OSR Commentary On The Lamentable Companion By Andrew Marrington From Grimm Aramil Publishing for The Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg

The Lamentable Companion By Andrew Marrington From Grimm Aramil Publishing works really well for The Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg. But it also works well for other OSR games. And one of the systems from it that I've used with other OSR games is the Demonic pact rules including the player character respawn system. Each time a character comes back from the brink between death  & the demonic dimensions they gain a derangement. Why? Because their in the body of another occultist or cult member who pledged to thier demonic patron. 

In this case it's been the Red Room's Wretched Époque game that we ran some months ago. The cult that our group ran into consisted of  worshipers of a particlarly heinious demon in the outback of the Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833). One thing led to another & the cult's leader was killed or so we thought. In actuality the leader came back in the body of another cult member. 

Things went from bad to worse though as the cult's leader released the seals on a portal to the Great Beyond unleashing a demon that resulted on the  destructive Galilee earthquake causes 6,000–7,000 casualties in Ottoman Syria.
The PC's barely got out alive from the area & had to go back to New York City to the Ghoul Market to have a resurrection performed. This information can be found in Red Moon Medicine Show issue one available here.   The body was preserved in pickle barrel & the resurrection cost the party a major spell book. 

So now the party is back home licking their wounds & planning their next forray aganst the villian. I'm going to dive back into raiding some of my Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg resources coming up. 

Review and Commentary On Vacant Ritual Assembly #5 By Full Moon Medicine Show For Lamentations of The Flame Princess Campaigns & Your Own Old School Campaigns

Right out of the gate Red Moon Medicine Show continues to impress me with their Lamentations of The Flame Princess fanzine, Vacant Ritual Assembly issue #5 which is going to be the last one for awhile now. At least until Klint Crouse and his crew decide to do another issue. So let's dive right into the pdf of this issue.
GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

This is a pretty jam packed issue with lots of factions and content the pdf is perfectly timed out to use and drop right into the deep end of your Lamentations games.

Issue #5 Includes:

New Artwork from Jeremy Duncan, Aaron Hamric, Olli Hihnala, Sean Poppe, and Xolis

Koster's Knob: A ready-to-use halfling village by Judd Karlman.

Weedwise Wizarding: An accounting of the Knob's more popular strains of pipe weed. New "Pipe Arts" skill.

The Ritualist: A new LotFP character class framework by Kathryn Jenkins.

Unholy Inversion of Hope:  A grimdark, psuedo-Catholic religion from my campaign.

The Sineater Wolves: A heretical order of lycanthropic monks. Rules for lycanthropy.

On The Raggi: An interview with James Raggi IV, author of Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

This fanzine is like a shot in the arm of old school Pre code horror comics fun and games for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess blended with a fine coating of David Lynch and Mario Bava  splatter punk sensibilities. This is followed by  a ready to drop in Halfling village for your campaigns and its a quality adventure setting piece. I don't want to spoil it but its very nicely done. Weedwise wizarding is that herbal gardening and popular pass time of the Halflings including new skills, strains, and high weirdness for LoFP this is another thing that Dragon Magazine sort of hinted about. But here the adult pass times of the Halflings are revealed.
The Ritualist is a welcome addition to the pseudo historical and Gothic brand of adventuring of LoFP but could work in other old school OD&D style games. There plenty of room here to twist and bend this class to your home games to make it work but I liked what I saw.
The Unholy Inversion of Hope is a shot in the arm and a very grim and nasty piece of pseudo Catholic styling of a religion. The piece drips with lots of potential to be a giant factional pain for characters and PC's. There's also plenty of fodder here for further NPC's and adventure hooks. These are guys your going to love to hate.

I absolutely love the Sin Eater Wolves! Finally some decent rules for Lycanthropy and a heretical order of monks to boot! I'm a werewolf kinda guy and and this faction really hits the spot. There is enough adventure meet on the bones to really bring these guys home and with a bit of work they can be a perfect addition to a Red and Pleasantland campaign. Lots of adventure fodder and further bits of wonderfulness to add into any old school OD&D style game. This for me was one of the highlights of issue five.
Another interview with James Raggi and a nice in depth piece on the creator of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I honestly have to say that Full Moon continues to produce some of the best pieces of gaming material for Lamentations outside of official releases from Raggi and company. Five out of five stars for a very well put together fanzine that you can use all kinds of horror related LofP or OSR games.

Unboxing & Commentary On The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem Adventure For The Lamentations Of The Flame Princess rpg Systems & Your Old School Campaigns

This is the actual adventure I received, the small independently produced modules continue to impress and amaze me. This adventure is wonderfully twisted and produced. 

I received a copy of The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem from the folks at  Red Moon Medicine Show, if you've never heard of this adventure nor Full Moon Medicine Show then you don't know what your missing.
Klint Crouse is a damn fine writer whose OSR  drug of choice is the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess rpg system. Klint's module is engaging, challenging, and damn fine in what it does.

The book is wonderful, its well put together, the artwork echoes the weird adventure locations that are presented in the book. Red Moon Medicine show ran a very successful Kickstarter for this adventure a few months ago and once again I'm late to the party on this one. We always hear about the negative Kickstarters well, let me tell you that this is exactly what the Kickstarter program is for. Producing weird and wonderful unique adventure modules for the OSR. There are three things that this module does well :

1. It presents an adventure location with its own rules and consistency as well as reasons for existence. This module echoes many of the current Lamentations design philosophies and yet wraps back around to the early LoFP modules as well. You can easily drop this place into a country or small town campaign or urban setting.
2. This module drips with atmosphere as good as the nicer Ravenloft or old school modules. Jesus the maps are gorgeous.  
3. I'm both jealous and amazed at Red Moon Medicine show's creativity. Because the way that this module can be plugged into a campaign and played with is amazing.Take one twisted fairy tale and then let the folks at Red Moon Medicine Show get a hold of it and you end up with something like  The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem.
   
   
   So yeah, blah, blah, it's excellent but is it actually playable? Well as a matter of fact its not only playable but it's a non rail roadie adventure location that can be dropped right into the back half of your old school campaigns. See the garden and all of its environs are just waiting for adventurers to stumble upon it. There are is a table of rumors in the back of the book that would allow adventurers to get themselves neck deep into the action of  The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem. The module has all of the components that I've come to love about LoFP adventures. The utility of them, and  The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem is no different in that regard. You see with a bit of work this adventure could be back ported into a wide variety of OSR systems. One nice thing about  The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem its a self enclosed and encompassing within its own parameters. The locations are perfect for any level of party because this adventure is about investigation,adventuring, and the weird. The weird is present throughout the Garden and it doesn't care about your adventurers or their foolishness. Its got its own thing that its doing within the garden and its going to drag you into its clutches kicking and screaming. 

 We know that the Gardens easily work within the confines of a Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign but where else could this adventure work?

You place The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem within a retroclone game like Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea but would it work there? Yes, the adventure location & grounds could be placed in behind a waterfall in on the other side of the river Yys. The adventurers stumble upon it and mayhem ensues. This adventure should stand on its own, as an adventure location it deserves this and its mechanisms should continue to work on a number of levels the contents should give you a clue what's in store for adventurers.


Yeah, I don't want to go into too much detail on some of the adventure elements in the Gardens but its sufficient to say that the Red Moon Medicine crew hit the high points in this adventure. This one has plenty of potential in spades of actually back fitting it into any OD&D game that flirts with the weird but I can tell you that hack and slash players are going to ruin it for the rest of the party. This is a bit of a thinking man's adventure not boring but there are several twists and turns that are going to do the players for a wee bit of thinking. This also means that the weird elements could be adapted to other retro or near clone systems. Yes that's right kids many of the elements in The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem could be used in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game campaign with the focus on the type of weird tale that Red Moon Medicine show is famous for emulating. In the end do I think you should grab this module? Umm yes in spades because I'm very proud to have it on my shelf and on my table. The adventure's author summed up best some of ideas and design philosophies of The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem. Abelia Prem was one very twisted lady. Happy exploring adventurers.