Using & Abusing Barrens of Carcosa Adventure Module Six By Geoffrey McKinney For Your Old School Campaigns

Its been a long while since I cracked open Carcosa Module six Barrens of Carcosa By Geoffrey McKinney.

The cover art by Luigi Castellani  depicts the Yellow Men of Dulaja worshiping a purple worm shoal. The cover artwork pretty much sets the tone for the module. Each of the Carcosa modules is a self contained module based not on Lamentations of the Flame Princess's retroclone system but instead Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition or OSRIC but they could easily be used with  LoFP.


This module is a hex crawl in every sense of the word & it doesn't matter where you set your PC's down in the module. Module six has many of the elements that make Carcosa the unique experience that it is. There are lots of weird Lovecraft references, encounters with weird Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, & some very non traditional monsters. But this is module that's designed to be a bit more accessible because the stats in the module are AD&D first edition its a much more accessible module for a DM looking for a casual dip into the setting. Everything in the adventure is self contained & very DM friendly with a very brief overview of the module piece of Carcosa & all bits & pieces ready to go straight out of the gate.
" BARRENS OF CARCOSA contains a large-scale hex map, introductory information, geographical notes, and detailed encounters keyed to the map. "

The module is on its side so my players don't cheat but you can get an idea of the layout.

The layout is clear & clean ready to go straight out of the box. The hex encounters are straight up well laid out & the descriptions are evocative without going beyond the top. This a module for any level PC but I'd clock it in at level four or five in my estimation. Encounters are lethal but not stupidly so unless the PC's blunder into certain keyed encounters. There are several colored people's cities & settlements while the technological levels are about 9th century Europe to the upper end of the Greys.
This module is made to be a bridge gap between the science fantastic setting of Carcosa & Advance Dungeons & Dragons first edition. The fact is that this module presents the setting in more at the table top adventure hex crawl. The maps read something more like a sustainable adventure campaign then the lethal brew that the original setting book was. The monsters are still the usual Carcosa fare of Illithids, aliens, mutants, dinosaurs,&  icky/slimy/oozy/wormy/tentacle-rape horrors but there's more of a traditional Dungeons & Dragons vibe to Carcosa module six. 

Barrens is a much more accessible module then some of the other Carcosa materials on the market & its self contained. A DM can run it straight out of the box & drop PC's into it. I've had several folks tell me that its not as balls to the walls gonzo as some of the Carcosa materials and personally this is a bit of a strength in my opinion. There are several ways of inexpensively adding in more gonzo material one of the best of which is  The Carcosan Grimoire. This is a community fan submitted Carcosa reference that has lots of sci fi & B movie goodness that can easily be added into Barrens of Carcosa without breaking the system. Can Barrens of Carcosa be run with original Dungeons & Dragons or B/X Dungeons & Dragons? Of course it can! Overall the module has a lot of plusses going for it if the dungeon master is used to running the type of adventure kit style that Barrens of Carcosa module six offers!


The kit approach is the exactly how these modules work taking each module as another piece of a greater campaign setting puzzle. Do you need LoFP's Carcosa book? Not at all but it can be added to the module to provide another setting layer.



Carcosa is one of the great kitchen sink settings able to be used in a wide variety of ways & in some respects Barrens of Carcosa ties into the hex crawl encounter weirdness of the original. But I've had visions of dropping a party of Arthurian knights & warriors into module number six for sometime.  There are several ways of doing this within the context of the Arthurian literature & several nasty & dangerous witches capable of cursing a party right onto the accursed & lost planet. Elaine,  Morgan le Fay, & Morgawse are the heads of several covens of incredibly dangerous Chaos worship aspect. Each of these is more then capable of cursing a party of knights, warriors, & a mid level wizard off to the lost planet.


In point of fact there was some evidence of these witches having truck with Shub Niggurath in some of the more modern Lovcraftian literature. Dark Albion or Lion & Dragon  in fact could be used to fill in certain settlement deals within Barrens of Carcosa.

The Carcosa Sunset - Review & Commentary For Barrens of Carcosa For Your Old School Campaigns

So way back about 2015 or so, I started seeing rumors & water cooler talk about a new set of Carcosa books by Geoffrey McKinney. 
Today I got an email requesting a review of  'Barrens of Carcosa'  Barrens was the first of the adventure modules that I got for Carcosa from Lulu back in 2016. Its a bit of a departure from the B/X good nesss of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Carcosa black edition. How so? Well, Barrens doesn't have the adult occult controversial content that the LoFP adventure source book has. This adventure is meant for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and adds a whole new set hex crawling adventure locations to the Carcosa setting. It adds traditional AD&D first edition alignment axis to Barrens of Carcosa NPC's within the hex crawl. This isn't actually a bad thing but its going to be interesting to say the least if your using this product with LoFP Carcosa because what it does is adds in more insight into the motives & motivations of the NPC's of Barrens.  After a short introduction into Carcosa with its Robert Howard Serpent Men demi god cosmic scientists  we dive right into the meat of Barrens of Carcosa. That is because this is actually a hex crawl encounter kit as much as a module.  Its designed so you can drop some group of smuc erm adventurers into the thick of a hex & come Hell or Cthulhu they'll have to survive.


Luigi Castellani's cover art depicts the Yellow Men of Dulaja worshiping a purple worm shoal.

This is a down and dirty survival horror hex crawl with a Jack Kirby slant & a fully moded out set of encounters within the adventure for this region of Carcosa. There are within the module series besides Barrens of Carcosa which is a part of the northeast quarter of a larger campaign area that includes THE YUTHLUGATHAP SWAMPS, JUNGLES OF THE K'NAANOTHOA, and THE MOUNTAINS OF DREAM.

The module's encounter levels vary tremendously between PC levels as does LoFP's Carcosa but this is where the similarities end. As I said before these are meant for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition or OSRIC. They make full reference to various AD&D monsters & some minor concepts. The adds for this module make it clear that these modules are for experienced dungeon masters only. This module has some of the science fantasy aspects to it but these are far & fewer reflecting the change in mode. This isn't a bad thing but different because Barrens of Carcosa plus into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition & its a different region of Carcosa itself.

Statistic information & layout is different but clear for the DM to deal with difficult encounter issues. There's plenty of room for Carcosa DYI efforts on the DM's part for their own campaign but hex encounters are laid out better. Population, resources, alignment, etc. is all there at the DM's finger tips. Understand that this is bare bones from the ground up with some really well done weird areas & Geoff excels at weird areas damn well. There are various nods to Lovecraft & his circle of writers here & over in that slime pit there.


So are you going to need your AD&D Monster Manual? Possibly but I didn't when I ran Barrens of Carcosa but I've always had a soft spot for the Carcosa setting. Because its a hex crawl there's as I said plenty of room for the DM to leave their own sweaty thumb prints all over this module/setting book. The possibilities are pretty endless of how the PC's are going to deal with some of the module's elements. So is all doom & gloom in Barrens of Carcosa? Surprisingly not all, because there are lots & lots of Spawn of Shub Niggurath! Not all of them are immicial to mankind & some are down right friendly (sort of in that weird Carcosa way).




Could Barrens of Carcosa be played with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess source book or B/X Dungeons & Dragons or its attendant retroclones? Well in a word yes with some minor modifications to stats, armor class, etc. In point of fact I would say that the LoFP Black Carcosa book adds a bit of range to the science fantasy artifact roaster, its not necessary but its a sweet sourcebook to have when running Barrens!
The back maps give a good overview of where the hex's are in this module for AD&D Carcosa additions to the campaign. Map turned on its side to thwart my players.



So is Barrens of Carcosa worth the 12.99 price tag? Well, in a word yes with some caveats. I've run this module as part of a marathon of Carcosa/Gamma World goodness & well I stranded the PC's here! They've managed to survive but Barrens has a lot more Lovecraftian references including Great Race artifact areas, some vicious Great Old One cults, & some surprisingly dangerous high technological encounters. Others have said that the lack of artwork is a step back for  Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa modules. 
The fact is that I totally understand that sentiment but I'm someone who grew up with Judge's Guild material & the lack of artwork to save on costs is understandable. The lack of artwork in thirty two pages didn't cause me any pain. Do I think you should get Barrens of Carcosa? If your a Carcosa fanatic like myself? Then yes absolutely. If your just getting into Carcosa then get the LoFP black Carcosa book first & then get Barrens of Carcosa. Its got a different feel but for me its much more approachable in some regards.
But now back to the email request, it came in from one of my players who PC is still trapped on Carcosa from our Gamma World/Carocsa crossover. We used the Barrens of Carcosa module for that game! More to come coming up on that front soon!


Barrens of Carcosa is
available right over here!


Ten ways to use Barrens of Carcosa with your old school campaigns

1. Barrens of Carcosa  makes an excellent start location for a Carcosa campaign. The diversity of monster, cults, & encounters is going to keep a mini campaign moving for months. 
2. The familiarity of the monsters makes this a much more AD&D friendly and somewhat familiar D&D module to drop your players into for the Carcosa setting. This tactic can be used to introduce the PC's to LoFP's Carcosa wastelands later on. There are several references scattered throughout the module to make this easy. 
3. For Post apocalyptic games I've used this module as the location for planar travel mutations or gates to open into several times. 
4. Barrens & the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series of Carcosa modules are very Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea friendly both in tone & conversion but some Lovecraftian elements could give players headaches. 
5. I've seen one game of supers where the DM was using  Guardians - Superhero RPG By Thomas Denmark game and dropped the players into Barrens of Carcosa. The players got stupid with one of the spawn & it was a TPK. 
6. Crash land your favorite Spelljammer crew on Barrens & watch the hi jinks begin. 
7. Barrens of Carcosa makes an excellent introductory module for Starships & Spacemen 2e
8. Take your Apes Victorious crew & dimensionally strand them on Carcosa. Watch them try to survive Barrens of Carcosa's encounters. I guarentee they'll be party cooperation between humans, apes, and underdwellers.  Some adjustments are needed between rpg systems as explained in the back of Apes Victorious
9. There's an artifact in the Barrens of Carcosa that your wizard needs. Time for a quick dimensional door! 
10. Barrens of Caroca could be used as the Carcosa introduction for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The region is a bit less screwed up then the rest of the planet giving more of an opportunity for mayhem on the DM's part before he fully reveals the extent of the the twisted horror that is the planet.

Carcosa/Gamma World Actual Cross Game Event - Barrens Of Carcosa & Five Classic Science Fiction Films That Inspired Last Night's Events

So my friends & I didn't make GaryCon again this year, we all have other commitments for me its my familial obligations. For others the schedules with work & whatnot but that hasn't stopped me from playing the hell out of some scheduled & unscheduled old school con style events. Take last night when I was settled in for the evening, a quick call from my friend Steven & I'm off to an unscheduled Gamma World/Carcosa game via the Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence. I've got nothing worked out ahead for a city location on my version of Gamma Terra  but I've already got that covered. So we get over to Steven's place & already the Golden Age 50's Atomic films are playing.

When had last left the PC's they had mostly escaped the Islands's influence or so they had though. Making it back through the scillicating dimensional gate pylon back to the wizard Shem'eli's tower the PC's were greeted by their employer & a stranger. They could rest & make use of the facilities but their employer had another job for them. The stranger in question was a masked patron of the Fruse'ru family from Torth ala Revelry in Torth [O5R adventure].

The players groaned they've faced this family & been employed by them many times before & died in their employ. They're relic & artifact sellers throughout the multiverse & their wizards of the lowest order.



The wizard Shem'eli's tower is located on the edge of the Wreckside District: A Post Apocalypse Setting  From Fish Wife Games. Yeah I used a product that my buddy Dave Woodrum had given me a day or so ago with just this sort of a thing in mind. What happens next is all on  the Fruse'ru family representative, the masked priest Kelop'ru. While everyone is sleeping, healing, & recovering the tower's alarm goes off!


This is when all hell breaks loose for our heroes! Mutant alien mercs from Torth are swarming the tower! They're lead by a masked Fruse'ru family wizard riding on the back of a giant mutant preying mantis! Yup that's right kids The Deadly Mantis inspired madness for your PC's doom!

So back through the gateway our PC's go as the wizard's tower endures an all out assault! Lasers firing, and weapons blazing the PC's make their way to strange gateway to make their escape!

Back to the purple inspired madness of the other dimensional gateway system to the dark gods know where?! Well after a few rounds, some saving throws, a dice toss or two they wake up on a strange other world that seems oddly familiar! They haven't had time to pack, grab food or water but they sure as hell grabbed their weapons!  They wake up just in time to see a strangely familiar thing about to munch on them, a horrid wormlike spawn of some elder eon inspired by The Monster That Challenged The World!

What hellish landscape of phantasmagorical nightmare & weirdness have they found themselves? What fiendish devilry have I cooked up for our heroes? The answer comes in the form of  the Rhedosaurus which takes out the wormlike god thing in one bite! All the PC's can do is look on in fear and then run! Run for their very lives!

So after about what seems like an eternity they come across a village of red men in the strange wasteland like landscape that seems achingly familiar to them. That's when one of the players spots an evil purple book sticking out from the very edge of my backpack! A strange warped book of horrid forbidden evil, The BARRENS OF CARCOSA adventure By Geoffrey McKinney. 

Groan not Carcosa?! Why in all of the universe did it have to be that lost & insane backwater world of ancient & terrible evil?! Well because they picked me up at nine at night & caffeinated beer made with hot sauce is the Devil's own creation but back to the game!  The redmen take in our mutant heroes & they are allowed to rest for the village needs champions against an evil that has taken down their best warriors. Some giant vegtible like human Thing From Another World (1951) has been terrorizing the village. The PC's immediately set off to destroy it and loot the downed saucer it came in.

So this took up the better part of the night & the PC's Pure Strain Human Restorationist technical advisor was almost killed by the Thing. It took some quick thinking on the parts of the players to take this boss monster out. Then they were exploring the rest of the saucer & came across a robot that sent shock waves of disbelief through the party. A deadly silver robot was escorting his prisoner to captivity when it escaped and began to wreck havoc. They looted what they could & quickly left! They made sure not to disturb that silver behemoth in the saucer!

Alright so our heroes are still trapped on Carcosa but they've got food, water, and shelter for the moment. The fact was that I again had to mix a good deal of first and second edition Gamma World in together to even things out for play. The modules weren't too bad at all. For last night's game the film inspirations were in no particular order The Deadly Mantis 1957, The Monster That Challenged The World, The Thing From Another World 1951, The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951. So 1951 & '57 respectively which were classic years for the Golden Age of atomic monster movies and alien invader flicks.
The mixing and matching of old school games,AD&D first edition and retroclone material went very well because of the fact that I was playing with very experienced players. Will I do this again? Only time will tell my friends but caffinted beer is the Devil's own. Keep em rolling. All films are trade marked and copyrighted to their respective owners this blog post is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Oh and don't forget Venger's latest KS is Trinity of Awesome Returns! For as little as 7 bucks, you get three adventures in PDF format - "one eldritch science-fantasy scenario (Crimson Dragon Slayer), one retro sleazy sci-fi scenario (Alpha Blue), and one pulp / investigative horror scenario (The Outer Presence)."

Some Impressions of The OSR Adventure Resource Barrens of Carcosa By Geoffrey Mckinney For Your Old School Campaigns

 GRAB IT HERE

So my other half splurged & grabbed me a copy of  Barrens of Carcosa By Geoffrey Mckinney, this is a thirty two page adventure module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition. This is a really interesting variation of the tradition Carcosa that we've seen from the pen of the author. Barrens of Carcosa could be thought of as the first of the series of AD&D modules in the sense that this book contains many of the usual setting conceits we've come to know and love from Carcosa. In fact I'd go so far as to call this Carcosa III Fallout Tactics; because it uses many of the elements we know and love with Carcosa. But the adventure uses them  in ways that I wasn't expecting.



There are hex after hex of special encounters including Lovecraftian gods and races, weird technology, space alien bases and cult  appearances and much more.All of this adds to the steady stream of weirdness we've come to expect from Carcosa.Some of these are done in odd ways and the author has sort of snuck in several subtle themes and ideas into the adventure mix here:

1. The encounters here are keyed with more conventional AD&D 1st edition monsters and it gives the Barrens of Carcosa a far more grounded feel. Tribes, wizards and others here are far more grounded in the setting. 
2. There are several key Lovecraftian NPC's and elements from the literature of HP Lovecraft himself from the City of Pillars with its ruler Abdul Alhazared to meta mix appearances by the Great Race. But this material is taking advantage of the multi dimensional nature of Lovecraft's creations which are hinted at within the literature and taken full at advantage of within the Barrens. 
3. Major send ups of pop culture horror and fantasy icons as encounters including the Phantasm series and several movie references scattered as Easter eggs throughout. A very subtle and neat touch for this adventure.
4.   Because this is meant as an AD&D 1st edition adventure there's lots of potential to cross this over into OSRIC or other Advanced Labyrinth Lord Companions style adventures this means more potential for parties to visit and be stranded on Carcosa. 
5.  Lots and lots of hexcrawl weirdness which if parties are not careful could easily mean a complete and utter TPK. 
6.  Barrens Carcosa seems a bit more accessible for traditional AD&D dungeon masters  but those with other editions of Carcosa should be easily able adapt this module as they need to. 
7. Certain encounters and locations are going to need to be fleshed out by the DM as major adventure locations because they scream for it. Cities, villages, and towns are pretty much in the Carcosian tradition. 
8. For those who own Realms of Crawling Chaos from Goblinoid Games  this is a great module to take on as an advanced option for play it has many of the Lovecraftian elements that book talks about in play. 
9. Barrens of Carcosa adds in another layer of forbidden vistas and weird sword & planet adventure to the mix of OSR goodness. 
10. Barrens is an affordable way to get into the deep end of the Carcosa experience and its a great book to use as a template for your own sword and ray gun campaigns. Barrens isn't perfect, the adventure is a mixed bag weirdness and several of the encounters have the potential to really work over a party of adventurers but that's to be expected. Could Barrens of Carcosa be used with existing sword and sorcery retroclones such as The Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg system? I think so but I would hasten to add in some additional material such as the free community based The Carcosan Grimoire. This is a set of free resources for the original OD&D role-playing supplement Carcosa by Geoffrey McKinney. Now the reason why I would add in this material for Barrens is because much of it is OD&D or system neutral and adds in a further level of background material for the adventure giving the DM just another set of tools to play with. I would also like to add in that these adventures could serve as perfect points to drop in side treks with Geoffrey Mckinney's  Psychedelic Fantasies in Barrens or one of the other Carcosa locations detailed in his other Carcosa adventures.
11.  The lack of artwork didn't bother me at all because I've known what I was getting into when this adventure came out. For me Barrens of Carcosa is a bridge gap into the next phase of the Carcosa line from Geoffrey Mckinney.
    
    
    
    If your a Carcosian gamer such as myself I think that Barrens is a good addition into the Carcosa line and collection . I also think that there more then enough room in the mix here for DM's to add in their own DYI D&D spin to this Carcosian adventure. Barrens serves as a brand new buffer adventure into the world of Carcosa & if you already own the Lamentations of the Flame Princess edition this book might make good add on.
    I sure thankful that my other half grabbed this one for me. My advise is to wait to grab it when one of those Lulu codes rolls around as they always seem to and get into the free shipping.
    Remember to keep those dice rolling.