Experiences with Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

[coffeeman]

Hey all! I picked up the core rulebook for LotFP and I'm in love with the ruleset, but won't be using much of the grittier flavor of some of the spells (Summon *cough*). I can see why the game gets so much praise, and some of the adventures look downright awesome. High production values too.

What are your experiences with the game? I'm planning on introducing some people new to TTRPGs with it. Should be fun. :)

[Yora]

It basically is the old Basic/Expert system with a much improved attack/armor system, and a very nice thief skill system. That all characters can use all weapons and armor and that there are no fireballs and lightning bolts are nice additional extras.

But by and large, everything that applies to B/X also applies to LotFP. Just even a bit more easier to learn and run.

[druid91]

Never played the actual game, but played a WoD Port of one of the adventures once. One thing I noticed is that were we not presenting out of context problems galore for the actual game, the module would have been absolutely lethal.

[Frozen_Feet]

I've ran both the Deluxe Edition and Grindhouse Edition, minor as their differences were. I've also use the hardcover Rules & Magic book. I hear a new version, with more radical changes, is on the way, but not publicly available yet.

Anyways, for the basic rules... they are the cleanest, simplest, most playable implementation of B/X or OD&D I've seen. So "just another retroclone", but that carries surprisingly far. Works for one-shots and long campaigns alike, doesn't really matter if you're going for basic fantasy and horror stuff or the more particular vision LotFP modules push.

I've also ran the following modules:

Tower of the Stargazer (both as one-shot and part of a campaign)
Vornheim (for one-shots)
Weird New World (two long-running campaigns and one extensive one-shot)
Red & Pleasant Land (short campaign)
The Grinding Gear (as part of a campaign)
Hammer of Gods (as part of a campaign)
The God that Crawls (2 one-shots)
Death Love Doom (6 one-shots)
**** for Satan (a one-shot)
Joop Van Ooms (a one-shot)
Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children (a one-shot)
Seclusium of the Orphone of Three Visions (one-shot)

In addition, I own:

The Lost World
Isle of the Unknown
Veins of Earth
England Upturn'd
Fire over the Velvet Horizon

... and probably some other crap I've forgotten. I have a bad habit of throwing money at Raggi whenever I see him.

Anyways, the stuff I'd recommend most:

1) Red & Pleasant Land
2) Veins of Earth
3) Death Love Doom
4) God that Crawls
5) Tower of the Stargazer

The first two because they outline amazing settings and have powerfull content creation algorithms in them. You can easily play several campaigns with material in them, and the physical books are gorgeous.

The following three because they give a good idea what a singular LotFP adventure ought to be like. Death Love Doom could be replaced by Death Frost Doom, but I've never ran DFD, so. (On paper, I liked the old version better than the new one, even if the new one is way more detailed.)

I've yet to encounter a LotFP product that'd be so bad as to be unusable to me. All of them have so far had neat ideas in them, even if those neat ideas wouldn't jive well with sanitized mainstream fantasy. (Death Love Doom certainly doesn't, but it's the best example of how to do a classic haunted house scenario I've seen.)

[Yora]

Better than any Man is also very much worth giving a look.
I quite like many of the ideas in No Salvation for Witches.
And I think Death Frost Doom is also pretty fantastic if you run it with restraint (and the players are careful, but that's entirely in their hands).

[some guy]

In addition what the other posters already have said, I would like to make these recommendations:

Qelong: I think this is a better hex-crawl than A Red and Pleasant Land (aRaPL is beautiful, a wonderful read, has good dungeons, awesome art, but Qelong requires less work). Watch Seven Samurai and Oni-baba (which are good films anyway) and you have the general idea.
Better than any Man is pay what you want, so besides it being a fun adventure, it doesn't hurt to check out.
I love Death Frost Doom, ran it 4 or 5 times, while it is possible to do with a new group, it's better with a group that is invested in the game world.

Broodmother Skyfortress is half adventure, half GM-ing advice, so that also might be a good fit for a starting read (like Death Frost Doom the adventure self is more effective if the players are more invested in the world.

Lamentations adjacent:
Maze of the Blue Medusa: a mega-dungeon with excellent layout, it does everything for making a dm's job easier. There are almost no uninteresting rooms and monsters.
Deep Carbon Observatory: high doses of gloom and human tragedy. An excellent prologue to a Veins of the Earth campaign. Like The God that Crawls you need to constant harry the pc's with antagonists which can be tiring, but makes for a thrilling dungeon.

Some Lamentations-writers are also active on https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/, so it might be worth it to ask some questions on there as well.

[LibraryOgre]

FWIW, there's a free PDF of the rules of LotFP (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/115059/LotFP-Rules--Magic-Free-Version?affiliate_id=315505)

$5 version with art (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/117262/LotFP-Rules--Magic-Full-Version?affiliate_id=315505)