Lamentations of the Whispering Tyrant

For a long time now, my two main interests in role-playing have been Old School games (mainly Lamentations of the Flame Princess), and “new school” fantasy role-playing (D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder RPG). I’ve participated in over 50 game sessions of each in the past few years, and have more than a passing familiarity with both game systems and play-styles. Both of these games have their roots in Dungeons & Dragons, but are nevertheless fundamentally different on almost every level. The only thing they seem to have in common is that both claim to be D&D, and both are fantasy role-playing games.

Each of these games provide something the other does not. Old school gives me easy, flexible rules, a free-form type of play, an emphasis on player skill and ingenuity, and a focus on exploration and investigation. New school gives me a robust game system, that appeals to the gamist in me, and a wealth of enticing campaign world and story material.

And so, after some brainstorming and research, I’ve decided to try and combine elements of both games into one campaign. The new campaign is going to be called Ustalav. It uses the LotFP rules, and old school sensibilities in play-style. Pathfinder RPG provides the story fodder in the form of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, a new school mega-adventure about the gothic horror -themed nation of Ustalav in Paizo’s campaign world Golarion. The adventure path spans six books, for a total of around 300 pages of gaming material. Considering the relatively slow pace of old school campaigns, this campaign has the potential to last years.

Lets see how it turns out shall we.

Edit: An earlier post I wrote has relevance the topic of this one. For anyone interested in the topic, it might be worth checking out: D&D 3.5 Mega-Adventures Old School Style.

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