As usual, I wanted a Skaven class for LotFP, as I have a ton of Skaven miniatures. This allows players to pick a Skaven PC, or create leveled Skaven NPCs if you so wish. Class features: High Poison Save (they live in sewers and use a lot of poison themselves) Multiple attacks - the ability to unlock two weapon fighting and tail fighting. Adventures In Parn Playtest IV - Skaven (1 page pdf) Check…
Waterdeep is known as the City of Splendors, wrapping around a coastal mountain, built on top of the ruins of ancient dwarven settlements and wizard towers. It is a multicultural trade hub along the Sword Coast, and as such, pretty much anything or any type of person can be found here. You are here not as some destined hero, but one of many normal folk trying to improve life for themselves (and…
Our open table game is expanding with supplemental recruiting on social media. I was forgetful of Mother's Day here in the states, which made me reschedule delve four as pretty much everyone was unavailable. I was able to run a session 0 with a player who was new in town, and we were more or less able to comfortably scope out how busy the local food hall is as well, so a full-on session is in…
I'm a performing musician in the eastern United States, so every now and then I get to try my hand at making flyers. I've also connected with a large amount of people thanks to gigging and podcasting, and many of them play some sort of tabletop RPG (usually D&D.) So, I wanted to kick something off where we can play some games adjacent to our gigs -- many of which are just a few blocks away from my…
In 2015 I was playtesting an adventure that I hoped to self-publish for LotFP. To make it fun as I ran it locally, I wanted some really snazzy character sheets, so I commissioned Craig Brasco (@craigbrasco) to make some characters in the style that he did some DCC character sheets in. I don't know what will become of the module, so here's a link to the seven pre-gens if you wish to use them…
Let me start by saying that I do not think TSR ever intended D&D to be a score attack game as we know them today. Space Invaders released in 1978, Galaxian in 1979, and Galaga (pictured above) in 1981. These games all featured a gameplay loop focused on getting your score on an electronic leaderboard. In digging a bit, Gary Gygax states in Dragon Magazine - Dave had taken the man-to-man and…
The original edition of Dungeons and Dragons launched in 1974, primarily marketed to gamers who were adults of working age, who were already involved in the hobby gaming scene. Of course, they had no idea how far the idea of codified roleplaying games rules would go in the future. The brown box was priced at $10, which seems pretty modest for today. However, using an inflation calculator, we can…
A few years ago I was tasked with running a D&D 5e one shot for my niece and her friends, for a 16th birthday party. I whipped up an adventure using a map from Dyson's Dodecahedron blog, and rolled randomly to determine the contents of each room. Then, I personally tailored the monsters to ones that made an interesting narrative. This may be a dungeon that most adults would think is bland, but…
An opportunity surfaced to talk about how our campaign differs from the common notions of old school play, so I figured I'd use it as a springboard to publish some thoughts about our campaign in 2023. A recent PBS Newshour posting by journalist Christopher Thomas had an interesting bit about the OSR -- Old School Rennaisance, Old School Rules, or Old School Revolution, depending on who you ask --…
I don't like Armor Class in D&D. I certainly like ascending rather than descending, but I don't like the ambiguity that comes about in actual play. Here's an example (and at the end, some proposed rules.) Let's assume our d20 character, Cory, has an AC of 15, from a combination of armor and dexterity modifiers. A skeleton archer attacks. The roll is a 14. The system informs us that the attack has…
Everything expressed here is just opinion and half-baked recollection It was in 2012 that I picked up Lamentations of the Flame Princess for the first time. For those who weren't heavily into tabletop roleplaying games then, it's hard to express how much of an outlier it was, for all of the reasons that might not be apparent in 2022. First, a little background. I obtained D&D materials when I was…
I've used these screen inserts for years. With almost ten years of playing LotFP and keeping up with Lamentations of the Flame Princess in online space, some of the more prolific creators (and useful resources) seem to have disappeared. These were originally posted on rolandgames.toniruiz.es, but the site hasn't been updated since 2017, and the link is broken. I went through great lengths to find…
The theory here is that certain encounters won't exist off of the roads, or at night, and the modifiers should reflect that. Parn wilderness encounters - roll d20 - Add +5 to the roll if you are not on a road. Add +5 to the roll if the encounter happens at night. Add +1 to the roll for every mile away you are from town. d4 merchants (level 0) transporting random essential commodities d4 merchants…
I've been reading through the Gygax 75 project and thought maybe it's best if some of the Parn information is presented here via that format. You'll notice that the "the concept" is mostly kept to the DM, so we'll start off with the week two plans -- "the surrounding area." As discussed in the first blog post , we've been able to clean up this map and turn it into one that we can use. And with the…
Did you find yourself wanting a playable Orc class for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or maybe just a stat block so you don't have to think about it? This incarnation of Orc is the kind of self-regenerative, kick-in-the-door fighter you want on your dungeon romps. These abilities won't save the Orc from the most gruesome traps available in LotFP modules, but players who enjoy tank-style…
Parn was initially conceived with Dungeons and Dragons 3.x in mind, so our first ideas for cosmology -- specifically religions -- were to fill in each part of the alignment grid with an appropriate deity. We had a couple of ideas that we felt really strongly about, and a couple more just to kinda fill in the blanks. We've reduced the importance (and size) of alignment in our games from 9 options…
My partner and I started trying to flesh out Parn in 2012. The goal was to have a persistent campaign world shared between all of our OSR games. In the first incarnation, the game was a single PC game run for my partner, who at this point played Camelia, a half-elf Bard. We generated characters, and the town, using the D&D 3.5 ruleset. A crudely drawn, MS Paint Parn Township We wrote up several…
The 2nd version of the Dark Sun conversion packet for LotFP is finished! You can get it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_q5Tn4Vi_0fMVNzeVdUcHRHNGc/view?usp=sharing New in this version: The Templar The Psionicist A few extra editorial-style notes Slight changes to Wild Talents Cleanup of some text Goals for next release: Dune Trader More in-depth conversion notes Adventure building guide If…
The wife and I have been hard at work preparing Dark Sun for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Whilst we didn't manage to complete this one over the weekend, we're pretty damned close. Included is the Thri-Kreen, the Half-Giant, the Gladiator, the Mul, rules on piecemeal armor, non-metal weapons, and wild talents! Pretty much everything you need to start playing. Download Dark Sun for…
Some characters have mishaps putting them well beyond the mortal coil. Occasionally someone may be hit with a disintegrating laser, or they might fall into a lava pit, or rocks fall and Bob dies and everyone loses hope. Well, now you and your party can hope once again! When found, this spell will be understood as Create Human Life. By Eliana Rose. znijurru at gmail This spell should be found on…
Whiterazor – capable of killing none, but cures death. Rotting flesh via necrotic energies, disease, or old age quickly regenerates as youthful skin... Sword by Eliana Rose. She is available for art commissions -- contact her at znijurru at gmail Strange, burning energy spreads from wounds made by cuts or pierces of the blade, and lasts for 2d12 hours, over which time the blade's effect will…
Avoid Resurrection! Spells and powers that allow characters to return from the dead can take away from the ability for players to immerse themselves in fantasy roleplaying games. In a world where we can cast a spell and return a person to life, how and why does anyone die? Why would your players take risks seriously when they know there's no permanent danger to their character? These are things to…
In the interest of making a character for (my wife) Ellie to solo-romp around the "Eastern Wastelands" with, we made the Bard a LotFP class. This variation of the Bard is heavily based on 1e AD&D, and also adds a new skill, "Lore" to the game. Click here to download the second playtest packet, 3 pages of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Bard material!
Our game world has no 'short races' -- we cut out the Dwarves and Halflings and have replaced them with two of our own classes, which we've been testing out for a little bit now. The first is the Barbarian, inspired by Korgoth of Barbaria, Conan, Fire and Ice, and early 80's heavy metal imagery. In a land similar to Cimmeria (Conan's homeland,) the environment breeds men that can do far more…