Review: Carcosa, by Geoffrey McKinney

Carcosa is my favourite RPG book that I actually don't like at all. I am obsessed with it, but really I am obsessed with the idea of it. I love the premise, the overall aesthetic of the thing. I love the uneasy mixture of genuine horror and pulp nonsense, of grotesque violence and gonzo comedy. I love that it's basically a Kingdom Hearts/Super Robot Wars-style crossover of every Lovecraft-adjacent author ever. I love the sense of intense potentiality in the setting, the feeling that over the course of a few sessions your players could very easily seize godlike power, or trigger an eldritch apocalypse, or just die of sepsis in a ditch.

What I don't love is anything that's actually in the book.

Once you start reading the details, all you find is one limitation after the other. McKinney created a wonderful playground for the imagination, but it seems like he didn't actually want to play there. Consider this quote from the section on "Artifacts of the Great Race":

Humans, however, find it almost impossible to use these outré objects. Only humans with an intelligence of at least 17 can even possibly do so. After each month of continuous study, such a human has a 5% (non-cumulative) chance of understanding the item well enough to make some use of it.

In other words - here's a bunch of cool stuff, but it's statistically improbable that any of your characters will ever be able to use it.

Or the section on sorcerous rituals, most of which require expensive treasures, human sacrifices, or quests to extremely dangerous locations. Even if all the requirements are met, the cosmic entity still gets a saving throw, and:

The Referee must make the being’s saving throw in secret. If a ritual does not work, the Sorcerer does not know why:
The ritual might be defective and thus will never work.  
The Sorcerer might have performed the ritual incorrectly. 
The entity might have made its saving throw.

How is this conducive to any kind of entertainment at the gaming table? If the PCs are trying to complete a ritual, it's just an exercise in frustration. If the PCs are trying to prevent an evil sorceror's ritual, it opens the door to a sad anticlimax: "You failed to stop him in time... but luckily Cthulhu made its saving throw so nothing happens."

Once you get past the long and pointless list of rituals (most of which don't do anything useful even if you go to the trouble of completing them) you reach what should be the real meat of the book: the hex descriptions. But here, too, McKinney seems to have little interest in the possibilities of his own material. So many hex entries are literally just a monster name and a number, as if rolled right off a wandering monster table. But the really baffling ones are things like this: "Tens of thousands of ancient stone burial vaults dot these barren plains. Every one of them has been broken open and emptied." Or: "A shadowy figure lurks at the edge of the forest, watching intently. Though it may be a Black Man or a Purple Man, it is impossible to tell for sure, and he disappears deeper into the trees if pursued. No amount of searching or pursuit will result in finding him."

In other words: "Something here appears to be interesting, but on further investigation, it isn't. At all." 

I know some people praise this kind of brief hex description because "it can serve as a starting point for the DM's imagination". But most of Carcosa's hexes are so brief that they give you nothing at all to work with, or worse, actively stifle imagination by negating possibilities.


The monster descriptions are similarly low-effort. Most of them boil down to generic blobs or crazed mutants that attack on sight. Many Lovecraft deities are listed, and although there's a certain goofy charm in learning that Azathoth, "the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space", has 19 armour class and 60 hit dice, ultimately the descriptions of them are so brief as to make each one indistinguishable. McKinney's attitude seems to be: "You've read the original stories, so I don't need to put in any effort here."

Yet even that is too kind because McKinney has managed to make a lot of the Lovecraft monsters less interesting than in their source material. For example, Carcosa claims that creatures as diverse as shoggoths, mi-go and Deep Ones are all numbered among the "six main spawn of Shub-Niggurath". This attempt to systematise the unruly hodgepodge of the Lovecraft cosmos is reminiscent of the misguided efforts of August Derleth, who notoriously tried to fit Lovecraft's pantheon into neat boxes based on the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. But cosmic horror really only works when the uncanny defies logical classification. The fact that Lovecraft's meta-universe is crowded with beasties and barely held together is part of its allure.

A review of Carcosa, especially a critical one, can't be complete without talking about the rape content. Because it created such controversy at the time of release, I'm always surprised to find how little there actually is in the book: I think it's just two or three rituals and one monster description. I absolutely think it should not be included in the book. Any reasonable DM won't use it anyway, and it makes it much harder to talk about the setting when you have to preface any discussion with "but I'm not into the rape stuff".

That said, I don't believe that the depictions of cruelty and torture in the ritual section are entirely gratuitous. It does add something new to the Cthulhu mythos. The traditional theme of cosmic horror has been "the universe is full of powerful beings that don't care if something horrible happens to you". Carcosa's rituals twist this a little: here, the powerful beings do care about horrible things happening to you, but they care for alien reasons beyond comprehension. But I really question whether this theme can be ably explored in a roleplaying game, much less in a game of gonzo hack-and-slash D&D.

Conclusion... look, I would be an asshole if I didn't give credit where it's due to a book that I've written a bunch of blog posts about. McKinney has definitely created a world that is fundamentally compelling on some level. But if you're reading this review to decide whether to buy it, I'd say... maybe don't bother?

Even aside from the fact that it's published by a guy who stands up for (alleged) rapists - the book doesn't give you anything you can't get yourself. Instead, I recommend you read the source material (Chambers, Smith, Lovecraft, Lindsay, and uh... Burroughs but maybe just watch the movie instead). Look at the artwork associated with Carcosa and read what other D&D bloggers have written about it. Then just imagine what's inside the book itself, and you will probably come up with something better than the disappointing reality.

Review: Bone Marshes

This is a review based on a read-through, not a playtest.

Bone Marshes is a 45-page sandbox setting for Knave. It focuses on a salt-marsh region undergoing an ecological catastrophe caused by (this isn't much of a spoiler) ancient alien technology hidden below the surface. The sun is stuck at noon twenty-four hours a day, the marshes are slowly burning hex by hex, and only the PCs can figure out what has gone wrong. The module includes a hexmap, a cave crawl inspired by Veins of the Earth, and several interlocking dungeon areas.

This is a great example of a well-written, table-ready sandbox. Each hex has something for the PCs to actually do, not just look at. The NPCs all have goals and opinions - there are at least four who could take the role of "quest-giver" depending on how the PCs interact with them. The random encounter tables are stocked with actual situations, not just names of wandering monsters.

One thing that really stands out about Bone Marshes is its focus on ecological and environmental factors as gameplay elements. Spreading wildfires and fluctuating tides create dynamic environments for players to explore. Mud is a dangerous enemy, and fresh water a valuable resource. All these things are not just set dressing, but are backed up with hard mechanics that will force the players to engage with them.

The overall tone of the module is a little scattered. Some things, like the above-mentioned mud rules, point to a grim and gritty tone, something like the Dead Marshes scenes from Lord of the Rings. But this bleak and cruel environment is populated by a cast of rather whimsical characters: a seacaptain whose boat fell through a portal in the sky; mud-people who sell mud items but only in exchange for mud coins... The contrast is reminiscent of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. I think with the right attitude from the GM, it could work very well in play.

The useability of the text is generally good. The hex descriptions are laid out in spreads, the prose is slim and functional, and the whole document is hyperlinked. There are a few places where the text could have been cut more, and a couple of others that are vague or semi-contradictory.

For some reason, the author decided to include the entirety of the Knave rules text inside the module. It's a cute idea: you can run the whole game with this book and nothing else! But it's not helpful if you want to use a different system, or your own hacked version of Knave. Plus, important setting-specific rules (for things like mud and fire-fighting) are mixed in with the generic Knave rules, making them harder to isolate.

I like every individual part of Bone Marshes, but I don't feel that urge of "I need to run this!" which will actually get it off my shelf and onto the table. Maybe my problem is that the central quest line is a bit dull. It basically boils down to the PCs collecting a bunch of batteries so that an NPC wizard can fix everything off-screen. Also, the final area (the inside of an ancient alien spaceship) is pretty generic and doesn't have the same sense of atmosphere that the above-ground sections offer.

Here are some ideas for how I might change the module if/when I get a chance to run it:

- Although the quest-giving NPC Azimech is a well-written character, I think her presence detracts from the agency of the PCs. What if she wasn't there at all?

- Instead of mapping the Marshes for Azimech, the PCs have a royal charter that gives them exclusive rights to trade in the region. The safer they can make the trade route to the King's City, the more merchants show up.

- Instead of collecting VoltCells for Azimech, the PCs have to figure out the ecological problems on their own through experimentation and/or advice from NPCs like the Swurmp Queen and the Guardian.

- I would rewrite the Vault section to be a little more Prometheus. That's just my style though.

Despite these criticisms, I really liked Bone Marshes overall and would consider it well worth the asking price. Even if you don't run it in total, elements like the hex descriptions, the mud rules or the tide system could be transplanted easily into other adventures.

Review: Cockamania!

Cockamania! is a 30-page mini-setting based in Filipino culture and folklore. Cockfighting is the main theme of the text, but it also includes mythological backstory, a small list of wilderness encounters, village politics, and even some recipes for cooking defeated cocks. The writing is evocative and draws you into its world. The biggest flaw with the supplement is a lack of immediate usability. After reading it, I immediately wanted to run an adventure in this setting, but I felt like it would take a lot of work on my part to get something playable out of the text.

Reading Cockamania is at first a bit disorienting. Many Filipino words are dropped into the text unexplained. Things become clearer once you reach the appendices that offer translations and an explanation of the gender-neutral pronouns used for certain characters. Overall, I liked the feeling that the writer was speaking honestly from their culture rather than translating everything for a Western viewpoint. I still would have preferred to have those appendices at the front of the book.

Once you get a handle on the vocabulary, the world of Sabungan village comes alive. Small details like the recipes and gambling rules give texture to the setting. The cockfights are tied in to a mythic drama involving spirits and demi-gods, which will soon intrude decisively on the villagers' everyday lives. After the village section there are some excellent wilderness encounters, some of which could form separate adventures of their own.

"Could" is the operative word here. The book isn't really ready for use at the table. In fact there is practically no mention of PCs at all, no discussion of what they might do or how they might be involved in the situation. There is a lot of backstory, but from the players' point of view the story begins with a giant goddess showing up, demanding something nobody has heard of, and threatening to eat people if she doesn't get it. OK, that's a good hook, but what happens next? How do the PCs find out any of the backstory?

Likewise, a lot of the random encounters (in village and wilderness) give no impetus for the PCs to interact with them. "A happy gambler". "2d4 wild jungle fowl". It's up to the GM or the players to squeeze out a narrative from these, with little support from the text.

Last of my criticisms about usability is the layout. The PDF has huge amounts of white space - the text could probably have been condensed to fit in less than half as many pages. Also, having recipes and cultural details scattered throughout makes it interesting to read through, but would probably add a lot of mental overhead during gameplay.

These criticisms are not dealbreakers, though. If you are interested in Asian fantasy written by Asian people, or intertextual RPG materials, Cockamania is well worth checking out.

Review: Through Ultan's Door #1

Through Ultan's Door #1 is a short one-level dungeon released in zine format by Ben L. of Mazirian's Garden. It is set primarily in the Dreamlands, a setting that evokes the baroque fantasy of Lord Dunsany and of H. P. Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Aside from this unusual aesthetic, the dungeon contains many familiar features: a range of monsters, NPC factions to be negotiated with, traps and puzzles to solve. It is written with the assumption that treasure-hunting is the primary concern of the PCs, but also offers some ideas for other motivations. The writing is lush and evocative, yet never purposeless; the whole zine feels like it would be extremely functional at the table.

I'm writing this review after reading the zine, but I haven't yet run it. My perspective is one of someone who has been away from tabletop RPGs, and OSR gaming in particular, for a long time. I would consider myself something of a novice DM, especially when it comes to dungeon crawls.  

Through Ultan's Door #1 looks like an excellent choice as an introduction to old-school play, both for the DM and the players. It appears relatively easy compared to some OSR modules, and has no instant-death situations that might feel unfair to new players. The room descriptions contribute to this feeling of fairness; they are very vivid and detailed, which helps to evoke the Dunsanian aesthetic, but they also give clues to players about what is useful and what is dangerous. For example, a floor littered with melon rinds serves as both a warning that a monster lair is nearby, and a hint that the melon tree in the next room is safe to eat.

It seems to me that clues like these are crucial to the agency-driven play that is so often espoused in the OSR community (and has been so carefully delineated on Courtney Campbell's blog). Without adequate information, the players are just blundering around the dungeon, encountering weal or woe at random. Yet these clues are often absent from published dungeons, or at least not as clearly emphasised as they are here. It's possible that experienced DMs will insert such clues on the fly, or that experienced players will be canny enough to gather information without needing it laid out for them. But as someone who is looking to begin a LotFP campaign with a fresh group of players, I really appreciate the details that Through Ultan's Door #1 provides.

The only real criticism I can make of the zine is that it almost evokes its particular aesthetic too well. If I begin my campaign with this module, and my players love it as much as I do, then I can probably expect most of the campaign to take place in Ben's Dreamlands. Expanding the setting with my own content is a daunting prospect: I fear I wouldn't be able to adequately mimic Ben's style, but if I apply my own style it might be a jarring shift. Possibly my best hope is to wait for Through Ultan's Door #2.