Games I run, games I run in, all games I play.

I didn't have a job.

Now I have it back.

And I've been running Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

So far, the game has been a series of dungeons, nothing too amazing.

The whole time I'm running the game, I find myself trying to calculate THAC0. More than a decade of running the calculations in my head has left a mental void when it's no longer needed.

My current crop of players seem to enjoy the more simple mechanics, however. I'm weaving a plot thread through the adventures that will eventually lead the players to Death Love Doom, but I'm trying to beef them up a bit before they face the horrors therein contained.

The thing I wrestle with most is the experience point system. With such a de-emphasis on monster slaying, recovering treasure is the only real way for the players to gain a level. This is counter-balanced by the expense of choice items and the cost of researching spells and scribing scrolls, but years of running games with boot-strap adventurers gaining most their xp through slaying and using their hard earned gold pieces to feed themselves and replace ruined equipment make me feel as if I'm running a Monty Haul campaign, especially when I have to add treasure to a prefab dungeon.

In other news, In my buddy Eddy's homebrew adventure, our characters are approaching the cusp of heroism.

We have recently become the champions of forgotten Gods, gotten guidance from our own personal Obi-Wans, and been outfitted with some magical do-dads. We're approaching the stuff of legends and it feels allllright.

Into the future, through the past!

Long time, no post.

I haven't ran or played a game in a while, at least a few weeks, and have been putting around the country on my motorcycle.

I ran a vampire adventure for a couple of friends last week using the storyteller system. Seems to me, unless you're heavily invested in melodrama, that system is really for the birds. My players spent most of their time in pursuit of wealth so that they could start their own porn studio and weren't very interested in vampire politics or exploring the tragedy of their unlife. This in itself is interesting, but not really what I think the game designers had in mind.

Other than that, I got my physical copy of Lamentations of the Flame Princess in the mail. I was going to do a fancy un-boxing post with pictures and what not, but then I didn't.

I'm really excited to play the game and like the books themselves. I heard a rumor that the game would come with a golf pencil? Mine didn't. It did however come with a set of dice so tiny as to be comfortably smuggled into prison.

I'm probably going to order a copy of the adventure Death Love Doom today, as I hear it is fantastic.

I'm hopeful for LotFP (hereafter, FP). My background is primarily in AD&D2E, a system known for its rules that govern everything from the useability of a broken chair as a weapon to the saving throws of mundane books. In comparison, FP is very minimalistic and streamlined, taking the things it needs and discarding things it doesn't.

An example: Every weapon in 2E has two sets of damage dice, one for small to man-sized creatures and one for things over 7 feet tall. Each individual weapon has its own dice values and sometimes special rules.

FP has a few weapons that have their own special rules and dice, but all other weapons are lumped into weapon categories by size and each weapon in each particular category has the same dice value.

I'm excited to give it a spin.