D&D 5E **Kickstarter - FUNDED** Lamp's Light Sanitarium: A Horror Sourcebook and Adventures for 5e

[matthewdcorley]

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We are funded and currently working on amazing stretch goals!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/lamps-light-sanitarium-a-horror-sourcebook-for-5th

Interviews about Lamp's Lights:
EnWorld: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...m-a-horror-sourcebook-for-5th?ref=creator_nav
Table Top Babble: https://dontsplitthepodcastnetwork.com/table-top-babble/098

Lamp’s Light is a fully realized horror sourcebook for the 5th edition of the world’s most famous roleplaying game. This black and white campaign guide has an expected page count of 130+ pages. As stretch goals are met additional content will be added and the book expanded to accommodate.

Lamp’s Light Sanitarium is a sprawling estate beautifully detailed in hand drawn maps by Toby Lancaster of Dark Realm Maps. The asylum is charted with six individual maps each of which has dozens of fully described rooms. The asylum is equally at home as an oasis in an urban environment or as an idyllic country estate. The characters, themes, and setting are distinctly Victorian with Gothic and steampunk elements.
Lamp’s Light is a fully realized horror sourcebook for the 5th edition of the world’s most famous roleplaying game. This black and white campaign guide has an expected page count of 130+ pages. As stretch goals are met additional content will be added and the book expanded to accommodate.

Lamp’s Light Sanitarium is a sprawling estate beautifully detailed in hand drawn maps by Toby Lancaster of Dark Realm Maps. The asylum is charted with six individual maps each of which has dozens of fully described rooms. The asylum is equally at home as an oasis in an urban environment or as an idyllic country estate. The characters, themes, and setting are distinctly Victorian with Gothic and steampunk elements.

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Lamp's Light in Your Campaign: How to incorporate Lamp's Light into an existing campaign such as those available Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, and other publishers.

New adventures:

• Discordant Scriptures (a Lamp's Light adventure for mid-level PCs). An alien intelligence has been drawn to the confluence of dissonant minds contained within Lamp’s Light. Administrator Rose, at the behest of her patron, has urged the residents of the facility to record their mad dreams within the pages of a dream journal. Rose believes that the collected journals contain within them the knowledge needed to release her patron from its imprisonment on another plane.
• Tabula Rosa (a Lamp's Light adventure for low level PCs) begins with the players as unwilling patients and subjects of test experiments. They are quickly drawn into the intrigues of the asylum and must make difficult decisions if they are to escape.

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Story frameworks: In additional to Discordant Scriptures there will be half a dozen 2-3 page story frameworks ready for you to customize and build upon for your individual campaigns.
Key staff, patients and other inhabitants of Lamp’s Light are detailed with statblocks, backgrounds, illustrations, and everything needed to incorporate them into your sessions. Dr. Renwick, Administrator Rose, and the man known as Patient 11 are but a few of the NPCs walking the halls of Lamp’s Light. Orderlies, Patients, and other creatures are covered in the same level of detail.


New Rules for Managing Sanity

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• The sanity and madness rules presented enhance role-playing, create challenges for the players, and bring more color to your game. 5th edition characters are, above all else, exceptional. They are capable of winning virtually any fight, overcoming epic challenges, and creating miracles. These rules keep that spirit in mind.
• The 20 pages of new rules build upon the framework provided by the DMG. There are expansive tables for transient, short-term, long-term, and indefinite madness, with nearly 50 different entries describing the narrative and mechanical effects on the character.
• For DMs looking for more color without the added mechanical crunch the narrative descriptions provide ample fodder for you and your players to role-play.

The Pledges
$1 – Visitor’s Pass: Thank you and access to backer only updates

• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$5 – Curious Observer: You get a copy of the Sanity Rules written for Lamp’s Light and a custom form-fillable PDF character sheet for 5e

• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$15 – Frenetic Patient: as above, you also get a PDF of Lamp’s Light Sanitarium, and your name in the book

• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$21 – Devoted Alienist: as above, and POD (backer pays for print cost + shipping) through DriveThruRPG

• Physical book (POD, backer pays print and shipping costs)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$40 – Faculty Consultation: As above, and Dr. Renwick will write a psychiatric evaluation for you on one of your characters or one of your player's character. The evaluation will be written on Lamp's Light letterhead delivered electronically (ANY locations) and mailed to you (US backers only)

• Psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Renwick
• Physical book (POD, backer pays print and shipping costs)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$50 – Taste of Madness: As DEVOTED ALIENIST, a Lamp's Light session run by Lamp's Light Creator, Matt Corley, on Roll20, and credit as a playtester.

• Lamp's Light Game Session on Roll20 with Matt
• Physical book (POD, backer pays print and shipping costs)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$70 – Lamp's Light Session at Gary Con: As DEVOTED ALIENIST, a Lamp's Light session run by Lamp's Light Creator, Matt Corley, at Gary Con on Friday March 8th from 8a to noon, game swag, and credit as a playtester. THIS PLEDGE DOES NOT INCLUDE LODGING, TRAVEL EXPENSES, OR A GARYCON BADGE

• Lamp's Light Game Session at Gary Con Friday March 8th from 8a to noon with Matt
• Physical book (POD, backer pays print and shipping costs)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

$150 – Lamp’s Light Inner Circle: as above, and you get to design an NPC (alienist, staff member, or patient) with Matt for inclusion in the book. This will include a full stat-block, background, and portrait. (Limit 8)

• Physical book (POD, backer pays print and shipping costs)
• Your name will appear in the book
• Lamp’s Light PDF; DRM-free and indexed
• Lamp’s Light Custom Character Sheet
• Sanity and Madness Rules
• Design a custom NPC (alienist, staff member, or patient) with statblock, custom art, and background
• DM Screen Insert of New Sanity Rules (PDF)

 

[matthewdcorley]

We have ~24 hours left on the Kickstarter and need less than $500 to unlock an automatic upgrade for all POD orders to hardcover!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/lamps-light-sanitarium-a-horror-sourcebook-for-5th

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Am in the middle of listening to you on Table Top Babble with Mr. Introcaso - very intriguing! I hope to pick up a copy to include as a setting in our homebrew campaign. Just got to the part where you indicated that it could be re-skinned as a temple (or other similar establishments). Very nice.

Thanks for all the hard work!

 

[Gradine]

Am in the middle of listening to you on Table Top Babble with Mr. Introcaso - very intriguing! I hope to pick up a copy to include as a setting in our homebrew campaign. Just got to the part where you indicated that it could be re-skinned as a temple (or other similar establishments). Very nice.

Thanks for all the hard work!

It might be interesting to see this re-skinned as something else... personally I'd rather the "sanitariums/mentally ill are so scary!" cliche be left in the awful history of mistreatment that predicated it in the first place. It's always frustrating to see attempts at horror (even cosmic horror) fall back on it.

 

[matthewdcorley]

It might be interesting to see this re-skinned as something else... personally I'd rather the "sanitariums/mentally ill are so scary!" cliche be left in the awful history of mistreatment that predicated it in the first place. It's always frustrating to see attempts at horror (even cosmic horror) fall back on it.

Fair enough. My hope that it's not the place that's scary, rather the folks that are running it, and the terrible things that they're doing. But again, that's a fair observation and as mentioned it's pretty easy to reskin a lot of it cosmetically if that's the preference.

-matt

 

[Swarmkeeper]

It might be interesting to see this re-skinned as something else... personally I'd rather the "sanitariums/mentally ill are so scary!" cliche be left in the awful history of mistreatment that predicated it in the first place. It's always frustrating to see attempts at horror (even cosmic horror) fall back on it.

I think you have sanitariums confused with insane asylums.

The author's creation deals with the former. If it dealt with the latter, I would hardly be supportive.

 

[matthewdcorley]

I think you have sanitariums confused with insane asylums.

The author's creation deals with the former. If it dealt with the latter, I would hardly be supportive.

I've worked at places that have cared for the mentally ill and would never, ever glorify barbaric treatments to those patients.

That said, this is a horror supplement and there are some aspects of an asylum that are included in Lamp's Light. The folks that run Lamp's Light are, by and large, not nice people and are engaging in activities similar to the atrocities inflicted by sanitarium and asylum patients in previous centuries.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you'd like. I appreciate the support and would never want someone to purchase this if it's not what you're looking for.

This thread gives more details on what you can expect to find in the book:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...rror-Sourcebook-amp-Adventure-for-5th-Edition

-matt

 

[Gradine]

I think you have sanitariums confused with insane asylums.

The author's creation deals with the former. If it dealt with the latter, I would hardly be supportive.

Fair, but often times (particularly in modern discourse on the subject) that ultimately works out to be a distinction without a difference, especially considering that "sanitarium" and "sanity" share the same root, and the product itself highlights its sanity rules (not to mention one of its marquee promotional images is of a straitjacket).

I also think that there's issues with the "evil asylum staff" trope, considering how the real-world history ultimately played out, at least in the US (tl;dr version: a handful of asylums displayed shocking abuses, all asylums fell under scrutiny, people decided the best solution would be to do away with asylums and focus on preventative community mental health care, nobody bothered to do any of that work or spend any of the money that would have been necessary to build that infrastructure so we just ended up stuffing a lot mentally ill people in prisons instead).

I'm not trying to piss in anyone's lemonade; I have a strong love/hate relationship with Lovecraftian horror myself. I had originally just dismissed this out of hand, but the fact that at least some thought has been put into how to reflavor the material has me more intrigued.

 

[matthewdcorley]

I also think that there's issues with the "evil asylum staff" trope

This is an excellent point and one that I've been mulling over. There is an NPC, that works for LL, that is absolutely a good guy. There will be at least one more staff (probably two) that are also thinking of their patients first.

I don't think anyone is pissing in anyone's lemonade either I'm enjoying the thread myself. And I agree with the mixed feelings about Lovecraft too, FWIW.

 

[Gradine]

This is an excellent point and one that I've been mulling over. There is an NPC, that works for LL, that is absolutely a good guy. There will be at least one more staff (probably two) that are also thinking of their patients first.

I don't think anyone is pissing in anyone's lemonade either I'm enjoying the thread myself. And I agree with the mixed feelings about Lovecraft too, FWIW.

I'll admit it's refreshing to see someone try to take on the subject with a measure of nuance and thoughtfulness. I've a cosmic horror adventure simmering on the back stove that I'm still trying to figure out how to approach in a way that feels more empowering than exploitative.

It seems I'm too late to back this now, but I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for it in the future.