A Look at LotFP Free RPG Day 2014 Indiegogo Campaign

I was all set NOT to back the LotFP Free RPG 2014 campaign, as I'm still waiting on LotFP's Summer Folly of 2012 to ship. +James Raggi 's stuff is always high quality in production values, even if some of his recent releases are so far from the beaten path as to be unusable for all but one-shots in my opinion. I'm sure James would argue otherwise (and has argued otherwise in the past).

James is also slow as shit rolling uphill in getting his projects out the door. This I know he won't argue (as he pretty much stated it himself on the Indiegogo page):

LotFP is kinda slow on these crowdfunding things, and that's a fair cop, so here's the skinny: 

The Doom-Cave adventure is already completely written and has been played once. Needs editing and layout, and will get another play and might need some minor text revisions before final editing. The cover art shown above is obviously done. Interior art and the alternate cover are still to be done. The dungeon map for publication is already done and delivered. Worst-case scenario is a cut-rate layout going to press, but last year's 3-times-as-big adventure didn't have writing done until mid-March and still got to press on time with the quality art and layout for Free RPG Day. 

Shirts and tote bags, as mentioned, will go to press just after the campaign finishes and I learn what sizes we need for everything and ship separate from any books. The design is, as you can see, already done. Previous crowdfunding knickknacks like shirts have shipped ahead of other perks on those campaigns. Track record here is good I think. 

Chandler's stuff is more of a crapshoot because I don't have the direct control over his life and pen. But Chandler has been a MACHINE - his 2013 RPG output (nevermind his day job and fiction writing) was 1017 pages and 291,000 words, with Pandemonio, Viewscream, The Starship from Hell, Teratic Tome, Slaughtergrid, Roll XX, and Bad Myrmidon to his credit. He'll get his stuff done in a timelier manner than anything LotFP does on its own. Dude's workrate puts LotFP to shame. Bastard. But we're glad he's helping us out for our fundraiser here! I mention his track record because he is reliable and works fast. Lacerations' status is "90% of the art is done, and most of the text is written by hand, or in my playtest-notebook." If the Lacerations game is late, it'll be late. Not much I can say to that, that's a Chandler self-produced thing. If the Lost World sandbox he's doing for this campaign is late (and it is in the outline stage, it is not yet written), I will ship the Doom-Cave backer copies on July 1 anyway and ship the Lost World adventures separately when they're done. If Chandler drops dead or gets hired by someone that wants FULLTIMEALLTHETIME for too-big money to say no, I'll get someone else on it, another established writer with a rep for getting things out in a timely manner.

Here's why I am going to back this, and it has little to do with The Doom-Cave of the Crystal Headed Children (which very well may be useable - at least the premise sounds useable) and little to nothing to do with totes and shirts and everything to do with +Rafael Chandler 's contributions to this project.

Rafael has a taste for the strange and bizarre yet his stuff is still pretty much plug and play when it comes to integrating it to the average fantasy campaign. Rafael "gets it". He also "gets" the OSR community.

So yeah, I'm in. Just need to figure out that euro conversion shit ;)