Part of my general dissatisfaction with Geoffrey McKinney’s Carcosa is certainly due to a difference of opinion when it comes to methodology.

First, 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. 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”.

It’s bland and it’s boring. It’s also virtually useless.

Unfortunately, this generally remains true of Carcosa‘s key even when more details are proffered. For example, massive chunks of the book consist of, “[Settlement type] of # [type of human] ruled by [insert title], a [alignment] [level] [class].” (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.

And 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.

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, hex 2004 is keyed:

A Brown Man, dressed in immaculate white robes fringed with golden embroidery, rests quietly by the side of the path. He acknowledges with a barely perceptible nod. It would be wise to return this show of respect with a dignified bow or curtsy.

… 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?

The argument can, of course, be made that the purpose of the key is merely to serve as a creative seed for the GM. But, if so, why is McKinney so delightfully enamored with the words “cannot” and “never”? Let’s proffer hex 2105 as an example:

Drums, the clash of war cymbals, and the deep clangor of a mighty gong can be heard coming from the desert. The sounds taper and crescendo with the bluster of the wind, but their source can never be found.

Even 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.

I recognize that many of these elements are historic qualities of classic hex-based supplements like the Wilderlands. But Carcosa is a particularly bland and repetitive instantiation of the form, and I also think 1976 was a long time ago. 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.

TO THE GOOD

One point of particular interest in Carcosa are the sorcerous rituals. 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. (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. If rape or violence against children are trigger words for you, you should probably avoid this book. 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.

For example, the Approach of the Farthest Rim, “can be performed only in the lost fane in hex 2401”. 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. 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?

That’s a clever structure for delivering scenario hooks and I’ll almost certainly be lifting it in the future.

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.

All of this, unfortunately, is fairly brief in character and scarcely justifies the purchase price for Carcosa. Which regrettably brings us…

TO THE FURTHER BAD

Overwhelmingly, my disappointment with Carcosa stems from the lack of anything truly weird or creative in the setting. The book bills itself as a “Weird Science-Fantasy Horror Setting” and I was expecting a creative burst of the unique, the bizarre, and the alien. What I got instead was “9 Tyrannosaurus Rexes”. (And, no, occasionally adding the words “mutant”, “radioactive”, or “fungoid growth” to the tyrannosaur doesn’t actually make it notably more interesting.)

Adding to the supplement’s weakness is the extremely questionable quality of McKinney’s house rules. Basically, the book starts by detailing a lengthy system in which you use a d20 roll to randomly determine what type of dice you roll before rolling them (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12). If you squint hard enough, you can almost have this make sense for Hit Dice (which McKinney has you re-roll at the beginning of every combat), but when he goes on to do the same thing with weapon damage (so that every time you make an attack you roll one of every die type and then use the d20 to determine which of the other dice count) all you can do is start backing away slowly.

Unfortunately, you won’t be quick enough to avoid the next page where he lays out the statistical analysis which demonstrates that, on average, all of this extra complexity and dice rolling has virtually no effect whatsoever.

And then there’s a whole related mechanic where you have to keep track of multiple hit point totals for each character… But I digress.

Finally, although other options are proffered, the supplement largely bills itself as a place to run full campaigns. (The book even includes an introductory adventure.) But there’s no place on Carcosa that’s accessible to new characters. Virtually every keyed encounter in the book is aimed at mid-to-high level play. (And most of those seem to be heavily inspired by the Tomb of Horrors “save or die… actually, screw it, just skip the save: you’re dead” school of design.)

For example, the starter adventure is set in hex 2005. Despite being specifically and explicitly aimed at 1st level characters, this module includes random encounters with 10 HD monsters. (And the hexes immediately surrounding hex 2005 are no better: Hex 2004, for example, contains five aggressive 10 HD monsters. If you follow the standard hexcrawling practice of automatically triggering the keyed encounter when the group enters a hex, anybody who strays too far north during the intro adventure is going to get TPK’ed.)

IN SUMMARY

There’s really no question that Carcosa is a truly gorgeous volume. Lamentations of the Flame Princess have lavished the volume with fantastic illustrations by Rich Longmore; the paper is thick and luxurious; the binding is superb; the layout and cross-referencing are excellent. (The PDF is somewhat flawed by the decision to de-synch the page numbers and make it unreadable on e-readers and tablets, but this is somewhat compensated by the encyclopedic cross-linking.) It even comes with a cloth map, which — as an old fanatic of the Ultima computer games — is a decision I absolutely adore.

But, ultimately, all of this glitzy extravagance surrounds a hollow core. Most of the book is nothing more than rote mediocrity, large chunks of the rest are unusable in any form, and, when all is said and done, you will come away with nothing more than a dozen or so decent ideas that might be useful if you polish them up a bit. That’s a good showing for a blog post, but for a $40+ supplement? It’s a disappointment.

Style: 5
Substance: 2

I lost all of last week to an incredibly nasty bout of ill-timed flu. Since I had a backlog of material scheduled here at the Alexandrian, you probably didn’t even notice (assuming you would care), but things will probably be a little sparse around here for the next week or so as I try to get back on top of things.

Among the things I’ve fallen behind on are the preview materials for Legends & Labyrinths. Things are really starting to heat up behind the scenes now and I want to share as much of that excitement with you as possible. Expect more of the Art of Legends & Labyrinths series in the next few days as I get them queued up.

If you’re looking for even more preview material, you should head over to our Facebook fanpage: Starting later today, we’ll be previewing all the spells from the Legends & Labyrinth Grimoire!

Based on feedback from the Black Book Beta, the spell lists have been modified (mostly to focus them a bit more). The Grimoire selection has ended up being heavily based on the original spell lists from 1974-1976 — partly on the theory that “if it was good enough then, it’s good enough now”; mostly from the practical discovery that those lists match pretty closely to what people think of as the “important spells” of the game.

Some of the spells will look pretty familiar (there’s only so much you can screw up with arcane lock), but others (like detect magic) might surprise you in how they’ve been stripped down and reworked to be both easier to use in play and more evocative. Let me know what you hate; let me know what you like.

Open the Grimoire!

Check out Putting a Bullet in Descriptive Text from Charles Ryan.

It closely matches how I prep descriptive text for my own sessions. And, as you can see in Complex of Zombies, I actually push this philosophy even further: Every aspect of an encounter area is keyed as a clearly titled and easily identifiable “chunk” that allows you to instantly grasp the entirety of even the most complex areas in a single glance.

I’ve been thinking about writing a longer essay of my own on this topic for awhile, and I probably still will at some point. But, in the mean time, check out Ryan’s piece.

As I’ve discussed previously, Technoir features a conflict-resolution system in which players push adjectives onto other characters. For example, instead of making an attack roll with your machine gun to inflict hit point damage, you instead use your Shoot verb to apply the adjective of riddled to the target.

In the rules as written, positive and negative adjectives “can be applied to a character directly – representing her physical or psychological state – or to an object belonging to a character – representing its physical condition or the states of its electronics and software”. When applying the latter, you’re supposed to draw a line from the adjective to the piece of equipment being affected. Some of the former might only apply to a particular part of the body; if so, that should be indicated in parentheses next to the adjective. (For example, broken (arm).)

RELATIONSHIP ADJECTIVES

There is also one other type of adjective in the game: The permanent, locked relationship adjectives which describes how a PC feels about their connections. (These adjectives act “as positive adjectives when the protagonist is helping or defending that character, they act as negative adjectives if she acts against that character”.)

What I would like to propose is a slight conceptual and mechanical shift in how relationship adjectives are handled throughout Technoir.

1. A relationship adjective specifically refers to any adjective which describes the connection between two characters.

2. When you apply a relationship adjective to a character, you specify which character they have that relationship with. The adjective describes the target character’s relationship with that character; it does not necessarily describe the character’s relationship with them.

(You can already apply an adjective like trusting. What I’m saying is that you should specify who, exactly, the character trusts. For example, trusting (Paul) or affectionate (Cyndi). This would mean that they’re trusting of Paul or affectionate of Cyndi; it wouldn’t necessarily means that Paul trusts them or Cyndi likes them.)

3. If you want a relationship adjective to describe their relationship with multiple people – for example, if you want them to be trusting of both you and your friends – then you need to use the rules for multiple targets: You need to have an adjective or tag that justify the application and you need to discharge a Push die (that is not rolled as part of the dice pool) to pay for the attempt.

Pushing relationship tags that describe relationships with multiple people onto multiple targets costs two Push die (one for multiple relationships; one for multiple targets).

(For example, if you want to make an entire Cyn Set gang loyal to Saito International, you’d need to spend one Push die to affect all the members in the gang and a second Push die because Saito International represents a large group of people. However, if you just want the leader of the gang to feel loyal to the corporation, that would only cost one Push die. Similarly, if you want the whole gang to feel loyal to a particular representative of the Saito International, that would also only cost you one Push die.)

4. Relationship adjectives generally act as negative adjectives when you act against the character you have a relationship with and positive adjectives when you’re helping or defending that character. Some exceptions may exist.

5. In general, relationship adjectives work just like any other adjective. If someone is fleetingly trusting of a character, they’ve been momentarily persuaded to believe their story. If that same adjective is made sticky, on the other hand, then they’ll keep swallowing the character’s bullshit for a long time.

If a relationship adjective is locked onto a protagonist, however, the character it describes automatically becomes a connection. (Somebody is saying “this guy is of major importance to this protagonist” and that needs to be respected.) This means they can be hit up like any other connection, added to the plot map, and so forth. (The GM can prep customized connection tables for the new connection; use them to replace a connection who has been killed or otherwise removed from play; or even make them the seed for a new or overlapping transmission. Alternatively, the GM can just use the master table for the connection whenever the nouveau connection is hit up.)

6. Of course, as with any other adjective, you still need to establish the proper vector for applying the adjective.

Snowmancer – Viktor Fetsch

Among the artistic goals I set for Legends & Labyrinths was:

Goal #2: Find a balance between men and women.

I suppose one could claim this represents some sort of agenda for political correctness on my part. But, really, I just like pictures of pretty women doing heroic things.

Another goal was:

Goal #3: Realistic armor.

And this one is completely agenda-driven.

Primarily, this is about eliminating chainmail bikinis. But it’s also about recapturing the simple realism of a bloke in plate armor facing the terrifying and supernatural unknown.

I’m a huge fan of Final Fantasy and anime and World of Warcraft, but I think there’s a current imbalance in fantasy art. I also think that the interesting contrast between the mundane and the supernatural in fantasy art has been lost as heroes and monsters alike both reach for ever-more-gonzo proportions.

And after all, as Viktor Fetsch so aptly demonstrates with his Snowmancer, you can still look completely badass while dressed in completely reasonable clothes.