LotFP House Rules

Following my purchase of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy RPG (reviewed here), I have of course been thinking about what kind of game I would run with it at some point.

The main idea that's popped into my head is to run some games in the Wormwood campaign setting that Greg Gorgonmilk and I are working on (and which is planned for publication at some point). Wormwood is still in development, so its final form is still in flux, but it's shaping up to be a creepy, quirky, pseudo early modern period fairytale setting, which seems perfect for some LotFP-style adventures!

Like any DM worth his salt, I have thus -- as first order of the day! -- been thinking up some house rule tweaks to emphasize the desired tone.

Towit:

More Skills
The LotFP skills system is just begging to be expanded with a few setting-specific additions. I'm thinking about:

• Medicine: identify herbs, minor healing capability.
• Arcane dabbling: use wands & scrolls. Chance of things going badly wrong if the skill roll fails.*
• Sense magic: spend one turn to detect whether a single object, creature or 10' square area is enchanted.
• Appraisal: accurately value treasures.
• Lore: know stuff about history or legend.
• (Maybe) Performance: influence people by making beautiful music, telling gripping tales, dancing like a sylph, etc.

(The latter two were inspired by Beedo's post about an LotFP bard / skald.)

* Note that all characters would thus have a 1 in 6 chance of being able to read the magic words on a scroll and unleash the arcane energies locked within. For your average adventurer this would, of course, be highly risky though, and probably only a last resort.

Class Cuts?
I would run the setting human-only, so that cuts out the dwarf, elf and halfling classes. Aside from that, I've got this thing about stripping down classes to their bare essentials, and the flexible simplicity of the skill system sort of encourages this.

A couple of further ideas I've been considering:

1. Remove the specialist class and simply give all characters a certain number of skill points per level. That way, a fighter could have a sideline in sneakiness or a magic-user could dabble in bushcraft.
2. Remove the cleric class and replace divine magic / favour with a "piety" skill. I don't yet have a clear picture of exactly how this would work, but I'm envisaging some kind of system where characters can pray at shrines in order to receive blessings from saints or deities, which could then be used like spells.

Putting both of those together, one would end up with only two classes: Fighter and Magic-User. I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but it's an interesting idea to think about.

The Complete Vivimancer: Layout Complete!

Just a quick update on the progress with The Complete Vivimancer. This weekend I've been very busy (and productive, thankfully) applying the changes suggested by the editor (Tim Snider of the Savage Afterworld -- many thanks Tim!) and finalising the layout of the book.

As much as I'd like to, I'm obviously not in a position yet to share the fruits of my labour with you, gentle reader, but I must say I'm very pleased with how things are shaping up. I feel the layout in this book is a real step up from what I did before for Theorems & Thaumaturgy.

So now it's off to Cadanse for illustration. I'll keep you posted!