Sunday, August 6, 2023

They Are Not As Noble As They Seem - Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and Original Dungeons & Dragons

 "What you get is a clear and focused restatement of the Basic D&D rules focused on what those rules do best: survival horror. But unlike the high fantasy safari of Dungeons & Dragons, LotFP Weird Fantasy concentrates on desperate treasure hunters hailing from a grimy replica of our own planet in the Renaissance/early modern period, where magic is a dreadful aberration and ne'er-do-wells who rob tombs and chance brushes with unknown horrors are shunned." 
John Q.Public Amazon Review 2019 Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg 



There was a time right around 2015 or so when Lamentations of The Flame Princess became a bit too main stream for my taste. LoFP has gone back into it's 'game whose name we can't talk about status' and that's fine with me. Reading further into John Q Public's December 2019 review; "Each place where Weird Fantasy differs from Mentzer's Basic D&D really doubles down on the game's weird survival horror vision. Characters have 3 Alignments as in Basic—Neutral, Law, and Chaos—but it represents your character's role in a cosmic conflict regardless of their moral outlook. Certain classes are polarized by Alignment: Clerics must be Lawful, and Magic-Users and Elves must be Chaotic. Furthermore, the rules otherwise treat Elves as inhuman monsters, making them vulnerable to holy water and certain spells cast by Clerics." 


Call me old fashioned but Elves in my mind for Weird Fantasy should absolutely alien. And other OSR games such as Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Secrets of the Nethercity takes the Elven/Chaos connection even further. We get an Elven empire that subcombed to the terrors of Chaos with  the ancient elven empire coming  to life with the Elven Cultist, Elven Hierophant, Elven Warlord, and Elven Wizard.























And this picks up steam with Rpg Pundit's Lion & Dragon where the Elves are an ancient malevolent force of nature from the time of the Pagan gods. Giving the Elves of traditional D&D fame a Fairy like malevolence is right in line with many of the legends and Fairy tale mythological connections. There's always been something very weird and dangerous about the Elven race of original Dungeons & Dragons fame. 'The too perfect, we're better at everything, and we're almost but not quite perfect' vibe of the Elven race. Elves literally are the 'other' to humanity and perhaps were an early precursor to us. And there for dangerous. 



And this goes back to 1974's Original Dungeons & Dragons supplement Greyhawk. If we look at the Wiki entry on the Greyhawk Supplement; "Greyhawk instead focused on new game rules that had been developed by Gygax and Kuntz during long hours of home play. The 68-page supplement also introduced new character classes (thief and paladin),[4][5] as well as new combat rules, spells, monsters, and treasures.[4] Greyhawk included new rules on weapon damage varying by weapon. The supplement added new treasure and magic items, and new spells, including 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells. The supplement also included a section on monsters, introducing the lizard menbeholdersdisplacer beasts, blink dogs, carrion crawlers, and many others". We really start to see the foundation of original Dungeons & Dragons forming from Gygax's and Kuntz's home campaigns. But there's something weirdly alien about the world setting that original Dungeons & Dragons was forming. And this isn't a bad thing just very alien. 
And among those alien monsters and races were the Elves. 


Now recently we started plugging back into these themes of alieness, the other, the outsider, and more into several other OSR games. The Elven mercenaries & sell swords who are far more problematic then thier worth. The image of Elric of Melibone by Michael Moorcock immediately springs to mind here. 























Demon haunted Elven communities & ancient cities on some long forgotten coast of Europe or Greenland immediately springs to mind here. Ancient Elven legendary sword masters and dragon riders now only myth and legend are told in whispers. Tales of children snatched and raised as one of thier own whose ears are pointed by long exposure to strange radiations and forbidden magics are told around camp fires. 
All of these were told when the Ice were coming down from the top of the world to claim thier lands and the cities of Man were being crushed beneath the coming ice walls. 

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