LotFP Wins 2 Diehard GameFAN 2011 Tabletop Awards!

Grindhouse gets Best OSR, Vornheim Best Campaign Setting.

See all the winners, and the associated explanations, here!

A Nice Grindhouse Review and a Note

Diehard Gamefan has reviewed the Grindhouse Edition, and they have to be nominated for most hilarious use of censorious black bars.

They do seem to suffer from a common misconception though... that picture opposite the Halfling class description is the illustration for the class, the same as every other class gets. If you didn't notice this, remember what the Halfling's best class ability is and make another Search roll.

Grindhouse Books HAVE ARRIVED!

I forgot to take a picture of the books on the pallets outside the front of the building. While we were unloading them and bringing them upstairs, you should have seen the looks on peoples' faces as they passed by and looked at the covers outside. :D

Anyway, books look good; don't see any pixelation in the images, text is clear, the color art looks nice and vibrant (can't tell so well from that second pic, but "evidence of existence," not "attractive advertising photo," was the goal there.

Mission accomplished. I did good. Now to assemble, pack, and ship these fuckers, all the while selling a bunch of them.

Vornheim arrives next week.

The Boxes Have Arrived!

The books to fill those boxes are supposed to be delivered on Friday. The dice have been here for months and the character sheets and OGL sheet have been here for almost two weeks now. When the books arrive I'll start putting the boxes together (all the boxes besides the one on display are still flat).

Vornheim will be here Tuesday or Wednesday next week, then we go to GothCon. When we return, we'll start preparing the pre-orders for shipment, and that will start once the shirts arrive, hopefully soon after.

Those pictures of how much of a mess this apartment was last year during box assembly? Haha, that was less than a third the number of boxes I'm doing now, plus I have another product arriving as well.

Fun, fun times, if you don't ask my wife what she thinks of the arrangement.

(buy buy buy for her sake!)

Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim and Shirts: PRE-ORDER IS LIVE!

LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition is a horror-fantasy game with everything you need to play in one box. Tutorial, Referee, and Rules & Magic books totaling 360 pages, plus character sheets and dice. Contains new and revised material and tons of new artwork by top talent.

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Zak S is both a mini-setting describing locations seen in the I Hit It With My Axe webshow and a general fantasy city playing aid. 64 pages, hardcover.

PDFs of these releases will be available to download as soon as the order is completed at no extra charge. (The Grindhouse PDFs seem to have a technical issue - this will be taken care of early in the coming week - but you can still download it and take a look at the art in the meantime)

The first 100 people to pre-order both the Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim will receive an extra Rules & Magic book (168 pages) at no extra charge.

Everyone who pre-orders the Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim will receive an oversized chart of Vornheim roll-on tables.

These offers end when the printer notifies me the books have shipped from the printer in Keuruu. I will update this blog when that happens. Might be a week from now. Might be two. Who knows?

Also for sale are Grindhouse and Flailceratops T-Shirts. Orders for these will only be taken until 11:59pm April 7 Finnish time. Only those ordered during this week, plus a few for the artists and a couple for me and my wife, will be made. Be part of the fun when people start posting pictures of themselves wearing their new shirts. :D

Because the shirts will likely be delivered at a different time than the books, be careful about pre-ordering them within the same order - if you do that I wait until everything arrives before shipping. Also, depending on what and how many of whatever you order, non-EU customers may find it advantageous when it comes to shipping costs to place multiple orders rather than just one big one. Feel free to fiddle around in the shopping cart before placing your order.

I had previously mentioned a big discount when ordering copies of the Grindhouse Edition for your whole group. That is still happening, but not as previously described - that shipping weight trick I talked about couldn't happen with the way the store software is set up, so instead I just made the discount on the boxes themselves a bit deeper to compensate.

*phew*

Yeah, I talk a lot.

The big link for pre-ordering: HERE

(YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WANTED TO PUT A RICKROLL THERE)

Two Days til Pre-Orders: Technical Notes About the New Releases

First, the T-shirts will be offered in sizes S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXL. The Flailceratops shirt will be 10€, the Fighter shirt will be 12,00€ (plus shipping or VAT). XXL+ will cost a bit more, because they'll cost me a bit more. If you're interested in a larger size shirt, email me by tomorrow night so I can have that ready to go in the store when we go live.

Shirt preorders will end April 7 11:59pm Finnish time. General pre-orders will last until I get the call from the printer that the completed books are on the way from Keuruu. I estimate that to be somewhere around the 18th but I make no guarantees; that could be off by more than a week either way. (there is a bit of a discount for ordering the Grindhouse + Vornheim combo that will disappear when pre-orders end)

I'm printing the books through Otavan Kirjapaino, one of Finland's leading printing companies. I'd seen a lot of their work on book shelves (and had been impressed by it) long before I ever decided to get into the RPG publishing biz. They've handled the printing of the Finnish editions by people like Neil Gaiman, Weis & Hickman, CS Lewis, and Anne McCaffrey, among others.

I've been told by several people that at these quantities I could have gotten these books printed cheaper elsewhere. China, or Estonia.

Yeah, I could have.

But I like the idea of having the confidence knowing that the people printing my books are the ones printing Michael Crichton and Anne Rice books that go on store shelves. Does anyone ever think, "Gee, I wonder how the binding is going to be on that Vampire Lestat book I'm thinking of picking up?" And the company's office is literally right up the road. Makes it easy to show up in person to discuss things like paper stock and cover finishes and dealing with issues that pop up (and pop up they have) is much simpler.

There are reasons to not go with the lowest possible bidder.

Any fuckups associated with these releases will be formatting issues that are my fault - the physical quality of the books will be just fine. (file that under "famous last words," eh?)

Technical details for the books:

Vornheim:
Size 148 x 210 mm
Number of pages 64 pages + cover
Papers and colours
Cover board: 1,75 mm
Endpapers: Offsetpaper 120 g/m2, colours 1/0, black
Cover-Wrap: Galerie Art Gloss 130 g/m2, colours 1/0 black + varnish
Jacket: Galerie Art Gloss 130 g/m2, colours 4/4 CMYK + gloss lamination 1/0
Inner pages: Offsetpaper 120 g/m2, colours 1/1 black
Heads and tails: White
Binding
Otabasic, thread sewn, case bound book 1,75 mm cover boards covered with 1 –colour printed paper, round back, printed endpapers, heads and tails, dust jacket.

Tutorial and Referee Books:
Size 148 x 210 mm
Number of pages 96 pages + cover
Papers and colours
Cover: Ensocoat 230 g/m2, colours 4/0 CMYK + water based varnish
Inner pages: Lux Cream 1,8 80 g/m2, 1/1 colours black
Binding Otabind perfect bound, paperback

Rules & Magic Book:
Size 148 x 210 mm
Number of pages 160 + 8 pages + cover
Papers and colours
Cover: Ensocoat 230 g/m2, colours 4/0 CMYK + water based varnish
Inner pages: 160 pages Lux Cream 1,8 80 g/m2, 1/1 colours black
Inner pages: 8 pages Galerie Art Gloss 130 g/m2, 4/4 colours CMYK
Binding Otabind perfect bound, paperback

The color insert in the Rules and Magic book is placed to separate the Rules and the Magic sections, serving a practical function in the book beyond the art on those pages.

And after all that blah blah, here's an art preview. It's the Dwarf "class portrait" by Amos Orion Sterns. I needed something to communicate "fighty type character, but durable." Drawing from the "Scottish Dwarf" stereotype, the scene didn't have to conform to the historical feel I was going for elsewhere - the hill peoples are traditional in the ways of war and fashion. Here it is:


Are we ready to rock?

Freebies When You Pre-Order Grindhouse + Vornheim

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit has charts on the covers (and one on an inside cover). You roll dice on the cover and read where they drop. It's cool.

If you pre-order Grindhouse + Vornheim, you'll get those three charts on a double-sided A3 sheet. Two of the charts will be twice the size as on the physical Vornheim book, and one chart will be four times as large.

But wait! There's More!

The first 100 people to pre-order Grindhouse + Vornheim get an extra copy of the Rules and Magic book at no extra cost.

That's a 168 page perfect-bound book that includes an 8-page full color glossy section. No, it won't fit in the box with all the other stuff, but now you're just being picky. :P

April 1.

Tempted yet?

I Want You to Make LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Your Regular Game

There, I said it.

Not many people do seem to say that, maybe for fear of seeming egotistical or "looking at things realistically," but I bet you anyone who releases a game wants people to play the damn thing. It's fine to release something that people think is "interesting" or a cool "collector's item," but when you make a game, you want it to be played.

There's a million games out there, old and new school, commercial releases and for-free. Role-playing and not. Even quality games get lost in the crowd.

But while we're being honest here, we all know I'm an attention whore. Getting lost in the crowd just isn't acceptable. So how to cut through all that to make my game your regular game?

If you're serious about making LotFP your game of choice, I'm serious about helping you.

Order at least 5 copies of LotFP: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing at once - one for everyone in your group - direct from me and you'll get them for 24.37€ each (regular price 32,50€ before shipping or VAT when ordering direct).

Non-EU orders will have them listed at less than 1/3 their regular weight so not only will your shipping cost be reduced, you can add more items and in most cases not get charged any more shipping since at that point it's measured by the kilo. EU orders will get free first class shipping with only Finnish VAT added.

So what else can I do to make LotFP your regular game?

Deep Breaths. Deep Breaths

Print time is almost here. I'm so damn nervous. You guys have no idea. There's the "What will people think?" factor. There's the "oh god I spent so many thousands on this, will anyone buy it?" worrying. "How the hell do I let people know how cool this stuff is without coming across like a lame shill?" "What if I miss something important and the stuff comes back from the printer all screwed up?" "Where am I going to put 2000 of these things?"

Seriously, how do publishers, musicians, authors, any of this sort, keep cool and dignified and quiet about it all when everything's all about to hit the fan?

Looking over the proofreading printouts, I'm just so damn excited about these books.

Vornheim is the coolest damn thing. Zak's a pretty smart guy, you know? I've probably said this already, but I predict Vornheim's format is going to be copied to hell and back across the industry because it's such a fresh way to present a role-playing book. The maps, the way charts are handled, everything. I questioned a lot of Zak's decisions along the way but he didn't let me deawesomefy any of his ideas, and now that the project's come together and I'm looking at printouts of an essentially finished book I see what he was doing all along.

My baby, the Grindhouse Edition, looks unbelievable. Not just all the art (and no expense was spared there), but I haven't been sitting around all this time just playing art director - the layout is 100% better, the books will be of excellent physical quality (perfect-bound this time with varnished covers), and the new spells, items, intro adventure, and various other bits and pieces will give Weird Fantasy Role-Playing an even more unique atmosphere when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts game.

From the beginning I described my efforts this way:

Note that it is not LotFP's goal to recreate the old feeling with our books, either in look or content. Playing classic games is not an exercise in nostalgia or a longing for a different time - these games are vibrant and alive and continue to provide true gaming excitement today, and on their own terms. LotFP's game offerings treat these games with the respect they deserve while giving their referees and players innovative and fresh material for those games.

The Grindhouse Edition and Vornheim uphold that ideal. They are going to blow your mind.

Here are the Grindhouse Edition blank mockups, actual size, with the Deluxe Edition box for comparison:


Here is a photo of the printouts I am using for proofing. In this pic you can see one of Christina Casperson's pics from the Tutorial book (left), the Table of Contents for the Referee book (top), a two-page spread by Amos Orion Sterns (of course the finished book won't have the white stripe between the two halves), plus another pic by Sterns there on the right:


And one of the four Russ Nicholson pieces that will be in the box set:


I hope you're with me on these. Because if you are, there's so much more to come.

Grindhouse Edition Giveaway Contest! Who is Karina?

I just realized I had one space left for my allotted giveaways... and now I figured out what the contest should be to determine who gets it!

I just received this email:

Greetings(!|)
Nice to meet you.
My name is Karina, me of 27 years.
I search for the man for serious relations.
As I search for a long time already for the significant other.

Obviously this Karina is somehow Weird!

Here's the contest:

Write this NPC up. Who is Karina? Where does she come from? What are her stats and unique abilities? Why is she searching for the man, and what sort of serious relations does she mean? And how does all this involve the PCs?

Submit the entry that impresses me the most (with or without answering those questions... that's a rough guide, not a list of requirements) and you win.

Conditions:

• The writeup you submit is your own original work that has not previously appeared in print or on the web.
• By submitting, you give permission for me to release it in an Open Game Content document.
• You need to be 18+ years old to enter.
  

Submit your entry to lotfp@lotfp.com.

The creator of the winning writeup will get a complimentary copy of the Grindhouse box. All entries (that I don't think are utter crap, anyway) will be organized into a PDF to be freely distributed, with all items being Open Game Content.

If you do not include a real name to be credited I assume you are OK with not being individually credited - I'd really rather not list internet handles.

Submit your entry before Wednesday March 23 11:59pm Finnish time.

And Now For Something Completely Different - Discussion About Upcoming Stuff

Nothing grotesque here except for some business talk.

Still have a very few last minute art bits to finish out the Grindhouse Edition, and it's in final proofing now.

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit is going into final layouts and proofing during this weekend.

The plan is to have everything to the printer the week of the 21st. We'll see...

Not 100% finalized, but the retail prices will be somewhere around 12,50€ for Vornheim and 37,50€ for the Grindhouse Edition.

Pre-orders will open when they go to the printer and I've got the commercial PDF versions together (hopefully just a day or two after). There will be a free bonus thingy for people who pre-order both at the same time. (also, the shirt will go up for pre-order, but you don't need to order that to get the free thingy)

Next week I'll be opening up the Gardening Society again for memberships. That'll happen next week, I just need to get the formats of a few things done and straighten out how I'm going to arrange the benefits.

While down at the printer dealing with the color proofs (who the hell decided that screens would use a different color palette than printers? grrr. GRRRR.) I also discussed formats and pricing for Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown.

Carcosa is going to be awesome. Looking at 192 pages right now, a cover as wonderful to touch as seal skin, with a foil-pressed cover. The printer rep did not look amused when I asked if human skin was available for the binding. Looks like the interior pages won't be able to be thick parchment-like paper without putting the costs through the roof. We should know who the artist is going to be for the whole Carcosa project by the end of next week.

Isle of the Unknown is a bit vexing. The book is looking like 128 pages, maybe 160 depending on how we handle the art. McKinney and I have big plans. Every monster in this book is new and unique, and we want them all illustrated. Plus there is a common theme through several of the areas described and I want those to get their own full page pieces. And we're trying to do this full-color - bring this island to LIFE. That's just about 125 color pieces.

We're trying to keep the final retail price below US$40for each of these books, but that's getting really tough with all the color we want in Isle...

Two More Grindhouse Pics... The Good, the Bad, The REALLY UGLY

Two pics, both by Amos Orion Sterns. The second one is one of the more extreme examples of how far the art goes.

But before that, something a bit safer. This portrays Alice (pre-Tutorial adventure) taking on a couple of elves. I told Amos to look at the Alien designs (as in the Ridley Scott film) to use as inspiration for the elf armor. We get two birds with one stone here: Show Alice being bad-ass, and show the elves in a different way than they're traditionally presented.


That's a heptacle, not a Star of David. And clerics don't have to use blunt weapons in Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, but why not have a traditional cleric weapon for the cleric?

Last chance to bail before the bad, evil pic that will ruin your childhood. Scroll on... if you dare!

I call this one Cult of the Fertility Goddess:

My wife was utterly speechless when she saw it. It was glorious. After she recovered, she then pointed out that, in her professional opinion (she's a midwife that's good enough that she speaks at midwifery conferences out here), this is not an accurate representation of the childbirth process.

(I have a feeling my wife's going to get a few more "You must be a very patient person" comments at cons - someone actually said that to her when we went to Dragonmeet :D)

This isn't the worst the Grindhouse Edition has to offer (there are a couple absolutely humorless pieces that might genuinely disturb), but it's the most over-the-top. That was the point of it.

The core idea for the pic was inspired by Savage Sword of Conan #161 (the sequel story to Valley of Howling Shadows), plus, you know, some adventuring stuff happening up top.

You have my permission to begin frothing at the mouth and telling me that you're outraged that I'm trying to destroy the gaming community by releasing such filth.

The Major Rules Changes Between Deluxe Edition and Grindhouse Edition

The Spell Lists. All the necromantic and nature-control stuff goes to the Magic-User (Speak with Dead, Speak with Animals, etc), and aside from the classic healing spells, the Cleric is anti-magic, anti-chaos. Most of the whiz-bang Magic-User combat spells are gone - Magic Missile remains as a first level spell, yet scales more as the mage rises in level so that it is the go-to combat spell for the wizard's entire career. Basically high-level Magic-Users are still Really Bad News but not "I'll just take over this kingdom and defeat that army all by myself." Twisted explorers of forbidden knowledge, not walking artillery.

Elves are no longer people. They are creatures of chaos! Basically all these means is spell effects treat them as otherworldly creatures and not humanlike. Good for the elf if someone's casting sleep or charm at them, not so good when facing clerics casting Protection from Evil. Also, no aging for elves at all anymore.

Skill system consolidation, meaning Specialists have just a touch more meaningful advancement, really. (Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings also advance in their racial skills as they advance in level - a high level Specialist shouldn't out-Search an Elf just because he has nowhere else to put points anymore...)

Silver standard for treasure and XP. This is going to look like a huge change but it's purely a cosmetic flavor thing designed to make gold cool and makes copper worth acknowledging. Seriously, the idea that a gold piece is a commonplace thing is poopy as hell. Gold should be A Big Deal! This doesn't affect compatibility, since all you need to do is change "gp" to "sp" in gold-standard material and the game rolls on as before.

Final Grindhouse Edition Art Credits

There are still a few pieces that need to trickle in, and assuming they arrive alright, this is what the art credits look like. Pieces published for the first time in this product are in red (Tutorial Book = 96 pages, Referee Book = 96 pages, Rules and Magic Book =168 pages, all perfect-bound):

Rowena Aitken
Box Bottom
Rules and Magic Header

Aeron Alfrey
Tutorial Cover
Rules and Magic Page 143

Tomas Arfert
Tutorial Page 51
Rules and Magic Page 40

Dan Berger
Rules and Magic Pages 64, 127

Johnathan Bingham
Referee Page 61

Nicole Cardiff
Rules and Magic Page 65

Christina Casperson
Referee Page 96
Rules and Magic Pages 113, 123, 159, 160
Tutorial Page 1

Ernie Chan
Rules and Magic Page 30

Dean Clayton
Rules and Magic Page 67, 89, 121
Tutorial Pages 4, 78, 81, 96

Ramsey Dow
Cartography

Jeremy Jagosz
Character Sheet

Laura Jalo
Rules and Magic Pages 27, 66, 84

Daniel Lapham
Tutorial Page 76
Rules and Magic Pages 26, 37, 94, 107, 139

Vincent Locke
Rules and Magic Page 72

Eric Lofgren
Rules and Magic Pages 85, 100, 124, 133

Rich Longmore
Referee Page 3
Rules and Magic Pages 55, 63
Tutorial Page 82

Peter Mullen
Referee Cover

NASA/STScI
Rules and Magic Page 66

Russ Nicholson
Referee Pages 47, 58
Rules and Magic Pages 28, 78

Jason Rainville
Rules and Magic Cover
Rules and Magic Pages 68, 71

Cynthia Sheppard
Book Back Cover Background
Box Cover
Rules and Magic Pages 69, 70

Amos Orion Sterns
Referee Pages 6, 10, 32, 44, 53, 59, 60, 74, 91
Rules and Magic Pages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 23, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 73, 74, 77, 83, 161, 164
Tutorial Pages 3, 11, 15, 17, 50, 54, 55, 77, 88, 90

Filip Stojak
Magic, Referee, Tutorial Headers
Rules and Magic Page 46

Eero Tuovinen
Box Graphic Design

See all that red? It's called "a project that sort of got away from me." :D

So yeah, please buy it. Because...

• It's Really Really Cool (I'll talk more about the non-art Cool Things in the days to come)
• It Looks Really Really Good
• Look at all the new art there. If you don't buy it I'm fucked.
  

The Three Unforgivable Sins of the Grindhouse Edition

Things are in the home stretch. I've said much of this before, but I don't want anyone to be surprised by what I'm doing so I want to sum up again. Feel free to skip it if you've heard it already. Or, if you're a masochist, read on!

I've held back most of the Grindhouse Edition material that I expect to be controversial from blog previews. I believe that the early buyers should get to see some things that nobody has yet seen - and I don't want to sell the game on the grotesque. That's part of the package and I want people to be aware but it's not what I want to use to lure people in.

(and with the new webstore's PDF-downloading capacity, it will come instantly. When pre-orders go up, you'll need to wait for the books to come back from the printer before going in the mail but you'll get to see everything right away in electronic format)

The thing's going to have an 18+ warning on it and with it clearly being intended for adults, a lot of the problems disappear. Violence in a role-playing game is a given. Adults complaining about nudity in products for adults are silly. It's a fantasy and a horror game so bizarre and disturbing images are to be expected. So I feel comfortable with most of the stuff to be presented. A bit wicked, a bit naughty, but in the end it's all there to hopefully pass on the joy of vicarious wonder and fear.

And I don't think "vicarious" needs to mean half-assed or with a wink and a smile.


Think about A Nightmare on Elm Street. I was just 12 or 13 when I saw that movie. The scene where Tina is dragged up the walls and slashed to pieces is and was fucked up and it scared the shit out of me.


The scene where she later appears to Nancy in the school hallway in a bodybag? Literally nightmare fuel. But it not only scared the crap out of me, it had me waiting in real anticipation for the sequel because I wanted to feel that way again!



And then a little later came A Nightmare on Elm Street Part III. Even if it wasn't as hardcore a horror film, the building of the mythology was (remember, Freddy was conceived when a nun was locked in a mental asylum and gang-raped, grew up to become a child-killer and was murdered by Main Street USA parents in a vigilante lynching). Add the whole 80s D&D thing where the adults don't trust that the kids know the difference between fantasy and reality (there's even a role-playing game in the movie! Stupid wizard should know not to engage in melee combat!) and experimental drugs and combat happening in two realities at once (John Saxon & Craig Wasson vs stop-motion animation skeleton!) and Nancy falling through the chair was the most awesome thing since awesome was invented (little things count!).

But it had that suspense and the horror in the sense that things were going to hell and people were going to die in unexpected and creative ways... but it was an adventure!

"You stupid bitch! You're killing us!"

"Let's go kick the motherfucker's ass all over dreamland!"

My horror fandom goes deeper and nastier - there's the beautiful butchery found in Argento's work (not so much represented in the Grindhouse edition but there in bits and bobs - when I go Argento you'll know it), the horrid, savage barbarity of Fulci films (it's there), the underground feel of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the wet comedies of Peter Jackson (Bad Taste! Brain Damage!) and Sam Raimi (Evil Dead II, Drag Me to Hell), George Romero and the zombie apocalypse... and exploding head cinema!


It also goes more respectable - the Hammer movies that didn't have so much of the blood but had all the atmosphere and even a touch of class.

... you didn't think I was calling this the Grindhouse Edition because of the Tarentino/Rodriguez project, did you?

I also love heavy metal and its imagery and lyrics. I got into it seriously with the 90s death metal explosion - the lyrics of bands like Carcass and Deicide and Entombed and a hundred more a seared into my brain. Then there's the books and authors. Lovecraft, Barker, Howard, Leiber and the rest, presenting amoral stories depicting gruesome death and sketchy characters, often written by men with serious character flaws of their own.

I've previously told of the story of having the Monster Manual at age 9, scared to let my mother see the inside for fear that all the boobies would cause her to take it away from me. I was also scared to read it at night because of all the creepy undead, but was always poring over it by daylight.

What I release should reflect what I love. A celebration of the macabre that has enriched my imagination. But it should also address what I don't love and how that relates to what I do love.

I also remember the 80s witch hunts. So many people have problems with make-believe. How many horror movies have been censored to get an R rating? (or further, to PG-13, for marketing reasons)? How ridiculous is that? Especially the teenage chop-em-ups, written about and for teenagers. This continues to this day - take a search around the net for the Hatchet 2 fiasco. There's the PMRC for music, and BADD for our very own hobby. And it never ends - remember the Carcosa fiasco (It's fine that some didn't like it - it was the calls for McKinney's head that drove me to rage, but as these things often do, it caused me to inspect Carcosa more closely, and a few years later I'm going to invest 5 figures in releasing McKinney's books.)?

This isn't corporate lowest-common-denominator stuff, this gaming thing is my prime creative outlet. My work needs to make my stance on this shit clear, you know? The first time around, there was some of that - the cover was a statement to that effect, and some of the stuff inside as well. But that's old news now, and it needs to be reaffirmed. In the grand scheme of things, I know I live a small, unimportant life and when I die nobody's going to give a shit, except my wife if I'm lucky. That's the life I've chosen; if I wanted different, I'd live differently. So sometimes my ideals about bigger, important things are going to come out in the efforts I focus my life on, meaningless to the world at large they may be.

Thing is, I'm not expecting any problems anywhere but in the USA. Hell, in Finland last night there were three full-on horror movies on free TV on different channels beginning anywhere from 9pm to 10:35pm: Scream (what a messed up movie - show graphic murder with the blood and guts... but hide the nudity!), The Ring (US crap version), and My Best Friend's Wedding. And they were all uncut - every swear, every death, everything, all there. Hell, I saw Argento's Inferno for the first time on Finnish broadcast TV a few years back - uncut. My first visit to Finland was an eye-opener: An uncut prime-time showing of The Jackal, with tons of gunfire and death and I think Jack Black getting his arm blown off.

(I haven't been back in five years - is rampant even-worse-than-the-MPAA censorship still happening on US broadcast TV?)

(fun Finland fact: Little House on the Prairie DVDs carry an 18 rating here because the company that released them didn't want to pay the ratings board to rate them. Can you imagine IP holders of family entertainment in the US having so little respect for ratings that slapping an NC-17 on it is considered the easiest thing to do?)

So I will fly the flag proudly for both my Grindhouse Edition and the sources that influenced its final appearance and some of its content. This post up to this point is a celebration of great things, not an excuse for including unseemly elements.

However.

There are three things within this edition which I don't think are covered by that background. And I think I need to let you know about them and offer my excuses.

The Grindhouse Edition is very, very white. On purpose, conscious decision. See, I decided to go for a north/west historical European flavor in the artwork, to the point of using Osprey Books illustrations as references for artists. There are exactly two illustrations with non-white ethnicities in them - the gaming group pic that was in the Deluxe Edition and a "The English meet American Natives" pic that will be in the campaign worldbuilding advice section in the Ref book. Remember that Iri-Khan is not really Asian, he just dresses that way.

It is precisely that wish for a historical feel that cemented the decision. The artwork has a lot of bad things happening to a lot of people. I wanted a late 1500s/early 1600s vibe off the thing. That era was vicious. Religious wars between western Europeans, the English thought the Scottish and Irish were different races, just general insanity all around my "target area." One of the pics is a very clear depiction of the kind of sectarian religious violence common in that era.

Say I decided to put some black characters in this mix - what would those illustrations involve if they remain consistent with the others? I'm not going there. Not here anyway, not unless there's greater commentary or context. The US slave trade started in this timeframe but no way was I going to put a slave train illustration or something near the "Slave" retainer entry. To use a black guy in another context without acknowledging any of that, well, then it would just be a "token" character, put in specifically to fill some sort of diversity quota and that's no good either.

In the end, I could have waived my hand and decided in a game that shows a dwarf, a halfling, and two pics with elves, there could have been a bit more non-white faces without the historical baggage attached to it. I just decided not to.

The Duel ends with a Dead Woman. Violence is everywhere in RPGs, and the Grindhouse Edition gets some of its horror by showing some of that violence in a more harsh light than lighter RPGs. I like having a lot of women in the pics as adventurers (ahistorical, but in the early part of this period women dominated the English throne, adventurers are outlaws anyway so what the hell, and Joan of Arc was old news by then, and ya know...). And in the illustrations for my game, adventuring is not a safe profession. So there are dead women here and there in the pics, and I don't consider that a bad or misogynistic thing. You play you pay.

But the duel, a pic in the Deluxe Edition expanded to a 7-piece sequence, ends the way it does because she's a woman, specifically because I was pissy about feminist blogs. I had already commissioned things like the Rules cover and a bunch of other stuff with strong adventuring women and I found myself worried that I didn't have an equal enough ratio of men-to-women adventurers or cocks-to-cunts (or pricks-to-pussies if you like softer language) and I caught myself doing it and got pissed and this is the result. That's not a good reason to do something like that, but it's the honest one. And thing is, the actual death-blow is not the brutal pic in the sequence - it's the guy tugging his sword back out of her head that struck me as just wrong. Amos nailed that one dead on.

Vince Locke. Known to me for his work for Cannibal Corpse... OK, let me show these to you so you get where I'm coming from. Click to enlarge.



This guy's work really left a mark on me, and I wanted that for my release. "Get me arrested" was what I told him when I hired him, but I sabotaged that by also insisting that the pic had to reflect a scene that could happen during a game. That greatly affected the composition, colors, everything. Instead of being a grand celebration with everything that could be absolutely wrong with an image, it was "reduced" to being a very grotesque depiction of dungeon delving gone horribly, horribly wrong. Which was not a mistake as I don't want it to look out of place with the rest of the art! Why this picture is completely out of line and purely the result of taking glee in the distress of others (in a real-life sense, not within the fiction) maybe won't be obvious until you look closer at it, but once seen, it can't be unseen.

So that's about all. I had a good excuse to get a bunch of horror pics together, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. :D

Oh, and for anyone who thinks this is a new thing for me:

Grindhouse Edition Giveaway Contest... I Need a First Level Spell!

The Contest:

I need an original first level Magic-User spell to put in the spell list of the Grindhouse Edition. I want it to come from you!

Conditions:

• The spell you submit is your own original work that has not previously appeared in print or on the web.
• You will not forget to include the Duration and Range along with the name and description.
  
• By submitting, you give permission for me to use it in LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and add it to the Open Game Content.
• Need to be 18+ years old to enter.
  

Submit your entry to lotfp@lotfp.com.

The winning spell will be used in the box set, and its creator will get a complimentary copy of the Grindhouse box. All entries (that I don't think are utter crap, anyway) will be organized into a PDF to be freely distributed, with all spells being Open Game Content.

If you do not include a real name to be credited I assume you are OK with not being individually credited - I'd really rather not list internet handles.

Submit your entry before Sunday Feb 20 11:59pm Finnish time.

The Grindhouse Fighter Pic is BAD ASS

With all the art I'm posting, let's not forget the guy doing the lion's share of the interior work, Amos Orion Sterns. Here is his portrait for the Fighter class, and I think you'll agree that should someone make a Hall of Fame for RPG art, this needs to be considered:


I know I'm posting a lot of art... but there's a lot I'm not posting. The two interior Sheppard pieces, Locke's zombie attack, the two interior Rainville pieces, the Casperson stuff, the four Nicholson full-pagers (he did the art contest pieces)... plenty of visual surprises for people who buy the thing. :D

The Full Color Version

Just because I'm curious. What do you think? (clicky clicky for more detail, a necessity with Alfrey's work!)

Grindhouse Edition Tutorial Cover... COMPLETED!

A nightmare made real by Aeron Alfrey (click for more detail):


The pic was done first as the black and white piece above (which has me doing backflips with how awesome it is), and then color was added afterwards.

The result unfortunately wasn't as great. The awesome detail of the original is still there, but is camouflaged by the color. But it's amazing what you can do with digital art these days. Here's something we came up with to retain some color - and horror with the remaining color being blood and brains - without losing the awesome effect of the colorless version.


So I need to decide exactly how to present the piece, but... it's a damn awesome piece. :D

Grindhouse Edition Rules Book Cover... Here!

All hail Jason Rainville for this one. Click for greater detail.