LotFP UK Games Expo (May 24-26) Price List

(comments can be left here)

Anarchy in the UK! Plus Interviews!

I will have a table at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham this weekend. Stop by, say hi, spend money.

Over the weekend I did some online media appearance stuff.

I was on a "Making Games Magical" panel with Julia Ellingboe (Steal Away Jordan) and Kyle Simons (Magicians); you can watch that video here.

I was interviewed by Pete Figtree about the LotFP Free RPG Day adventure. You can watch that video here.

Weekend Sale, 25% Off!

I'm off to Sweden for a few days, so until 11:59pm Sunday Finnish time, you can get 25% off of any 10€+ order (pre-tax, pre-shipping) in the LotFP store by using the coupon code SVERIGE.

Just to let you know that the Grindhouse Edition is inching closer to selling out (down to around 10% of it's original print run) and we've just got a couple dozen here. (The next printing's PDFs will be given free to everyone who has the current Grindhouse PDFs.)

This next printing will consist of a hardcover Rules & Magic book and a hardcover Referee book, prices not set in stone but it's looking like 19€ and 27€ (about $25 and $35). The new R&M book will just be a correction/revision of the current Grindhouse Edition, plus gunpowder rules in the appendix. The new Ref book will be an extensive rewriting with tons of new tools and things like that. The new R&M book is almost ready for press, the Ref book will be a couple months down the road at least.

So there's your information to help decide if you want to get the current Grindhouse Edition with this discount or not.

Domains at War: You Want Gunpowder?

So I was talking to Tavis today about that ACKS Domains at War Kickstarter that's going on. "Does it work with low-magic settings?" Because wizards don't join armies fireballing people in LotFP, you know? I try to buy gaming stuff that I have a decent chance of using.

I was told they playtested historical battles. Cool.

Would gunpowder rules/units be included? (Because the forthcoming new LotFP Rules & Magic hardcover will have firearms rules in it, as my home campaign has for a long time.)

No, it doesn't presently have them included. But because I can't shut up, it might happen if you make it happen.

Use the link from that banner there to pledge to the Kickstarter. If pledges linked from this blog reach $4,250, there will be a PDF supplement for Domains at War covering  gunpowder weapons. But you have to leave a comment on the Kickstarter saying that LotFP sent you; the referral system isn't working perfectly for pledges made from the blog here so that's how Autarch is going to track which dollars come from here.

$7,500 gets the gunpowder rules included in the Domains at War books.

We're late in the game here, they've already collected over $20,000 and there's 9 days to go, but there it is.

So if you haven't gotten the ACKS game yet, or their Players Companion, now is the time to do it as you can get them as add-ons to this, boosting the $ amount. (I just gave a $120 head start on this.)

No word on what happens if you've already put money down and leave a comment now saying "I want gunpowder rules!" Try it. What else is LotFP other than a harbinger of chaos?

Geoffrey McKinney's Dungeon of the Unknown Available in PDF!

Up on the DriveThru sites!

(if you backed Better Than Any Man and didn't get the download link, let me know)

Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess Now Available!

The PDF is up at the DriveThru sites, it'll be up on the LotFP store and submitted to the other PDF outlets over the weekend.

(if you backed Better Than Any Man and you haven't already gotten the link for this, let me know)

Better Than Any Man is at the Printer

So another thing checked off the long, long list.

The adventure is 96 pages and will carry the 18+ explicit content age disclaimer. Some will love it, some will hate it, some will be silly and complain about it even though they're getting fair warning about it, plus it has a little trap for knee-jerkers who will make assumptions that aren't supported by the actual text. It's going to be a festive Free RPG Day, that's for sure. (it'll be available in participating game shops for FREE on June 25, and for free PDF download a week or so later)

Here's a Free RPG Day Retailer Locator to see if a store near you is participating.

Now then...

I have a lot of emails to catch up on, some weeks old, and I've been very irresponsible there.

Then it's back to whipping the troops into line so all this late stuff gets done (of course a few art things in that direction relate to the first item).

And then... Grindhouses are disappearing fast. My final supply (save for some I'm holding back for UK Games Expo) are going out the door very soon, and I expect them to be gone entirely by July.

Time to think reprints.

10€ Shipping Days at the LotFP Store!

Through 11:59pm Finnish time Monday the 1st, the LotFP Store has added a 10€ shipping option. Order as much as you want, shipping charges cap at 10€.

10€ shipping items will be sent 1st Class to EU orders, Economy Class outside of the EU.

I'm taking the remaining Ooms and many of the shirts to GothCon this weekend, so I've deactivated those for now. If you want the Ooms book or an LotFP shirt, you need to wait until I reactive them Sunday night/Monday morning. (they are reactivated)

All orders from this point forward will be mailed on Tuesday the 2nd.

LotFP Quick Primer #5

Primer #1
Primer #2
Primer #3
Primer #4

(#5 is on the blog and not G+ because it's got lots of pictures!)

LotFP Quick Primer #5: Men Versus Women

Depictions of women in gaming material (and how gamers treat women in real-life) is a frequent topic of discussion these days, and LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing seems to be frequently brought up as one of those games that gets it wrong.

One of the main sources of this belief is this Something Awful review. I'd sent the Grindhouse box set to them hoping they'd do exactly what they did - make a comedy review of the game (it's what they do) and highlight some of the art. This would give it exposure and thus attract those who like the grindhouse aesthetic and help make sure people who didn't like it knew enough to stay away.

I was extremely happy with the review and still believe it was an important step to selling the thousands of copies (yes, plural) of the Grindhouse Edition in print and PDF.

But people seem to have taken the cherrypicked art (of course they'd use the "worst of the worst" in a comedy review) used there, and looked at the "Alright, I picked this image and the next two images out because I wanted to demonstrate that as violent as this book is in general, it has a definite fascination with the violent deaths of women." line as representative of the art direction of LotFP as a whole.

For the record, men suffering violence outnumbers the women suffering violence even in SA's review by more than 2-to-1 (which goes even more lopsided in the full Grindhouse set art). All of the women suffering such violence are adventuring/competent types suffering the consequences of being adventuring types, and none are tied down/naked/crying as it happens, which is the case with some of the depictions of men suffering violence.

General guidelines for LotFP art direction include:

No "random" cheesecake. People wear the clothes that makes sense for their situation.

Racy material shall not hide or pretend to be anything other than what it is and "racy material" means more than just naked women.

All of my protagonist Player Character stand-in "iconic" characters are women. And they are never cheesecaked up.

 

As far as the writing goes, my own writing uses male pronouns as the singular generic standard. It's just what I'm comfortable with and always understood as "correct." Writing "he and she" and "him and her" everywhere just seems like ugly looking writing to me, and I'm not threatening to overtake Vance in beautiful prose as it is.

But this is not a constant throughout LotFP releases. Zak uses the "he and she" style writing in Vornheim, and Ken Hite assumes a woman as the generic Referee in Qelong. As with many things in LotFP, it's about the individual author's style.

In hiring freelancers, Cynthia Sheppard has done many covers and other art pieces, including the box set (and new reprint covers). Women have been involved in the art from the very beginning (the early releases' art was, cartography aside, done entirely by women), and there's been a long list of women I've worked with for art these past few years. The qualifications needed for an artist: "Is your work awesome? Can I afford you?" That's about it.

We haven't done so well having women writing material. Several women were involved in last year's crowdfunding efforts, but they didn't get funded, and there is one woman-written project in development but the completion of that one is entirely up to the author. I don't accept many product pitches (backlog is bad enough as it is and resources are stretched to the max, this being small publishing), but I'm always up for receiving pitches that fit in with LotFP no matter who it's from.

Bottom line is that LotFP is a horror game and it's going to show you horrific images and present horrific situations and they're going to involve men, women, and children and absolutely nothing is off the table.

Not even vagina monsters mounting corpses while an Englishman dressed up all Asian-like tries to look away but just can't.

(comments can be left here)

The Seven

(comments can go here)