LotFP: Ashes of Angles (New Campaign Info)

I’m very excited that I get to start running my new LotFP campaign this weekend. I’ve wanted to run some faux-historical dark fantasy stuff for a while, and I finally convinced my home group to give it a go. My kid (a big fan of Dark Souls and Darkest Dungeon) was very eager to play, and was helpful in getting my other players on board.

Session 0 is this weekend, which will mostly focus on character creation, rules explanations, and setting introduction. I don’t expect any of that to take too long, so we should be able to roll right into the starting adventure in the same session (the PCs will need to escape from a small, 5-room dungeon).

The following is the campaign introduction I shared to my group’s Facebook group. I wanted to make sure my players had a solid idea of what I was shooting for in the campaign. I thought I’d share it here.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Ashes of Angels

Campaign Concept: The Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg, Berlin, 1630. Central Europe has been embroiled in war for 12 years with no end in sight. The conflict that will one day be known as the Thirty Years War started as a clash between Protestants and Catholics and has escalated into a land war between numerous family dynasties wrestling for control of Europe. Unceasing war has led to famine, which has led to disease, which has led to the resurgence of witch hunts. Entire towns have been wiped off the map, and cities lie half-empty. To the average peasant, it very much seems like the world is ending. Maybe it is. Certainly, there are unnatural things crawling through the night and haunting the hidden places of the world.

Player Characters: You are outcasts and refugees from “normal” society. Maybe you’re a last survivor of a ruined village. Maybe you’re a criminal or deserter. Maybe you’re an actual witch. Maybe God talks to you in dreams. Maybe you’re just a woman with strong opinions. Maybe you’re not actually a human. Now you’re trying to survive and make your fortune by any means necessary. The War has uncovered many lost treasures but has also reawakened pagan things that guard them. It’s dirty work for dirty people like you.

System: Lamentations of the Flame Princess by James Raggi. It’s a streamlined and compact version of old-style (B/X) Dungeon & Dragons designed for weird fantasy and survival horror campaigns. Encumbrance and resource management will be important. Combat is dangerous, and healing is slow. Black powder weapons are common, and heavy armor isn’t. I’ve added a number of house-rules and hacks to help fit the system to this specific setting, including reskinning the classical fantasy races to more appropriate options.

Campaign Structure: The campaign will be fairly open and sand-boxy. The PCs start as prisoners thrown together, but after that you will have all of Europe (indeed, the world) to play in. You might choose to become grave robbers, bounty hunters, pirates, or anything else. There will be plenty of adventure and story hooks to latch onto or avoid as you see fit. Treasure = XP in this system, so you’ll always want to keep a lookout for the next big score.

Inspirado:

• Solomon Kane
• Three Musketeers
• A Field in England
• Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter
• Hammer horror movies in general
• Masque of the Red Death (the Vincent Price movie)
• Flesh & Blood
• Darkest Dungeon
• The Witcher
• Bloodbourne

Abaddon and Wyrld, an overview (with image dump!)

My new setting for my upcoming campaign (ostensibly FLAILNSAILS compliant), is coming along nicely.The Map of Abaddon is done, except for grid and labels. I've got the basic history of Wyrld (the game world) and Abaddon (the island setting) hashed out. Rather than assault people with my tortured prose, I'll just present it as bullet-points.

Broad History of Wylrd
Eons in the past, and Wyrld has no sun and two moons.

The Annunaki come down from the stars, bring with them their Dead Gods and the Elves.

Elves are slaves of the Annunaki, used for entertainment and the magical properties of their blood.

The Annunaki create Dwarves for labor and Men for food.

The Annunaki craft the world under the perpetual twilight of two moons.

Suddenly, the Annunaki leave.

One of the moons falls from the sky, crashing into Wyrld. The planet burns for 1000 years.

Wicked days of fire and darkness, dragons and trolls.

The Witchlords of Ur rise to power, using poorly-understood secrets of Annunaki magical science.

Wyrld is dark and sunless. The Witchlords constantly war between each other and breed all manner of beast, monster, and undead abomination.

Two smiths Bramah and Santanis, human slaves of the Witchlord Mag-Xyloth, rise up forge a rebellion. Their army of Men, Elves, and Dwarves, strike against the Witchlords.

The demoness Unastre falls in love with Bramah, and is redeemed by him. Unastre renounces her demonic heritage. The two marry and become battle-mates.

The Witchlords, in a final gambit, unleash Ahrizoth, the most powerful of the Annunaki's Dead Gods.

Santanis betrays and kills Bramah, then devours and absorbs Ahrizoth's power, becoming a god.

Unastre uses her great magic to bring Bramah back to life, making him immortal.

Bramah forges the sun and casts it into he sky, bringing light to the world and defeat to the Witchlords and Santanis.

Bramah founds the Brazen Empire, and the Dominion of Man begins. Bramah and Unastre reign for 200 years before ascending to the divine.

And so...
The Brazen Empire was founded 2000 years ago. It has been in steady decline for 500 years.

It is currently Imperial Year 2176.

The current Emperor is Vandranis Ro, a sick and ineffectual man bullied by the senate.

Affairs of the Empire will likely never influence this campaign, but it's good to know the basics.

The Island of Abaddon
A large island, far on the western edge of the Empire, mostly outside of its influence.

Inhabited by many wizards, seeking to peruse their own sorcerous projects without imperial interference. (The wizards went Galt!)

The greatest of Abaddon's sorcerers was Mandraxis the Magician. His manse still remains in the Fleshlands.

300 years ago, Abaddon disappeared. No cataclysm or apocalyptic explosions. One day it just disappeared.

Three years ago, it suddenly returned.

Spending three centuries “someplace else” has changed the islands and its inhabitants.

Adventurers and explorers from across the empire have come to Abaddon in search of mystery and fortune.

Lord Tiberius Rook founded Rook's Landing, the only Imperial settlement on Abaddon.

Rook's Landing serves as a starting point for many adventurers.

Jungles and swamps in the south. Badlands to the north. A band of fairly temperate forests and grasslands in the middle. Reavers Island is cooler.

Dinosaurs!
Aesthetic and Feel of the Abaddon Campaign
I'm going for a “weird pulp adventure” sort of feel. Not really “dark” but weird and fantastical. Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance are the heaviest influences. If I'm being honest, there's a bit of “Adventure Time” tossed in there too. Abaddon is a crazy, strange, and wicked land, but the brave and bold will succeed.

The Brazen Empire has a distinct Roman feel, with some heavy Mesopotamian influences.

Visually, I'm trying to lean away from the modern “dungeon-punk” aesthetic and recapture the “old-school” Erol Otus/Bill Willingham feel. So, massive shoulder pads and tons of belts are out. Helmets with horns (or wings!) and cuffed boots are in.

Inspirational Abaddon Image Dump

These images came from all over the Internet and found their way onto my hard drive.I don't know most of their sources. My apologies.

 

 

 

 

STMS Season Finale! [Monsterhearts]

(Click HERE for my first Monsterhearts roundup)

So, The Sexy Teenage Monster Show wrapped up its first season this week. Since it was the last session of the season and one of our players (the Chosen) was going to be unable to game for several months, we had a lot of things happening at once, trying to wrap up as much as we could. It got a bit jumbled here and there. More than a couple times, my players broke into a bit of meta gaming. “I need to get into a fight or some other Volatile conflict so I can mark my last XP and get my final advance!” That kind of thing. Normally I'd poo-poo that kind of thinking, but again, it was the season finale, and I tried to be accommodating without breaking things too much.

Here are the highlights of the last session...

Lillith the Fae switches skins to Mortal, chosing Caleb (the werewolf that wants her dead) as her lover. The player decided that when she betrayed her father, the Faery King, he stripped her of her fae nature. When Lilly's mother (still a fae) discovers this, she FREAKS OUT and disowns her, driving her out. (Accept people, but only conditionally)

Lacuna the Angel-turned-Hollow has “explosive amnesia” (a phrase we always say in our best Calculon voice.)

Caleb the werewolf blows up Lillth's home. Building maintenance is his part-time job, so we decided that, sure, he knows how to sabotage a gas line. (Be a fan of the PCs)

A big werewolf/fae/chosen/angel rumble in Gabriel's living room triggers a fatal heart attack in Gabriel's father. (Make them pay a price)

The Fectori tell Gabriel that they can bring his father back to life (“You'll never know the difference, Gaaaabrielll...”) if only he'd just join them. (Tell them possible consequences and ask)

Gabriel's sister discovers the body of the dead police detective in his bedroom. (Expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person)

Lacuna comforts Lilly while the former fae has a nervous breakdown. Their clumsy teenage sapphic sex allows Lilly (now Mortal) to change her Lover to Lacuna.

To my surprise (although I should know better at this point), Lilly orchestrates a big four-way sex scene between all the PCs. It triggers all their sex moves at once. I tell the two male PCs “I don't care if you never touch each other, it counts as having sex with each other.”

Lilly and Caleb come to a tenuous peace. After the sex-party, Lilly, Lacuna, and Caleb form a strange three-way relationship.

Caleb spills all the beans to his father, a powerful werewolf himself. Dad has something planned that involves the nazi-era crates hidden in his study (setting up for next season by announcing future baddness)

Gabriel takes the fight to the Fectori, leading them deep into the haunted mines and brining the mountain down on top of him, trusting that his God-touched powers will seal them away, like the angel once did.

So here's what I've learned from my first season of Monsterhearts...

Things live and die by strings, something that was quite obvious by session 2.

My female players are more filthy and depraved than my male players could ever hope to be.

There's a fine balance between continuing to escalate problems for the PCs and stepping back to let things shake out, especially when there's a built in time-limit on the campaign. I have to fight my instinct to keep piling on trouble.

If and when I run a new game of Monsterhearts, I will not use the chosen. It draws away from the internal conflicts by defining an outside “bad guy.” That said, I'm glad I used it in this first-run. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a better point-of-reference for most of my players rather than Twilight or Vampire Diaries.

When we eventually get around to Season 2, I think I'm going to skip ahead several months, perhaps all the way to the first day of the next school year. That'll give the town a chance to recover from the weird murder spree. It also gives me a chance to get my players to write “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essays. 

The Sexy Teenage Monster Show [Monsterhearts]

Monsterhearts, oh I love Monsterhearts. We've been playing Monsterhearts for several sessions here at the Freehold, and it's been a blast. Our love of supernatural drama mixed with our general dislike of teenagers has let us orchestrate a glorious mess of sex, murder, betrayal, and chaos. We invision the game as a screwed up TV show and informally call the game The Sexy Teenage Monster Show.

Our next session will be our season finale. We plan on continuing for at least one more season. We're also going to do a spin-off series set in college. One of my players is going to run that, so I can get a chance to be a player.

So here's how the Sexy Teenage Monster Show sits right now.

Shermer Heights, WV

The Sexy Teenage Monster Show is set in a small West Virginia coal-mining town named Shermer Heights. The hills to the north are riddled with mines, some in use, some long abandoned. Shadowy monsters lurk in the darkness of the deepest mine. To the south lies thick, mostly unspoiled forest and Adalwulf Lake. Train tracks run through the town, dividing it into good (east) and bad (west) sides. The local teens enjoying hanging out at the nice new mall, the crappy old strip mall, the skate park, or Platinum, the way-cool teen club. The Shermer Heights High School team is the Dire Wolves (“A winner is coming!”)

Caleb, the Werewolf 

Caleb's family has been in Shermer heights for generations. One of the founding families, they own most of the land in town and almost half the town pays rent to them. Their long residence and interest in the area has granted his family a powerful spiritual connection to the land. Werewolfism is a genetic gift, running along paternal lines. His parents are both werewolves, withhis mother belonign to a different bloodline.

While in control of himself, Caleb can take the form of a normalish wolf or a balanced hybrid wolf-man form. But when he becomes his darker self, the wolf takes over and he becomes a munderous horse-sized beast of fangs and claws.

Caleb has been working to build his spiritual powers. He can partially enter the spirit plane and walk through walls, and can curse people with hexes.

Caleb is in love with Lacuna, and has finally started a relationship with her. He has teamed up with Gabriel on past monster-hunting missions.

Lillith, the Fae

Lillith's mother was a low-caste fae who begat a her to a noble sidhe. Exiled, Lillith's mother took Lilly to the mortal realm and started a life for them both in Shermer Heights. Lillith's mother runs the Wolf Whistle strip club. The club also functions as a kind of way-house for traveling and exiled fae. Lillith and her mother make their home in an old, overgrown gothic mansion deep in the woods. Lillith's mother hosts all manner of weird guests.

Lillith recently discovered that her father wasn't merely a fae noble, but was in fact, the Faery King himself! Lillith is obsessed with Caleb, and used her father's faery magic to disguise herself as Lacuna to seduce him.

Lillith has proven herself to be petty, spitful, and dangerously impulsive, more than willing to sleep and murder her way into control. She currently has several classmates bound to her by promises. He favorite is “promise you will always protect me.”

Gabriel, the Chosen

Gabriel's family has recently advanced into a higher income bracket and moved to the good east-side of town. They are respectable hard-working people. Gaberiel has been marked by god for a higher purpose, and his secret monster-hunting exploits are starting to bring unwanted scandal upon his family. Gabriel has recently discovered that he can come back from the dead, his wounds healed over with glowing angelic script. This caused no small amount of confusion when he was dead body was found in the middle of his school and taken to the morgue. 

Gabriel is good friends with Caleb but has a massive and tragic crush on Lillith. He sees Lacuna as his foreign-born sister.

Lacuna, the (former) Angel

Lacuniel was left behind. After the Creation, god left her trapped underneath a mountain for thousands of years. He never told her why. She could hear the mortals above her, but could never see or interact with them. Recently, humans dug too deep into the mountain and freed the angel in a flash of light. Her essence settled into the body of a recently-arrived Spanish exchange student. She doesn't know what happened to the poor mortal's soul.

Lacuna lives with Gabriel's family. She can see God's imprint on Gabriel, and is obsessed with finding out what it means. Since she is unfamiliar with human emotions and interactions, Lacuna comes across as having massive Asperger's Disease. She keeps notebooks about everyone she knows in Shermer Heights.

Lacuna recently discovered that her imprisonment under the mountain actually served some purpose. Her presence kept the strange shadow monsters there trapped safely under the earth.

In the penultimate session, Lacuna apparently trespassed against God one too many times. In a stroke of lightning, her angelic nature was revoked, and she became Hollow.

The Fectori

The strange shadowy creatures from deep within the mines are responsible for a number of murders plaguing the town. They are mostly shadow, but have been gaining more and more physical substance with each kill. They fear Lacuna the Angle, but are fascinated with Gabriel. They desperately want Gabriel to become their new leader, their “Chief-Priest” as they call him. They have offered him all manner of gruesome aid and gift.

Dwimmerlaik, the Faery King

Lord and master of the alien Fae and Lillith's Father. He helped his daughter seduce Caleb by gifting her with Medea's Veil, allowing her to assume Lacuna's appearance. Dwimmerlaik has some unknown plans for Caleb and wants Gabriel “removed” so he cannot interfere with his machinations. He was unaware that Lacuna was an angel until Lillith told him.

Previously on The Sexy Teenage Monster Show...

At the end of our penultimate episode, Lillith, Lacuna, and Caleb were naked and bloody in the forest, Lillith had turned on her father, Lacuna had been smote down to mortal, a police detective had been murdered and his body taken somewhere, and Gabriel was in bed with his kinda'-sorta-not-really girlfriend.

Man, I love this game.