#RPGaDay: Day 16

16. Which RPG do you enjoy using as is?

Answer: Although I'm not opposed to using house rules in my game no matter what the system, I typically run things pretty close to the book. My Basic Fantasy house rules are few and far between and mostly deal with character advancement rather than adjustments to in-game mechanics. In my recent explorations of the OSR retro clones of old school D&D, the idea of playing these games RaW (rules as written) has been very appealing. Running them straight would really give me the chance to understand how the subtle difference affect what is essentially the same game. For example, how does Iron Falcon compare to White Box FMAG or Delving Deeper? With that in mind, the game I'm most excited to try running RaW is Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Although Lamentations is really based on the same B/X version of D&D that Basic Fantasy is [UPDATE: James Raggi has made it clear Mentzer's Basic was his inspiration, not B/X], there's enough changes in mechanics in LotFP to differentiate it from BF and other similar games. Moreover the explicit flavor and implied setting of LotFP truly makes it a unique game among all of the others. The point of playing this game for me would be to indulge in its strange and dark milieu. You don't have to play the game in the suggested period of the early modern era, but to me, that would really be the point of playing it as intended - to give you a different experience than the standard Dungeons & Dragons realm. I like the game's built-in default settings: a de-emphasis or outright exclusion of demi-humans (even though they're part of the rules), secret societies, gothic horror, an historical real-world campaign template, early scientific discoveries of machines and firearms, and intentionally including fewer monsters in favor of creeping dread and mystery. I like the game's idea of magic being something metaphysically insane, something that rips at the fabric of reality. Under the hood, this game is mechanically pretty much Basic D&D, but it has a distinct style of its own. It's familiar enough that it would be pretty easy for me to run as written while giving me a new world to play in. I don't know that it would ever be my go-to game, but it would be a fun break from my standard fantasy fare and great game to run completely straight.