Reviewing All Eight New Lamentations of the Flame Princess Books: Part 0

Lamentations of the Flame Princess recently released eight new products in their latest "wave" of material. I don't really want my blog to be a "review" blog, but, after sitting with these books for a few months now, there is just so much to say about them that I feel like I will probably explode Arnold-Schwarzenegger-at-the-end-of-Total-Recall style unless I push out some kind of review. After going back and forth on how I want to do this, I thought the best way would be to push out a different post for each book going in order from my most favorite of the books to my least favorite.—the intent here is to release these posts rather quickly, but considering what a slow writer I am, we'll see how that goes.

There is quite a variety to these books, with some being the very best that LotFP has ever put out and some er... less so. Digging through the strata of LotFP releases, I've noticed three distinct "periods" of materials. Let’s call the early stuff the “grindhouse period” with adventures like Death Frost Doom—still generic fantasy, but several degrees darker than the mainstream. Next, there’s the “auteur period” with its bold, idiosyncratic books from major OSR creators such as Veins of the Earth, Broodmother Skyfortress, and Scenic Dunnsmouth. The previous release cycle with Big Puppet and Fermentum and this new release cycle represent the beginning of what I’m calling LotFP’s “Baroque period.” Baroque in the sense of its emphasis on the Baroque era setting and Baroque as in the original meaning of the word—a misshapen pearl.

These new books really embrace the default 17th century setting, carefully wrapping themselves around the events of the 30 Years War. While the books do give plenty enough historical information to run the adventure, I found that being familiar with the 30 Years War to be helpful in understanding the mindset of the period—I’d really recommend the wonderful book 30 Years War by C. V. Wedgewood. The pointlessness of the war hangs over the adventures. All too human horrors are metamorphosed through the alchemy of game design to the merely supernatural.

These books are significantly more Weird in the H. P. Lovecraft/Clark Ashton Smith/Ron E. Howard/Arthur Machen sense than anything else the OSR is currently producing (gonzo is not the same thing as weird, folks). The 17th century is a great setting for the Weird—there is a built-in tension between true numinous spirituality (and/or the bleakness of God’s absence) with the quotidian politics of those who use religion for political leverage. The Weird manifests as a product of this tension.

Overall, the books don’t really feel very “OSR-ish,” tending more towards free-form investigative-type adventures rather than the usual OSR dungeon crawls. The adventures very pointedly do not have much in the way of treasure or magic items. There’s no hex crawls, no point crawls, no distractingly flashy graphic design, no unnecessary bullet points. A great example of how LotFP is willing to buck trends in favor what actually works for the book—as far as I’m aware,  Lamentations of the Flame Princess was the company that popularized the OSR practice including important information on the endpapers. A great glut of books have blindly followed suit, but even this trend is bucked with this latest release cycle–instead opting for simpler patterned endpapers. Rather than relying on the standard OSR stylistic shortcuts, these books lean purely on the strengths of writing, art, and presentation. Some succeed quite well, others less so. There’s no experience points for your players here, only the ecstasy and the horror of uncovering something that was hidden.

These aren’t OSR books, they’re post-OSR.

Let’s review some books, shall we? First review is coming soon!