*** ***
Role playing games have been around near thirty years now, and the trend has been for fancier packaging, and more complicated gaming systems. The LotFP: RPG is designed to take the effort out of gaming, and the cost out of the game materials.
What exactly does hardcover binding and full color illustrations have to do with gaming? When it comes down to it, a gamer wants to game, and having 200 page books with a hard cover, large text, big margins, and color printing on every page does not do anything to enhance the gaming experience. Sure, they look good on the bookshelf, but none of those things enhance the game itself. What are you paying for? There are plenty of $20 to $30 role-playing books on the shelves in the LotFP offices, and a lot of them are really nice, but it certainly didn't make the games any better! LotFP: RPG is designed to be bare bones in presentation, resulting in inexpensive products for gamers.
The second problem that has plagued the industry is that the games are way too complicated. To play a new game, you had to read hundreds of pages to get the idea of what the rules were. Even as 'universal' systems took hold, they still required sourcebook after sourcebook after sourcebook to get everything you need to run a complete game. And in the end, there are always far too many charts and dice rolling and rules that get in the way of role playing games. This isn't math class, and RPGs lose the heroics when everything is ultra detailed and/or realistic (and RPGs then will turn around and cancel out 'realism' in terms of 'game balance', making the rules go against common sense). The LotFP: RPG system is designed to be concise and intuitive.
The third issue that the LotFP system corrects is the issue of characters who can defeat world beating menaces, becoming detached from the game world itself. If a party of characters can face down a dragon in its lair, being mugged by two experienced hoods armed with knives isn't even a cause for concern, causing scenarios to turns into an escalating arms race to challenge more experienced characters. This leaves behind basic storylines as characters 'outgrow' them. Such things make a role playing campaign more unrealistic as time goes on.
As a role-player since fourth grade, there are things I notice that are universal to all games, that I hope to correct with LotFP: RPG. One is the emphasis on combat in role-playing games, and players thinking of their characters in purely combat terms, and coveting all the goodies that allow their character to be more successful in combat. Game rules therefore cater to this, making combat more detailed over time, and taking up more and more time at the gaming table during combat situations. Realizing that combat situations are very important and that making sure different situations do matter in combat, a prime goal of LotFP: RPG is to make combat very streamlined and not time-consuming at all. In dealing with friends, I've described trying to make combat as uninvolved for the player (certainly not their character!) as having his character pick a lock. While even a streamlined combat system can't be that simple, the important points of combat are: Who wins? How hurt are the participants? The idea is that a decent amount of combat situations can be resolved with two die rolls.
Combat will be based on a character's skill with a weapon, and not the weapon itself. A knife is a deadly weapon, after all, but you just try and find a game where a skilled knife-wielder is truly a threat to any character a game. There won't even be a listing of weapons in the game, but rather a listing of fighting skills and how those skills are applied. The game for the most part won't care what weapon you're carrying, but rather how good you are at wielding it. So a player must decide... does his character become very skilled in one particular combat skill in order to vanquish most foes more easily with that style, or does his character get some skill in many combat skills so as to be able to defend himself against a wide variety of enemies?
Also present in LotFP: RPG is the separation of skill levels and character attributes (the standard Strength, Intelligence, etc). In most games, strong and quick untrained characters seem to always have an advantage in combat over average people with training in whatever form of combat is being resolved. If you take a 200 pound Olympic champion freestyle wrestler, and give him a sword, would he be able to win a swordfight with a 120 pound competition fencer? How many game systems can cope with the reality that the wrestler is much better off dropping his sword and attempting to take the swordsman down... or running? And going away from non-combat concerns, how many games would allow a stupid villager to be a great farmer, without being at a disadvantage in game mechanics to a brilliant city boy? Skill and innate characteristics don't necessarily match up and few games want to deal with that.
In trying to make the rules intuitive and at least roughly realistic, the decision was made to make the magic system a separate book. That way, the core rules can be more 'real life', and you can look at a rule and think, 'that makes sense'. A magic system can't 'make sense' because it doesn't exist in the real world, so making it a separate supplement will allow the integrity of the core rules to remain.
Elves. I remember a game system that ran ads in Dragon Magazine declaring that there were 'No Elves.' In LotFP: RPG, 'races' will not be part of the game system. That should be part of the campaign setting determined by the GM. LotFP: RPG characters are built on a point system, so if you want to be an elf and elves exist in your campaign world, simply buy some extra points of the Awareness characteristic (because elves are supposed to be of sharp eyesight and hearing), buy some archery skill points, and then the fact that the character has pointy ears and a long lifespan really doesn't have any game mechanic effect. The removal of race as a game mechanic will encourage more original thought in how a fantasy RPG is set up, yet players wanting the 'standard' setup will be able to have that as well.
Speaking of ads though, I'm thinking of marketing this with a tagline, 'Absolutely not a d20 system game.' Nah. But I like the sentiment.
So now that we've established that LotFP: RPG will be doing away with many gaming 'standards' in the industry, the opportunities for a different style of game play should be obvious. The longterm plans for LotFP: RPG (assuming the initial release doesn't fall flat on my ass and make me broke, ha ha) after the original three books are out is to introduce an official campaign setting for LotFP: RPG where I believe I'll have the most fun, fleshing out a continent and its cultures from scratch,
Fast paced play. Inexpensive rulebooks. That's what LotFP: RPG wants to provide. I hope you'll come along for the ride.
*** ***
Thoughts?
Role playing games have been around near thirty years now, and the trend has been for fancier packaging, and more complicated gaming systems. The LotFP: RPG is designed to take the effort out of gaming, and the cost out of the game materials.
What exactly does hardcover binding and full color illustrations have to do with gaming? When it comes down to it, a gamer wants to game, and having 200 page books with a hard cover, large text, big margins, and color printing on every page does not do anything to enhance the gaming experience. Sure, they look good on the bookshelf, but none of those things enhance the game itself. What are you paying for? There are plenty of $20 to $30 role-playing books on the shelves in the LotFP offices, and a lot of them are really nice, but it certainly didn't make the games any better! LotFP: RPG is designed to be bare bones in presentation, resulting in inexpensive products for gamers.
The second problem that has plagued the industry is that the games are way too complicated. To play a new game, you had to read hundreds of pages to get the idea of what the rules were. Even as 'universal' systems took hold, they still required sourcebook after sourcebook after sourcebook to get everything you need to run a complete game. And in the end, there are always far too many charts and dice rolling and rules that get in the way of role playing games. This isn't math class, and RPGs lose the heroics when everything is ultra detailed and/or realistic (and RPGs then will turn around and cancel out 'realism' in terms of 'game balance', making the rules go against common sense). The LotFP: RPG system is designed to be concise and intuitive.
The third issue that the LotFP system corrects is the issue of characters who can defeat world beating menaces, becoming detached from the game world itself. If a party of characters can face down a dragon in its lair, being mugged by two experienced hoods armed with knives isn't even a cause for concern, causing scenarios to turns into an escalating arms race to challenge more experienced characters. This leaves behind basic storylines as characters 'outgrow' them. Such things make a role playing campaign more unrealistic as time goes on.
As a role-player since fourth grade, there are things I notice that are universal to all games, that I hope to correct with LotFP: RPG. One is the emphasis on combat in role-playing games, and players thinking of their characters in purely combat terms, and coveting all the goodies that allow their character to be more successful in combat. Game rules therefore cater to this, making combat more detailed over time, and taking up more and more time at the gaming table during combat situations. Realizing that combat situations are very important and that making sure different situations do matter in combat, a prime goal of LotFP: RPG is to make combat very streamlined and not time-consuming at all. In dealing with friends, I've described trying to make combat as uninvolved for the player (certainly not their character!) as having his character pick a lock. While even a streamlined combat system can't be that simple, the important points of combat are: Who wins? How hurt are the participants? The idea is that a decent amount of combat situations can be resolved with two die rolls.
Combat will be based on a character's skill with a weapon, and not the weapon itself. A knife is a deadly weapon, after all, but you just try and find a game where a skilled knife-wielder is truly a threat to any character a game. There won't even be a listing of weapons in the game, but rather a listing of fighting skills and how those skills are applied. The game for the most part won't care what weapon you're carrying, but rather how good you are at wielding it. So a player must decide... does his character become very skilled in one particular combat skill in order to vanquish most foes more easily with that style, or does his character get some skill in many combat skills so as to be able to defend himself against a wide variety of enemies?
Also present in LotFP: RPG is the separation of skill levels and character attributes (the standard Strength, Intelligence, etc). In most games, strong and quick untrained characters seem to always have an advantage in combat over average people with training in whatever form of combat is being resolved. If you take a 200 pound Olympic champion freestyle wrestler, and give him a sword, would he be able to win a swordfight with a 120 pound competition fencer? How many game systems can cope with the reality that the wrestler is much better off dropping his sword and attempting to take the swordsman down... or running? And going away from non-combat concerns, how many games would allow a stupid villager to be a great farmer, without being at a disadvantage in game mechanics to a brilliant city boy? Skill and innate characteristics don't necessarily match up and few games want to deal with that.
In trying to make the rules intuitive and at least roughly realistic, the decision was made to make the magic system a separate book. That way, the core rules can be more 'real life', and you can look at a rule and think, 'that makes sense'. A magic system can't 'make sense' because it doesn't exist in the real world, so making it a separate supplement will allow the integrity of the core rules to remain.
Elves. I remember a game system that ran ads in Dragon Magazine declaring that there were 'No Elves.' In LotFP: RPG, 'races' will not be part of the game system. That should be part of the campaign setting determined by the GM. LotFP: RPG characters are built on a point system, so if you want to be an elf and elves exist in your campaign world, simply buy some extra points of the Awareness characteristic (because elves are supposed to be of sharp eyesight and hearing), buy some archery skill points, and then the fact that the character has pointy ears and a long lifespan really doesn't have any game mechanic effect. The removal of race as a game mechanic will encourage more original thought in how a fantasy RPG is set up, yet players wanting the 'standard' setup will be able to have that as well.
Speaking of ads though, I'm thinking of marketing this with a tagline, 'Absolutely not a d20 system game.' Nah. But I like the sentiment.
So now that we've established that LotFP: RPG will be doing away with many gaming 'standards' in the industry, the opportunities for a different style of game play should be obvious. The longterm plans for LotFP: RPG (assuming the initial release doesn't fall flat on my ass and make me broke, ha ha) after the original three books are out is to introduce an official campaign setting for LotFP: RPG where I believe I'll have the most fun, fleshing out a continent and its cultures from scratch,
Fast paced play. Inexpensive rulebooks. That's what LotFP: RPG wants to provide. I hope you'll come along for the ride.
*** ***
Thoughts?
