![]() ![]() Overwhelmingly, my disappointment with Carcosa stems from the lack of anything truly weird or creative in the setting. In a similar vein of derived utility, the random charts for Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, Space Alien Armament, Random Robots, and Mutations are all fairly well done.Īll of this, unfortunately, is fairly brief in character and scarcely justifies the purchase price for Carcosa. That’s a clever structure for delivering scenario hooks and I’ll almost certainly be lifting it in the future. In fact, even if the ritual is not being performed (by the bad guys or the PCs), learning the details of the ritual inherently provides a hook: What else might be inside the fane? Whether the PCs are trying to stop a sorcerer performing this ritual or playing villains attempting to complete the ritual for themselves, this kind of specificity will drive them out into the wilderness of Carcosa: They have to find that fane. Otherwise, you’ll find more graphic stuff in a Clive Barker, Jacqueline Carey, or Stephen King novel.) What I actually find interesting about the sorcerous rituals is that they provide an innovative method for motivating and directing the exploration of the hex map.įor example, the Approach of the Farthest Rim, “can be performed only in the lost fane in hex 2401”. If rape or violence against children are trigger words for you, you should probably avoid this book. (Although the critics would lead you to believe that they’re graphic snuff pornography, the reality is that the vile acts - while specific - are not detailed or described in any sort of lurid detail. These have received a good deal of attention because many of them require specific vile acts in order to perform them (murder, rape, and so forth), but that’s largely a tempest in a teapot. ![]() One point of particular interest in Carcosa are the sorcerous rituals. Similarly, while I may find Palace of the Vampire Queen a fascinating historical oddity and revolutionary for its time, anybody trying to sell me a dungeon designed like that today is not going to win my applause. But Carcosa is a particularly bland and repetitive instantiation of the form, and I also think 1976 was a long time ago. I recognize that many of these elements are historic qualities of classic hex-based supplements like the Wilderlands. The sounds taper and crescendo with the bluster of the wind, but their source can never be found.Įven if this wasn’t the umpteenth time I’d read some variation of “there are mysterious sounds and you can never figure out what they are“, you can’t try to defend half the hex entries by saying “just ideas to develop” while the other half of your hexes are trying to stifle the development of those ideas. But, if so, why is McKinney so delightfully enamored with the words “cannot” and “never”? Let’s proffer hex 2105 as an example:ĭrums, the clash of war cymbals, and the deep clangor of a mighty gong can be heard coming from the desert. The argument can, of course, be made that the purpose of the key is merely to serve as a creative seed for the GM. #Carcosa pages pdf skin#… or what? He’ll attack? He’ll shed his skin and reveal himself to be a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath? He’ll curse them? He’ll turn out to be a demi-god? He’ll betray them to their worst enemies? It would be wise to return this show of respect with a dignified bow or curtsy. ![]() He acknowledges with a barely perceptible nod. For example, hex 2004 is keyed:Ī Brown Man, dressed in immaculate white robes fringed with golden embroidery, rests quietly by the side of the path. Second, even when the hex key shows greater creativity, it usually takes the form of material which is non-actionable during an actual game session. ” (For example: “Village of 400 Green Men ruled by ‘the Peerless Will,’ a neutral 8th-level Fighter.”) And even more are dedicated to describing the particular physical characteristics of various Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, all of which were generated using the charts found at the back of the book with no additional creative thought applied whatsoever.Īnd that, ultimately, is probably the biggest indictment against Carcosa’s hex key: Virtually all of it could have been more usefully rendered as a half dozen random tables. For example, massive chunks of the book consist of, “ of # ruled by, a. Unfortunately, this generally remains true of Carcosa‘s key even when more details are proffered. This is particularly true of published products, and yet a depressingly huge number of Carcosa’s key entries consist entirely of things like “17 Diseased Guardians”, “13 giant lizards”, and “5 Mummies”. Part of my general dissatisfaction with Geoffrey McKinney’s Carcosa is certainly due to a difference of opinion when it comes to methodology.įirst, whether we’re talking hex keys or dungeon keys, I’m extremely skeptical of key entries that consist of nothing more than a list of monsters. ![]()
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