Tuesday, April 5, 2022

OSR Review & Commentary On Lost Carcosa By Tristan Tanner From Bogeyman Gaming For Your Old School Campaigns or OSR Fantasy Role Playing Game.

"ENTER A WORLD OF HIGH ADVENTURE AND COSMIC HORROR!

Lost Carcosa is an exciting new supplement for the ORIGINAL FANTASY RPG, inspired by the works of Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard! Within its pages, you will find:

  • Dozens of horrifying new monsters
  • 11 new spells for use with either the Cleric or Magic-User classes
  • 21 new magic items
  • 7 regions, detailed with encounter tables and 50 possible things to find in each region
  • Simplified rules for wilderness generation and exploration
  • Brief biographies of prominent NPCs and deities
  • And more!" 



Lost Carcosa by Tristan Tanner from Bogeyman Gaming is a Weird Fiction OSR supplement & addition too your favorite OSR retroclone system. It essentially walks the same course as Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa with quite a few distinct differences. And Lost Carcosa starts off with Men & Magic offerng Zoogs & Ghouls as a PC race. Then we've got spell additions with essential salts & a host of other Lovecraftian spells. And then we get a ton of Lovecraftian monsters and did I mention that this is all for OD&D and B/X Dungeons & Dragons style games. And there's a good dose of Edgar Rice Burroughs thrown in there for good measure. And there's a whole truck load of weird & Lovecraftian magic items for good measure. Here's an example; "Image Of Ghatanathoa: These typically take the form of wooden boxes with hinged lids, within which is a statue of the Great Old One Ghatanathoa. Anyone who looks upon the visage of Ghatanathoa is instantly petrified, their body mummifying and fossilizing while their brain remains alive. A saving throw versus stone can be made to avoid looking at the statue." 

And then we get into 'Lost Carcosa' proper yes that's right this actually is a  'Robert W. Chambers' campaign setting and its pretty detailed with random enconters, adventure goals, & much more thrown in. 
And a huge amount of significant areas described but there's no map at all for any of these Lovecraftian locations! There's the Carcosan underworld that rates its own sections & it goes in for the deep dive on those with more random encounters and much more. And then into Carcosa mini dungeons! 
Then there's the Dieties of Carcosa including the King in Yellow himself, and more Lovecraftian dieties to boot! And then we dive into exceptionally important NPC's on Carcosa such as; "THE WOMAN IN THE WALLPAPER The King in Yellow feeds on intelligence and creativity, inciting obsession and madness. The Woman in the Wallpaper is one of his many victims, corrupted into a monster by his unholy influence. Once she was an ordinary young woman from Earth, suffering from clinical depression in an age where treatment for such a condition was locking the unfortunate woman in an empty room for days. The King in Yellow crept in through the ugly yellow wallpaper which decorated her room, and began to corrupt the woman. She started to see impossible patterns in the lines of the walls, illuminated by the pallid moonlight, until she could see a distorted, crawling figure behind the wallpaper. In time, she came to realize that it was herself, and in a frenzy stripped the wallpaper off the wall and began to change into something not quite human. Her husband died of shock" 
And then we get 'Appendix A' a random mutation table & 'Appendix B' -'Appendix B: Dark Young Of Sheol-Nugganoth' section! And then inspirational films, literature, etc. 
Alright let me slow down because all of this is packed into Eighty Nine pages of a glorious Lovecraftian  campaign  of a supplement in 'Lost Carcosa'. And what 'Lost Carcosa' reminds me of is Dave Hargrave's Arduin rpg supplements. Lots of incredibly interesting & somewhat insane Lovecraftian ideas thrown into the mix of 'Lost Carcosa' that you as a DM can use or not. 
Could 'Lost Carcosa' be used with Geoffery McKinney's Carcosa?! I believe it not only could but that was the intention here.  'Lost Carcosa' offers an alternative OSR campaign setting to LoFP's Carcosa or another face of the classic OSR campaign setting. Perhaps another side of Carcosa where we have even more weirdness happening. 'Lost Carcosa' is an interesting addition to the OSR landscape and one that I hope to be using coming up! 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.