In September 2017 we presented the Bundle of Lamentations +2, our second offer (a follow-up to the July 2016 original) featuring the gorgeously horrific weird fantasy RPG Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. With a heavy-metal attitude and explicit non-work-safe illustrations, LotFP presents a sinister and grotesque twist on fantasy gaming. A Lamentations scenario shrivels your heart with cosmic terror while also, not incidentally, grinding your character into mincemeat. But for fearless gamers who are over 18 and have strong stomachs, the Lamentations line embodies some of the hobby’s most imaginative work from leading designers.
LotFP‘s merciless attitude comes out of heavy metal, Clive Barker, and the ultra-violent supernatural thrillers of Dario Argento: Anything goes, wild as hell, go for the throat. You could call it “horror fantasy,” but this isn’t about vampires or serial killers. LotFP is largely about forces from beyond our awareness causing great distress. Many fantasy RPGs establish dungeons that are supposedly dangerous (“no one has ever returned”), and then the player characters waltz in and kill everything. But LotFP dungeons are seriously dangerous — as in, “You’re Definitely Going To Die Down Here, No Really.” Touch something the wrong way and you’re hosed, or sometimes you trigger an apocalypse.
In a metagame sense these doomed journeys teach players caution. They’re “nega-dungeons”; they exist for the purpose of you not going there, and if you do, you’ve already lost. A place like this can help your campaign. As Evan Jeshka wrote in a November 2014 entry on this blog, “Welcome to Death Frost Doom, Now Turn Around and Go Away“: “It adds grit and verisimilitude, and reminds you you’re in a world that exists for its own purposes, not to feed you experience and treasure.”
The first Bundle of Lamentations was our top-grossing offer of 2016. This second collection — our top-selling offer in Bundle of Holding history — presented many recent scenarios — several of which won ENnie Awards this year — plus a few older books we omitted from the first offer because (to be totally candid) we were afraid. These books are, no kidding, potentially very offensive to — well — potentially just about anybody. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
There were eight titles in our Weird Starter Collection (retail value $62.50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:
- Blood in the Chocolate (retail price $8): A magically horrific candy factory and its enigmatic, bloodthirsty proprietor. 2017 ENnie Gold Award for Best Adventure.
- Carcosa (retail $15): A weird-fantasy setting of dark and loathsome sorcery.
- Isle of the Unknown and Dungeon of the Unknown (retail $11): An island hexcrawl that fits easily in any campaign, and a dungeon that explores some of its many mysteries.
- The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time (retail $8): A reality-warping (and character-warping) entity drives an experience of cosmic horror. [Previously presented in the November 2013 Old School Revival offer.]
- Death Frost Doom Second Edition (retail $7.50): The anniversary edition, fully revised with all-new artwork, of the controversial adventure that launched Lamentations of the Flame Princess. [Previously in the November 2014 Old School Revival +2.]
- Lamentations of the Flame Princess Rules & Magic Full Version (retail price $5): The complete core rulebook by James Raggi of weird-cosmic-metal fantasy. Includes the introductory adventure Tower of the Stargazer (retail $6). [Also in the original July 2016 Bundle of Lamentations.]
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Appalling Bonus Collection with nine more titles worth an additional $73:
- Veins of the Earth (retail $20): The massive treatise on the underworld environment by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess (Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Deep Carbon Observatory). 2017 ENnie Silver Awards, Best Writing and Best Monster. “An amazing work.” — China Miéville
- Broodmother Skyfortress (retail $10): A super-awesome, fantastic, and friendly adventure/campaign design kit by Jeff Rients, Arch-Mage of the Old School. (Note: This one isn’t appalling.) 2017 ENnie Awards – Judges Selection.
- Towers Two (retail $10): An unspeakably raunchy sandbox campaign co-designed by heavy metal musician Dave Brockie, AKA Oderus Urungus of Gwar. Truly not-safe-for-work (and maybe -life).
- No Salvation for Witches (retail $10): A gleefully gory adventure in 1620 England by Rafael Chandler (Pandemonio). Did we mention most of these books are adults-only?
- Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess (retail $5): A village of gumdrops and candy canes run by fairies and teddy bears. Absolutely not for children.
- Monolith walkthrough poster (free): A brand-new poster-size image — debuting in this offer and available in .PDF nowhere else — recounting an imagined playthrough of The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time (in this offer’s Starter Collection) by Jason B. Thompson, well known for his D&D map walkthroughs.
- The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem (retail $5): Seek a black flower in an abandoned mansion in this eerie location-based module by Clint Krause of Vacant Ritual Assembly.
- Qelong (retail $8): A trek across a cosmic battlefield from Kenneth Hite (Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents). (Previously in our November 2014 Old School Revival +2.)
- The Roots of Bitterness (retail $5): An introductory scenario by Zzarchov Kowolski about evil trees on a Russian-Mongolian steppe. Retail price notwithstanding, this module was available exclusively in this offer and nowhere else.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to the charity designated by Lamentations publisher James Raggi, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
