Qelong

by Kenneth Hite

Two barely conceivable beings have fought a war for a generation over Sajavedra, a barely legendary land far to the southeast. They wish to claim its rich harvests of souls and fields, its intricate networks of ley lines and temples, for their own.

They have devastated it utterly.

A forgotten weapon in their war, a neglected sorcery fallen from a distracted archon’s attention, lies in the Qelong River valley at the edge of this near-cosmic battlefield.

Qelong is Kenneth Hite’s hellish southeast Asian setting inspired by fantasy quest drama and war stories like Valhalla Rising, Apocalypse Now, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Suitable for character levels 4-6, usable with LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming

53 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2013

About the author

Kenneth Hite (born September 15, 1965) is a writer and role-playing game designer. Author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, Hite has been announced as the lead designer of the upcoming 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade.

Reviews

[Tazio Bettin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So at best sourcebooks, be they campaigns, settings or short adventures, which are published under the Lamentations of the Flame Princess line are heartbreakers. That means that they tend to have great ideas, seeds you can easily use to make quite epic adventures, but if you play them as they are written, they are not fun. Not at all. They're dull, repetitive and lead to players doing nothing because every step is an invitation to total party kill. And very little of the great ideas in the adventure or setting can actually be seen in game, if you play like that.
Qelong is maybe the most heartbreaking campaign I've read from LotFP. The setting and the story seed is amazing. Simply awesome. It's Apocalypse Now meets Stalker meets Lovecraft's Mythos. You have a tainted land, all sort of weirdness and the definite feeling that the situation is beyond hope.
Now this would have been great if it had been the setting for a game like, say, Exalted, where demigods battle desperately to save a corrupted land and its people. It would have been epic, dramatic and full of pathos. But it's not like that. So using this manual as a seed for other games is quite great. Just forget about the mechanical side, and change how the corrupted magic essence called Aakom works, and you have excellent material.

[Kars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Packs a lot of delicious details in a small package. Manages to capture the atmosphere of war-torn Southeast Asia distorted through a weird fantasy lens. Docking it one point for some overly complicated mechanical simulation of game effects. But I guess if you're full-on into old school roleplaying that's a plus, not a minus.

[Kelvin Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely south-east Asian mini-setting that I think tends to get overlooked as it is so far removed from the general European feel of the rest of the LotFP product line. Even so, it shares the sense of dark, corrupting horror as the rest of the line, and I encourage you to find reasons to get your players to travel there!

I only have two (minor) complaints. I think the mechanics for the magical poison are too fiddly and perhaps too punishing; although there is a lot of treasure to be found, I'm not sure many players will stick around for long once the poison mechanics kick in, and I feel that's a waste of a setting that deserves to be explored. I would tone down both the book-keeping and the lethality of the corruption.

It would also be good to have at least one adventure, or at least some overt adventure seeds, so that there were some clear hooks for the players. This is a minor issue because once the players get involved in local events, there are many things to do, and it's clear that you can apply a lick of faux-Cambodian paint to an existing adventure and drop it in, so I only mention it as a mild warning.

Qelong is in my opinion one of the best LotFP products and is well worth a look for a GM interested in a fantasy Asian setting that isn't monks and samurai, or just wants a prepared hexmap full of interesting, if horrific encounters to throw at their players. Great stuff.