LoSS Weekend Update

Gather round!

Gather ye mighty heroes and vagabonds, here my tales of exploits of the week past, and time to come!

It's time for the Weekend Update!

It was a great week for Demonlords.

Demonboard upgrades!

Many articles on how to use cheap easy to find materials to make a full 3d dungeon for use in any fantasy roleplaying game. Two kinds of Blocks, ramp making for tunnels to weave above and below each other.

We even threw a new cheap enemy in the mix, Giant ants, a penny a pop.

And finally your mighty thewed warriors threw off the confines of the Lair to travel...Outside...with a quick tip on how to make a whole forest of tress with an hours work and the might investment of a dollar!

Even the Lair of Sword & Sorcery Hub had a facelift, with better organization so that you can get to the LoSS information you're looking for faster and easier.

But oh so much more to come!

Issue 5 Lairs

Well under way is a double issue of sorts. Issue 5 of LoSS: Lairs!, will contain not only all the instructions needed to make Lairs using the Lair of Sword and Sorcery "Lair" system, but also the blank templates themselves. Allowing you to make up your own Lairs of majesty and power, in about an hour.

I jest with you not, mighty demonlords, using the Lair templates I have created many a Lair in just under an hour, fully stocked and following all the rules of the "Lair" system.

But what is the Lair system and what makes it so great? I give a short example of the basics in a previous article "Lairs and 5 room dungeons".

In a nutshell it formalises into rules the things which every Lair must contain to make it fun, playable, convincing, heroic, and more importantly, compelling for both Players and their Heroes.

The LoSS "Story" system

Available for the first time will be the Loss "Story" system. One double sided template that solves all the Demonlords woes. (and incidentally is system agnostic, useful for any game from basic D&D to Call of Cthulhu). 

In LoSS a story is a series of Linked Lairs. A story may be simple like conquering all the levels of a Sorcerors tower (each level being one Lair). Or it may be all of the comings and goings of a small community, with the sheet tracking the main story, background events, triggered events such as Heroes poking their noses in, or Other "miscellaneous" events which may never happen.

Using this Story template you can plot out the intricacies of months of adventures all interconnected. All of this in "you guessed it" about an hour.

I don't do all of this so quickly or with any fancy wizardry. The fact is the LoSS adventure game was made from the bottom up to support, quick effortless play not bogged down with things unnessecary to fun play.

This means players don't have to track a bunch of stuff just for the Thrill of Realism, It also means that the Demonlord does not need to track a lot of things or create alot of things to prop up game balance or encounter fairness.

Lair is about Heroic action

If you've been playing the game you may have noticed a couple of things. It's very easy for heroes to become overwhelmed very quickly if they are not careful, and if they do not act strategically. If your heroes are not using Sota to do creative things, taking advantage of the fact that the Demonlords minions may not do so, they will find that their enemies are able to quickly cause alot of damage.

The system is written this way on purpose. The heroes have henchmen to use for their mundane action like "I attack with my sword"

The heroes are there to do heroic things!

You may also have noticed that it is also very easy for Heroes to escape from Lairs with the Demonlords being able to do little about it. This is on purpose as well. The heroes should fail heroically if they fail. They leave to fight another battle but there are consequences of failure, the "punishment" section of every Lair which states what happens if they don't succeed. Without the consequences of punishment the thrill of Victory will be rather empty.

Caverns of the Blind Burrower

And at long last the caverns will see the light of day. Included in the issue will be the first LoSS Story, Caverns of the Blind Burrower, to illustrate all the things taught in the Lair issue.

Caverns was the first Story written for Lair and in alot of ways firmed up the basic feel of the game system. It was originally written without the templates as I muddled along to figure out just what a Lair would need in LoSS. Playtesting and formatting led to the invention of the Lair templates and indeed a great deal of the Lair rules themselves.

In fact the Veteran advancement system came out of the playtesting of Caverns.

Hero advancement

In LoSS the "Veteran" system for hero advancement was written based on how Lairs are actually played, and how they are played is based on the template system.

That means that instead of having to write your Lairs to take into account the partys powers and limitations, and then balance things based on that, and then guage rewards of experience and treasure based on that, you simply write a great Lair, and the system swings into place to pick up all the slack.

You needn't worry as the the ways the rules are written will automatically adjust for balance and reward.

Prepare yourself

So if you've been thinking about getting into this whole Lair of Sword and Sorcery Adventure game thing then the time has come. 

Go and get the books, 

You can but print copies here:  LoSS Magazine Printed Copies

or get the Pay What You Want pdfs here: Loss Pdfs at Gumroad

Spend an afternoon making a Demonboard with the instructions from Issue 1: Demonboard!

Create some Heroes and have some fun with the LoSS skirmish game in issue 2: Combat to get a feel for the Combat rules.

Download some free Lairs from the LoSS site (they are on the right hand side under "free Lairs".
Run them using the rules and advice from Issue 3: Veteran

If you run all the free Lairs you may find some Heroes will have enough Veteran points to advance their Heroes. Though some will be happy to continue on the path of the Warrior the path of Sorcery is also a tempting one. Use Issue 4: Sorcery! to add the thrill of Arcane evil to your game.

And then when Issue 5 is released you will be ready to write your own Lairs and Stories and begin to fill the world of Kartharka (or your own world) with creations of High Adventure!

Sally Forth my Blood Reavers! Take the world for LoSS! The Adventure Game!

~Ripley Stonebrook