Lamentations of the Flame Princess
No Dignity in Death and People of Pembrooktonshire by LotFP Publishing are a pair of loosely related books for early editions of Dungeons & Dragons and modern “retroclones”. The former sets out three adventures set in and around Pembrooktonshire, while People of Pembrooktonshire presents a healthy percentage of the town’s populace as unstatted NPCs, most of whom serve as plot hooks and stories in a can.
This review is presented as a “He-Said—He-Said” discussion. Michael S. is a member of the Old School Renaissance online community, but enjoys good games when he finds them. Michael finds these books to be very useful, interesting modules that break the mold of what people think is the “typical old school” fare. Gerald Cameron prefers more modern games, but has been relearning old lessons recently, and finds that these books are a breath of fresh air.
Michael: James Edward Raggi IV has published two fascinating books that display a unique approach to fantasy roleplaying. The first, No Dignity in Death, is a series of three adventures set in a very odd town – Pembrooktonshire. The second book, People of Pembrooktonshire, is a Rogue’s Gallery of some of the oddest and craziest Non-Player Characters that you could ever meet. With these books, he presents adventures that challenge the players to engage with a story in a variety of ways, and leaves them the possibility of many resolutions, most of them not in favor of the characters. These are not your straightforward dungeon delves many associate the “Old School Gaming” community with – rather, these are quirky views into the things that make Raggi tick.
Gerald: Raggi has a distinctive style, which makes these books unlike anything in the original Dungeons & Dragons product lines. One of the adventures in No Dignity in Death is a straight-up murder mystery, for instance. People of Pembrooktonshire works best as a “rogue’s gallery” that you sample, rather than trying to use it as a whole, but the NPCs are colorful, largely unique and distinctive. No Dignity in Death redefines in some ways just what a Dungeons & Dragons adventure can be. As long as you are okay with some weirdness in your games, you should get good value for your money from both of these books. I would especially recommend No Dignity in Death to anyone that wants a good guide to preparing mysteries for play. Because they feature such an original voice, No Dignity in Death and People of Pembrooktonshire could even be useful to players of fantasy games that they were not originally intended for.
Gerald: Although both books are both set in the same eccentric border town, they present the town in slightly different ways. The Pembrooktonshire of No Dignity in Death comes across as a strange town wrapped up in bizarre and even evil social mores, it still manages to feel plausible, and even a place a group of PCs could use as a base of operations (albeit with some difficulty). On the other hand, People of Pembrooktonshire makes the town look like an asylum that would devour itself in a matter of months, if not weeks.
Michael: No Dignity in Death is a refreshing break from the typical “medieval fantasy” setting; it focuses on a town that can easily be seen as a very different place in a typical high-fantasy setting or a creepy old town in a more modern setting.
Pembrooktonshire is the slightly “Victorian/European” setting for this small trilogy of mini-adventures. James does a fair bit of explanations of the oddity of Pembrooktonshire, and playing it as written will give the players a far different feel than the usual fantasy town. I could easily use this town as base for a horror RPG as a fantasy adventure. This is also the setting for all of the adventures in this book as well, making the town central to the players’ activities.
The adventures are not the typical old school adventures, and as such, they make a nice showcase of what is possible with any RPG, including all the older versions of D&D. All three adventures are interesting run together or separately. All in all, this module provides some interesting twists and possibilities, but there would be a lot of work for the DM to do to make the module plug into a pre-existing campaign unless using Pembrooktonshire as presented.
Gerald: Pembrooktonshire and the adventures in No Dignity in Death could definitely be adapted to other games, whether fantasy or horror, and not just games from the 70’s and early 80’s, either. They would work beautifully in Burning Wheel, especially. Only the last adventure, “The Lonely House on a Lonely Hill”, makes suffers outside the D&D genre.
The strangeness that Pembrooktonshire exudes does make it hard to move two of the adventures to another setting. I think that weirdness is it’s own thing, however. While the prosperity and complex set of social expectations do resemble Victorian London, they have a completely different basis, which I think would make the town distinct in play. That distinctive, off-kilter feel is a large part of what I like about the Pembrooktonshire books, too.
Michael: I think the weirdness and “slightly off” feel are what make these two books so valuable. It follows a well-trodden path of challenging participants in the same vein of Blackmoor, Arduin and Empire of the Petal Throne. It furthers the use of original D&D to present something that is not all it seems, and conveys the sense that you have entered a complete creation of imagination, versus a “been here before”, “Tolkein” high-fantasy or Howard “pulp” feel.
Gerald: I think that, although all three of the scenarios in No Dignity in Death are strong, the first, “Small Town Murder”, is the best. As the name implies, it is a murder mystery, and it is among the most usable ones I have seen in an RPG product. Next strongest, is “The Great Games”, an odd little set piece about a bizarre and deadly town ritual. It is distinctive, but it leaves some important aspects for individual DMs to develop. The last adventure, “The Lonely House on a Lonely Hill” is the most traditional of the three, and depends on preternaturally curious PCs. It is also being rather lethal to the unwary, which is not unusual for this style of dungeon. None of the adventures are bad, but “Great Games” and “Lonely House” will demand more from DMs.
Michael: I find something in each of the adventures to offer to the players, although interestingly, I find the first adventure, “Small Town Murder”, to be the weakest in presentation as it is done in a confusing manner. I find the second adventure, “The Great Games”, to be the most accessible to any Game Referee and one full of interesting possibilities. The third adventure, “The Lonely House”, is a dungeon crawl, but I find that you are fighting the house and environment as much as you are the few monsters to be found within.
Gerald: The first adventure in No Dignity in Death is “Small Town Murder”, both an introduction to the slightly bizarre atmosphere of Pembrooktonshire and a murder mystery. I think it gets the presentation largely correct (see below for my one quibble), and serves as a nice illustration of the form for DMs that want to develop their own mystery adventures. In particular, I like how it focuses on the relevant NPCs, sketching them well in a sentence or two, then on their relevant background and the information they can provide. It does not get sidetracked with locales or hard to locate clues.
Michael: I think the first adventure, the murder mystery, is the weakest of the lot in that it falls into the same trap a lot of module mysteries run into – no real guidance and the probability that the PCs will not solve the mystery. I think a novice DM would have a lot of problems with this adventure as presented; it pushes you into the scenario and says “Here, go design a murder mystery with this victim and this outcome.” James seems to suggest a possible scenario, but then seems to discard it, and I found that confusing. The way the scenario goes does allow a Game Referee the ability to wrap this mystery into a more of a confrontation setting. In a way, the mystery is second to the outcome of the (most likely) failure of the PCs to expose the real killer. I think that makes for a more interesting possibility, but the presentation was “off”.
Gerald: I think adding more leads that aim at other suspects would help with your concern. I don’t see how PCs could fail to see one potential guilty party after talking to a few witnesses, though. Perhaps you are underestimating how annoying certain key NPCs are?
It might also have been better if Raggi had said “here’s how to set up the mystery for guilty party X, you should do something similar once you decide who you think should be guilty”?
I think both of those items depend highly on the Game Referee and their approach. A Game Referee may not play up any of those aspects and that is where presenting mysteries without guidance and examples can be difficult. I still think the far more interesting scenario is to let the mystery remain truly unsolved and let the players react to the obvious railroading – that is, if they choose to engage at all. That’s the other problem with mysteries – unless you railroad the players into participating, they may choose to not investigate at all, or abandon the investigation when it doesn’t interest them. It’s a gutsy attempt by Raggi to create a murder mystery.
Raggi seems willing to accept that players may not engage with his adventures. It might be nice if he advised unwary DMs that this could happen, but this is a danger with any adventure that doesn’t start with the PCs at a dungeon door. The hook in “Small Town Murder” grabs players as well as most I’ve seen in published adventures.
As much as I like “Small Town Murder”, I do think the lack of leads that point at anyone other than the default culprit hurts it. PCs are liable to make a beeline for the default after only a couple of interviews, with little to make them hesitate. DMs who would rather that another NPC was guilty have to put quite a bit of work into the adventure, too. Not only do they have to add new clues, they also have to trim enough of the included clues to keep the PCs from going after Raggi’s preferred guilty party. This is not a fatal flaw, especially since the material provided functions nicely as an example of what’s needed, but it does seem a bit slapdash.
Michael: The second adventure, “The Great Games”, is the one that I found most accessible as it reminds me of the old Dragonslayer movie, but with a ritual and purpose behind it. I really liked how the morality of the games is left for the players to determine, and it can make for some interesting roleplay. I think this is the most straightforward and “pluggable” into any module. It’s something that any DM could run.
Gerald: I like the concept behind “The Great Games”, but I’m not sure there is enough meat on the bones for new DMs. Managing the pace during the games themselves seems especially tricky. Raggi also leaves DMs mostly high and dry at the very end. He wants to leave the adventure open ended, so the DM can adapt it to his own tastes, but the final reveal does not actually feel like the end. There are a few suggestions about what direction to take things, but there is very little to actually work with.
I’m also worried that PCs will get themselves killed just because they follow their own sense of morality, which seems a bit off to me. I’m cool with it getting them into trouble, but dead (or helpless) rubs me the wrong way.
Michael: I’m the type of Game Referee who doesn’t mind the PC’s having to make choices, even fatal ones, in the interest of exploring a game or themselves. I read a lot less into the adventure in terms of the morality play, and perhaps that’s because of my Game Referee style. I don’t mind the players making their own choices and setting the plot to how they want to play. To me, this adventure provides a perfect opportunity for players to do just that. For instance, a Paladin of Law will struggle mightily to thread his/her way through this scenario. In that, I see “The Great Games” as an open end to further adventure, and I think new Game Referees should be able to use this as such.
The last one is a fairly straightforward scenario, “The Lonely House on a Lonely Hill”. The adventure outlines what happens when a tinker has too much time on his hand and he has a strange and ugly bride – at least to the people of Pembrooktonshire. I find this one interesting in that the players are fighting the house more than they’re fighting the monsters.
Gerald: It is an unconventional dungeon adventure that shares as much with old Call of Cthulhu adventures as it does AD&D modules. It’s a dungeon, but it has a very… gothic?… feel about it. There’s a lot of effort spent toward setting the mood.
I’m also a little worried that it’s a little too tough for a party of the level that is (vaguely) indicated in the book. It’s billed as being for a party of low to mid single-digits level characters, and a lot of the core threats seem really nasty. I know balance worked differently back in the day, but I doubt a group could face up to half of the encounters presented. Is it meant to deconstruct the dungeon trope by presenting no foes the PCs should take on? What am I missing?
Michael: From my approach to fantasy games, where I play that ordinary people are doing extraordinary things, this all feels right. For this last adventure, I don’t expect that the players are going to find a 2HD zombie at the end – I think they are going to stumble onto something really bad and they have to decide to fight or flee. I can see a 4th to 6th level party surviving most of this dungeon. I would think a smart player would probably flee the banshee, especially since her most powerful weapon is negated in a very clever and specific way. I also think that a cautious party is not going to rush in and try to club everything – and knowing how Raggi thinks, I’d say he’s stuck true to his core philosophies in this adventure: exploration and adventuring are risky businesses – participant beware!
Gerald: I remember enough of my AD&D1 DMG to know that not every threat needs to be level appropriate. I’m even getting an appreciation for well-designed save-or-die traps. It felt to me, though, that “Lonely House” is a natural follow-up to “Small Town Murder” or “The Great Games” if the PCs decide to explore the countryside and I don’t see a campaign that starts with STM and GG getting PCs to 4th level. Perhaps I didn’t read between the lines as much as Raggi had intended.
The NPCs in People of Pembrooktonshire were designed as citizens of the town, but they were also created individually, not as a cohesive group. The result is a collection of murderers, madmen and messiahs. If you are not trying for a completely Lynchian campaign, it may not be practical to use more than a handful in any one campaign. That said, People of Pembrooktonshire is a wonderful resource for DMs that like a dash of weirdness in their campaigns. Almost any town can be weirded up by adapting a few of PoP’s NPCs. Some NPCs are rooted deeply in D&D fantasy, but lots of others can be tweaked a little and inserted into just about any genre.
Michael: People of Pembrooktonshire is interesting because you can use some, all or none of these NPCs. I think it gives an interesting “flavor” to the NPCs, but I also wouldn’t use them all at once, or at the same time. It is usable outside of Pembrooktonshire, but it would require a lot of rewriting or transplanting wholesale. However, as a “Rogues Gallery” for Pembrooktonshire, this is a great resource.
Gerald: It’s a shame that People of Pembrooktonshire doesn’t include an index or two. The entries are presented in alphabetical order by character name, which makes it harder to find “that butcher” or “the guy that wants to blow up the town hall” (a made up example, not in PoP). At the very least, an index of professions (and similar descriptors) would be handy when you’re looking for a particular write-up.
Both books are attractive saddle-stitched, digest-sized volumes. The interior layout is clean, although it does suffer from miniscule text sizes – perhaps as small as 6 point. The printing is crisp, so the text is readable for those that have good eyesight. If your eyes are not as young as they used to be – like those of a lot of the people that now play older editions of Dungeons & Dragons – you may want to opt for a PDF, and scale the digest-sized pages up to full 8.5″×11″. Unfortunately blowing the pages up may do some violence to Laura Jalo’s beautiful interior art. Her drawings are moody and dark, and unlike anything you’ll see in other RPG products.
Michael: No Dignity in Death presents its maps as center pullouts, which is a nice touch. The font size is indeed small, due to Raggi’s choice to present the books as digest format. The layout is sparse and direct, but that does not take away from the delight that’s found within.
Gerald: I think it has more to do with limiting page count than the digest format per se. I’ve seen plenty of digest-sized books that use more readable font sizes. I guess page count must be a major price factor for Raggi. I think I’d rather pay an extra $2-3 for a few more pages and slightly larger text.
Oh, and the maps are really nice too. Clear and readable, but they still have character.