In praise of Lamentations (LotFP)

I recommended Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) to someone online and they asked what's so special about it.

I had already compared it to other similar systems here:

Famous for its gory, mature, bloody art and themes, and some interesting adventures, but for me the rules are the best part: well organized, streamlined, and even somewhat rebalanced. Seems inspired by Mentzer's B/E. It strays a bit further from Basic than any of the ones mentioned above, but still roughly compatible. I find most of the changes (cleric, turn undead, 1d6 thief skills, encumbrance, the summon spell, etc.) very positive and preferable to the original rules and other clones. The basic rules do not contain anything explicit or gory except for one spell (summon) that might cause sexual violence. Free version here.

As you can see, there is a free version; if you prefer, go read the book instead of this little overview! The version with art is also worth it (if you are not discouraged by some blood and gore)

Notice I do not run LotFP, but my own game, Dark Fantasy Basic, with a few updates.

But if you want to know why I like LotFP, here are some my favorite aspects.

The fighter gets +1 "to hit" per level and a few simple combat maneuvers. Other classes do not get any bonus after level 1, which I dislike but at the same time admire for its radical simplicity. 

Clerics and magic-users can use swords, however, which I like.

Clerics get to choose turn undead as a spell; it is not an intrinsic ability anymore. A cleric takes many hours to prepare spells - as many as the highest level spell being prepared. They deserve the nerfing IMO.

The magic-users start with read magic plus three random spells, and gains ONE new random spell per level. This is perfect IMO. Notice the simplicity: the fighter gets +1 to-hit, the MU gets one new spell, etc.

The MU can still get other spells through research, scrolls, etc. Spells like fireball, which I dislike, are simply removed. The summon spell is expanded (to 10 pages!) to generate random creatures that the MU cannot always control - and it can be used from level 1!

The specialist is probably the most interesting class: he has the same 1-in-6 chances that most other classes have to perform certain feats/skills, but he gets skill points each level to distribute as he wishes between stealth, climb, search, etc. Sneak attack is also a skill - having 4 points means you QUADRUPLE damage. There are ten skills, which sounds about right to me.

Overall, the rules of the game are simplified and well organized. I like most of the options the author takes (simplified encumbrance, silver standard, simplified weapons, streamlined attribute modifiers from -3 to +3, a few combat maneuvers, etc.), and they are very adequate to the "dark fantasy" genre I enjoy so much.

There are a few things I'd change, of course (combat feels less deadly than most B/X games for several reasons, I dislike the usual 5 saving throws, would like to give the fighter more tools to play with, or more customization in general - no multi-classing here, etc.), but this is just me.

The rules are both SIMPLE and feel COMPLETE, which is hard to do. The spells go to level 9, characters go to level 20 and beyond. There are innumerable small tweaks that improve the usual B/X rules, too many to analyse.

If I were to run a OSR dark fantasy game I didn't write - and couldn't change a thing - this is one I might use.

So, while I don't run LotFP, I have run several modules - Qelong (awesome), Better Than Any Man (which is very good and FREE!), The god that crawls (review here), etc. 

I don't think it is useful to make generalizations (well, I've made a few here) - some are great, some are bad, look for reviews here or elsewhere. In this post, I just wanted to talk about the basic rules.

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