The Gerry Anderson OSR Campaign Options - More Campaign Workshop Thoughts

If Lamentations of the Flame Princess uses Mentzer Dungeons & Dragons as its OSR foundation then it stands to reason to go back into Mentzer as system tool box. Mentzer D&D works very well as a science fantasy base system as well out & out D&D fantasy. As a huge Gerry Anderson  U.F.O. & Space 1999 fan Geoffrey McKinney Carcosa hit right at the right time for me. The setting got my synapses firing on all signals. See my campaign version of Carcosa is a place of the lost & damned. The final location where worm holes & star gates like the legendary Bermuda Triangle finally exit. 

But now I'm a bit torn looking through my old notes on my old Carcosa/Marvel Super Heroes rpg game campaign which actually used a hybrid Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition,Mentzer Basic, & Original Dungeons & Dragons as its base. 

Rock on, and detect magic. Jeff Easley's art
 from Mentzer's Basic 

Here's the trick, these days I've had to become a lot more systems savvy to many of the OSR options that are on the table top level these days. This includes the fact that Venger Satanis's Cha'alt is now available to me as a dungeon master. Cha'alt is a full on desert setting & it fits in quite nicely with McKinney's Barrens of Carcosa. Demon worms, coloured cultists, & incredibly dangerous cults are the norm not the exception here. 

Now here's where the Cha'alt & Carcosa setting  mechanisms start to get a bit more tricky. This is an interstellar empire in disrepair. The serpent men's machine is still there but the breakdown started millions or billions of years ago. The Greys of Carcosa are the dimensional equivalent of cockroaches moving through the Lovecraftian cracks at this point.

 But there are far worse things now breaking through. This brings in Dave Hargraves Arduin rpg 's Star Spiders which are the Lovcraftian beasties from Space 1999's episode Dragon's Domain. These horrors & monsters are found on the surface of this planet of the damned & in the space around it.  

So now the  dilemma is which OSR or rpg system do I use run this science fantasy weirdness waiting to happen?! There are few options that I've already got brewing in the back of my head: 

1. Castles & Crusades Siege engine springs to mind as a perfect venue for this! Victorious rpg/Castles & Crusades hybrid  is already in play with my War 1870 super hero campaign. 
2. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition,Mentzer Basic, & Original Dungeons & Dragons hybrid is another option. 
3. Gamma World or a post apocalyptic campaign might be the order of the day. 
4. Fade back into an AD&D first edition or D20 game system but these are all D20 to be sure. 
5. All of the above. 

This whole cloth dilemma has been on my mind for quite some time now & there's a ton of stuff that would done differently these days then the last time that such a campaign was run  in 2011 or 2012. One of the questions that's been at the back of my mind is what happened to the royals of such Lovecraftian setting? Venger Satanis's Torth has the answer to this. Torth itself is a separate little black planetoid orbiting nearby Cha'alt. The two planets rarely have interaction but there are ancient teleport pads, star gates, etc that allow travel between these planets. The royals of Torth once ruled Carcosa/Cha'alt when the serpent men died. Or did they?  

These same 'kings of Torth' know the key & the gate to Earth's Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence. Here's where things start getting very dangerous for my Earth 1870's campaign. There are several giant king's colony star ships waiting out in the darkness between the void for some fool to stumble upon them.These are inspired by Space 1999's Mission of the Darians. 

Across various time periods of my campaign Earth's history there are Lovecraftian cults & various sleep cells working with agents to bring down the curtain on our planet. This is a central theme in my Victorious rpg campaign. 



 This brings in an idea that been brewing at the back of my brain for a long while. Could HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands be the far future of Earth?! And is there far more going on below the surface there in terms of adventure?! 

"Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination"
(1935) Illustrated by Arthur Rackham