We're All Mad Here

The goodies kept coming yesterday. Freeport is my favorite published setting. It's D&D, pirates, Lovecraft and those things I love. The Kickstarter was over a year over due. I'm excited to finally have the book. It's over 550 pages of full color glory. However, all of that excitement has been trumped by A Red and Pleasant Land.

My physical copy of AR&PL was waiting for me when I got home. While my crappy phone camera pic doesn't show it, this book is gorgeous. It is tome filled with gaming material: monster stats, magic, a new class, adventure locations, and charts galore.

It's so much more though. 

It really does feel like a piece of art. A utilitarian (I hope to use soon) piece of art, but art nonetheless. From the cover, to the paper quality, to the built in book mark, A Red & Pleasant Land just feels magical.

I really enjoy the Alice class. It's quite unique and fits the mercurial nature of Wonderland and the heroic fool archetype. The Beasts and People section is quite wonderful too. In particular I love the fusion of the Caterpillar with a carrion crawler. One of the really wonderful things about the crunch of this book is that it's written in a way that makes it easy to use in multiple games. Yes the book is for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but it can easily be altered to pretty much any edition of Dungeons and Dragons. My initial reaction was to use it with the latest edition.

The world portrayed in this book feels familiar, but wholly original at the same time. Dracula and Alice and Wonderland are things that have been done to death. Still with flair +Zak Smith has created a beautiful, deadly monster that feels new.

The price for the physical book may seem a bit daunting to some, but I feel it's worth the price. I've read a lot of quality books recently, but I connect to this one on a weird personal level.