Lamentations of the Flame Princess A Red & Pleasant Land

Pro: Seemingly amazing bookCon: Two damaged copies were sent to me, on the third order currentlyThis book is high quality, and full of great art. It’s a small form factor, but the quality materials make it very nice. I love a book with a built in book mark. This book looks more like a ‘fancy’ library book than an rpg campaign.On the negative side, I just returned my second copy of the book, both of which were shipped in envelopes, and were damaged. The first had a puncture through the heavy duty board cover, and the second had a completely ripped obi. Whoever is handling these books, both of which appeared damaged before shipping, should be fired. Shame to damage and waste two quality books. I sincerely hope they ship the third copy in a box, maybe even shrink wrapped to cardboard.

I'm already in love with this book ! I've only in depth read about 1/4 of it, but the art is lovely and the writing is enjoyable and fun. The book cover is lovely, definitely more quality than a lot of gaming books I've gotten; it feels like you're opening a fairy tale. The theme is very unique, and the writing really helps you understand how to implement this world and the laws that govern it as a game master. I'm very excited to use elements of this book in my curse of strahd campaign !!!

Whether you run old school renaissance RPGs or not, you will find the ideas and tables contained within this tome to be useful in any fantasy RPG. The layout and artwork contained within is both unique and inspiring.Taking it's inspiration from classic Lewis Carroll stories and designed to be used with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess ( "or any classic fantasy roleplaying game, or their modern simulacra"), Zach S. knocks it out of the park once again with this beautiful, and practical digest sized book.Once again, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Press manages to put out another inspiring RPG product.

This is the best RPG setting guide I've ever found. As the book itself explains, you can use the setting whole, just take bits and pieces, or use it as inspiration for something else entirely. But it presents a fully cohesive and wonderfully detailed world in the best of all methods. It defines its world NOT through pages and pages of maps and descriptions of the boring, irrelevant-to-adventure history of locations your PCs will never visit, but instead by explaining the signature behavior and customs of its inhabitants, the unique qualities of the world itself (like its weird time distortions), the themes and motifs most prevalent in adventures that take place here, and best of all, TOOLS and RESOURCES that are easily usable at the table while also, themselves, defining the world.Running a series of Red & Pleasant one-offs was some of the best gaming I've ever done. My players have never felt more like they're distinctly "in a fantasy land." I needed almost nothing more than this single book for every session, and reading through it once or maybe twice made me familiar enough with it to know exactly how to quickly consult it.Now, I love Alice in Wonderland and I love vampires and I love spy fiction. But everything in this book is flexible enough to fit into any broadly medieval-ish or European-ish setting, and honestly probably even more. You could throw one of the Flower Children monsters into any fantasy setting. You could use the demon generator for a million things. You could have Zak's puddings replace all the oozes you ever use in your campaign from now on.And if ever you plan on writing your own setting guide, I implore you to take notes from how this book does it. There is one, undetailed map of Wonderland in the whole book (the inside front cover), and you can easily enough ignore it. It has resources within it to generate the landscape as you need it, if you really want a map. But more importantly, it did more to define its setting as a true, fully-formed place in the Players' minds than spending more than a year adventuring in the Forgotten Realms ever could.An anecdote: one time my players were sneaking through the woods when they accidentally stumbled on a tea party hosted by an enemy House, attended by a spy and several horses. In service to etiquette, they got trapped into a long, bizarre, tense-yet-polite tea party with a never-ending series of ridiculous rules and customs they had to rapidly learn in order to maintain their manners. They survived, and much later, in an entirely separate incident, they found themselves wanting a treasure in the woods guarded by a strange beast (a slythy Tove). And they decided, rather than kill it, ambush it, bait it away, capture it, etc. they would invite it to a tea party. They found a stump, brewed some tea, drank from a bunch of shoes (they had a whole sack of them), and wrote it a letter cordially inviting it. They followed all their learned etiquette and it went perfectly. Watching my players come up with and execute that plan was one of the most satisfying moments I've ever had as a game master.This book generates fun.