[Review] Winter Death (Lotfp 3PP); The Other Lotfp

[Adventure]
Winter Death (2023)
Markus Schauta (Gazer Press)
Lvl 1

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The following review contains spoilers.

I recently received a hardcopy booklet in the mail. Tearing off the protective cardboard wrapping, I gazed curiously upon its imposing black cover, its classic horror image of a bestial woman roaring at the gloomy blue moon rendered in striking watercolor, its ominous dripping graffiti title of ‘Winter Death.’ Further examination revealed it was an adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. ‘Lotfp?,’ I said to myself, ‘that game with adventures where you kill dogs, drink piss, experience allegorical molestation by relatives, travel into a literal shitworld and steal money from Alexander Macris? Why on earth would I, or anyone respectable, have agreed to review such a thing?’ And then, as I perused the first of its 50 pages, struck with rapture and delight at its dark and solemn beauty, the knowledge returned to me, as if by divine revelation. Of course. This was for the Other Lotfp.

Yes, the Other Lotfp. Does anyone recall the Other Lotfp? The grim, grimy, historical horror game of witchcraft, pike and shot, where death is ever but a heartbeat away and men must face off against both the terrible, supernatural forces of the weird and the most depraved, vicious and cruel specimens of the human race ? The type so firmly embedded in euro-history that it reeks of the Schwartzwald, the Ossuary of Sedlec and a Balkan wolves’ Den, where an ironic nudge and a wink will get your skull caved in to the tune of enraged slavo-teutonic curses? The type exemplified by the likes of A Single Small Cut, Better Then Any Man (or most of it, the info gathering part in the prostitute-inn is a bit sus), The Punchline, that map book thing and the original Death Frost Doom? Yes. That one. The serious one.

Case in point, Markus Schauta has returned with something of a prequel to his earlier, excellent offerings, and an stellar candidate for a standalone adventure, campaign starter or one-shot to boot. At this point Lotfp’s attempts at ironic subversion have all the artistic merit of a disease-ridden tramp in public transport throwing faeces at a his fellow passengers so whoever is still riding the Lotfp bus with aspirations of maintaining any sort of respectability should treat these as an immense relief, third party though they may be.

But really, how was the play Ms. Lincoln?

It is winter, 1634, Germany at the height of the Thirty Years War. The party has been captured by a group of soldiers, bound in the freezing cellar of an inn, and awaiting a hanging by dawn. While they receive their last supper, the Fransiscan priest in attendence slips them a lockpick and tells them the door on the balcony is unlocked. Stripped of their gear, and freezing, the party will not survive a journey through the night without winter clothing. Enter the PCs.

A jailbreak. A marvelous, complex, multi-faceted jailbreak. What makes a jailbreak scenario work? Schauta understands. You get thrown in an impossible situation, faced with several problems. You are imprisoned in the cellar of the inn, stripped of your equipment, handcuffed and if you would flee into the night you would freeze to death without winter clothing. You immediately get an ally, the friar, who slips you a lockpick, allowing you to escape your bonds, and announces that the balcony door on the second floor has been unlocked, and tells you where your equipment is. Do you trust him?

A long while ago I reviewed an Lotfp adventure called No Rest For the Wicked and I hated it: It was 34 pages of inert Ikea Catalogue detail surrounding a relatively simple single-encounter premise. And while one star is a bit harsh considering the other Lotfp material that would come out afterward, I would probably stand by that verdict. I bring this up not to claw open old wounds but to contrast this with the approach that Winter Death takes, while being also situated in an inn. Significant choices, challenges and twists, wrapped in vivid detail, permeated with and atmosphere of grimdark fantasy and historical authenticity.

Immediately, while you are being marched up the mountain to the inn, you are confronted with a choice. Do you make a dex check and try to pilfer some small item of the soldiers and sequester it upon your person, or do you make a wisdom check and perhaps observe some crucial detail. Because the scenario is relatively contained, every NPC is given a loving paragraph of detail and a striking water-colour portrait. The ruthless captain Hagendorf, the psychopathic Knees, the tough-as-nails bounty-hunter couple, the inn-keeper, the apparently benevolent fransiscan monk, the injured spy hiding in the cellars. Many of them have ulterior motives, dark secrets, complications that add to the scenario. You are placed in an impossible situation, must formulate a plan, and then you will encounter serious wrinkles that you have not expected.

The most challenging part of the scenario is that a lot of permutations are covered but it is not always easy to quickly retrieve this information. There’s excellent procedures for, say, what the chance is of alerting sleeping persons if you fire a flintlock in the inn, and how long it will take the alterted soldiers to converge on your location, but you might run into a problem because the state of the NPC is only determined when the characters listen at or attempt to enter his room. Indeed my one tip would have been to put the occupants of the rooms on the map, a rare occasion when such an inclusion would have been justified. The direction of stairways and interconnectedness between levels is well-marked on the encounter key, which is fortunate. In contrast, there’s a time-table and splendid procedures if the PCs escape ‘prematurely,’ and the How to Survive? spread spells out some of the more obvious courses of action so you do not have to infer all this from the text proper.

There’s a way to designing a scenario like this where pressure is applied to the characters and I think Winter Death nails it. Moving through the cellars without protection triggers saves and causes the characters to gradually lose constitution, a process that gets worse if they venture outside. This is combined with Schauta’s fondness for inertia, which makes movement through even the 10 room cellar feel laborious and claustrophobic. Doors are locked or stuck, iron grates must be forced, there’s a narrow tunnel partially filled with freezing water. Improvised weapons can be scavenged from tools (very often given a helpful damage indicator between brackets).

Mega-spoilers.

The straightforward escape plan is complicated by factors large and small, allowing the adventure to unfold unpredictably across multiple playthroughs. The inn-keepers werewolf wife (!) is chained up in the meat-room. The innkeepers injured brother, a deserter, is holing up in the wine-cellar, with a bounty on his head. The father is actually a spy, there to recover a splinter of the true cross for a large reward. The bounty hunters may be bribed to look the other way. The state of these NPCs is randomly determined when the PCs enter, meaning playthroughs will vary. Lars Triberg might be asleep, or he might be waiting, aiming his pistols at the door and telling the PCs to surrender, or drunk and fire immediately, possibly alerting the guards. If the guards begin searching the cellar they might find Anna and get into a fight, which in turn means the innkeeper will grab his blunderbuss and attempt to defend his wife etc. If you go outside there is a small chance each turn you will encounter (and get attack by) wolves. The whole scenario is permeated with a tension like a primed grenade, awaiting violent, explosive release.

Winter Death combines tense atmosphere and unpredictability with good gameplay, rewarding both skill and the ability to respond to unforeseen, quickly shifting situations. There is tiered success (you might survive but have the priest pilfer the sacred relic with the PCs none the wiser), the PCs might simply obtain one or two pieces of winter clothing and make a break for it, or they might decide that they will try to retrieve their stolen money from one of the soldiers.

The wrap up is a bit contentious. Requiring the PCs succeed at a DC 15 with a charisma check, giving only a +1 if the PCs were savvy enough to pick up on the Catholic cause, or else face imprisonment when they recover the relic and bring it to the regimental captain is a bit too grimdark for my tastes. The single magic item, the Relic of the Cross, has a chance to be inert (realistic but boring), a chance to convey understanding that there is a formula for the transmutation of iron into gold on the inside of the skull of the PC with the lowest charisma, an Lotfpean flourish that I simply had to share, and only 1/3 chance of being a truly sacred relic, imbuing the wielder with the ability to fight on long after having sustained lethal injury, with the Lotfpean caveat that retreating from combat requires a save vs paralysation.

Yeah its good. A grimdark do-over for the Hateful Eight, with a dash of the ole’ classic horror thrown in the mix. Great for a repeat con game or as a campaign starter. Schauta continues to delight. Highly recommended.

****

It seems others share my estimation of Schauta’s work. Winter Death may be checked out on the Lotfp store in hardcover.

And the PDF is here. I believe there is a bit of a Black Friday/Weekend sale going on.