Lamentation Sales-O-Mania

Earlier this month our favorite Finnish iconoclast and free-thinker put on a massive Lamentations of the Flame Princess sale.  I haven't kept up with all of JR-4's latest releases so this was a perfect opportunity to add new books - I picked up a dozen or so recent PDFs.  Some are going to become LOTFP classics - I've had fun reading.  Kelvin the Green Machine is a workhorse over there.

I heard about the sale on Facebook, and saw that it was a response to bad actors in the RPG space targeting Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  A JR-4 video popped onto my YouTube feed - I watched several of his videos from the past year. 

The YouTube videos offer a troubling lens into the personal toll the industry persecution has put on our favorite prophet of the weird.  Video is a powerful medium, it offers rare intimacy, letting you experience the creator behind the byline.  James has had to deal with an overwhelming amount of crap for championing an artistic vision - gatekeeping, bans, and now freelancers getting dumped due to mere association.  I don't like to swear on the blog, it's lowbrow, but fuck all the book banners and their ilk.  It's a topical concern for Americans; you may have noticed we're having a moment over here.  It's maddening.

I may be currently running a classic Gygaxian Greyhawk game, but am very much aligned to the LOTFP project of mixing horror and weirdness into fantasy gaming.  I appreciate works that subvert worn tropes and push the boundaries of what our games can do and be.  Not everything they do over at the House of the Flame Princess is to my taste.  TSR had plenty of stinkers in their day, too.  But I support the creative freedom to try new things and see what works.  Our hobby is more interesting for it.

So what can I do to highlight what's going well over in Lamentations-land?  To that end I'm going to review the entire LOTFP catalog, at least one per week.  Granted, this is a half-dead blog, so it's not exactly the most life-changing way to get attention for a publisher doing good, interesting work, but hey, that's what I got here.  I think I own 75% of the LOTFP stuff anyway so it won't be a great stretch to acquire the stragglers.  I've been a fan ever since Death Frost Doom turned a section of Greyhawk into a zombie wasteland, and my group still talks about surviving those early Lamentations adventures to this day.  Let's find out what other treasures are hiding out in the LOTFP catalog.