Another RPG bundle offer - Lamentations

This is an offer based on the fantasy RPG Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which can best be described as "Adventuring is really dangerous and nasty, everybody dies." It's a clone of D&D with stricter rules for things like encumbrance, and sets out from the outset to make things as difficult and horrible as possible for adventurers. It doesn't at first seem like a fun idea, but when you remember what happens to most characters in e.g. Paranoia or Call of Cthulhu you can see it might be interesting. Art etc. tends to be gory and disturbing. I'll be honest, this isn't one I'd particularly want to play, but if I was still running D&D style games I could possibly get into the idea of a REALLY nasty dungeon or two to teach players to be careful.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Lamentations

"Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing presents a sinister and horrific twist on traditional fantasy gaming. Though the rules are a tight retro-clone of B/X D&D --with stricter movement and encumbrance systems, for reasons explained below -- LotFP's attitude comes out of heavy metal and Dario Argento horror films: Anything goes, wild as hell.

You could call it "horror fantasy," but this isn't about werewolves or serial killers. LotFP is largely about forces from beyond our awareness causing great distress. Some might describe it as "sick." One review struck the right note: "This adventure has torn open a slime-laden murder-blunt-trauma hole in reality's sky and poured in the awesome."

Designer James Raggi explains: "The inspiration for LotFP is the basic belief that the life of an adventurer is a hellish thing nobody sane would want -- full of danger and violence, with no real home, no real family, no certainty, ever. Think of the classic RPG adventure form: You're going into some dark hole with a sinister history, fully expecting to encounter deathtraps and supernatural monsters and all sorts of things that want to kill you and probably eat you, and you're doing it for some money. Or 'glory.' In real life we get pissed and dream of quitting our jobs when our bosses want us to sit at a desk for an extra hour, and our 'glorious heroes' are the people that are victims of the most and worst gossip, and bloody hell this is all terrible. So let's drop the pretense of being noble heroes doing things for noble reasons and just spotlight the fact that 'adventures' are terrible, life-ruining traumatic experiences. And my love of heavy metal and horror movies provides wonderful inspiration for making them so. That's LotFP."

Lamentations has become notorious in the Old School Revival community for this unforgiving ethos. 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. As with Luke Crane's Torchbearer, even ordinary logistics can do you in. Remember how the LotFP system emphasizes movement and encumbrance rules?

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 the official Bundle of Holding 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."

We've presented many Lamentations titles in our past Old School Revival offers, including A Red and Pleasant Land, Death Frost Doom, The God That Crawls, Qelong, The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time, and others. This offer's only duplicate from past collections is the single most famous Lamentations title, the spectacular city-design supplement Vornheim by Zak S.

We provide each ebook complete in .PDF (Portable Document Format). Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these books have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their ereaders.

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to this offer's designated charity, The Myositis Association.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer at launch is US$92.50. Customers who pay just US$11.95 get all twelve titles in our Weird Starter Collection (retail value $42.50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• 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).
• Vornheim (retail $9): The brilliant city-design supplement by Zak S (A Red and Pleasant Land, Maze of the Blue Medusa). Previously presented in our first Old School Revival offer, November 2013.
• The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions (retail $10): A system for building wizard towers by D. Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World).
• Thulian Echoes (retail $7.50): One dungeon explored twice -- first in the ancient past, then again a thousand years later.
• The Pale Lady (retail $5): Zzarchov Kowolski's expedition into the realm of an evil fae queen.

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $22.95 to start, also get our entire Historic Bonus Collection with eight more titles (retail value $50) that show LotFP's fascinating takes on world history:

• World of the Lost (retail $10): A breathtaking 180-page hexcrawl and time-crawl by Rafael Chandler (Pandemonio).
• The Magnificent Joop van Ooms (retail $4.50): A Renaissance Man in 17C Amsterdam who brings cosmic weirdness to the world.
• The Cursed Château (retail $7.50): James Maliszewski's venerable haunted house in an expanded deluxe edition.
• Scenic Dunnsmouth (retail $10): A rotting swamp town with two dark secrets, and an innovative dice-and-cards system that makes it endlessly replayable.
• The Squid, the Cabal, and the Old Man (retail $7.50): The 1685 war between Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke, told with a bloody twist.
• England Upturn'd (retail $7.50): The English Civil War, Lamentations-style.
• Forgive Us (retail $5): 1625 was a plague year in Norwich. History tells us it was an outbreak of the Black Death. History is wrong.

At least one more title will be added after launch. When a title is added after launch, ALL customers who previously purchased the bundle automatically receive the newly added title, REGARDLESS of whether or not they paid higher than average. This is their reward for buying early.

I'm not particularly interested in this, I gave up on D&D-style games many years ago, but I think it looks like a reasonable offer. As usual I have to point out that I get this stuff free if I want it, your mileage may vary.