I’ve been giving some thought to the fantastic in fantasy worlds, the question of how wonderous and strange a setting can be.  Up until now that meant how commonplace magical items in a game or setting are, and I tended to err on the side of rarity: the heroes having swords found on quests, but that common magic beyond spellcasting or potions breaks immersion.  Recently I’ve decided that that’s more of a question of High magic vs Low magic, however, and not actually how fantastic a setting is. Since I’m designing a game, and with it my go to setting, that question has become very imp ..read more

There’s been discussion in my RPG circles about trap design, and I wanted to blog some thoughts. The two questions were whether (a) a particular puzzle trap was a good design, and (b) how to design a Saw-movie-style room, which the OP called a “kill room” trap. Both questions prompted thoughts about the use of traps in a game, or even in a story or film. Puzzle traps are a favourite of mine, as the challenge isn’t about rolling dice and doing damage, but challenges the players. Puzzles have clues of some sort, or objects that need to be put in place, that lead to an “answer”: a reveal or rewar ..read more

Looking over the two different RPG day modules LotFP has put out, the Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, and Better than Any Man, I wanted to give a fair summary of both of them.  It’s been educational, and the weird thing is they both have something great and imho needing work, and that’s something worth reading. Spoiler: I think Better Than Any Man is just a better module, but Doom-Cave has something going for it. PART A: DOOM-CAVE OF THE CRYSTAL-HEADED CHILDREN Doom-Cave is the publisher’s response to criticisms about their previous free adventure, that it was about killing chi ..read more

This is going to be a quick review, as I’m going to go over the Referee book as I also read through the adventures I’ve seen so far AND a thought I’ve had this weekend for LotFP adventures and tone.  I’m going to update the blog with part Four “Adventures” soon, but all the ideas are kind of floating around. Spoiler alert: I really liked the referee book, I’m conflicted about the adventure, and I have an idea for how to write LotFP that I think would help. I’m also including my interpretations of this book here. LAMENTATIONS REFEREE BOOK (GRINDHOUSE EDITION) I really like the advice ..read more

  The core rule book for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. It actually is what it says on the box! Also really, really 18+/NSFW Let’s dive into the core rules. I like a lot of things about the game, from how alignment is dealt with, to class abilities, to spell selection. The game is available for free on the website, so you might as well just pick it up for the tiny details. I’m going to focus on things I like and don’t like, and try to give a good overview while I’m at it. Also: I’m copying the art from a lotfp tumblr page; this isn’t done with permis ..read more

This past year has been about stepping back and expanding my horizons, and that includes looking into what I like about gaming: digging deep, asking questions about what the point of it all is, what the best experiences of gaming have been for me, and seeing what the best gaming material out there has to offer. Right now one of the hottest games in the RPG zeitgeist is Lamentations of the Flame Princess, a game that started as an OSR (Old School Renaissance) game but took on a life of its own… or un-life of its own, so to speak. One description is a game dancing gleefully on the far side ..read more

Okay, so I just finished Until Dawn, the PS4 game by Supermassive Games.  It’s the first time I’ve gotten to the end of a story game like this, and I’m so glad the game was made. Five Stars.  Ten.  A hundred and ten. The game starts on the solid foundation of “college kids alone at a ski resort”, and you follow their interactions, search for clues in the (lavishly detailed) areas, and choose which path the story takes.  It’s almost an interactive movie: your choices affect the path the movie takes, and whether or not a character lives or dies. I’ll leave it at that, but I c ..read more

Yes, this is hipsters reading the PHB. A-thank you! The 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been out for a little over a year now, and it had possibly the biggest debut of any RPG book I can think of, with over $700 Million in sales within the first month and weeks on the bestseller lists of all the major online vendors. That’s big, bigger than the opening weekends of summer blockbusters (Ant-Man, a great film, made $350 in its opening weekend). Part of the success of 5th edition would seem to be that the design team at Wizards of the Coast wanted to bring together the various strength ..read more

I just cranked through this show in two sittings (only because kids/family/limited hours in the day), and I wanted to review it while it’s still… fressshhhh… The series follows the Gecko brothers as they try to escape to Mexico, while one of the brothers is going insane thanks to visions of strange snake-demon women.  Along the way they leave a trail of bodies, earn the blood oath of a Ranger to hunt them down, and capture a troubled preacher and his kids on a family trip.  This is all like the film, but where the series takes off from the original is keeping the focus on the story a ..read more

Warning: Self-promotional plug to follow! And the plug is… …I’m publishing! In fact, the first of my PDF products is LIVE RIGHT NOW!    Wrath of the Frost Queen! Clearly you, my dedicated fans, were wondering “where the heck was that guy?” or “Gah, no posts in forever… life has no meaning!!” or something.  Welcome back to me, then, and a hero’s welcome it is, too. I’ve taken this year off for personal reasons, and that included a period of rebuilding.  Along with robotic limbs, I also enrolled in a publishing certificate, learned how to use InDesign and Photoshop, and taugh ..read more