Just bought this

[danbuter]

Got my copy of Carcosa yesterday. It's a neat supplement. While I won't use it wholesale, I will definitely be stealing stuff for my game. Some of the hexes are really cool, and I also like some of the alien technology. While I think the spells are interesting, I don't know that I would use them in game (which I tend to keep PG). Overall, I like the book. Thanks for publishing it!

[needles]

So now that all of the supposed outrage over nothing blew over. I want to order my copy of Carcosa because frankly I need a bit of new material for my game. I love the Lovecraftian bits of the setting & such. I know the amount of work that's gone into it. Has anyone used this material for their games?

[Morandir]

I use stuff from Carcosa fairly often. The hex descriptions are great inspiration for when the PCs are wandering through the wilderness and you want a bit of weirdness to spice things up and the spawn of shub-niggurath generation tables are invaluable for quickly rolling up a random abomination for the group to slaughter. It's definitely made my game a lot more interesting!

[needles]

So there is now a money order on its way to Geoffrey. I've been going through most of the Carcosa material that I could find here. I'm sold!

[Finarvyn]

It is funny how much people were doing the "villagers with pitchforks and torches" thing with Carcosa, and how this has died out so significantly since then. Personally, I think it's an excellent supplement and the "nasty parts" weren't that nasty at all.

[Malcadon]

Yep, its an awesome booklet. Its a truly unique, like Tékumel but not so... detailed. It definitely drew from vary unusual sources, and a good change from an industry overtaken by generic vanilla fantasy.

All the flack from some of the spells was really silly, and I always respect the boldness of including such spell requirements. I find such things to add a dark, nihilistic feel to the sorcery. Although, between using that alien aphrodisiac on one adolescent girl eleven times to summon an army of frogmen or to pleasure eleven women in one night... well, with over elven races in Carcosa, why not enjoy the world for all its colourful splendor... in one sex-filled evening. ;D

If you can't tell, I don't shy from sexuality in my games. My games are no less mature because of it, because I'm experienced enough to to deal with things like this in a mature and reasonable way (unless the night is running really slow, and the player find they have to make a save vs breast weapons or get spayed by a boob-dragon, but that is just some off-game comradely).

[murquhart72]

The "nasty" bits in question are necessary, not just for the flavor, but as a check/balance for player's wanting magic that is unwholesome and alien: It's been found that killing orc babies is one thing, but when you want to summon a demon and have to kill 4 men of your own kind in cold blood, or rape an innocent; Suddenly, dealing with the darkness doesn't taste so good!
I still think Carcosa is the boldest, most honest supplement to come out in decades ;D

[abecross]

There's a lot to take from Carcosa. I have used plenty of it in my B/X campaign, stolen some for a not-quite-Barsoom game, and plan on using a lot in other games. The Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, alien tech, the hex descriptions, etc are awesome.

[arcadayn]

I will be spicing up my Hyborian Age OD&D game with Carcosan sorcery and probably a few actual trips to Carcosa for the unfortunate PCs. I'm basically using it as an expansion of the Lovecraftian elements in Conan's world.

[needles]

Tonight the group is getting a few sources of fun from Carcosa. I'd like to thank Geoffrey for some excellent customer service & a d**n fine product.
What I love out of this product:

48 new monsters- These aren't just new dressings on older Lovecraftian monsters but monsters that actually are suited to the game world.

* tables for the random generation of spawn of Shub-Niggurath~ This enables you the game master to generator a really unique monsters. This table reminds me from the random demon generator from the first edition AD&D Dungeon masters guide.

* 5 colors of the desert lotus~ Deadly,cool, & nasty

* countless high-tech weapons and items of the Space Aliens~ Very cool stuff here, random artifact generator that will keep players guessing

* Random Robot Generator ~ This generator is fantastic for making friends,foes, & everything in between
Final conclusion this is a game master book right from the start. The magic rules in this are perfect for creating nasty npcs who will keep the players talking about the bad ass that they faced a few months ago.
Other products that this campaign setting will work well with Gamma World 1st edition, The Conan & Barsoom hack of grey elf, Terminal Space, & a bunch other stuff from the old school movement. My personal favorite is an original Empire of the Petal Throne mash up.
I'm very satisfied with the over all quality of the Carcosa pdf. Next is going to be the Fungus Gardens. I think the stink over this product far over shadowed anything actually within the pages of Carcosa which is actually a shame.

[Malcadon]

Sept 15, 2010 12:17:46 GMT -6 needles said:

* tables for the random generation of spawn of Shub-Niggurath~ This enables you the game master to generator a really unique monsters. This table reminds me from the random demon generator from the first edition AD&D Dungeon masters guide.

You mean Hordlings, aka the Hordes of Hades from the MMII. I used to use them until I found all the rolled-up disruptions redundant, as the players would rather hack them out-right, instead of hearing about all the overly-detailed descriptions. I find the Spawn of Shub-Niggurath tables to be more useful, as they are slightly more generalized (no need to roll for freakish necks and ears), and a lot less clustered with the dice rolls (most of it using a d20).

The best part of using such creatures, are they way they are vary inconsistent. Most D&D monsters are static and after a while the players get to know the monsters really well - weaknesses and all. Having such monsters available really keeps the players on their toes.

[18 Spears]

Acutally, I think he's talking about this from page 194 of the ADD DMG.

APPENDIX D: RANDOM GENERATION OF CREATURES FROM THE LOWER PLANES

At times it might be useful to have an unrecognizable creature of evil from the planes of the Abyss, Tarterus, Hades, Gehenna, or Hell. It is no great matter to sit down and design a fairly interesting one given an hour or so, but time or desire lacking, the following will enable you to create one or several such monsters in but a few minutes. The format is straight from the AD&D MONSTER MANUAL for ease of recording and handling the creature(s) developed.

About 2 and three-quarter pages of tables for generating new hellish monsters follows.

[Mike]

Folks, if you were going to run Carcosa 'as is' but opted to leave sorcerers as the evil NPCs (or no one wanted to play a sorcerer) would there be enough variety in the party with all of the characters being Fighting Men?

[tavis]

When we were playing Searchers of the Unknown PbP here, having everyone be essentially a fighting man actually created more variety in characterization. When you are The Fighter, you can be that stereotype without needing to plumb its depths; having everyone in the same niche made us differentiate within it in a way that was really cool.

[Mushgnome]

A couple of years back, I DM'd a Cthuluoid horror campaign based on Mike Mearl's flawed-yet-intriguing Iron Heroes setting. The book's magic system was basically a flop, so none of the players chose to play spellcasters, but it occurs to me that Carcosa sorcery would have fit right in with its grim sword-and-sorcery vibe. If I had a time machine I would have totally integrated ideas from Carcosa into that campaign!

[verhaden]

Sept 21, 2010 18:17:43 GMT -6 tavis said:

When we were playing Searchers of the Unknown PbP here, having everyone be essentially a fighting man actually created more variety in characterization. When you are The Fighter, you can be that stereotype without needing to plumb its depths; having everyone in the same niche made us differentiate within it in a way that was really cool.

I was just thinking today about doing a "Searchers of Lost Carcosa" writeup, using elements of waysoftheearth's Refried rules as a base. (I think his dd mechanic would work wonders in keeping things simple while still having a strange unpredictability with regards to damage.)

[waysoftheearth]

That would be a great contribution Verhaden ;D

A little while back a did yet another revision to SotU Refired, which (more-or-less) summed up a bunch of wisdom that fell out of a few games I ran since posting the first few versions. I'll dig it up and post a link...

[verhaden]

Upon further consideration, it's not really necessary.

You can run Carcosa with the Refried base pretty much as-is. Remove the demi-human races, get rid of wizards, defer to the conventions in Refried when you have conflicting info in Carcosa and you've pretty much got it.

E.g., The Awakening Dawn (F1, AC7, MV10", HD2d6+2, HP9, Chain Mail, Sword, Dagger, Bow) is a wild and energetic Orange Fighting-Man, eager to complete his mission and return to his tribe as a man.

Sorcerers are NPC antagonists and boom.