LotFP: RPG

Friday, December 30, 2011

Contest Ends Tomorrow the 31st!

I recently got a new forum header, which led to the question "What the hell is that thing on the table?" And there's a contest about it!

Go see the picture, and the contest details, here.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Fooling Around with Game Design

So Carcosa and Isle are out and shipping, and I'm waiting on some contributor input before moving forward with the next projects.

In this "between time" I've been doing what we all do at one time or another, fiddle around with the idea of making a completely new game. Whether it will develop into a real thing or not, too early to tell, but it's kept my interest more than similar attempts over the past few years.

If you're interested in seeing what I'm up to (and just maybe get the first look at 2014's hot release!), I'm posting my thoughts and notes in my forum here.

Monday, December 26, 2011

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!

Frowny Face and Happy Face Reviews

RPGnet review of Carcosa isn't very happy.

Aventuras en la Marca del Este has a happier Isle of the Unknown photo review.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Well That's Going to Be a Bad Influence

Was stuck at the in-law's house yesterday for over 10 hours (and to think I used to dread the holidays when I'd be all alone... note to self: make sure the next wife is an orphan)... I take my notebook on these trips because, well, what the hell else am I going to do?

Didn't get much done because of course the TV had to be on, playing Christmas concert TV specials most of the time. Made me aggressive - but I bet being forced to watch Andrea Bocelli sing with the Muppets would do that for anyone. And remember the 90s when Nightwish was this absolutely bizarre idea? Now here's Tarja Turunen singing in a church in front of Finland's President. Nothing completely ruins a fun thing - retroactively, even - quite like respectability.

Damn yesterday was torture.

So the few notes I did take were all about some rather, ah, interesting monsters and spells. Of the "I did that that zombie attack picture from Grindhouse and I just published Carcosa so let's use those as a new normal baseline and explore where we can go from there," variety.

So that ends up with a bunch of "I can't really use any of this, can I?" stuff.

Oh, look, one of my Christmas presents was a copy of Alan Moore's Neonomicon. I really like Lovecraft and I really like everything I've read by Moore but I'd never even heard of this. How did my wife find it?

(looking around this morning, this is how Moore himself describes it, if you're unfamiliar: "Lovecraft was sexually squeamish; would only talk of ‘certain nameless rituals.’ Or he’d use some euphemism: ‘blasphemous rites.’ It was pretty obvious, given that a lot of his stories detailed the inhuman offspring of these ‘blasphemous rituals’ that sex was probably involved somewhere along the line. But that never used to feature in Lovecraft’s stories, except as a kind of suggested undercurrent. So I thought, let’s put all of the unpleasant racial stuff back in, let’s put sex back in. Let’s come up with some genuinely ‘nameless rituals’: let’s give them a name.")

(also, check out this analysis of the book... I wonder if any of these ideas could work for RPG books?)

After reading Neonomicon most of that "I can't really use any of this, can I?" stuff in my notebook seems rather middle-class now.

Which leaves a couple things that still have potential, and some idea corridors I wasn't before considering are now open.

If you're familiar with Neonomicon, you're thinking the worst of this right now. Which is good, because that sense of dread is the coolest thing ever. But I do have limits, as there are certain things I'm not willing to play out in a game with other people, either at my home table or with random people at a convention, so I wouldn't ask you to do so. But hopefully this can instead be something else entirely that takes you by surprise. That will hopefully be good. And make you think "You can do that?" while looking at it.

(oh, I also received Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium RPG. Haven't read it yet and am not familiar with it at all, although I'm told it should be right up my alley. First thought after a quick page-through is this book has no business being 8.5x11 format and whoever decided that was a good size for RPGs in general, and this one in particular, needs a damn spanking)

Friday, December 23, 2011

A Blog About the Isle of the Unknown

Booberry (the best of the monster cereals, so of course also always the hardest to find...), of the new Giant Evil Wizard blog, is writing a series of posts about Isle of the Unknown and the possibilities therein. Don't know how long Isle will be the focus, but it's the focus right now and that's cool enough.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Carcosa is "The Best of the Best This Year"

Don't take my word for it, go read the review here. Lots of pictures. (see a translated version of the review here)

Also, a new review of the Isle of the Unknown.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Contest!

I've got a new forum header image.

To celebrate (because packing and shipping hundreds of orders is kind of dull and I need some excitement), there's a CONTEST! With PRIZES!

Details here.

(and the LotFP main site has a new background image as well, have you seen it?)