Games Night: LotFP/Isle of the Unknown

I've missed talking about our regular Lamentations of the Flame Princess game for a couple of weeks. Last time on the Isle of the Unknown, Patrick was DMing us through a dungeon underneath an old keep. We had killed some Cthulu-worshippers, some giant bats and avoided some traps along the way. All was well with the world, and I was enjoying playing my new cleric, Priam, servant of the powerful god Venn. Charley/Henry Shortbread, the specialist, had disappeared into the undergrowth, and Priam had just happened to walk along and find the party as they were on their way to the keep.

Patrick has a nice house rule when it comes to magic; as with many D&D type games, you have your spell slots, but you can also try to cast any spell appropriate to your level, so long as you roll for success. Success is determined according to the Apocalypse World success rules: 2d6 plus or minus any modifier, a 10+ gives you what you want (the successful spell), a 7-9 gives you success plus a roll on a "something bad happens" table and a 6 or less just gives you the roll on the "something bad happens" table.

The Bless cleric spell/prayer in LotFP, as understood by me, means that you get d6+level points to spend/declare for future rolls. So having points like that means I can spend points to attack, to evade, for WIS checks - or even, to try and get future spells using Patrick's magic house rule. So if I get a good Bless result early on, then I have points in reserve for the night. I just needed to make that first AW-style roll.

It worked last week. It didn't last night.

I roll a 9, so get my blessing, but immediately have to spend the points to get favour from Venn again in order to cast cure light wounds on myself. Why? Displeased with my constant requests, Venn placed a small dog in my abdomenal cavity. Yes, that's right: A SMALL DOG. Not warts or boils on my face, or a limp, or blindness. A SMALL DOG. Luckily I was able to perform a caesarean on myself and have enough HP to then invoke cure light wounds (using many of the bless points that I just got).

Phew. I was up on the deal I guess. The dog was out, I had more HP than I had had before, I had some bless points left, and a dog that (rolls for loyalty)... hates me.

Lesson learned: don't try to game your deity.

Despite having the highest wisdom in the group I failed four rolls in a row - which is improbable enough - but then for the first three rolls I rolled a 16 each time. A one in eight thousand chance.

The small dog, Priestly, was eaten by a giant moth, we had our first big toe-to-toe battle with some giant Amber Scarabs (was touch and go), escaped from a crazy trap, got suspicious about the Bandit/Cleric who put us up to the job in the first place and the younglings were shouting at each other so much at one point that I passed Patrick the encounter die and said "You may as well just roll."

I can't make it for a couple of weeks, so have asked Patrick if my character can try to slip out of the dungeon (so that he isn't killed in the background when the others do something incredibly reckless). We'll see what happens. I'm enjoying playing a cleric much more than playing a specialist, so am hoping that I'll be able to get him back into play at some point soon.