Free Comic Book OSR Resource & DYI Weird Horror OSR Gaming For Long Term Campaigning Involving The Lamentations Of The Flame Princess rpg

City of the Living Dead is an Avon Periodicals one shot, and its a perfect public domain campaign venue. This horror adventure comic makes a perfect venue for a modern weird horror adventure for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure setting and source book.


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Right out of the gate you get everything you need for a South American 1950's or alternative Earth weird horror adventure in the old school tradition. This includes the opening lurid splash page.

 This is one of those settings that exists as a sort of border or fringe other dimensional location that the locals know about and don't bother with. You've got all of the makings of a perfect adventure mega dungeon or nega dungeon location to add right into a modern game. I can hear the wailing about the lack of modern fire arms and technology, check with the OSR library of  David Bay Miller. There are several reasons why Quetana The City of the Living Dead makes a perfect LoFP location.

• Pirate legend background along with Aztec gold connections, like many of the published LoFP adventure locations Quetana The City of the Living Dead is unique.
• The treasure is still there and its completely guarded, who knows how many levels there are to the city and its dungeons.
• Quetana The City of the Living Dead seems to be the sort of location that transcends time and space with a lovely and horrid place to stage repeated visits. This also means that the  The City of the Living Dead could find its way into other place such as the post apocalyptic wastelands or a sword and sorcery vibe.
• Not unlike other LoFP its deity is on site and watches over the place insuring that its minions are perfectly pitched and ready to go should the need arise. 
• The evil of Quetana The City of the Living Dead's ghoul curse and disease can easily spread to other civilizations. Perhaps if its evil spreads then PC's might have to go there for a possible cure. 
• I dig the weird Indiana Jones meets Tales From the Crypt vibe of  The City of the Living Dead
  
  The Great Quetzal Aztec God of Justice is a god of undeath and law, a perfect minor alien god to throw into OSR adventures. He could easily be adapted by clerics as a patron style god and not something to be taken lightly at all. For my own campaigns I'd use him as a minor god of Law with connections to the Beyond.  Given his treatment of the Martins, I'd say that he's got some stiff competition from the Demonic powers of the Beyond. 
  
  
  But this isn't the only story in City Of The Living Death worth taking a look at, Glistening Death has three things worth noting. 
  

  • A unique monster easily fleshed out that can menace parties of adventurers for years to come.
  • Lots of gold and treasure for the greedy and a potential for a cult of horror that can be build into and fleshed out for lots of potential.
  • A tie in that will work with certain monstrous aspects of Carcosa or Lusus Naturae.
    
    Finally rounding out this issue is the Witches Come At Midnight story.
    • Lots of potential here including introducing aspects of the summon spell to a modern style adventure setting. Weird mutated birds, plenty of cult potential, and the possible introduction of a minor demon lord. If this was a LoFP adventure the family would be slaughtered and the adventurers would stumble upon the remains. And who exactly is this minor demon lord that makes his devil impersonation in the story? Or is this actually a sorcerer whose delved too far into the powers of darkness and played around with black forces?
      

 So how is City of the Living Dead good for long term campaigning? Well there are several reasons to go this route with LoFP. The skills and encumbrance rules are top notch, the fact is that the system is easy to adapt for a number of venues and the potential for a one shot developing into a full campaign is perfectly suited in this type of setting. This style of campaign might not be to everyone's liking but the potential for a long term campaign set in a modern era using LoFP is something I've been tossing around for some time.   I'm always on the lookout for old school public domain campaign resources and on occasion I've stumbled upon a real gem. In this case we've got a perfect 1952 public domain comic book from the Avon comic book company.Avon is was one of those comic & publishing houses  that always seemed to be a cut above the rest when I've read about them in the past.According to Wiki : Avon Books was founded in 1941 by the American News Corporation (ANC) to create a rival to Pocket Books. They hired brother and sister Joseph Meyers and Edna Meyers Williams to establish the company. ANC bought out J.S. Ogilvie Publications, a pulp magazine publisher partly owned by both the Meyers, and renamed it "Avon Publications". They also got into comic books. "The early Avons were somewhat similar in appearance to the existing paperbacks of Pocket Books, resulting in an immediate and largely ineffective lawsuit by that company. Despite this superficial similarity, though, from early on Meyers differentiated Avon by placing an emphasis on popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit."^[1] The first 40 titles were not numbered. First editions of the first dozen or so have front and rear endpapers with an illustration of a globe. The emphasis on "popular appeal" led Avon to publish ghost stories, sexually-suggestive love stories, fantasy novels and science fiction in its early years, which were far removed in audience appeal from the somewhat more literary Pocket competition.' Kinda fitting since its HP Lovecraft's birthday today, because,'as well as normal-sized paperbacks, Avon published digest-format paperbacks (the size and shape of the present-day Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) in series. These included Murder Mystery Monthly, Modern Short Story Monthly and Avon Fantasy Readers. Many authors highly prized by present-day collectors were published in these editions, including A. Merritt, James M. Cain, H. P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler and Robert E. Howard.'

All in all I think that City of The Living Dead is a pretty good addition to my arsenal of tools for LoFP and other OSR games. There's plenty of potential for long term and weird horror games with this style of adventure.  More coming up.