Flame Princess 2.0

I see a rash of bloggers also recently got their Finnish boxes bearing the latest edition of Weird Fantasy Role Playing - mine came in Saturday, so I've had a chance to peruse the books and amaze the players with the new shiny.

At first I was a bit stunned by the size - I didn't have anything digest-sized before.  I thought maybe the books got transmitted from Finland in Wonkavision, miniaturizing the dice along with them.  Where's my Oompah-Loompah to stretch them to normal size?  But now that I've had them a few days, the digest size is growing on me - they're easy to read and carry around, and won't take up much room on the table.

Really nice job on the printing - the paper is a good weight, feels really durable.  I like the practical charts on the back cover of the books.  I find I'm looking for utility in my gaming books more and more - save the artsy fartsy stuff, I want usefulness at the table.  This release has a nod in both directions.  I'll be digesting the actual rules changes from version 1.0 in more detail over the next few weeks as I read over them - I've warned my players there's a good chance the Black City campaign will be adjusted to work with Flame Princess 2.0 (certainly seems like a popular choice in the current poll).  I think the big thing will be pouring over the revised spell lists and figuring out how much they change the default assumptions in a D&D setting around the power of magic - no flying wizards raining down fireballs and lightning bolts, for instance.  Otherwise, the revised XP charts, the new skill progression for demihumans, all those seem like reasonable refinements players will appreciate.

I do have a warning for other purchasers - I'd recommend the 1st class shipping from Finland.  My shipping carton looked like it was used as a soccer ball by the Finnish or US post office and the stuff inside was a little beat up.