Disappear for Two Days and Look What Happens!

First, the important stuff: I was at Jalometalli over the weekend. Was down front and center for Cathedral, playing a 90 minute show on their farewell tour. Saw Entombed. NAPALM DEATH! Fun time.

The funny moment: One of the musicians I knew from over the weekend (who shall remain nameless for his own protection!) came up to me and gave me a great big hug... and then gives my wife a great big hug and starts speaking to her in Swedish. He hadn't gotten the memo that my current wife isn't the same woman I was with when he met me in 2005. aaawwkkkwwaarrrdddd

Got the "Are you Jim from Lamentations? OHMIGOD" treatment from someone with exhortations to release another issue. I really should, if I could shit more time for myself. I'd get into all these festivals for free, receive more free CDs from the people that actually still send free CDs to zines, and get some death threats going again since you role-players seem to actually like what I write. You bastards.

While in Oulu I also did an interview for a Spanish RPG zine. Rodrigo's going to transcribe the interview and translate it for his audience. That's hardcore.

The life of a famous person on the road, you know? I need a bigger entourage.

I now have a close-to-finished Carcosa layout in my possession... still need to go through and assign final illustrations based on that layout. Current estimate is going to be about 45 pages of art over 288 pages.

Isle of the Unknown's artwork is finished barring a couple of revisions. I have a feeling layout for this one is going to be a nightmare.

Signs of life and new samples from Exquisite Corpses in my mailbox!

I have a feeling all of these are going to get finished at once and I'll either have to gamble on 30000€ in printing at once or then artificially delay some of the books...

ahhh, almost-finished Monolith cover art. What a busy bunch of minions I had over the weekend. :D :D :D

I'll be at some remote cabin from the 19th to 26th and will not have internet access. Store orders made during that time will be shipped after my return. Assuming the wife and I aren't butchered by some maniac in a hockey mask during that time, I'll return with a completed The Dancing Queen in Yellow manuscript since there's going to be fuck all else to do there.

Vornheim 1000

Got the GenCon sales report last night...

Including both PDF and print, Vornheim: The Complete City Kit has broken the 1000 sales mark.

The first (but not last!) LotFP release to do so.

(I track the Deluxe and Grindhouse versions of the rules separately, but if taken together, including PDF and print, they've moved over 1400 copies)

Big LotFP Store Sale!

Cash flow: The bane of any small business. Lots of bills coming due in just a short time.

To persuade you to give me a bunch of money right away so I don't have to sweat it, I'm offering the following coupon codes to the LotFP Store:

Coupon code ENTOMBED gives 10% off an order of 100€ or more.
Coupon code CATHEDRAL gives 15% off an order of 150€ or more.
Coupon code NAPALM gives 20% off an order of 200€ or more.

Each coupon will expire after five uses, or at the end of the month, whichever comes first. A customer can only use a particular coupon code once. Discounts are on pre-tax and pre-shipping totals.

Spread the word, if you would...

(I'm hitting a metal festival this weekend, if you are curious as to where the coupon names came from...)

In stock:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition
Vornheim: The Complete City Kit
Grinding Gear
Hammers of the God
Tower of the Stargazer (6 left!)
Weird New World (8 left!)

Die Cast Games
Insidious

Expeditious Retreat Press
Advanced Adventures #1 - #17
Magical Society: Silk Road
Malevolent and Benign
Sorcery & Super Science!

Faster Monkey Games
Lesserton & Mor
Realm of the Technomancer
Re-Energizers
Skull Mountain
Wheel of Evil

Frog God Games
Fane of the Fallen
Hollow Mountain
Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti
Splinters of Faith #1 - 5, 7, 8
Strange Bedfellows
Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook
Ursined Sealed and Delivered
Valley of the Hawks
Vengeance of the Long Serpent
Winter Wood

Goodman Games
Dungeon Alphabet
GM Gems
PC Pearls
Points of Light
Points of Light 2
Random Esoteric Creature Generator

Henchmen Abuse
Anomalous Subsurface Environment

North Wind Adventures
Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent

Pacesetter Games & Simulations
Circle of Fire
Death on Signal Island
Eruptor's Vengeance
Screaming Temple
Thing in the Valley

Planet Thirteen Games
Purple Worm Graveyard

Rogue Games
Shadow Sword and Spell Basic
Shadow Sword and Spell Expert
Under Pashuvanam's Lush

Running Beagle Games
B/X Companion

Isle of the Unknown Art Preview 3: MORE MONSTERS + Blargle

I've had a nasty habit of writing 3/4ths of a blog post lately, but then not posting them. So here's the money shots of all that unposted writing, without the arguments behind them:

• G1/2/3/D1/2/3 is as much of a story-loaded railroad as I3/4/5
• Death on the Reik is perhaps the awesomest adventure ever
• The answer to "Is there room for another...?" is always yes, as long as it's good enough
  
• Guns may change the flavor of your setting but they won't change the actual play of your old school game one bit
• My publishing philosophy moves further along the "pay your people, make everything awesome, if it costs it costs"
• Ropecon story from Mentzer: Gygax wrote Keep on the Borderlands so he could get the "included in the basic sets that are selling by the hundreds of thousands" royalties instead of continuing to let Mike Carr get that loot with In Search of the Unknown
• It's weird to be worried about how well I did at GenCon...
  

And, as advertised, here are some more monster pics from Isle of the Unknown. Concepts by Geoffrey McKinney, artwork by Amos Orion Sterns.

Isle of the Unknown Art Preview 2: MONSTERS!

There will be over 100 new and unique monsters in Geoffrey McKinney's Isle of the Unknown.

All of them are being illustrated by Amos Orion Sterns, all of them in brilliant full color!

Three examples:

It's my understanding that the line work has been completed for all of them, and there are still 40 or so left to be colored.

I've seen the cover art (by Cynthia Sheppard) and map (by Jason Rainville) drafts and I hope to show you those soon.

I'd apologize for the delays, but since we're not sitting here with our thumbs up our asses I'll instead apologize for being optimistic when originally announcing the release dates (I was originally planning on Grindhouse to be out in December of last year, to let you know how unrealistic my expectations are).

We'll get this out when every possible bit of awesomeness has been squeezed into it, not a moment before, and hopefully not too long after.

LotFP Call for Submissions (Revised!)

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is looking for submissions for its series of fantasy/horror adventure modules for the Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game. Each module will be published as a 32-page, A5-sized book, which averages out to 15,000-20,000 words in length plus maps.

Your first contact with LotFP should be an outline of your proposed adventure. This outline should include:

• The title of the work
• A brief synopsis no more than two paragraphs in length
• A list of the adventure's intended subsections with a brief description of each each subsection which should be no more than one or two lines in length.

Keep in mind that if LotFP is interested in working with you, your submission will undergo a developmental process before it is published. Part of this process involves both editing and, if necessary, making changes to your submission.

Playtesting should be done by you before submitting the final draft. If you do not play your creations you have no business expecting anyone else to do so.

While the core of the system used in the Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game is very familiar and traditional, these adventures are very different in feel and style to that found in scenarios published for other fantasy RPGs!

When writing for Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, your submission should take into account the following elements:

• Present the adventure as if it takes place during the Early Modern period, roughly between the years 1500 C.E. And 1650 C.E of our own history. You do not need to be a student of geography or history to write a LotFP adventure, but when it comes to cities and nations and cultures, your adventure must be real-world in feel. You are still free to completely invent local areas and should remember that for Weird Fantasy Role-Playing adventures feeling historically accurate is just as good as being accurate.
• Demi-humans, if used at all, must never be portrayed as being involved with or living within human society. Other humanoid creatures normally standard to other fantasy RPGs should not be used at all.
• Every monster in the adventure (other than real-life animals) should be an individual and unique creation. They should be used sparingly.
• Magic items must also be rare and unique, and never part of normal society. Magical items encountered should present the Player Characters complications with the potential for ill rather than as their expected reward or treasure, or as a form of guaranteed power-up. Only if you are charitable should a magical item grant the PCs a positive benefit.
• NPCs with class and levels should be rare.
• “Extreme” or “edgy” or “offensive” content is absolutely not required for a LotFP submission, and if used at all it should make sense in the greater context of the adventure.

Be creative, be weird. Only submissions which impress and amaze will be accepted.

All submitted work should be your own original work that you own all rights to, and the work should not have been previously published elsewhere in English.

Your full submission should use the following formatting:

• .rtf file format
• Times New Roman 12 point font
• There should be full line breaks between headers and the following text, and full line breaks between paragraphs with no indentation.
• All spell names should be capitalized and italicized
• Saving Throw categories should be capitalized
• Monetary listings should be without period (5sp and not 5 s.p., for example)
• NPC and monster statistics should have their own paragraph rather than be into the text.
• Maps should be submitted in rough form (they will be professionally redone later)

Compensation will be handled in one of two ways, chosen by you:

• 0,02€ per word (final draft, after editing), paid upon publication. LotFP owns the work outright after payment is made.
• 35% of profits made from the work, paid every quarter. No money will be paid up front and LotFP will be simply licensing the work and publication rights from you. Both the work and publication rights will revert back to you when the print run is sold out or after five years, whichever comes first.

Full contracts noting the specifics will be sent to you in either case; these two points are merely summaries.

If you have a longer-form project in mind (or even a full game), different arrangements can be made. Get in touch!

Disclaimer: At no point before the signing of a contract is LotFP obligated to publish your adventure or pay you for it. Submitting a work and getting developmental feedback is in no way a guarantee of payment or publication. At the same time, LotFP has no rights to your work until a contract is signed and you can pull your project from LotFP at any time before that.

Submissions, questions, and comments can be sent to lotfp@lotfp.com

Details on Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, including a free PDF of the rules (in art-free format) can be found here.

HUGE Webstore Update

The LotFP Webstore is finally back up!

Here is what is currently in stock... Keep in mind I only have 1 of some of these items so you might want to check things you're interested in sooner than later...

(note: I apologize to my French customers, but too many packages sent there have been lost. French orders will now be charged a flat 6,15€ for shipping, and I will send the buyer a tracking number once the order has shipped)

(as always when so much is updated at once, if you see something odd while ordering, let me know right away!)

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition
Vornheim: The Complete City Kit
Grinding Gear
Hammers of the God
Tower of the Stargazer (9 left!)
Weird New World (12 left!)

Die Cast Games
Insidious

Expeditious Retreat Press
Advanced Adventures #1 - #17
Magical Society: Silk Road
Malevolent and Benign
Sorcery & Super Science!

Faster Monkey Games
Lesserton & Mor
Realm of the Technomancer
Re-Energizers
Skull Mountain
Wheel of Evil

Frog God Games
Fane of the Fallen
Hollow Mountain
Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti
Splinters of Faith #1 - 5, 7, 8
Strange Bedfellows
Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook
Ursined Sealed and Delivered
Valley of the Hawks
Vengeance of the Long Serpent
Winter Wood

Goodman Games
Dungeon Alphabet
GM Gems
PC Pearls
Points of Light
Points of Light 2
Random Esoteric Creature Generator

Henchmen Abuse
Anomalous Subsurface Environment

North Wind Adventures
Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent

Pacesetter Games & Simulations
Circle of Fire
Death on Signal Island
Eruptor's Vengeance
Screaming Temple
Thing in the Valley

Planet Thirteen Games
How to Host a Dungeon
Purple Worm Graveyard

Rogue Games
Shadow Sword and Spell Basic
Shadow Sword and Spell Expert
Under Pashuvanam's Lush

Running Beagle Games
B/X Companion

Aural Adventure Generator

1. Zombie Creeping Flesh
2. Steel Teeth (The Metal Jaw)
3. Zombie Kommand
4. Atomizer
5. Fortified Zone
6. Racists!
7. Scientists?
8. Hell Trucker
9. Nuke the Skeets
10. Skellington Crew
11. Bullet Belt

1. Zombie Blood Nightmare
2. Evil Voices
3. Final Fight
4. Time Crime
5. Global Warning
6. OCP
7. Hammer Slammer
8. Sentenced to Thrash
9. Zombi Brew
10. Hell Trucker
11. Return of the Technodrome
12. Thrashoholic
13. In the Court of General Zod
14. Space Invaders
15. Bullet Belt

1. Slam Anthem
2. New Eliminators of Atlantis B.C.
3. Three Witches
4. Last Ninjas Unite
5. Escape from Scarecrow Mountain
6. Mussolini Mosh
7. We Respect You
8. Apocalypse 1997
9. Return to Blood Castle
10. Polterghost
11. Skeletron
12. Mummy Invasion

Carter Holmes Desperately Wishes to Die...

...and if he can not convince the PCs to kill him outright, he will further tempt them. He will point out that eating parts of his brain will imbue some of his magical knowledge in the devourer.

Ten brain bits may be picked from Holmes' head before he expires. If a piece of brain is consumed, roll on the following table to determine what knowledge is gained from it...

Sorry, I'm on the jazz hard for adventures now, and I've got time to work, and I thought I should feed little (brain) bits of what I'm working on. That bit is from the Monolith From Beyond Space and Time.

And for the adventure that will need dancing rolls, it has been suggested to me that high Charisma and low Wisdom are both useful in dancing. What do you think?

It's a shame it's taken this long for follow-ups to the Grindhouse Edition to come out, but forcing things out before their time is no good.

The Weirdest is yet to come.

Quick Update

Ropecon went well. In sales terms that means I paid for con expenses + importing all that stuff. Hanging out with Mentzer and also Erik Mona and Jeff Richards for a bit was interesting and enlightening.

The webstore is just about ready to reopen, I'm just waiting on a couple PDFs to be sent to me so I can set those bundles up.

Work continues on upcoming releases... the art is almost finished for Isle, Carcosa's next layout iteration is in the works, Monolith is chugging along and after I that finished I've locked in the followup, the concept of which will guarantee that I burn in hell.

Its title at this point looks to be "The Dancing Queen in Yellow." Chew on that one.

I still hope to get 5 things out by the end of the year, but at this rate I should be happy with 4 and satisfied with 3. LotFP is not a shovelware publisher, apparently.