Bad News on the Doorstep?

The New Year is rolling in fine with some fantastic RPG material landing on my office doorstep (figuratively speaking) on the 13th. I was sick as a dog and lying in bed at home when the office manager texted to let me know a box had arrived from Finland for me. Despite battling a nasty case of the flu I dragged myself in there after hours to collect my collection of madness from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

By the time I got the thing in my hands I was feeling a lot better so I opened it up right there. As I peeled back the packaging I was greeted by the words: "YOU ARE DOOMED."

What a great start!

It sounds like bad news to the uninitiated, but in LotFP that just means the stakes in this adventure will be high.

I lifted each of my seven new treasures from the box with slow, deliberate care. Turning them over in my hands and enjoying their look and feel. I flipped through them, glancing at the pages as they spun past. Stopping here and there to take in a piece of particularly arresting art. I laid it one on the table in front of me and once I was done took the whole thing in.

The random postcards were a fun freebie. I was impressed with all of the books. The PDFs just don't do them justice. Still, there is a reason I unpacked them on the red table. I live in a mining town in what many in Canada just refer to as "the North." There are still plenty of people living much farther north than me, just exponentially more to the south. Because of the mild remoteness of my location I have had the pleasure of reading on the internet for a few weeks now about how wonderful A Red and Pleasant Land by Zak S is. One heartless person has even teased me about it without mercy. My anticipation for this particular book had built up to a near frenzy. 

I was pleased that as thing the book lives up to the hype and more. It feels good in my hands while I read it and it feeds my eyes with vivid visuals and balanced layout. I'm taking my time with this one so I'll post proper reviews of it and some of these other books later. For now, I'll stick to first impressions and the highlights that caught me during my unboxing.

Death Frost Doom I'm saving for later. It's the adventure that launched the Lamentations brand. I didn't even open it. Crazy right?

I have a copy of the original Tower of the Stargazer and I've run it a few times so I left the new one aside for now as well. I'll compare the two side by side when I have time.

I've mentioned Zzarchov Kowalski's innovative adventure Thulian Echoes on the blog before, but I know it will eventually get a post to itself. Yannick Bouchard's cover is fantastic and Kelvin Green's interior art lets you know things are going to be weird.

What I was really waiting for from Kowalski was his Lovecraft inspired, adventure creation tool Scenic Dunnsmouth. It's full of seductive, creepy corruption and weird time anomalies. Because each adventure is freshly generated, it's possible to play it more than once with the same group and have wildly different adventures. The kicker for this one though is Jez Gordon's interior art. His signature heavy black shapes are foreboding on their own, but in this book there's a hazy coloured glow on many of the images, hinting at the corruption that could be anywhere in the adventure. I'm hoping to run it sooner, rather than later. It would work well as an intro to A Red and Pleasant Land since the featured river could serve as a way into the Land of Unreason. Regardless, I hope I get to use it sooner rather than later.

The impact of the full colour art in No Salvation for Witches surprised me. It's another one that needs an in depth review. I'd like to play it first though. I'm not sure how the time limit will play out. There's enough clues to figure everything out but they are spread out far enough there's little chance to get all the pieces of the puzzle in time to take action. In the meantime, I can tell you the production values of this book are wonderful. I am thrilled I contributed to crowdfunding project that got me NSFW.

I'm happy to get it all! There's a great collection of RPG madness here to use, inspire me, or dip into to give a lagging campaign a jolt. My LotFP shelf just keeps getting bigger and better.