I picked up copies of the new Premium AD&D 1st Edition reprints earlier this week at Hairy Tarantula here in Toronto. I was on the fence about getting them as I don’t have much interest in actually playing AD&D 1e. I decided to buy them because I heard they were great books on role-playing games in general, and an important part of the history of the game. I’m also a big fan of the art from that era–back when no one working for TSR really knew how to draw. The reprints are really well done1 and I’m quite happy with my purchase.2
The Dungeon Master Guide is the biggest of the three books that comprise the core AD&D 1e rules, and it is fascinating. I plan to post little snippets from the book as I make my way through it.
A word of warning. Many products might purport to be satisfactory for use with ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, but only those noted as OFFICIAL or AuthorizedAD&D items should be accepted. Do not settle for substitutes or second-rate material in your campaign; ask for approved AD&D products only!
I can only imagine what was happening in the table top gaming community back in the 70s, but clearly Gygax was unimpressed with the work being done by 3rd party publishers. I wonder what his thoughts about the OSR community would be. Gygax’s writing is full of exuberance and passion, but the start of the Dungeon Master Guide is full of talk of official rules and playing the game properly. It seems to run counter to ethos of old school gaming, as I understand it.
Of course, we then get to a table about contracting parasites while adventuring so why are you griping about Gary Gygax? Please!
Wizards of the Coast wrote about the process they went through to create these reprints, and it’s really quite incredible. All three books pre-date digital typesetting, so they had to redone by hand. The designers at Wizards of the Coast had to recreate the layouts from scratch. It’s actually quite amazing when you look at a page from the original books and then the reprints. ↩
I’ve added a new page to this site, listing the D&D books I currently own.1 I like seeing what books (and PDFs) other people own, as it’s a good source for finding new books that might be worth reading. That page will also be a good place to link back to reviews i’ve written about the books I’ve bought. For someone who doesn’t actually play that much D&D, I own a lot of books on the subject. I suppose this page also exists to shame myself into not buying more D&D books.
I woke up the morning following the death of Osrik, my dwarf paladin, realizing the character had a power that would let him re-roll a missed hit when bloody. I’m not sure this would have turned the fight that cost the character his life, but it certainly would have helped. This got me thinking about 4th Edition and its pantheon of classes and powers a little bit more.
Playing–and killing–a few characters in 4th Edition will teach you that the combat mechanics of the game are important to grasp.1 With the Encounters game I participate in I had been playing characters whose abilities the official character builder picked for me. I found I spent the down time between my turns in a battle scanning my list of abilities, trying to pick the one that seemed most appropriate for the situation at hand. This is a sure fire recipe for death and destruction. It can also be kind of boring.
Looking around the table I could see that I was not the only one suffering from this problem. D&D is ostensibly a game where you can do anything you can imagine. That’s what makes it so much greater than a video game: the possibilities are endless. The way 4th Edition has been designed really discourages that sort of play. This is probably the biggest weakness with 4th Edition. When playing my Warlock in my regular 4th Edition game, I spend most of my turns in combat doing some permutation of: moving at least three squares to gain concealment; cursing my nearest enemy; casting an eldritch blast. No matter what the situation may be this is almost always my best choice of action.
The flip side to this is that the enumeration of all these classes and powers is 4th Edition’s biggest strength. You can quantify the challenge of a battle in a way you really can’t with any accuracy in earlier editions of the game. If you’re interested in tactical combat 4th Edition is really unrivalled when it comes to simulating a battle. I don’t think you could do something like Forth Core Death Matches with any of the older versions of D&D. I’m not getting the most enjoyment out of 4th Edition because I haven’t invested the time in learning what options my character has, and how they best work with those of my fellow adventurers. The question for any 4th Edition gamer is whether this is something they even want to do.2
People often compare 4th Edition D&D to a video game. Certainly Wizards of the Coast used a lot of modern video game language when describing character classes and the mechanics of the game, but I suspect that’s because that language is going to be most familiar to new D&D players. I think 4th Edition has more in common with Magic: The Gathering.3 You and your fellow adventures are working together to produce a winning mix of classes and powers–this seems analogous to deck building in Magic. The focus on game balance is a natural extension of this. Magic is a successful collectable card game because there is no one deck to rule them all. Wizards of the Coast seem to have taken what they learned making Magic and tried to apply that to D&D, with mixed results.
I’m curious to see if Wizards of the Coast, or the wider D&D community, do interesting things with 4th Edition once the 5th Edition of D&D has been released. I feel like there is a lot to 4th Edition, if you can get past the fact it’s not exactly the same as every version of D&D that proceeded it.
Some might say they are the only thing to grasp in 4th Edition. ↩
Wizards of the Coast even sell the various powers available for the various classes as packs of cards! ↩
Kiel of Dungeons and Donuts recently made a little hand-out for generating 4th Edition characters. Rather than bothering with classes or powers, he decided to ask players to pick a role and pick from a list of abstract powers. Players could then make up all the fluff that goes along with the role and powers they’ve picked. I’m a big fan of this idea. ↩
There are lots of great blogs about D&D out there on the Internet, but one that puts out consistently good stuff is Untimately by Toronto’s own Brendan S. His most recent post is on the rules that compromise Original D&D, distilling everything in the 3 brown books into concise lists of rules. A recent post that was particularly creative was about his take on schools of magic. If you’re into D&D you should be reading Untimately.
As I have mentioned in previousposts about Carcosa, Geoffrey McKinney seems to be working quite hard to say as little as possible about the nature of his “official” game world. There is very little exposition about Carcosa’s history, people, culture, etc. Each section of the book reveals a little bit of Carcosa’s story. The books bestiary reveals the most about the setting, hinting at the nature of the world and some of its history.
The vast majority of the monsters discussed in the bestiary are unique. They are crazy grotesque beasts one might find in a H.P. Lovecraft story.1 The gods of Carcosa are for the most part absolutely terrifying. These creatures have stat blocks and descriptions, like your typical kobold or goblin, so they are ready for your players to battle to the death. I mean, why give a monster hit dice if its not meant to be killed?
A few these monsters reside in particular places (hexes) in Carcosa. In the PDF version of the book, this is mentioned in their description.2 In the hardback you only learn of their home on the planet when reading through the hex descriptions later in the book.
Here looms the great and extinct black volcanic Mount Voormith’adreth, honeycombed with weird and outré caverns, and beneath which bubbles and heaves Shub-Niggurath. – The description of Hex 0402, Carcosa
Of all the old ones that reside on Carcosa, Shub-Niggurath appears to be the most important. Two of the races mentioned in the first section of the book, The Great Race and the Primordial Ones, are spawns of Shub-Niggurath. In addition, 4 other races mentioned in the bestiary are his children, so to speak. The most typical monster found on Carcosa is a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, which can appear as almost anything. (A disgusting mutant tree? Why not. A horrible giant fish? Of course.) There is an appendix at the back of the book that contains random tables to help the DM with generating these spawns. This one monster description provides a lot of clues into the cosmology of Carcosa.
The remaining monsters of Carcosa provide further insight into what’s happening on the planet. One of the few non-unique monsters are dinosaurs. Of course, this being Carcosa they are expected to be of a crazy mutant variety. Similarly one finds giant jungle ants wandering from hex to hex. Lakes in Carcosa are likely home to to giant lake monsters. These sorts of beasts paired with the descriptions of the 13 races of men hints at a King Kong style world.
As mentioned at the start of the book, there are space aliens. From their description we learn that they originally crash landed on Carcosa a millennia ago, but since then they have established bases and come and go as they please. It’s their presence and their technology that makes the world a little bit less King Kong and perhaps a bit more Flash Gordon.
There are all sorts of slimes, puddings, and oozes similar to those encountered in your typical game of D&D, but with a Carcosa twist. Many of the unique monsters discussed in the bestiary are also some variation of disgusting ooze-like thing with tentacles. If it’s not a giant-mutant-monster it’s probably a creepy slime.
The illustrations by Rich Longmore really bring this portion of the book to life.
The bestiary ends with a brief description (without stats) of the long extinct snake-men. Here we learn some more of the history of Carcosa.
For tens of millions of years the civilizations of the Snake- Men were mighty upon the planet of Carcosa. They delved deeply into the arcane mysteries and laid the foundations of the systematic practice of sorcery. From shambling man- apes the Snake-Men bred the various races of humans to be sacrifices efficacious for their sorcery. At the height of their powers, the Snake-Men destroyed themselves by releasing ultratelluric forces impossible to control.
What else is there to say?
Finally we get to the hex descriptions, which is what it’s all about.
As I had mentioned when discussing the sorcerer rituals, each set of rituals deals with one of these unique monsters. The two sections work together to provider a fuller description and background of the monster in question. ↩
The level of cross-referencing in the PDF is one big advantage it has over the physical book. Figuring out how everything fits together is much easier when browsing the PDF. ↩
The last campaign he ran raised $16,240 to fund a hardcover book edition of the LotFP rules. Prior to that he raised $6,241 to fund two adventure modules. Clearly there are people out there interested in LotFP. My fear is that there are not enough people to fund such a large body of work in a single month. That would be a real shame, because the more I learn about the people involved in the campaign the more disappointed I’ll be if some of these adventures don’t get funded.
Today I was listening to an episode of the Jennisodes, a podcast about role-playing games, which featured Kevin Crawford, another participant in this campaign. I had never heard of him before, but after listening to him wax-poetic about sandbox gaming for a half hour I now want to fund his campaign as well. It sounds like it will be amazing. (Oh, and the host of the Jennisodes is also hoping to write an adventure for LotFP.)
I read Jeff’s Gameblog, by Jeff Rients, another participant in this campaign. I assume his campaign will do well as he seems to have a bit of a following in the OSR community. His writing on D&D is all quite fantastic. He posted a video today] about what he wants to do in his adventure. Guess what? It sounds pretty fantastic too.
I assume if I learn anything about most of these writers I’m going to want their adventure. As far as I can tell there are no B-team participants. Everyone seems to bring something interesting to the table. Monte Cook is writing an adventure! One of the dudes from mother-fucking members of GWAR is writing an adventure! It’s ridiculous.
I don’t have $114,000 to spend on adventures. Most people probably don’t. I suppose the hope then is that in aggregate fans of LotFP and of these individual writers can get a few things funded. This is certainly feels like the golden age of crowd funding–every other post on this blog seems to be about a kickstarter project–but this project might be a bit too ambitious. Still, I wish Raggi the best of luck. He has $20 of my dollars–so far.
A complete list of all the adventures in this campaign follows:
Carcosa is an impressive piece of writing, but people seem to get fixated on the small portion of the book that is filled with all sorts of rape and human sacrifice. Wait, what?
Magic in the world of Carcosa is (literally) all about the Cthulhu monsters. The planet is apparently filled with Cthulhu monsters of one sort or another. You can summon them, torment them, commune with them, and banish them. There’s no Magic Missile. There is no Fireball. If you want to play a character who shoots stuff at people you will need to find some laser guns.
Flip through the sorcerer rituals presented in Carcosa and it’s a sea of human sacrifice. When I first read the book I quickly skimmed this section and decided it wasn’t worth looking at in detail. The descriptions can be repetitive, clinical, and a bit of a downer: kill these Green men; rape and kill this Blue woman. Magic in Carcosa is evil and generally unpleasant. A whole chapter saying as much seemed unnecessary.
The only spells that don’t involve sacrifice are the rituals that exist to banish the Cthulhu monsters. This suggests one option for playing a lawful sorcerer: only cast banishment spells. I had assumed this was done on purpose, that McKinney didn’t expect players to actually use the spells outlined in the book, that they would be reserved for evil NPCs. In a recent interview I learned this wasn’t the case. In his home game he did have players who ran around the planet rounding up men and women to be sacrificed all the while looking for rare ingredients for their spells. That’s definitely a departure from traditional D&D.
There is another level to the rituals that is easy to miss because they are so repugnant. In Carcosa the rituals are another way Geoffrey McKinney shares his fantasy world with us. They hint at quests to embark on, monsters to fight, and sorcerers to vanquish.
Many rituals mention specific regions (hexes on the map) of Carcosa. They might discuss some rare ingredient that is required for the ritual that can only be found in a particular hex. They might mention a monster that can only be found in a particular place. Often times a ritual’s description of a hex is more detailed than the hex description itself. The description for hex 1513 is, “Ulfire Mold.” (I mentioned the writing was terse, right?) If we look at the ritual that binds the Fetor of the Depths, we learn that there is a “vile cave in the swamps of [the hex],” which is where that spell needs to be cast. The description for hex 416 is “7 Giant Frogs.” Looking at the ritual that conjures the Fetor of the Depths we learn that this hex contains the subterranean lair of the monster. Here I’m looking at two random rituals that relate to one of the old ones. This sort of thing happens throughout the chapter. There are numerous examples where the ritual description adds a whole other layer to what otherwise might sound like a pretty boring hex in Carcosa. This is all easy to miss if you dismiss this chapter as I had initially.
When Carcosa was first released it was mired in controversy because of this section on sorcerer rituals. The warning on the not-quite-a-dust-cover of Carcosa is no joke. The book is filled with depictions of vile black magic: buyer beware. Some of the ritual descriptions are particularly disgusting, but that is clearly the point. McKinney never explicitly tells us, “magic in Carcosa is evil.” Instead he shows this to the reader by outlining what it costs to cast a spell. Some people might not care one way or another about killing fictional alien space men, so McKinney goes the extra mile when it comes to some of the rituals: there is rape, killing babies, torture. These things are all upsetting, but Carcosa isn’t about a real place where real people are committing real crimes. The way these rituals are described is not gratuitous. As far as I can tell, McKinney isn’t trying to come off as edgy by mentioning a sorcerer needs to kill a baby to cast a spell; he’s not trying to express his anger towards women by mentioning a sorcerer needs to rape and kill a women to cast a spell. If you read Carcosa it seems clear that McKinney wants you to close the book knowing that magic in his world is evil. I think he succeeds here. Reading anything more into this section of the book is disingenuous.
If you skip ahead in the book you can read about aliens riding dinosaurs and shooting laser guns. How are people taking anything in this book that seriously?1
As with the sections that proceed it, the chapter on sorcerer rituals subtly reveal more about the world of Carcosa. There is a lot about the rituals that is left unsaid, leaving a lot of room for a dungeon master and players to make them and the world of Carcosa their own. I should add that the hex descriptions that come later in the book do mention potions and other magic items that perform the same function as some of the sorcerer rituals. This presents another avenue for players to conjure and torment monsters without some of the unpleasantness associated with doing so the traditional way. One can imagine quests that involve trying to reproduce a ritual via some other means.
And yeah, there are crazy mutant dinosaurs on this planet. They deserve their own blog post. My epic review of Carcosa will continue.
I submitted two questions about the controversy around these rituals for an interview of Geoffery McKinney that was being conducted by Gamerati. The first, “Has the controversy surrounding Carcosa had any influence on the subsequent writing you have done, or did it have a chilling effect on your work?” was answered with what amounts to a “No.” The second, “Have you read any criticisms of the rape and other controversial parts of Carcosa that you felt were interesting, valid, etc. (As opposed to shrill, knee-jerk, etc.)” was also answered, more or less, in the negative, and touches on the point I raise about not taking the work too seriously. ↩
If you’re looking for the next Kickstarter project you should be supporting, look no further than Brave Halfling Publishing’s Appendix N Adventure Toolkits (DCC RPG Modules). For $20 you can get a copy of 5 modules and a slew of other bonus material. From the Kickstarter:
Each Appendix N Adventure provides Game Masters with a challenging adventure that can easily be dropped into an existing campaign, as well as an inspirational module map and a set of illustrated player handouts. Each also contains new monsters, unique enemies, creative traps and bizarre settings to challenge players, and inspirational ideas for expanding the campaign and launch points into further adventures for the Game Master.
The project is already funded. You have nothing to lose. If the project hits $15,000 than they plan to also release a new campaign setting.
Five years ago, I spent many months working on a unique campaign setting (“The Old Isle”) to help try and spark renewed interest in Gary Gygax’s rpg, “Lejendary Adventures.” With Gary and Gail’s blessing, I consulted with Gary frequently about the design of the setting, npc races, magic item creation, divine beings, etc. I bounced ideas off of him and he provided suggestions and critiques. It was a very special time in my hobby gaming that I still treasure. However, while Gary played a supportive but indirect role in my creation of the Old Isle Campaign Setting, he did not create or write one word of the setting - The Old Isle is 100% my creation. Maps were created and art was commissioned. With Gary’s passing and the end of his Lejendary Adventures game, I decided to not release this material. However, from the first time I read some of the early DCC RPG play-test material, I knew this campaign setting had found a new home!
If you haven’t used Kickstarter before, this is a great first project to support. Brave Halfling Publishing has been around for a long time, and has a great reputation. They already have 6 modules ready to go, so you’re really only paying to help them bootstrap their printing costs. This seems like a pretty low risk venture. By the sounds of things, you should expect modules in the mail by July or August. That’s pretty fast turnaround for Kickstarter.
Carcosa, by Geoffrey McKinney, is ostensibly a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. Carcosa was originally released as a stapled booklet entitled Dungeons & Dragons Supplement V: Carcosa. Both the name and its form were a homage to the original 1974 D&D books. As I understand things, McKinney would print off copies of Carcosa on his laser printer when he got an order for the book. When his laser printer broke he stopped selling Carcosa. This re-release by Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a much grander affair. As a physical object Carcosa is nothing short of perfection.
Carcosa describes a fictional alien planet of the same name. I’m used to campaign settings of the 2nd Edition variety, where anything and everything a dungeon master could possibly need to know about a place and its people is revealed. For example, I have a very good sense of what the fantasy world of Dark Sun is like from reading all sorts of splat books. If you approach Carcosa expecting that same level of detail you are going to be sorely disappointed. The world of Carcosa is hinted at obliquely. That’s not to suggest the book is light on material: it is both dense and terse.
Carcosa opens with a discussion of various changes to the D&D rules. In the world of Carcosa there are no non-humanoid player characters. There are instead 13 races of men, each identified by a different skin colour. Three of these colours don’t exist on Earth: ulfire, jale, and dolm. (And here skin colour is quite literal: a Blue man is blue like the dance troupe.) There are only two classes players can play on Carcosa: fighters and sorcerers. The difference between the two is that sorcerers can cast rituals1 that were devised by a long extinct race of Snake-Men.
There are no magic items in the world of Carcosa. Instead one finds all sorts of crazy technology scattered over the planet. The book presents example artifacts from: the space aliens, the Great Race, and the Primordial Ones. The technology of the Great Race and the Primordial ones is so foreign to humans that most people will have no hope of understanding what an item does or how to use it. (Mechanically, you need an INT score of 17 to have a 5% chance to use one of these artifacts.) I should point out that at this point in the book, there has been no real discussion whatsoever about space aliens, the Great Race, or Primordial Ones.
After reading this opening of the book, which is something like 30-40 pages long, you do have some sense of what the world of Carcosa is like despite the fact McKinney has explicitly said very little about it. We have a blighted world where humans are clearly the weakest in a long line of civilizations that have inhabited Carcosa. There is a gonzo sci-fi element to Carcosa: your characters might encounter space aliens in their travels, and the plater’s only hopes for “magic” weapons come in the form of space bazookas and ray guns. There is also a Lovecraftian undercurrent to to the world and its people. Everything you learn about Carcosa in this opening section of the book is gleamed through sideways glances.
Carcosa really comes alive in the sections that follow. The bestiary helps the reader visualize what populates the world of Carcosa now. The hex descriptions are often single sentence affairs, but they too give some colour to the world. The sorcerer spells are almost all tied to particular Chuthulu-esque monster found on Carcosa, and often discuss specific hexes in the world. I found how deeply interconnected these three sections of the book are surprising. I haven’t encountered another D&D supplement structured this way.2
I have so much more to say about Carcosa, but we have to stop somewhere. For now, anyway.
Oh, the rituals. They deserve a blogpost to themselves. They seem to be what people fixate on when they first read (or hear about) the book. Not that I can blame people for that, I suppose. ↩
I have since learned on Google+ that this style of presentation was used with Judges Guild Wilderlands modules. ↩
