Masters of Carcosa - Session 2

My first session of Masters of Carcosa only included 2 players, Gus and Eric. I was a little worried the game wouldn’t catch on, but the next session included 6 people! This was basically the Pahvelorn crew, along with the lovely Bryan Mullins. Players would change from sessions to session. A true open table! These were all the rage in the early 2010s. The parties home base was the town of Invak, and they were expected to end sessions somewhere safe. This typically ended up being Invak, as its leader and his bounties was one of the few sources of gold in the game.

This session sees the introduction of the parties primary antagonists for the entire campaign, the Jale Slavers. There were lots of factions playing around in the background, but I was far too coy with them in hindsight. I wrote about this a long time ago, inspired by some writing from Vincent Baker: Have Them Act. I had intended to do something different than XP-for-Gold with this game, as in my mind Carcosa wasn’t a setting that fit that adventure framing. What ended up happening was I never figured out a new scheme, the leader of Invak would pay for the heads of Jale Slavers, and so the game because all about hunting the slavers and chopping of their heads. Blood Meridian, but in Carcosa. (Except the party would actually kill slavers, not any old person.) A few sessions latter the party would liberate the settlement mentioned in the note they found on the first slavers they killed. I would try and litter clues about wider world whenever I could. With a hex crawl you want to give people reasons to explore the setting.

The second half of the session saw the players exploring a little dungeon I created, looking for supplies for their towns alchemist. I made several small dungeons to litter the environment with, and I’m pretty sure I just followed to see which weird cave system they encountered.

In the session Evan’s character is shot by a ray gun and disappears. I didn’t tell him his character wasn’t vaporized till the start of the next round of combat, when he found himself on the surface, shot by a teleport gun. The sorcerer that shot him would eventually retreat to the surface as well, ending up dead at Evan’s character’s hands. I originally thought my rules for eating sorcerer brains to gain power predated Evan’s character eating some sorcerer brains, but it was the other way around. He figured a weird bone man sorcerer would eat his enemies brains for power, so I made some rules for what would happen after the fact. House rules from play: that’s the juice.

Eric’s first character was killed this session, to be replaced by the infamous Orange Julia. She would survive till the campaign ended.

You can contrast these notes with the Carcosa style recap I wrote.

Players:

• Bryan: Gloss-o-lalia (Lalia),  Dolm Woman Sorcerer
• Brendan: Missave Rage, Yellow Women Fighter 
• Nick: Horace, Blue Man Fighter
• Gus: Normangina, Yellow Woman Fighter
• Evan: The Spangled Inquiry, Bone Man Sorcerer
• Eric: Gux, Yellow Man Fighter

Recap:

• The Rainbow Connection, now joined by some new friends from the town on Invak, decide to make some cash exploring the region for Desert Lotuses, which the apothecary The Falling Flower will happily buy. 
• 2 hours out of town, to the North East, the party encounters a band of 5 over-confidant Jale Slavers while looking for Desert Lotus filled caverns.
• They initially parlay, but then realizing that slavers without slaves are probably carrying currency decide to attack.
• They make reasonably quick work of the slavers, with minimal injuries. They find manifest for 14 sold slaves and 700 GP in the Citadel of ???? to the North.
• For their efforts they are rewarded by The Swift and Silent Beginning, the leader of Invak, with an additional 500 GP for each dead slaver and 100 GP for recovering this manifest.
• The rest for the day—for no mechanical benefit, harsh Ram—and head out again in search of caverns.
• Heading South West they come across a small opening that leads into a bigger cavern. It’s damp and dewy, and seems like a prime candidate for being filled with weird flowers that don’t need light to grow because they are so magical of course.
• Venturing South they find an empty camp site, that seems to have been recently used. 
• To the West they stumble upon an obvious pit trap. Exploring the cavern below they find what they thought were flowers, but turned out to be some strange plant that would knock out those who lingered too long.
• Resting in the room with the pit trap after all this exertion, some strange insectoid beasts ambled down off the ceiling.
• The party retreated to the North, the creatures uninterested in pursuit.
• Heading west the party finds their first Lotus, a blue flower.
• Further West still they stumble upon Purple Men cultists, dragging an Orange couple.
• There is some arguing, cut short by a blast from a Bazooka.
• A purple man sorcerer enters the fray from a room to the West. He shoots Evan’s character with a ray, and he is teleported to the surface.
• As the tide turns the sorcerer retreats into back into his room. He frees a giant plant Spawn and then shoots himself with his ray.
• The purple men turn to flee. Two manage to escape.
• On the surface, Evan’s character and the sorcerer grapple, but Evan’s character is victorious. He feasts on the brain of his foe.
• The battle is long and hard, Horace is cut down by a Purple Man, Gux is killed by a strange plant Spawn.
• The party explore the sorcerers abode, and find strange alchemical supplies and a ladder and hatch that lead to the surface.
• They return back to town!

Treasure:

• 5 whips (how many did you guys keep?)
• 5 swords (ditto)
• 5 pieces of armour (10 x 5 = 50 GP)
• 700 GP from slavers
• 600 GP reward for killing them
• Blue Lotus - 100 GP
• 6 White Lotus - 100 x 6 = 600 GP  
• Dead Spawn Guts - 100 GP
• Alchemical Supplies - ???
• Reptilean Armour - Looks badass, and grants 16 AC
• Teleportation Ray   
  • Unknown number of charges remain, if any.   
  • Unclear if the ray sends someone to the same place, or some fixed distance.

Monsters Killed:

• 5 Jale Slavers
• 7 Purple Men Cultists
• 1 Purple Man Sorcerer
• 1 Spawn

I’m not sure I’ll always include the comments from the session recaps, but in this case you can see us discussing rules, world building, etc.

• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 05:47 UTC): So glad to play with you all. If you have ideas for what I should be doing differently let me know. I’m still trying to figure stuff out. Let me know your characters names, or if there is anything of note I missed in the recap. I will let you guys know what’s on the map Bryan Mullins’s character started with. And I’ll give you the name of the citadel the manifest mentioned. You are all aware of the place: “A castle of Orange Men to the North run a gladiatorial arena of sorts: there are no prizes and the winners of the games are fed to the Spawn of Shub-Niggurath the Orange Men worship as a god.”
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-02 05:47 UTC): My dead character was Gux, a ST17 IN7 Yellow Man. New character is Orange Julia, WI17 CO16 and Cell Adjustment. No pic yet.
• Beloch Shrike (2014-12-02 06:01 UTC): My new character’s name is Alfred.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 06:05 UTC): The apothecary will pay 200 for the alchemical supplies, though he already has everything he needs to work with these plants.
• Bryan Mullins (2014-12-02 07:34 UTC): Gloss-o-lalia. or Lalia
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-02 08:07 UTC): I DECLARE THAT ORANGE PEOPLE ARE OVERSIZED OOMPA LOOMPAS.
• Bryan Mullins (2014-12-02 08:25 UTC): Lalia kept a whip, she likes the reach as an option. Still, she was obsessed with her battle axe this session.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 14:37 UTC): I think a few people have whips. Anyway, they are probably a few GP each so they aren’t going to have a big effect on how much XP/GP you end up with.
• Gus L (2014-12-02 17:32 UTC): I kept a obsidian sword as a backup weapon.
• Gus L (2014-12-02 17:34 UTC): As a possible rules tweak have you considered weapon traits? To differentiate them? Cleave for axes, armor pen for maces etc? It doesn’t really matter, but is an idea.
• Mike Davison (2014-12-02 19:52 UTC): Are you open to new players Ramanan S ?
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 19:53 UTC): Yeah, though the people we normally play with would have preference. I’m basically just filling in DM duties while Beloch Shrike and Brendan take a break. Bryan Mullins is doing the other week.
• Beloch Shrike (2014-12-02 19:56 UTC): Despite the deluge of players we had last night, attendance on Monday night has been flagging for awhile. We could use a new player or two in the group.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 19:58 UTC): Not too keen about adding too much in terms of additional rules. I don’t mind if people have weird weapons that are mechanically identical, honestly. One of the things I like about OD&D. Though, could steal rules from 5e about that. (Could also just run 5e really, but I thought it’d be good to run something turbo simple to start.)
• Gus L (2014-12-02 20:28 UTC): Yeah totally get that, the question I have though is how does this interact with fumble as weapon breakage?  If a broken weapon is functionally the same as a good one how does the fumble work?
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 22:07 UTC): Yes, good point. I mean, in this game Brendan’s weapon just shattered and that was that. Need to think of clearer rules. Was thinking of just stealing from Dark Sun, where some materials cost more and do less or more damage, and are less or more likely to break. Though doing things based on costs seems to scale poorly, people end up with cash quickly. So could probably have things balance against each other. (Bone is +1 to hit, but more prone to break or something.) Need to think more about money in general. Should maybe switch to XP for CP recovered, and keep costs besides room and board the same GP values. So most stuff is rare and very expensive. Not sure if that actually makes sense or would be playable.
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-02 22:44 UTC): XP for copper ceramic pieces worked for Dark Sun. You do need a nice big price list with plenty of cheaper items on it.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 22:48 UTC): Yeah, that’s what i’m thinking. I need to figure out what the rules we are playing with actually are. Then it’s go time! Hah.
• Bryan Mullins (2014-12-02 22:55 UTC): I have the same feeling, for the Blackmash game…I’d never used LotFP…but it looks simple. I think by the end, I’ll be running some other system because the LotFP is going to get hacked up pretty bad.
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-02 23:23 UTC): We’re all pretty adept at swapping between systems at this point; DMs, please don’t feel a need to cast the rules in stone.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-02 23:25 UTC): Yeah, no doubt. I mean, I think we are all used to playing something vaguely “D&D”. It certainly makes DMing much simpler.
• Gus L (2014-12-03 01:39 UTC): You could do something like the upkeep rules and carousing I’ve been using.  Like basic upkeep is near free and spending more get session only bonuses (rerolls, extra HP, etc) it eats the money of the cautious.
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-03 02:32 UTC): I really like Gus’ Apollyon upkeep rule. It scales nicely with level: the 15gp for +1 HP options are awesome at 1st, not so much at 3rd or 4th.
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-03 02:38 UTC): [a bunch of math splitting all the gold for XP]
• Brendan S (2014-12-03 03:13 UTC): By “stumble upon” I think you mean cleverly find.
• Brendan S (2014-12-03 03:15 UTC): For a rainbow connection there’s a lot of yellow going on. I think we need to buy recruit some followers to up our diversity before we are found out as frauds.
• Brendan S (2014-12-03 03:18 UTC): I think dCarcosa would overwhelm any mundane weapon differentiation so why bother? Also we will soon all have space alien ray guns. Right?
• Brendan S (2014-12-03 03:20 UTC): Thanks for the XP summary Eric Boyd (also: note to self, XP incorporated).
• Eric Boyd (2014-12-03 03:50 UTC): Count’s Dolm, Bone, 2x Yellow, 2x Orange after battle casualties. Also I’ve got Telsa the Yellow Woman and Bolgo the Black Man from the funnel still, and Gus has one more surviving funnel dude I think.
• Gus L (2014-12-03 04:30 UTC): Yeah Mr. Smyth, the greedy radiation poxed white man in carved wooden demon armor.
• Evan Webber (2014-12-09 04:12 UTC): My bone man sorcerer is named The Spangled Inquiry, and I’m wearing that snake armour now, and I didn’t tell anyone about the ray gun though I assume someone would have noticed. And I consumed the brain of the Purple sorcerer and I’m assuming that yields great benefits but you can let me know, Ramanan.
• Evan Webber (2014-12-09 04:15 UTC): But since I’m travelling and need to miss the next session someone can borrow the ray gun.
• Ramanan S (2014-12-09 04:16 UTC): The teleportation ray? Yeah, i’d assumed people would know it was on the guys person when he died. I’ll think about the benefits of eating sorcerer brains.
• Gus L (2014-12-09 04:34 UTC): Have you considered? http://www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/lets-see-whats-been-on-your-mind/