Lamentations of the Flame Princess & The Caverns of Thracia

I run several alternative games in the event that a critical player is missing from our regular Pathfinder game. One of the alternatives is a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game set in the Judge’s Guild Wilderlands campaign – essentially the main map area around the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Continue reading Lamentations of the Flame Princess & The Caverns of Thracia

The First Age: Familiars for Clerics

Sage Advice was a Q&A column in Dragon Magazine, and often provided very useful interpretations of the 1st edition Core Books. Dragon Issue #46 (February 1981) has two nuggets useful for The First Age – the question of familiars for clerics and deity selection for Paladins and Rangers. Continue reading The First Age: Familiars for Clerics

Lovecraft RPG: Expertise Avoids Screwing Up

Sometimes success is carried by knowing when you are wrong, and making it right. Even very knowledgeable people have bad ideas. A rule going into the skill system for Lovecraft RPG is the notion of Expertise. If you have a skill, you have it. If you don’t have a skill, you can try to solve a problem using related knowledge. But it takes real skill and practice at anything to know what the bad practices are. Continue reading Lovecraft RPG: Expertise Avoids Screwing Up

Lovecraft RPG: Basic & Advanced Rules

Some of my favorite games over the years have had a lot of crunch. Creating  Champions / Hero System characters, or even new characters for Pathfinder take a lot of time.  For the core system of Lovecraft RPG, there are going to be Basic and Advanced Rules, and the actual Lovecraft portion of the game – the meat of the game – will be separate. You can pick a character template that fits with the character types you find in Lovecraft’s works, make a few modifications to personalize the character, then be up and running and ready to go in 10 minutes or so.

Cleric Weapon Prohibitions Makes Sense

A perennial topic around the Cleric class is the prohibition against edged and pointed weapons.  As the story goes, this prohibition came from legends that Archbishop Turpin used a mace based on the notion that they who live by the sword will die by the sword. Wikipedia tells us though that Archbishop Turpin was depicted in art as bearing both a sword and spear, and the origin could be from Bishop Odo, also Earl of Kent who bore a club into battle. Even with an error of origin, the prohibition makes sense. Continue reading Cleric Weapon Prohibitions Makes Sense

Strength Bonuses in Lamentations of the Flame Princess

A friend picked me up Lamentations of the Flame Princess Grindhouse Edition in December. We’ve been talking about playing an Old School Renaissance game for a while, and when James Raggi ran his Kickstarter for newly revised hardback versions of the game, a group of us went for the GM’s pack so we could each get a copy of the game. We’ve waited and waited.  There appear to be signs that the newly revised versions are still being revised, which we are all happy about. Then a few copies of Grindhouse Edition showed up at Powell’s Books in Portland so we jumped on them. Continue reading Strength Bonuses in Lamentations of the Flame Princess