LotFP Printed Books Sale

 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.

Come play with us

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 

Ви вилл хав фун.

The year was interesting.

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. 

Merry Christmas, Barbie. Wherever you are.

Barbie is a great film. D&D-able, too. 

And Ken is my dolly. 

Odds and ends.

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.

On Bards

Statement: bards using music to cast spells is stupid.

Query: how does one make bards using music to cast spells cool? 

Answer: creative cursing. 

What I'm thinking of is a mixture of the classic witchery (the curse works because you believe it works, because you know that someone cursed you and you're superstitious and your brain makes connections that aren't really there), and a single episode from Terry Goodkind's writing legacy about how a magic-using artist is more dangerous than anyone else - because an artist's spell doesn't depend on words. It is powered by visuals. Hiding your true name doesn't protect against it. 

So: art imbued with magic can become a curse. How does it work with poetry? 

Here's what you need. 

1. A bard. It can be someone born with a magical ability, or someone who met a Fairy Queen and she liked him and had a one-night stand with him and seven years later he showed up and was changed forever, or someone who drank some godly mead from a magic cauldron, you can write your own d20 table of the source of bardic power if you like. Point is, there's someone who can put the magic into the rhyme and tune rather than weird gestures and mixing bat guano with pure white sand.

2. A target. Here's a retelling of an old Irish legend about Seanchan the Bard, a highly unpleasant individual. Feeling offended by a cat, he claims: "I shall satirize the tribe of the cats, and their chief lord, Irusan, son of Arusan. For I know where he lives with his wife Spit-Fire, and his daughter Sharp-Tooth, with her brothers, the Purrer and the Growler". For his offensive song to work, the bard needs to know his target well enough. It must be written in a tongue that the target understands. 

3. After the bard composes and sings the song, it will magically find its way to the target (unless the target is right there next to the bard - Seanchan killed ten mice that had the misforture of hearing his ballad about them). It'll be catchy enough for people to sing and repeat it, even though they would hardly remember where they heard it first. 

4. As soon as the target hears the song, bam - the curse activates. Seanchan's song led to the death of King of Cats. 

5. Depending on the target and the curse, the target might have enough time and opportunity to kill the bard. The target will know who cast the curse-song, it's part of the magic. The King of Cats might've bitten Seanchan's head off if he wasn't convinced by his daughter to bring the bard alive to their cave so that they'd all take turns torturing him. 

It feels like it's a mechanic best reserved for NPCs. How can it be useful in a game? Either there's an evil bard who's making a curse against someone, and you the characters must find a way to stop the bard, or there's an evil king or something and there's a bard who wants to kill the evil king with a magic song, and you the characters must provide bard with the information about the evil king for the curse to become possible.  Or you hire a bard to hit your enemy with a curse-song, why not. 

Don't know when, or if, I'll get to test it.

The General Theory of Dragons

 As Zak put it here: 

One thing I really don't like about D&D's dragons is the symmetry of the original dragon scheme: good metal dragons on the left--evil colored dragons on the right. 

 The symmetry is suboptimal. It works, more or less, if you're doing some sort of epos/wargame where armies of dragons are basically the same kind of dragon, only there's many of them. 

But it decreases the value of an individual dragon. Dragons in the epic of Silmarillion are just one of Morgoth's armies, but Glaurung is cunning, cold, and horrible. 

 Dragons in Witcher books are somewhat different. There are several colours, which seem to be similar to human races - there are white dragons who live in the cold climates, there are "red" and "black" and "green" who are actually various shades of brown and grey, and then there's the gold dragon who's unique, a legend, different from all the others. He also presents the closest thing to alignment that is encountered in Sapkowsky's books while drinking beer with a monster slayer and two half-naked warrior women, which is doubtlessly the best way to discuss such things. Anyhow - a unique golden dragon is interesting, a subtype of golden dragons who are all similar is less so. 

And in Dragonlance, dragons are kind of a big thing. There's many of them. Onyx and Pyros are supposed to be individuals and interesting, but having another dozen of black or red dragons right next to them kind of gets in the way. 

So while I'm recreating Tarsis for my players, I'm thinking about dragons. 

And I'm thinking that, while I despise D&D alignment system, dragons could work really well with my colour-coded system. 

Dragons know all about the Colours. They see how the Red grows in times of war, how Green prospers in the forests, and how Black and Blue struggle for influence. 

And as they grow, dragons attune themselves to the Colours that they prefer. Dragons, like mages, carry their Colours openly. 

Dragons are born yellow, and filled with the Colour of youth, joy, and curiosity. As they grow, some stay forever young and curious, and these become brass dragons. 

Others change as they age, and pick their paths in life. As their interests and desires grow, the dragons grow stronger with particular Colours, and it affects their appearance. Those who crave riches and power turn black, and gain the ability to summon and control darkness and shadows. Their breath corrupts the very air. Those are the black dragons. 

Those who value freedom and the joy of flight most of all turn blue, and become able to turn the sky itself against their enemies, raining lightning on them. 

The metallic dragons (besides the brass ones) are those who keep a specific aspect of White as well as other Colours - they are governed by honour. 

The white dragons are cold, and proud, and honourless - this separates them from the silver dragons. 

Green dragons are careful and good at hiding and avoiding conflicts. They are sensitive and wise in the ways of nature, and like nature itself, they are cruel and shameless. 

Red dragons are creatures of passion and rage, and fire heeds their call. 

***

This means, among other things, that colour is not strictly hereditary among dragons - sure, many of them grow up just like their parents, but some of them don't. 

And it feels like, with this in mind, Takhisis and her followers were even worse than depicted in the books and modules - I mean the whole thing with corrupting the unborn dragons.