Impressions: LotFP Rules & Magic Hardcover

I recently received a copy of the Rules & Magic hardcover of James Raggi's Weird Fantasy RPG. I'd skimmed through the free (art-free) PDF version in the past, but, obviously, now owning it as a physical book, I wanted to give it a proper read through. I'm sure almost everyone reading this is already familiar with this rule book, so this won't be an in-depth review. I did however want to write a little something about it, and point out a few things which stood out to me, and my overall impressions. I've only completely read the rules section of the book so far (the magic section still awaits), but I did read it in its completeness, "cover to cover", without skipping over any bits like "oh yeah, whatever, I know how to roll ability scores".

Bullet list ahoy:

• I really like this rules set. It strikes a delicious balance between cleaving to tradition and adding its own little twists. A lot of the twists added are in line with my own philosophy and taste. I could definitely envisage running a campaign using these rules.
• It was fun to actually sit down and read an RPG rule book straight through. I seldom buy new rule books. I'm a massive proponent of Labyrinth Lord / Basic D&D, which I know like the back of my hand, so only ever skip around in the books to look things up.
• The prose is written in a style which is at once very clear and very atmospheric. A job well done. I would guess this is at least in part due to the fact that this text has gone through several (2? 3?) editions by this stage.
• Having said that, I did notice a couple of editing / proof-reading errors. (One unfortunately in the first couple of pages, which set me on edge a bit.)
• The firearms appendix at the back is super useful. A lot of research has obviously gone into it, but it presents game rules which seem easy to use, without getting too bogged down in historical realism. I would definitely allow firearms if I were to run a game with these rules.
• The art is of a very high quality, and does a lot to convey the kind of atmosphere James is trying to promote. There are a lot of black & white pieces scattered around, which have a nice slightly sketchy quality to them, with some pleasant use of thick black lines. In the middle there are a bunch of gorgeous colour plates, most of which I'd seen before -- I guess from following James on G+. I must say though, I was very surprised to find them all clumped together in the middle of the book. This struck me as odd, but I can only assume it was due to some technical reason as part of the printing process. I'd been expecting them to be distributed through the text, like the colour plates in the AD&D 2nd edition books were.
• The one picture I didn't like is the one of the elf -- too silly.
• The book itself, it goes almost without saying, is also of very high quality. I'm really glad I waited for a hardcover version of this to come out.

As an addendum, I also read the important bits of the Open Game License. You know, those 2 pages of tiny text at the back of most OSR stuff. I was delighted to discover the following:

Open Content: All text not specified as Product Identity.

Product Identity: All images, graphics, layout design and the LotFP and Lamentations of the Flame Princess names.

So that means that the entire text, apart from the use of the words "LotFP" and "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" is Open Game Content, and can thus be used in other OGL products (or used as a basis for house-ruled versions of the game). Kudos to James!

Link: The Book of Miscellaneous Spells

Via a google+ post by Peter Fröhlich, I just came across the marvellous looking Book of Miscellaneous Spells.

I've only had a quick skim through it, but it looks like there's some really nice stuff in there. Apart from the different approach of not presenting new classes, it reminds me a lot of my own Theorems & Thaumaturgy. Especially in the way the book's development is described in the introduction:

"This supplement started life on June 19, 2011 as a spell posted in the Workshop Thread on the Dragonsfoot Forums. The first spell posted was Lighten Load (not my best work, but I've included it from a sense of sentimentality). I would probably never have taken the next step, pulling together a compilation, if winemaker81 (Bryan) hadn't put the concept in front of me. In many ways, he deserves a lot, if not most, of the credit for this. I had no idea at that time that a single spell was going to lead to the crafting of over 150 spells."

Compare that to what I wrote in my introduction:

"...the seeds of this project were planted several years ago, when I'd just started playing old-school D&D again, in the form of AD&D 2nd edition. I began writing some spells to fill out two of my favourite schools of magic: necromancy and dimensionalism. Shortly afterwards I discovered the unstoppable explosion of creativity that is the Old School Revival / Renaissance and began to share some of my creations. The positive feedback I received from the community inspired me to write more, and more, and more spells... and now here you are with this book."

 Definitely worth checking out!

New Vivimancer Spell: Nature's Secrets

A little taster of what I've been working on recently.

This spell is basically a mixture of the druidic commune with nature and the magic-user's contact other plane, with some vivimantic flavour and twists.


Nature's Secrets
Level: 5th
Duration: See below
Range: ½ mile radius per level

This spell grants the vivimancer the ability to interpret information from the subtle whisperings of plants, fungi and creeping creatures of the undergrowth. The spell may be used in two ways, as follows.

Firstly, the caster may gain mundane knowledge of the area within range. One fact per caster level may be gained, from among the  following subjects: the ground or terrain, plants, minerals, bodies of water, people, general animal population, presence of powerful unnatural creatures, or even the general state of the natural setting. It takes 1 turn to cast this version of the spell.

Alternatively, the caster may delve deeply into the alien intelligence of the natural world in order to receive advice and information on any subject. The vivimancer may ask as many questions as he wishes, and will receive answers in the form of riddles or cryptic statements with a 75% chance of containing hints at the truth – the vast and subtle intelligence of the natural world is so radically different to human intelligence that straightforward answers can never be obtained. Each question asked in this way carries with it a risk of insanity, as the caster opens himself to the inhuman mind of nature. A saving throw versus spells is required, with failure causing the caster to be afflicted with a form of insanity lasting for 1d4 weeks. The saving throw is penalized by -1 per question asked beyond the first. This process takes one hour per question asked.

It is known that some vivimancers drive themselves into a state of permanent insanity through seeking deep knowledge of the universe in this manner.

Ix -- The Metamorphs of Hul Nostra

Hul Nostra, city of metamorphs (see Ix campaign map).

This city's proximity to the mutoid wastes has caused a variety of unusual human-variants to arise. These make up approximately 30% of the population.


Pandrogynes: Sex changes on a periodic cycle, usually over the course of a year. Male -> hermaphrodite -> female -> sexless -> cycle restarts. If a pandrogyne becomes pregnant during its hermaphrodite or female phases, the sexual cycle pauses until the child is born.

Bimorphs: Have two distinct forms, usually both the same sex. Change between forms is voluntary but takes 1d4 days. Drugs exist which can accelerate this transformation.

Monoforms: Beings whose bodies adapts to match that of those around them, over a period of several weeks. Monoforms living in mixed company attain a kind of in-between or average state of those around them. Settlements consisting purely of monoforms are made up of identical individuals, and are sometimes mistaken for clones. When in the company of a single individual, a monoform can eventually achieve an exact mimicry.

Phagomorphs: Those who take on the appearance and characteristics of the beings they consume, by genetic absorption. Phagomorphs typically die young, as they develop non-human physiology which is unable to support their bodies. However rumours tell of specially trained (and carefully nourished) sects of phagomorphs engineered to exhibit powerful animalistic traits.

Changelings: An extremely rare form of metamorph -- one which can change its form at will. True changelings are valued for their talent as spies and assassins. Changelings are unable to reproduce, and thus cannot be deliberately bred.

Introverts and Extroverts in Gaming

Well, this is going to be something of a first for me: a post relating to a sociological / psychological aspect of gaming. Not a topic which I normally have much insight into, or even much interest in generally, but this just occurred to me and I realised that it's something I've actually never seen explicitly discussed before, so would be very interested to hear other people's input.

For the sake of discussion, let's say there are three (very broad) types of people: introverts, extroverts, and people who are either somewhere in the middle or who can switch / go both ways.

I am the classic introvert. Quietly spoken, often blending into the background in groups unless specifically involved, preferring small intimate situations to big open ones, and so forth. (This is a personality trait for which I've inwardly criticised myself for much of my life, and have only in recent years come to accept as both normal and ok, but that's another topic...)

My gaming group also tends (I would say) towards the introverted end of the spectrum. My regular group has a mix of introverted and "in the middle" people, but no one whom I would immediately and unreservedly describe as an extrovert.

Thinking about other people I've played RPGs with over the years, I can see a strong pattern: I favour other players who are on the introverted end of the spectrum. Indeed, the fellow gamers whom I've gotten on least well with over the years were all strong extroverts.

Of course, as I am almost always on the DM's side of the screen, the fact that my group is on my preferred end of the intro/extroversion spectrum is likely no coincidence -- I've probably selected such players in order to form a group to my tastes.


Noticing this pattern and preference is the first interesting thing.

The second thing, however, is the (to me) somewhat radical idea that there must almost certainly be gaming groups out there which are composed of people on the extroverted end of the spectrum! It's really something I've never given any thought to.

So what I'm now really interested to hear is what other people think about this. To me the typical role-player is the quiet / nerdy type, but I know there are extrovert role-players out there -- I've met them! To what proportion and in which combinations they exist is something I find quite fascinating.

Spell Layout 2

Following on from the discussion around yesterday's post, and the very helpful feedback people here and on Google+ gave, I've been playing around with possible page layouts again.

Here's what I've come up with. An A5 single-column layout, but with a kind of side-bar sort of thing. I like it a lot.

Any further thoughts or feedback?

Spell Layout -- Thoughts?

As part of a new super secret (not any more ;) project I'm working on, I've been fiddling around with possible page layouts for spell listings. (See... though my posting here has dropped off a bit lately, I am far from idle.)

I've come down to two fundamental possibilities, and I'm not sure which is best. So I thought I'd post examples up here to see if anyone has any thoughts.

Note that both these example layouts are rough. You need to ignore things like paragraphs wrapping over columns -- that stuff will be sorted out when I get to the layout stage of the document for real. For now it's just playing.

The first possible layout for a spell list is the traditional 2-column layout on an A4 / letter size page.

The alternative layout which I've had in mind is a single column, A5 / digest size page. I like digest size books a lot, so wanted to experiment with this format.

As you can see, the 2-column layout actually fits more text in the same amount of space, due to more efficient paragraph wrapping and less margins overall, I presume. You may also notice that I've gone for the traditional spell listing by level here. One advantage of this, in terms of layout and page usage, is that I don't need to specify what level every single spell is -- a nice side-effect.

Another small point of interest is the way I've put the Duration and Range on a single line. I'm not totally sold on this, but thought I'd give it a go.

So, what do you think? Any feedback / advice would be most welcome!