Ruining Childhoods Since 2023

It is at this point that I should mention -- since I completely forgot -- that my new Lamentations of the Flame Princess book is now out:

Can you guess the source material?

James Raggi asked for a Cocaine Bear pastiche, and this is what I did. To be fair, there is a bear in the book, and the bear does engage in substance abuse, but the overall focus is a bit different. It's a mini wilderness crawl with anthropomorphic -- and murderous -- animals, a massive idiot, and a conceptual entity that will -- I hope -- befuddle your players and maim their characters.

It went on sale at Ropecon and Gencon a few weeks ago and is now available from the LotFP EU shop. It's not yet on sale at the US shop or DriveThru, but I will try to remember to update you when it is.

(It's now available from the US shop here, or in pdf form here. I remembered!)

The Fifth Place

So this happened:

I have mainly been using it to play the PS4 games that won't fit on the tiny hard drive inside my PS4, and to benefit from the "PS4 Pro Enhanced" features that I obviously cannot detect with my ageing brain and eyes.

It's a fine machine. It's huge, about the size and weight of a small family hatchback, but at least it's nowhere near as noisy or power hungry as its predecessor. I have two complaints:

1. The build quality feels wonky. For such a bulky thing it feels flimsy, even cheap, and I'm not fond of the shiny black strip down the middle that does nothing but attract fingerprints and smudges.

2. The user interface is bonkers. Gone is the lovely simplicity of the XMB, or even the PS4's chubby menu, and instead we have an insane double menu system that seems to combine both, but in the most non-intuitive way possible. Utter madness that feels like it was designed at 4:30pm on a Friday and released before anyone noticed.

All that grumbling aside, the happiness in the image above is genuine.

Moving Without Travelling

I have never played Traveller.

No, that's not true. I did run a very brief Traveller: The New Era campaign when I was 15 or 16 but:

1. TNE is its own weird thing and doesn't feel like proper Traveller.

(Although I do quite like the updates it made to the setting. I think they restore a bit of fun OSR-type exploration and uncertainty to a setting that sometimes felt stale and static, and also sidestep around some of the issues regarding how real world technology has outstripped the predictions of 70s science fiction.)

2. I was teenager and had no idea what I was doing. It was equal parts Bablyon 5, Call of Cthulhu, and utter rubbish.

Anyway, I would quite like to play proper Traveller one day, and this excellent series of posts from Sir Poley on the "four table legs" of classic Traveller only makes me want it more. Go and have a read; they are very good pieces and make a lot of sense.