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 describes it as "Zak's best work". Also as something that you, the audience, should buy as soon as possible.
And here's why.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks to everyone who bought All Dogs Go to Hell, it's now a silver bestseller on DTRPG. Yay!
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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.
"The House of Stars became the House of Spiders".
That's the line from Tanis's secret journal that the heroes managed to decipher. And the druidess really, really wanted more spiders.
Which is how the elf, dwarf, and two kendergirls found themselves at the borders of Silvanesti, greeted by none other than Porthios, far from everyone's favourite elf.
Now, I must say that Tracy Raye Hickman put a lot of work into Dragons of Dreams. And I appreciate some of it, and a lot of it is kind of meh.
The sickly green mists and trees that weep blood are cool. It's like a little piece of Ravenloft in Krynn, the best of both worlds.
The scene with the executioner? Also cool.
So, as the heroes entered the woods of Silvanesti, they met a group of hungry minotaurs and almost ate them (after the kendergirls tasted roasted dragon, they suspect every NPCs of being a polymorphed delicious dragon. This is scary, really).
They lost their NPC followers in the mists (Sturm, Riverwind, Goldmoon, and Alfred the butler), and sent their three dogs to find and help the lost followers.
They witnessed the execution of Kitiara by Tanis, and impressed the starved, enslaved Silvanesti elves by killing the executioner.
Then they were attacked by creepy spider-goblins. Because when two characters in the party have spiderclimbing abilities and like to use them, sooner or later you must have a vertical fight on/in a half-ruined tower.
Notes on vertical fights:
If you throw something at the character below you, you're in a better position to hit them but if you miss, your weapon falls all the way down;
If you throw something at the character above you, there's a chance that your weapon will fall back and injure you;
If you charge or dodge, there's a chance that you'll lose contact with the wall and fall down, unless you manage to grab something and stop your fall;
Dispel magic suddenly becomes deadlier.
All in all fun.
Notes on spider-goblins: spider-shaped body with cephalothorax and abdomen, goblin faces, four goblin arms and four goblin legs. Freaky. They enjoy using Stinking Clouds, Webs and Darkness.
Also they briefly met an NPCs from an old campaign that some players knew and some players didn't. I'm sentimental like that.
Next, the heroes are going to find the entrance to the Underground Zoo of king Lorac. What are the chances of running into more freaky creatures?
So we're still playing what I like to call Lamentations of the Qualinesti Princess - a game of classic Dragonlance modules remade and arguably improved with the help of LotFP rules, and some LotFP and compatible books.
Our latest adventure was Dragons of Ice, written by Douglas Niles.
They fight the dragonarmies.
The Dragons of Ice go like this - you bring the heroes to Tarsis, they find some clues in the long-forgotten library, the city is conquered by dragonarmies, the heroes are urged to go south and look for the Dragon Orb at the Icewall Castle. Simple enough.
However...
Part 1. Rebuilding Tarsis
Tarsis is a big city. It's fallen on hard times since the Cataclysm because they used to have a sea and now there's no sea, and there are beautiful ships just rotting for centuries because there's no sea. Still, a big city.
The amount of things that you can do in Tarsis, according to Dragons of Ice, is this:
stay at the Red Dragon inn, where you meet princess Alhana Starbreeze, a Silvanesti elf who, like many racists, secretly is aroused by interracial stuff and falls in love with the human knight Sturm;
visit the governer in his palace;
find a secret library with Fizban's help;
choose to rescue a nice elderly couple from thieves or leave them to be robbed;
run to the south to get the Dragon Orb or stay in the city and eventually be captured by draconians and either escape or be executed.
Thrilling.Though it could be fun to play a variant of Casablanca in a draconian-controlled city, maybe one day we'll go there.
Anyways, I wanted Tarsis to be a city with places you can go, people you can meet, things you can do.
I used Vornheim, of course.
So under my wise government, Tarsis now has:
a palace and an inn that we inherited from the old regime;
a library - but not just some boring old library. Indeed, it's the legendary Library of Zorlac, complete with the librarians and magic insanity-causing rugs;
some fancy stores that sell fancy stuff;
an elaborate maze of streets and alleys;
barracks where the draconian troops are stationed;
an old temple once dedicated to the sea gods, now long-abandoned, which the characters chose as a meeting place with their adversary.
In other words, it's a real city.
2. Messing with the NPCs
Since the Heroes of the Lance are replaced with the four above-mentioned meddling kids and their three dogs, I felt free to switch around some of the NPCs and enemies. Goldmoon and Riverwind are still there, doing what they're supposed to do, acting as the heroes' loyal followers since Dragons of Despair. They were joined by Sturm Brightblade with his Solamnic sword and Solamnic code of honour and Lolla Mesmer, an elven cleric that I rolled using Vornheim tables who was converted by the dwarf into true faith of Kiri-Jolith. Note: due to the dwarf's missionary activities, Kiri-Jolith is now the second most followed deity on Krynn.
Laurana is supposed to hang out with the characters, being a bratty girl who still hasn't grown into her role of the heroic Golden General. Fine by me. By now, Laurana has gotten over her childhood crush on the Qualinesti wizard (which is what the previous modules had recommended for her - if there's a Qualinesti elf in the party, boom, Laurana's all ready and willing to marry him), and now has a teenage passionate romance with Tika who is her SOULMATE and they're VERY HAPPY and will live happily EVER AFTER. Which is okay for everyone, especially the wizard who was really uncomfortable when Laurana fawned over him.
Kitiara is supposed to appear and disappear without much interaction, at this point in the story, she's just the mysterious and menacing Blue Lady, the Highlord of the Blue Wing. But since the heroes saw her and decided to kill her, why not let them? I gave them Kitiara at her best - charming, manipulative, smart, looking out for number one and not giving a damn about her superiors' master plans.
The Dragon Highlord that the heroes are meant to really mess with is Feal-Thas, the lord of the White Wing, a dark elf who holds the Icewall Castle. He's okay. But I had something else in mind. Our wizard grew up in Qualinesti, he knew Laurana and her brothers, Laurana fancied him to be her betrothed - so what was up with Tanthalas at the time? I bet he wasn't all that happy, growing up as a half-elf in Qualinesti. In fact, Tanis is now the Dragon Highlord, Kitiara's sometimes-ally, sometimes-rival, bitter and angry at the elves who treated him like shit just because he was not racially pure. Can't really blame him.
3. The Sinister Secret of the Spider Sity
The kender druidess wanted to find a spider city. She also rolled the "you know where to find the thing that you really wanted, four sessions away or sooner" on Zak's Random Character Advancement table.
Which is why Silvanesti is now, apparently, taken over by spiders, and the heroes are flying there on top of a rather large and grumpy red dragon whom they freed from Tanis's magical prison.
I have some ideas about what will happen there but it's a story for another time, besides, the players probably don't want to know ahead of time.
There's going to be some horror stuff, obviously.
And now a word from our sponsors.
The cast of Lamentations of Qualinesti Princess originally appeared
in the playtest of All Dogs Go To Hell, published by LotFP.
A lot of animals, people, bacteria and magic artifacts
suffered during the playtest, but the dog survived.
Buy it now and get a complimentary "Why, thank you!"
from the writer, the cast, and the dogs.
Or get it for free, it's pay-what-you-want.
There were a hundred and three games at Terminal City. Three of those were Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
Why? LotFP is fun. The rules are free. There's a lot - a whole lot - of quality content. Almost everything, even that one adventure about the dogs, can be bought as PDFs. Some of the stuff, especially that one adventure about the dogs, is pay-what-you-want (so you can get it for free, and no one will judge you, you greedy tight-fisted miser). And there's even more stuff that's LotFP-compatible.
Is it because LotFP has no warehouse in Canada, and there are no physical books at local game stores? Printed books are something that sets Lamentations aside from many others, they look absolutely gorgeous.
There were a hundred and three games at Terminal City, and the three Lamentations games that were barely advertised were all full. (One person had to cancel but there was one extra at the next game, so it evened out).
Some were players with LotFP-related experience, and it was a pleasure watching them use every skill and trick in their arsenal. Some were people who never played an LotFP game before, or never played a tabletop RPG, period.
Everyone contributed, everyone did something cool.
Maybe we should play more LotFP games at cons and show more people how great it can be and make James Raggi rich and famous so that he publishes more games that we will play at cons, you know what I'm saying?
Anyways, it was fun. I want to thank everyone who came, or wanted to come but couldn't, or didn't plan to come but something came up so they just sat at my table and played. And Becami, Jeff and Zak, who gave some very sound advice on being a Referee at a con game. And James for making Lamentations and publishing the two adventures that I used, and once again Zak for writing the two adventures that I used. And Austin, because it was nice to see a familiar face and know that someone at the table is resourceful enough to deal with anything that will go weird and pear-shaped. And the organizers and moderators of Terminal City, because it was a really cool and friendly event.
It was a pleasure.
How I use the Random Encounter table...
Roll.
No, can't use this, this looks more interesting than the rest of the adventure.
Roll.
Meh, that's kind of too tough.
Roll.
2d4 Orc Knights on horses, okay, that sounds good.
"So, from behind the trees, you see eight goblin scouts riding baboons..."
They also killed the xortoise. They sure rolled a lot of natural 19's. Maybe the dice were loaded. I brought the dice. Why did I give them loaded dice?
"So you brought me... an old bald man, two birds, a monkey, and a - to be frank - seriously impressive giant half-goat, half-scorpion. That is supposed to be the superweapon that will save my kingdom?"
"Ah, your majesty, let me explain how this bird is actually a weapon of mass destruction".
Goat-demon is invulnerable to normal weapons. But not to the cunning of the magic-user who promised him a whole lot of killing and violence.
Note: always bring a pencil sharpener AND a knife to a game. Luckily, I did.
"So... these girls in the pool were not the octopus's handpuppets?"
"No, they were real girls who just liked to hang out with a giant octopus".
"I know girls like that".
Step 1. Forbid to bring food/drinks to the building.
Step 2. Charge $4.50 for a can of Pepsi.
Step 3, obviously, world domination.
I cannot see how this plot could possibly fail.
Last time on Lamentations of the Qualinesti Princess, the brave heroes (Qualinesti elf red mage, hill dwarf priest, and kender bardess) decided to lure Dragon Highlady Kitiara into a trap. This went... relatively well, meaning that now the heroes and Kitiara work together. The warrior woman with a crooked smile sent the heroes south from Tarsis to find a Dragon Orb.
I keep trying to make the original Dragonlance modules more interesting. In Tarsis, I used Vornheim to make the city more like a city. In the Plains of Dust, I used the Book of Jerks for random encounters. I do love how the whole fight against animated statues was resolved by the mage shrugging and casting Turn Rock to Mud. Creative casting is the proper way to do it.
Now, in the frozen wastes of Ice Wall, the heroes (who are now four - a kender druidess joined the company) have met a Dragon Highlord (a half-elf who hates his elven relatives because they treated him like dirt), defeated an army of minotaurs using the hacked Pendragon mass combat mechanic, and enjoyed the spoils of victory. Namely, they found a flask with a potion that the bardess immediately drank.
It turned out to be a love potion that made the drinker fall in love madly with whoever harmed her last. Thing is, in the end of the battle, the bardess sang a song that was so horrible, so painful that it hurt everyone in the battlefield, herself included.
Now the kender bardess is deeply narcissistic.
Then, following the original module, the company found a dragon and a knight frozen in a dungeon. The druidess used her Speak With Dead Animals spell (we used the Quick LotFP Druid), and asked the dead dragon several questions about the Orb, and also if dragons are good to eat.
"Yeah, little one, dragons are delicious".
"Have you eaten a dragon?"
"Oh, many times".
"Do you mind if we eat your body?"
"Hey, I'm dead, I don't care".
So, after burying the knight, for the first time in the history of Krynn, a dwarf, two kenderesses, and three dogs ate a dragon.
The elf refused to partake.
***
This weekend, I'm hosting some LotFP games at Terminal City Tabletop Convention. It'll probably be crazy. I cannot promise that we'll eat a dragon, but you never know.
See you there.
The latest adventure in Zak's Cube World series is simple and elegant like a snake. It's about snake people.
No stepping on the snake, please, thank you.
It has cool monsters; interesting treasure that's both valuable and useful; secrets and traps and puzzles; a map that has all the information you need right on it; an explanation of how all the snakes are books and what kind of books and how they can be read and who knows about it; and with it, you also get the latest edition of Cube World Bestiary and Random Treasure Table.
Like the rest of the Cube World, it's compatible with LotFP rules, or you can hack it and use with the game you're playing. After all, system doesn't matter.
James Edward Raggi IV had published this State of the LotFP Union Address. He looks very blue.
Long story short, Lamentations of the Flame Princess needs to clear out the US warehouse, and this is why you can now buy a book and get another book free from the LotFP US Webstore. A great opportunity to get some excellent stuff. The books can be shipped internationally, and the sale goes on till 20th of February. They've got Broodmother Skyfortress and Black Chamber and Bee-Ware! and other cool stuff. Just a reminder - one thing that separates James Raggi from a lot of RPG indie publishers is that he pays the authors fairly.
Also, buying something from the LotFP PDF store will help James deal with all the shit that happens, and bring the release date of the Referee book closer.
I'm not saying that everyone should buy All Dogs Go To Hell, although it's quite obvious that if you don't have All Dogs Go To Hell, you should buy it - it gives James a little money and it also makes me happier.
I'll be at Terminal City Tabletop Convention on 16th and 17th of March.
If you'll be there, come say hi. Or better yet, come and play. I'll be hosting some Lamentations of the Flame Princess games.
Saturday morning - Expedition to the Immortal Zoo
Saturday afternoon - Adventure at the Lin-Cataldus Monastery
Sunday morning - Inquisitors' Road
I don't really like those lists of "the things of the year". They're stupid and pretentious, and more often than not people who write them don't mention anything really cool. So screw that.
Still, the year was interesting. I wrote an adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which as of now had been downloaded 847 times. If you haven't read it, you are in a unique position to get the 848th PDF of "All Dogs Go To Hell", and give us some money or not, it's pay-what-you-want.
I played some games with some cool people, half a dozen of my characters died horribly (rest in peace, Miyamoto Unagi and his Raccoon Dog. You did what you were sent to do, and more - you destroyed the bridge, and you sent a single paper lantern down the stream for the poor spirit of the bridge that stood in your way).
There are some ideas and projects for the next year. We'll see how it goes.
Meanwhile, James Raggi uploaded another video, the message of which I'd summarize as "Guys, you're doing satanism wrong". Don't know if he's right, I try to stay as far away from religion of any kind as possible; but the thing that the compilers of the Bible went "Guys, guys, let's keep this story about Job, this is something that makes our god look good!" really is hilarious.
Zak wrote this idea of a book. He says it should be published, and I think he's right. Personally, I now want The Stars My Lamentation, which should be like Spelljammer only better and with pictures of cool space pirates. Probably at least one with a tiger-like tattoo.
Gem at Damage to an unresisting target is always Massive wrote a cool post about the xenomorphs from Alien and the Thing from that film based on Who Goes There?, and made up monsters with Demon City stats based on those two horrible extraterrestrials. Gem is very methodic with their approach to horror films and games.
Stygian Muse wrote a review of my doggy adventure which you can buy at J. E. Raggi IV's PDF store at Drivethru. I feel flattered.
Raggi himself uploaded a video where he talks about how the owners of D&D change the language in the books and why it is not a good idea. It's worth watching.
There's an Australian cartoon called "Bluey" and it's excellent, some of the episodes say more about tabletop roleplaying than some shows about tabletop roleplaying. Also, an episode of this cartoon was banned by Disney because it's about a male anthropomorphic dog pretending to be pregnant as he plays with his daughters, and that's offensive to someone?.. Anyhow, it's on Youtube and it's great.
So this book, something that I wanted for a long time - a fantasy roleplaying game set in a place heavily influenced by Japan, so you can have samurai and ninja and yokai hanging out and doing what they usually do, - The Nebulith is coming.
It's LotFP compatible, mostly, because there are some new things. It has new character classes that are interesting and challenging in their own ways. It has a special mechanic of how magic works for one of those classes. It has martial arts moves - a lot of those. Each school is different, each is effective in its way, each is interesting.
And check out Zak's gorgeous art.
Now I want to play a ninja and I don't even like ninja that much.
James E. Raggi IV sells some of the good old Lamentations of the Flame Princess books for half-price, both from European and from USA warehouses.
Here's what he says on the subject (and beyond the subject).
And you can read the details on Lamentations website here.
Here's your chance to get Frostbitten & Mutilated, Green Messiah, and Idea from Space cheap. Those are three of my favourites.
The sale continues through November 5th, so make haste.
And while it goes on, you can also buy the PDF of All Dogs Go To Hell for half price - instead of Pay What You Want, you can Pay Half What You Want. Great deal!
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 t...
