So we belayed 13th Age for a bit to try out the new playtest rules for Lamentations of the Flame Princess last night starting the new World of the Lost module from Rafael Chandler. There IS confusion around the new rules, since it’s no longer JUST a better version of B/X, there are some biggish changes, and I’m not sure I like all of them yet (hence playtesting which will round off the burrs), so let’s see how it goes.
Main things are:
- Everyone has some random skills, specialists have more skills that they can choose
- There are fighting ‘styles’ now and Fighters can use all of them
- Saving throws are different and use D6’s
- All spells can be cast at first level. This makes things a bit crazy because now spells can go awry (a la Warhammer Fantasy Battle/Roleplay).
Session stuff
Characters:
- Rainer Keeling – Magic User (1 hp)
- Van Hagan – Specialist (tinker, bushcraft)
- Udo Quatellbaum – Fighter with a man catcher
- Bernard Dreu – Fighter (I’m glad matt picked a good name this time)
- Anton Schleiss – Magic User
- Isaac Netherwood – Specialist (languages)!
The characters joined a ship’s crew in Cornwall under one Richard Trower who sold them on the idea of heading over the ocean to Africa, finding the city of Khirima all for a hoard of the “Negro silver!” After months on a boat and weeks of travel from the Portuguese port of Lagos along with a Portuguese caravan, they made it to Khirima and settled in to start to look for the silver. Trower took 6 Germans from the crew and went off, supposedly to meet a contact and then come back the next morning– and that was a week ago. While they waited, they stayed on the down low but got some rumors from the tavern.
As money ran short, the characters talked about what to do and decided to leave the tavern they were at to search the city for trace of Trower or the Germans. When they did so, they were approached by an obviously sick and recently beaten Portuguese brass caster (who was with them on the caravan from Lagos) who kept repeating: “they put a disease in me.” He told them that since Trower was now ‘gone’ THEY had to fulfill his debt for the crime he committed by fulfilling a task for ‘them’. They were to protect a caravan from attack while also murdering a noble that would be a long with it. They were suspicious and tasked the Portuguese hard but he only had so much information.
When he wandered off, they followed him into the Royal district, where he dropped dead while walking. After being accosted by guards (Leopards) and a barber surgeon who noticed them following the man (as Europeans stick out quite a bit in Khirima), they dragged the body off, dumped it in an alleyway and high tailed it back to the tavern. It was only a Portuguese anyway right?
They decided to scout the caravan they needed to guard the night before departure, but couldn’t find it, and then headed back to the tavern where they caroused. Someone slipped them something in their drinks and they woke up in the jungle tied to stones by vines with something crawling towards them screaming.
Welcome to Africa!
Of note, the characters were constantly exposed to languages during this short session, so there were rolls for Hausa, German, Portuguese and nearly French as well. The linguist specialist speaks nearly ALL of the languages they will encounter during this game and I tell you that helps. I wasn’t sure what to do with languages since with a normal party, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone except via hand signs, with a linguist specialist, they have it made.
World of the Lost is pretty fucking badass, got to run it more, but so far: recommended.