Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Red & Pleasant Land And Death Frost Doom Deluxe Are Out But Disappearing Fast

Last I checked Red & Pleasant Land was disappearing at faster than a copy a minute--at the current rate they will be gone in two days. Anyone who's tried to scrounge up a print copy of Vornheim knows how hard it is to get your hands on these things once they disappear.
Connie says: "This is the greatest book I have ever read…"
"…Glory can be yours, too."
So I am very happy with it and you should buy eleven (one to mark up, one to keep and nine to give people on each day of Hannukkah) now.

But don't take our word for it! Here's what the rest of the free world has to say:

China MiƩville (author of Perdido Street Station and The Scar)

"How lucky are we? Once again we get to experience the artistry and art, the cantankerous smarts, the dissident gaming philosophy of Zak S. It's inadequate to call Red & Pleasant Land brilliant. With alchemist swagger, Zak takes the base matter of well-worn fantasy standards and our cheerful nerd hobbies, and makes the strangest gold."


Molly Crabapple (artist, journalist, author of Shell Game, King's County suspect # 2-2-14 08955-10)

"God, it's so beautiful, I love this. It just makes D&D look so fucking now."



Kenneth Hite (author of Qelong and Night's Black Agents)

"It should be next to impossible to do anything original with Dracula or Alice, but Zak S demonstrates instead that it's next to impossible for him to put out a bad game book. He trails his barbed artistic and gaming sensibilities through these two modern myths and emerges with something more than a mashup or a collage: it's a necromantic restoration of a nightmare that never was."



Monte Cook (author of Numenera, Ptolus, The Strange)

"Zak is not just imaginative, he's bold. Which means that while he recognizes the value of fantasy traditions, he doesn't hesitate for a moment to throw out anything that's become tired or dull. Going to Zak's blog is like opening a window to let in fresh ideas when the room is full of only stale, trite, conventional ones."

Keith Baker (creator of Eberron)

"ZAK SMITH'S IDEAS ARE... (d100)
1-21. Intriguing
22-49. Innovative 
50-62. Insane
63-92. Indispensible
93. Warm & Fuzzy
94-95. Torn through a wormhole from a dystopian future that can only be stopped by the timely intervention of a Nordic cyborg
96-100. Roll twice and use both results.  "
--Keith Baker

Vanessa Veselka (journalist, author of PEN-prize winning novel Zazen)

"Let me be plain in case it is not obvious; you want Zak Smith as your GM....Zak unfolds one mind-blowing illustration after another. Art is never absent from anything he does. The world we are in was once the site of a giant castle roughly the size of a continent. Worn to its roots now, all that’s left is the foundation of old power structures. There is a Red King (who dreams of an Antiland) and a Heart Queen (who is cruel) and a Slow War. One name for this place is “The Land the Gods Refuse to See.” It has mirror portals that lead to a Quiet Side of the glass where you go “unplayably insane,” a reminder that Zak uses Lewis Carroll like manga uses the atom bomb, as inspiration for a terrifying and wondrous landscape…"

…in Matter.

Charlotte Stokely (star of Skater Girl Fever and Not Too Young For Cum 4)
"Groovy"
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The new, deluxe Death Frost Doom--the classic fantasy module that I started my campaign with--is also out. James had me completely re-write it.
with massive new art by Jez Gordon

From the introduction:


When a freakishly original thing is made, it inevitably contains both inherited and mutant genes. When the original Death Frost Doom was found on the doorstep of the old school gaming scene, its horror-short-story tone and structure came thinly wrapped in familiar adventure-game trappings. James and I agreed that this new edition should maintain that tone and structure, but replace as many of the handed-down bits as possible with more creepy magic.


When I first read James' Death Frost Doom, I considered it not just the best module I'd ever read, but the only usable one I'd ever read. It demands only a little of your campaign's space and time, but it does something with every inch of that space and every second of that time. I've tried to keep it as disturbingly efficient as it was when I first met it five years ago--when it helped kick off the campaign I am still running today (and when it caused most of the trouble the characters have been dealing with since).


I think we've done no violence to it, and given you and your players a few more toys to play with. And smash.

…the reception of the pdf has been good:


So go buy things. There's a package deal on shipping, too, so literally, this is the best time to pick up anything else you might want from LOTFP including the must-have Carcosa hardcover (which not nearly enough people own) and new ones like The Idea from Space and No Salvation For Witches.

I am extremely pleased with everything we've done here. It's been years of effort to bring this to you. These are days the like of which will not be seen again. 

21 comments:

  1. Carcosa in hand, and death frost doom and red and pleasant land ordered. I think my 2015 gaming inspiration doth overflow.

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  2. More than a copy per minute? Zak, that's awesome. :)

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  3. And ordered. That plus my backed print copy of NSFW means an early and delightfully messed up Christmas for me.

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  4. That just went on my Dragonmeet shopping list. Hope I get there early enough!

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  5. I was due a free Death Frost Doom and Tower of the Stargazer from the indiegogo and I was planning to pick up a copy of Scenic Dunnsmouth with them. Since your book is selling out and I liked Vornheim so much, I added A Red and Pleasant Land to my order. My niece loves Alice in Wonderland and Serial Killers - maybe this will get her into Roleplaying.

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  6. Friggin Blogger ate my comment.

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  7. Well hell. Now I want you to be my GM. I will order the book and look at your picture while I read it, imagining you unfolding the words into my brainspace. I have no idea what you sound like though. I assume you sound annoyed a lot of the time, but that may be an unsafe assumption.

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  8. I had to buy it. I had to! I had no choice. You made me do it. Sigh... now I have to wait for it in the mail!

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  9. Yeah, fuckin' mail. I think Raggi charged me VAT, but wtfe. Congrats on this.

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  10. Just ordered RPL and DFD. The latter will be included soon in my current campaign. And I am 100% positive that RPL will turn out to be a great source of inspiration as well. Really looking forward to the actual product.

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  11. Ordered as soon as I saw it was available. If it's even half as good as Vornheim, it'll be worth every penny. And I have much higher expectations... =)

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  12. Great rewrite of Death Frost Doom. You managed to improve it, which is some feat.

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  13. Just finished reading through death frost doom. Fantastic. Red and pleasant land is obviously a whole other beast, but looks really good so far. I would be grateful for any other recommendations for adventures of a similar size and quality to death frost doom that can be dropped into other world's easily. Osr or not, I am using 5th ed rules atm.

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    1. I first ran DFD because I had never seen anything like it. I still haven't.
      That said, Kelvin, Zzarchov and James' stuff for LOTFP is probably as close as you'll get.

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  14. Anyplace to buy printed copy in the U.S.? All I see are Euros? I maybe blind I have a fever and it is 4:00 am but I wanted a printed copy of this. I did not get a printed copy of Vornheim....although I have printed various parts
    Of it on my printer for reference it might have equalled 25 printed copies and promptly lost what I printed by the next week.

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    1. The LOTFP site will happily change your dollars into euros and vice versa.

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  15. Got Red and Pleasant. Love it. The players are playing characters sent into Wonderland to report on the war and have spent five years mixed up in it all. They started their campaign midway through the Red King's castle to assassinate him, though none of them can remember why. We've been playing with the time aspects a lot and had fun with that. The Red King enacted a plan to bring Wonderland to the Quiet Side of the Looking Glass (our world). His kingdom lands in New Orleans at Mardi Gras though, so only his people will be safe from madness. Then he'll return Wonderland to the War Side of the Looking Glass and wipe out his enemies. So the PCs are playing a New Orleans / Wonderland hybrid environment.

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  16. Hi, thanks for all the awesome material you put out. I just bought Death Frost Doom and have a question (spoilers): is there any explanation how the dead explorer in area 16 (the crypts) got in there without triggering the melting? Or is that just an oversight?

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    1. SPOILERS

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      -That explorer is from one of the alternate universes in the snowglobes.

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