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The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions
Supplement for Lamentations of the Flame Princess providing rules, guidelines, tables and suggestions for creating wizards' seclusia.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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June 16, 2018
I picked up a copy of The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions because I am a big fan of Vincent Baker’s work, not because I’m experienced with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of dungeon crawls these days, and while I’m interested in OSR games as RPG game design, I’m not overly interested in playing them. I put that information out there because I suspect reviews of this book will be at the two extremes, some people hating it because it isn’t the book they want it to be and some people loving it because it is much more than they expected.
The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions is not a ready-made adventure that you can read and throw your weekly gamer group into after you take some notes. Instead, the book is a toolkit to help you create your own seclusium by breaking the envisioned adventures down into their basic and indispensable parts. If you want something that lets you bring other people’s ideas and stories to your table, this is not the book for you.
A seclusium is Baker’s word for a wizard’s tower or sanctum in which they both live and practice their arcane arts. The seclusiums that this book helps you build are considered “vulnerable,” meaning that the wizard “is in some form absent,” and has been for some time. Much of the staff, help, slaves, and whatnot have taken some items and left the grounds, but some staff and creations linger behind, either carrying on with their assigned tasks in anticipation of the wizard’s return or forging new lives and order. Neighboring political bodies and people of power are casting their eye upon the long-silent seclusium, but have yet to muster the nerve for an incursion. As such, the vulnerable seclusium is the perfect site for a location-based adventure. The specific rules cited in the book are geared toward the rules of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but the book is more concerned with the creation of the location than it is with what system will be used to explore it.
I loved this book. Baker’s writing is beautiful and evocative, his ability to break things down to their most basic level is impressive, and every page holds at least one moment that made me catch my breath from inspiration. Much of the book is made up of lists to help you bring the seclusium, its past, and its inhabitants to life, but I found those lists eminently readable, like lines of poetry.
What I think makes the book so successful is that Baker takes the time to lay out an opening set of principles that guide him in his creative endeavor and that he offers to us to do the same. The book opens with a bullet-pointed definition of a vulnerable seclusium. Everything that follows in the next 150 or so pages are constrained and shaped by those definitive statements. Also in the introductory chapter, Baker briefly defines his vision of what magic is and how it works. Plasms, plasmids, plasmic entities, plasmic psyches, spells, spellbooks, demons, imps—they are all tied together and proposed as a unified theory of magic. With this singular vision of what magic is and how it works, Baker uses those elements in his explanation of the magic items and creatures left behind by the absent wizard. These clarifications, along with his thoughts on the nature of wizardly traps and monsters, are used as principles to guide your thinking about what has happened in the Seclusium you are building and why it’s peopled and arranged the way it is. With those principles in hand, you can chase the feverish runnings of your imagination with confidence and excitement. It is, I think, a fantastic way to structure a book.
Once the principles are set, the book follows 8 steps in creating your seclusium, whether you’re finishing one of the started seclusiums or building your own from scratch. First you detail your wizard, creating their name and title (e.g. “Horvia of the Seven Potencies”), the overall look of their seclusium (e.g. “a place of luxury and occult pleasures”), and their general temperament (e.g. “a wizard of wicked imagination and vast capacity”). Tables are provided to help you narrow down why the wizard abandoned their seclusium (e.g. “He has been seized, reft from his work, and bound into servitude by a power greater than he”) and what general facts are known about the seclusium (e.g. “the wizard possessed an enslaved monster, who flawlessly obeyed her signals”). There are then tables to work out the look of your wizard, (e.g., black-skinned, willowy, with wild hair and a wrinkled face, restless eyes and eccentric fashions). Finally you narrow down the wizards foremost endeavors (e.g. “to communicate through time and existences with a significant personage of another era, world, or reality.”)
That’s how easy it is to create an outline for you to flesh in and make your mind’s plaything.
Once you understand your wizard’s ways and drives, you can fill in the details of the seclusium and its mysteries. Some readers will be put off by the fact that no maps are supplied in the text. The tables make a lot of material suggestions about the look and layout of the seclusium and its grounds, but doing the actual mapping is left to you, the creator. After deciding from some tables, or rolling on them, you might decide that “the seclusium’s built on a site of ancient cultic significance, known of old to be a place of dangerous power,” that on the grounds are “a polished marble fountain” and “a natural cave in whose belly is a chamber of crystal,” that its staff’s personal rooms “are a complicated warren,” that central to the architecture is “a high-peaked hall,” and included among the rooms are “a sunken amphitheater” as well as “a forge, furnace, or bank of kilns,” that the seclusium uses “rustic wood,” “blue marble,” and “mosaic tiles” of “garish colors,” that is has “hanging tapestries” and “stained glass windows” with “sumptuous chambers”—but where those features appear and how they are laid out is entirely on you. The intention is to give you enough motifs and imagery to let you build out a seclusium that can only come from your mind. If you are excited by that process, you’ll love the book. If you want someone else to do that creative work, you’ll be disappointed.
One of the things I love is that you are guided to come up with a number of people who were in the seclusium before it became vulnerable and who are living there still. Guests, staff, servants, slaves, rivals—by the time you are done, there will be a number of humans (or human-looking monsters) with their own drives, desires, and pressures. You are encouraged to bring in the monsters and spirits as well, but there is a social core that is created within the seclusium. I find this approach exciting in that it creates a pre-existing set of relationships for the PCs to encounter and have to navigate. If you were so inclined, you could create a relationship map for these characters and a set of stakes that you as the referee (to use the name from Lamentations) are curious to follow up on.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to run players through a seclusium of my own devising, but I am certainly eager to put one together as a creative exercise. I imagine that authors of fantasy could get a lot out of this book as a starting point for a focused world building.
If this sounds awful to you, stay clear of it, but if you found yourself intrigued by the possibilities, the book is well-worth its meager cost.
The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions is not a ready-made adventure that you can read and throw your weekly gamer group into after you take some notes. Instead, the book is a toolkit to help you create your own seclusium by breaking the envisioned adventures down into their basic and indispensable parts. If you want something that lets you bring other people’s ideas and stories to your table, this is not the book for you.
A seclusium is Baker’s word for a wizard’s tower or sanctum in which they both live and practice their arcane arts. The seclusiums that this book helps you build are considered “vulnerable,” meaning that the wizard “is in some form absent,” and has been for some time. Much of the staff, help, slaves, and whatnot have taken some items and left the grounds, but some staff and creations linger behind, either carrying on with their assigned tasks in anticipation of the wizard’s return or forging new lives and order. Neighboring political bodies and people of power are casting their eye upon the long-silent seclusium, but have yet to muster the nerve for an incursion. As such, the vulnerable seclusium is the perfect site for a location-based adventure. The specific rules cited in the book are geared toward the rules of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but the book is more concerned with the creation of the location than it is with what system will be used to explore it.
I loved this book. Baker’s writing is beautiful and evocative, his ability to break things down to their most basic level is impressive, and every page holds at least one moment that made me catch my breath from inspiration. Much of the book is made up of lists to help you bring the seclusium, its past, and its inhabitants to life, but I found those lists eminently readable, like lines of poetry.
What I think makes the book so successful is that Baker takes the time to lay out an opening set of principles that guide him in his creative endeavor and that he offers to us to do the same. The book opens with a bullet-pointed definition of a vulnerable seclusium. Everything that follows in the next 150 or so pages are constrained and shaped by those definitive statements. Also in the introductory chapter, Baker briefly defines his vision of what magic is and how it works. Plasms, plasmids, plasmic entities, plasmic psyches, spells, spellbooks, demons, imps—they are all tied together and proposed as a unified theory of magic. With this singular vision of what magic is and how it works, Baker uses those elements in his explanation of the magic items and creatures left behind by the absent wizard. These clarifications, along with his thoughts on the nature of wizardly traps and monsters, are used as principles to guide your thinking about what has happened in the Seclusium you are building and why it’s peopled and arranged the way it is. With those principles in hand, you can chase the feverish runnings of your imagination with confidence and excitement. It is, I think, a fantastic way to structure a book.
Once the principles are set, the book follows 8 steps in creating your seclusium, whether you’re finishing one of the started seclusiums or building your own from scratch. First you detail your wizard, creating their name and title (e.g. “Horvia of the Seven Potencies”), the overall look of their seclusium (e.g. “a place of luxury and occult pleasures”), and their general temperament (e.g. “a wizard of wicked imagination and vast capacity”). Tables are provided to help you narrow down why the wizard abandoned their seclusium (e.g. “He has been seized, reft from his work, and bound into servitude by a power greater than he”) and what general facts are known about the seclusium (e.g. “the wizard possessed an enslaved monster, who flawlessly obeyed her signals”). There are then tables to work out the look of your wizard, (e.g., black-skinned, willowy, with wild hair and a wrinkled face, restless eyes and eccentric fashions). Finally you narrow down the wizards foremost endeavors (e.g. “to communicate through time and existences with a significant personage of another era, world, or reality.”)
That’s how easy it is to create an outline for you to flesh in and make your mind’s plaything.
Once you understand your wizard’s ways and drives, you can fill in the details of the seclusium and its mysteries. Some readers will be put off by the fact that no maps are supplied in the text. The tables make a lot of material suggestions about the look and layout of the seclusium and its grounds, but doing the actual mapping is left to you, the creator. After deciding from some tables, or rolling on them, you might decide that “the seclusium’s built on a site of ancient cultic significance, known of old to be a place of dangerous power,” that on the grounds are “a polished marble fountain” and “a natural cave in whose belly is a chamber of crystal,” that its staff’s personal rooms “are a complicated warren,” that central to the architecture is “a high-peaked hall,” and included among the rooms are “a sunken amphitheater” as well as “a forge, furnace, or bank of kilns,” that the seclusium uses “rustic wood,” “blue marble,” and “mosaic tiles” of “garish colors,” that is has “hanging tapestries” and “stained glass windows” with “sumptuous chambers”—but where those features appear and how they are laid out is entirely on you. The intention is to give you enough motifs and imagery to let you build out a seclusium that can only come from your mind. If you are excited by that process, you’ll love the book. If you want someone else to do that creative work, you’ll be disappointed.
One of the things I love is that you are guided to come up with a number of people who were in the seclusium before it became vulnerable and who are living there still. Guests, staff, servants, slaves, rivals—by the time you are done, there will be a number of humans (or human-looking monsters) with their own drives, desires, and pressures. You are encouraged to bring in the monsters and spirits as well, but there is a social core that is created within the seclusium. I find this approach exciting in that it creates a pre-existing set of relationships for the PCs to encounter and have to navigate. If you were so inclined, you could create a relationship map for these characters and a set of stakes that you as the referee (to use the name from Lamentations) are curious to follow up on.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to run players through a seclusium of my own devising, but I am certainly eager to put one together as a creative exercise. I imagine that authors of fantasy could get a lot out of this book as a starting point for a focused world building.
If this sounds awful to you, stay clear of it, but if you found yourself intrigued by the possibilities, the book is well-worth its meager cost.
August 9, 2017
While not necessarily a good game book to simply read, it is an excellent resource to build a wizard's lairs, or seclusium, with tons of tables brimming with ideas.
September 3, 2018
Tablas para crear guaridas de magos y tres ejemplos (unos más detallados que otros). Prescindible salvo coleccionistas.
August 25, 2013
A book of tables and guidelines for creating a wizards' seclusia (ie a wizard's home), for use as a location based adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) RPG. It also includes three seclusia created from the tables in the book as examples.
While it's designed for LotFP, it could easily be adapted to most fantasy RPGs, although some of the concepts might have to be adjusted.
Like anything by D. Vincent Baker, there are a lot of interesting ideas in this book, from the "Concepts" in the first chapter to the "House Rules" in the appendix.
The latter are probably the most interesting thing in the book to me. He has basically taken some moves out of Apocalypse World and tweaked them a bit to provide alternate perception checks for use in LotFP or other old school RPGs.
While I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to use this in a game, I'm glad I have it, and recommend it to other RPG gamemasters.
While it's designed for LotFP, it could easily be adapted to most fantasy RPGs, although some of the concepts might have to be adjusted.
Like anything by D. Vincent Baker, there are a lot of interesting ideas in this book, from the "Concepts" in the first chapter to the "House Rules" in the appendix.
The latter are probably the most interesting thing in the book to me. He has basically taken some moves out of Apocalypse World and tweaked them a bit to provide alternate perception checks for use in LotFP or other old school RPGs.
While I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to use this in a game, I'm glad I have it, and recommend it to other RPG gamemasters.
September 29, 2013
O livro tem um conceito foda, excelentes idéias, mas falha ao tentar ser uma caixa de ferramentas: a temática dos seclusiums, por mais esperta que seja, é muito amarrada. As tabelas, bem inspiradas, também tem uma forte pegada temática, o que tira boa parte de sua utilidade como uma "caixa de ferramentas" que é a proposta do livro. No final das contas temos um meio termo entre uma aventura e um livro de suporte, que não faz nenhum dos dois papéis satisfatoriamente...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews