding out a single word of True Speech - not that I think of it, "The Dying Earthsea" sounds like a good adventure title). A wizard talks to the world in the language of creation, and the world listens. 

Which is why I'm now working on a tribute adventure, with a new class and magic and probably a magic item or two and all that jazz. 

And it's probably going to be somewhat like silver bestseller All Dogs Go To Hell which you can buy here, and the magic items are probably going to be along the line of Magic Item Collection and Generator which you can also buy here. It's a little something that I like to call creative style. 

 

Another TCTC Con...

Last weekend I was at Terminal City convention, hosting some Lamentations of the Flame Princess games. 

Tried out Becami's adventure, The Black Chamber, which turned out deadly but not before I unleashed some creative spellcasting violence. The Referee, Austin, wrote a bit about this year's game and a bit about last year's game that I ran, you can read it at WatcherDM. And maybe buy some stuff while you're at it, "Dragons&Dragons" sounds like a good title. 

I ran my murder-investigation LotFP adventure, and it seemed to work fine, different from the playtesting but still enjoyable. 

Also I got to use The Collection and Generator. The players used the Snake Mantle to talk to the Nagadusa, and were so not ready for the snake poetry slam that followed (and smart enough not to challenge the Nagadusa to a staring contest, unlike some people I used to know), but rolled high and thus succeeded. And they killed a horrible creature that possibly was inspired by Donald Trump. 

That's it with the advertisements for the week, let's get back to work. The Convulsium will not write itself. More on that later.

The greatest horror game ever is here.

That's pretty much it, folks. 

DEMON CITY can now be bought, both in printed format and as a PDF. 

I've had the PDF for some time now, and I'm really happy with how it's designed.

It's pure poetry, in the sense that it's strange, follows its own rhyme and reason, and has a really high information to volume ratio.

For example: explanation of how to play takes a couple pages, and it's presented as an "Actual Play" situation. The players make decisions, forget about stuff, remind each other about the stuff, and face the consequences. It's very comprehensible and fun to read. 

Character generation is smooth and bright. 

The art is gorgeous. It's Zak Smith at his best, and Shawn Cheng also at his best. Linda Tirado added to it, too, text-wise.

There's a bestiary of sorts - descriptions of the many kinds of monsters and horrors and what they do. 

There're adventure seeds presented as movie posters, which is a great way to do this thing. 

There are rules for how to play monsters as PCs if you're into it, and frankly, who's not into it? 

My favourite part of the game is, like I always say, how easy it is to play it in the Here and Now. We played it in war-torn Ukraine, as members of local territorial defense unit who are called upon to investigate stuff that the police has no time or desire to deal with, and it felt very natural, the real bits of the city around us naturally flowed into the game. Later we played it online and the game took place in LA and it still felt natural and living. 

It's a great game.

You should get it. 

The Magic Item Collection and Generator is now live for sale

So this is the thing that I made. 

What's it good for? 

The Collection contains 30 magic items that I wrote up, more or less original. Some are weapons, some are clothes. Most are weird. Some are almost definitely cursed.

The items in the Collection are grouped into five categories. When you need to quickly and randomly give your players some unfamiliar magic loot, roll a d6 a couple times, and there you go. 

The Collection was designed to be useful at a physical gaming table. So if you print it out on both sides of a Letter-sized page, and fold it along the marked folding lines, it should look like a booklet or bookmark, call it what you like. 

 

Here's me using it as a bookmark for Zak's Compendium. 

And then there's the Generator on a separate page, in case you need to quickly whip up some new magic item. You'll need a d4, or, if you want to randomize it more (and/or despise d4s), a d4, d8 and d20. 

I playtested it, it's fast and efficient, and comes with four curses that can fall on whosoever picks up the magic item. It's compatible with LotFP and, I suppose, any other OSR game and old school D&D. If you like it but something doesn't fit your game, let me know and I'll think of something to fix it - or hack it yourself, which is the proper way.

You can buy it for whatever price you want in here. 

Have a good game in the new year. 

Space Frontier

 Among other things, we playtested a game of space western. 

While the obvious secret ingredient is "playing with good and fun people", there are also some mechanics that made the game fun. 

Like: 

Setting the playground. A desolate world where everyone you meet is a survivor with some specific talents and possessions that helped them stay alive, and the scars left by their day to day struggles; and every location has some meaningful features that can be used to your advantage or disadvantage. 

And: 

Picking the toys. Every item that the PCs can have in their saddlebags is meaningful. You can pick simpler things and have slightly more of them, or just one-two really fancy trinkets. 

Also: 

You have your gun, your knife, and your robot horse. Each is personalized. No six-shooter in the world is like yours. They all have special features and flaws. 

Plus: 

The stats and skills, which are an effective fusion of D&D and Demon City. 

And finally: 

The showdown dueling rules. A deadly game of "rock-paper-scissors", only more nuanced and flexible. 

My character's life was, in the end, saved by his trusty magnetic boots. 

And Gooseman was his name. 

Coming soon.

 

LotFP has a sale

 

Go get some Lamentations goodness.

This is gonna be good.

In case you didn't know, Zak is taking down his Cube World adventures that are available from his Store. They'll be gone after this year ends. 

Instead, he suggests this. 

The Compendium that has all the Cube World stuff and then some. 

Hardcover. 

Efficient. 

Beautiful. 

I mean, look at this. 

 

So if you, like me, want this, you have until January 1st to write to Zak and to ask for it. 

Sweet.

I'm thinking about Linda Tirado.

 I'm thinking about the USA election, and I'm thinking about Ukraine, and I'm remembering how the "Berkut" snipers shot journalists in Kyiv in 2013, and of course I remember Linda Tirado. 

And here's an article, an interview with her. She's crazy and beautiful. 

And here's a story she told a couple days ago. 

I don't know how long she can live like this. Brain's a tricky thing. 

There's not much anyone can do to help. But if you can do a little thing, please do it. 

We owe it to her.

Kelvin Green has a gift for summarizing things.

I don't know if there's anything that can be added to what Kelvin posted. 

I can only repeat it. 

So about gender representation

 Jeff Rients quoted this on his blog. 

And it got me thinking about stuff that we're playing.  

The Dragonlance campaign that we hacked is more or less over this issue, the elven princess has two brothers, there are male and female evil generals, dragons, gods, all of them have names. Switch them around and not much will change, although I like the idea of a female Death Knight lusting after an elven prince. 

There are not that many humans in All Dogs... and if you genderbend the bandit leader, she turns back into sort of Robin Hood (that was the pun about her name). 

I'm so progressive, aren't I. 

Gen Con Surprise!

If you're on Gen Con, check out this year's LotFP free catalog. Because there's something awesome in there. Let's hear from James E. Raggi IV. 

Oh look, we're silver.

 Thanks to everyone who bought All Dogs Go to Hell, it's now a silver bestseller on DTRPG. Yay! 

Yaaay.

To celebrate this, I'm going to make pizza. I'd invite y'all to have a slice but I don't have enough for everyone, sorry. Instead, I'm going to publish a little thing that I've been working on (with some vital help from my friends). I dunno if I'll make it a pay-what-you-want on DT or put it somewhere else, we'll see. It's fun and I think it's gonna be useful. Give me a week or two and I'll show it to you.

Once again, I want to thank all the 1087 people who downloaded All Dogs, especially those who paid real money for it. And James Raggi who thought I have a funny name, and hired me to write it. And the artists, and the editor, and the playtesters (they're all mentioned in the adventure, they're cool people). 

Now let's get back to work. Electrum bestseller is next.

Zak's new art book

So here's Zak's new book, collecting his artworks from 2000's and until today. Twenty years ago the Orange Revolution halted the totalitarian usurpation in Ukraine. Today things are quite horrible, but art is still art.

I've ordered it already, but it'll take some time to get it from Europe. 

Personally, I like this spread. 

Something in the colour scheme appeals to my Ukrainian patriotism. 

The cover looks cool, too. 

 It's discounted now, but soon will be sold at full price. 

You can get it here. 

Linda Tirado. Help if you can.

I never got to know Linda Tirado in person. I learned about her after she, a journalist, was shot by a cop. I read what she posted on Twitter back when it was still Twitter. I saw a fighter, a strong and loving person who knew what real evil was and despised it, and never stopped fighting against it.

She's dying. The rubber bullet shot by the policeman caused too much damage. 

The world will be a much worse, shittier place without Linda Tirado. 

So if you can help her in the few days that she has left, please do. She deserves it. 

Here's a link telling how you can help. 

https://lindatirado.substack.com/p/story-thirty-nine