Pay what you want Combat issue now available!

The pay what you want train continues!

The Combat issue of LOSS is now available on Gumroad!

Just head to the usual buying page here to download the pdf.

I hope the digital editions are good news for our overseas readers (I'm looking at you +Eric Fabiaschi) so that they can finally get a look at what Lair is really all about.

Campaign continues...

It's almost friday!

The official Lair of sword and Sorcery Campaign continues tomorrow.

The hapless heroes will be tackling the first Story written for Sword and Sorcery, "Temple of the Blind Burrower".

It will be available for free, either here at the site or elsewhere once we've played it through and I've had time to polish it.

Another true test of the games rules as the party has tripled in size since last week.

Luckily the Lair of Sword and Sorcery Veteran system has a built in ranking system to calculate party strength which is used for balancing encounters. 

So can my written scenario take on triple the amount of heroes? Yep, I can calculate the number appearing in the encounter on the fly, including the bosses etc.

Love it.

I'm more worried about how many chairs I have...

Play reports should be up on the weekend (even though I owe you a few from last time still).

Writing continues, the Veteran issue, Sorcery issue, and the Temple issue are all being written concurrently (Sorcery slides across all 3 so there you go)

I off to conquer!

~Ripley

The Lights are out...

What a ride it's been the last couple of months.
The combat issue is coming along, with the last page of illustration on the board and half done as we speak.
Just painting illustrations and designing the maps for the scenarios now.
Thanks everyone for the patient wait for the most important issue of Lair of Sword and Sorcery "The Combat Issue".
Character creation, combat, equipment, combat rules, scenarios, a beginning lair, the map for the first setting location of "Stroh Branoch" largest city in the winter lands, It's a big issue.

But real life happens, my day job is going to be crazy for the next week, and home life too as all those little things to make the season bright take up time.

So work on the issue will continue a bit during the next two weeks but the blogs, face books etc will be going dark for two weeks.

I hope to see everyone back in the New Year as we launch issue 2, The retailer site should be up by then, you may be able to buy issues online, the Hub site should be refreshed with a new layout and content.

The next year should see the rest of the game roll out, The veteran issue, the sorcery issue, and the Demon Lord versions of the issues should be coming out concurrently.

You should also see a small scenario collection of starting scenarios as well as larger supplements detailing the travails of my own group of players.

So Happy Yule everyone, and a Happy New Year!

PS (Crandall and I will be spending the holidays doing the fun things, like making cookies, painting ornaments, and visiting friends, everyone take a few days off the internet to do the same, I highly recommend everyone else do the same, take some time away to see the real people, the internet people will still be there when you get back)

PPS I heard that some people could not find Lair of Sword and Sorcery at the Heroes Beacon in Saint John (see the where to buy link for full address). It's in the comic section, usually on the Right hand side at the top,

~Ripley

The table runs with blood!

Had a massive playtest on the weekend for the final form of the combat rules. 4 people with 13 heros each ranging from 0 to 2nd rank veterans. Combat rules worked out great, added a couple endurance points to the base endurance and cut armour by a third.
One interesting feature was that 2 different players in two different games decided to turtle up and hide in a single room and in both cases the rank 0's were able to force them out.
Everything played out as I thought it would overall though, The higher rank heroes did indeed cut swathes through the level 0's but were also severely injured in the process.
If the scenario had not been one long pitched battle they surely would have retreated to rest and recover.
High ranking Heroes did show themselves to be capable of getting in and causing a lot of damage but a long drawn out battle with no chance to rest indeed leads to dead heroes.

Rules for playing your own version of the Skirmish game will be included in the Combat issue and it was indeed the best way to teach the Combat system of Lair of Sword and sorcery to new players. In a single 1 hour session you get to learn all the basics, how well your starting heroes will fare against more powerful foes, how many common peasonts they can wipe out, and how far they can push things before they need to pull back.

Strategy and tactics in Lair involve mostly not getting surrounded while trying to gang up as many heroes on a single enemy as possible.

A high ranking enemy will of course send out his minions first saving his own strength for after they have worn down the heroes.  A sure way to kill you big bad boss is to send him in early to take out the heroes minions.  Those 0 rank guys can be brutal.

All in all lots of fun, and a combat system that works perfectly for the genre as well as being fast. We found the action clipped along alot faster than in most table top wargames.

Find out all about the combat rules in the upcoming "Combat issue".

~Ripley

Issue 2 underway

The adventure Continues!
Issue 2: ~The Combat Issue~
The contents of Issue 2 have been finalized.
The frozen wastes of the mountain stronghold of the first men will be further revealed in the starting character setting of Stroh-Branock.  One of the Winterlands capitals it is the center of iron mining in the fearsome Valley of Fangs.

Next the readers are plunged into the actual meat of the Lair of Sword and Sorcery game system.

Character creation, equipment, and combat will all be covered in this issue.

But the Demonlord is not left out in this issue, also included will be the Lair of Sword and Sorcery skirmish game, allowing the players and the Demonlord to get to know the combat rules through a tabletop skirmish type war game. Player versus Player and Player vs Demonlord will all be covered, as well as premade scenarios and guidelines for creating your own scenarios.
An excellent way to learn the Lair rules without burning through your precious characters. It also allows the beginning Demonlord to get to grips with making the difficult decisions and rules interpretation which fall to any Game master.

Scenario creation also serves the Demonlord as good practice for creating full fledged adventures and campaigns later, a good scenario is really just a less complicated adventure and after getting a few of these under their belt the Demonlord should have the confidence to make their own adventures.

The Winterlands