Review Of Fire on The Velvet Horizon By Scrap Princess & Patrick Stuart For Your Old School Campaigns

There are monster books and then there's Fire On The Velvet Horizon which is one part punk aesthetic artwork & six parts monster book from the depths of the soul of an adventurer whose seen deep into the recesses of the human abyss. Someone showed up at my house today with this book and handed it too me, they made me promise to review it. Well Justin I keep my promises and here's the review you were promised. Fire On The Velvet Horizon is one hundred pages of brain melting monster candy done in Scrap Princess's frenzied  art style along with Patrick Stewart's prose. The book clocks in at one hundred and twenty one pages
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How the hell do you describe the one hundred monsters that are within this book? Well its sort of an in monster and adventure  book all in one. Full  of a monsters that slowly crawl off of the page and quietly rams themselves into your back brain. These are original, weird, and more then creepy monsters who come to life at each turn of the page. I'd probably put this book at about the level of a Red & Pleasant Land, the artwork is punk and dark acid aesthetic warped through a blender of nightmare fuel. There isn't a single stat in the book but the creatures really do get under your skin in a odd alien way.


This book is more artifact then actual Monster Manual, its a book of monsters in fact over a one hundred of them but these are things that have their own internal rules of play within their descriptions. These things are the stuff of nightmare that you might see just before you wake up from sweat induced fever. Are they well done? Absolutely! Are they original? Very much so! But where can you use these horrors? They each have their place within the frame work of their own reality. I can easily see using these horrors in a place like Carcosa or the back end of some ancient Lovecraftian nameless abattoir setting.

This is a book for people who love monsters and by monsters I mean the really weird things that lurk between the cracks of reality and the horrors of some demented dungeon master's mad ravings. There are three reasons to use this book :

• One you want monsters that are violently weird, original, and very strange to build an adventure around. These are creatures that can do exactly that, monsters that you can build entire adventure frame works around. 
• These are horrors and creatures that feed into the realms of fantasy and dark imagination. 
• The horrors of this book have an internal consistency that breeds its own mythology around the contents of Fire On The Velvet Horizon and that makes the book beg to be used at the DM's table. 

But is the book actually good? Well its a book that demands the reader's attention and imagination sparking off ideas for adventures just in the reading of it. Fire on the Velvet Horizon is dark and original in its bold strokes of internal mythologies. Many of the creatures are odd and very dangerous found in only the remotest areas.

After spending part of the day going through this book I can honestly say I've never seen any other bestiary or old school monster book quite like Fire on The Velvet Horizon. It weird and truly wonderful book of  monsters that kicks soon much ass. I can see using this book to generate entire campaigns around it. Five out of five for this new school monster manual, Fire On the Velvet Horizon hits all of the right buttons for creativity, originality and DYI Dungeons and Dragons!

The Physical Copy of The OSR Adventure - Deep Carbon Observatory From False Machine Publishing For Your Old School Campaign

Deep Carbon Observatory is one of those adventures that gets under your skin and is both a disaster module as well as mini campaign setting all in one. The physical book is perfectly suited for the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess rpg. It's got three things going perfectly for it. The first thing is the adventurers against the weirdness that flows through this adventure like the dark rushing waters theme and the fact that the weirdness factor gets turned up to eleven, then there's the fact that the adventure is well written in an open ended fashion allowing the DM customize it to their DYI campaigns, and finally this physical product is a really perfect balance between the mid range of party adventure and deadly disturbing book. Scrap Princess's artwork is the perfect blend of all of these factors. You can see my review HERE

 The physical artwork is far more imposing onto the mind #@#$ that goes into desperation, malice, and nasty business that's been socked into this ninety two page adventure that leaks with the toxic weirdness that oozes out of Deep Carbon Observatory. This is an adventure in which adventure, opportunity, and murder all collide together in one massive toxic wrapped disaster adventure coupled with some strange monsters coming from the cracks of the pages.

A favorite paperback for size comparison.

 The random tables are easy on the eyes, the prose is very well written by Patrick Stuart, & Scrap Princess.
This is an adventure where opportunity abounds in the rising waters and events of DOC and sometimes those events can and do cut both ways. PC's are going to die in the waters, wastelands, and  

The text is very well laid out and the physical book is far easier to run then the pdf.

 From the encounters to the adventure's path mostly everything here pardon the pun flows together with an old school vibe of the tragic and malevolent in equal turns. I'm very happy to have a physical product instead of a pdf. The lettering is easy on the eyes and the book is well constructed. I do like the binding, its nice and strong.

 There are some nasty pieces of business between the pages and Scrap Princess's art capture's the fury and the power of the raging violence that boarders on David Lynch style energies in places. This is definitely a mid level party adventure with lots of strangeness just waiting to be sprung on your favorite PC's.

 I like the layering of the encounters, the way that the adventure lays itself out in the DM's hands and the style of the writing as well. The encounters here are both nasty but there's a sense of demented whimsy throughout the thing wrapped in a miasma of horror, menace, and utter desolation. Only certain Kult rpg adventures approach this level of strange.

 Graphically the thing is a nice blend of art, weirdness, violence, and old school DYI action packed old school adventure done in a core of Patrick Stuart's writing and design. This isn't a one hit wonder but a waiting hellish and brackish adventure compliemented by Scrap Princess's artwork. This is a completely different level of product then say the TSR era's adventures. This thing get's under your skin and haunts your brain at night whispering hellish secrets to you about the demise of PC's and taunts you to run it.

I love the maps the and the ethos that went into the
design of this little bundle of horrific art and writing. 

Do I think that Deep Carbon Observatory is worth the price of admission? Yes and having a physical copy adds to it's playability by a factor of  two hundred. All in all I can't thank my friend for the gift of this wonderful little book Grab this one before it get's away.