OSR Commentary - Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Summoning Spells, Dark Albion, & DA2 Temple of the Frog

So we're just getting back after a day of work & Lamentations of the Flame Princess has been on my mind.Why!? There are a myriad of reasons for this & one of the reasons is just how ingrained some of the ideals of LoFP have become within our games. 

A good example of this is the first level Summon spell that has caused a myriad of motives & problems for PC's in numerous campaigns. Numerous times I've used scrolls of Summoning as the 'treasure' within the lair of a cult or magus's abode.
After long considerations about LoFP the Summoning spell is one that I've turned into ritual. There are several reasons for this. 
While I've kept the level at first the spell became a ritual & one aligned with Chaos at that. Possession of this ritual has become one that carries with it the death penalty within our campaigns. This came up as a result of a Dark Ablion game in which a player's ousted magus spoke to the party about the ritual. 
Instantly the character became prime enemy number one on the Sol Invictus's wanted list. What however is so dangerous about the Summoning ritual? 
There are in point of fact two reasons. The ritual not only summons an unknown creature of Chaos. But it opens a doorway for the things of the unknown to gain enterance into our campaign world. 
Due to the influence of Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos the  corrupting nature of Chaos continues to be a problem long after the other worldly monster has been dealt with. 
And this is an issue that has cropped up in any number of games where the influence of Blackmoor continues to rear it's head as well. 

DA2 The Temple of the Frog  By Dave Arneson & David J. Richie has become a staple as one of the origin points for the demonic frog humanoids in our various Dark Albion game campaigns over the years. 

Stepthen The Rock as a discipline of Tsathoggualo continues to plague everyone of my campaigns as another clone body is released via the clone tapes with his last stored memories of his demise by the PC's fresh on his mind. His Chaos cult is also one of the sources of the Summon ritual. Tsathoggua continues to be amused by the antics of his favored son. The Temple of the Frog is the source for the Chaos humanoid frogs who rule France in our Dark Albion campaigns. The humanoid frogs were released thousands of years ago & began their ascend into full on sentience & take over of Albion. 

The Rose War has stunted the machinations for exploration but for hundreds of years Europe had been exploring their world & beyond. And it's this beyond that has led them into other realms. This ties into  

Mad Scribe Games Sword & Caravan which in turn ties back into today's Red Tide campaign setting. 

 The Red Tide energies means that PC's from the Dark Albion era are able to rub elbows with Dark Albion NPCs's as well. These energies extend the life of those who spend time on the islands. These same energies are also the leaks from the war of the two unknown archons from Qelong. These are all due to the Celestial Engine breaking down over billions of years. 
Each time a summoning ritual is used another pin prick point of damage is done to the Celestial Engine. But what does this all mean?! 

OSR Commentary On Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos By Rpg Pundit For OSR & Old School Campaigns

 "Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos is a gaming supplement for Dark Albion (also available on Createspace / Amazon), as well as most OSR fantasy-horror role-playing games. It will help you generate various Chaos Cults in detail (many tables are provided). It then describes the most common Chaos cults found in Albion (those worshiping demons, and others), gives advice on how running Chaos cults adventures (several tables are provided), and proposes three ready-to-use dungeons (i.e.: maps plus descriptions of contents for three dungeons that would be perfect for cultists lairs). This supplement is usable with any RPG of the OSR movement, such as Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (also available on Createspace / Amazon), Osric, Labyrinth Lord, etc."

Cults of Chaos by Rpg Pundit has been one of the most useful additions to my gaming libary over the years. Theres been plenty of times when this volume has come in very handy. 

All of the Pagan gods depicted within Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos are in some way or another touched by Chaos. A practice that over the years since Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos we've used for numerous OSR & old school campaigns. These cults are dangerous and very much not as much in the same vein as other old school games portray them. Take the Roman cult of Mithra according to Cults of Chaos it aligns with its wiki enty up to a point; "Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries or the Cult of Mithras, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated.^[a] The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from about the 1st to the 4th-century CE.^[2]

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".^[b] They met in underground temples, now called mithraea (singular mithraeum), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome,^[3] and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far as Roman Dacia, as far north as Roman Britain,^{[4]: 26–27} and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east." 
While it is united by it's symbols, handshakes & signs as a 'mystery cult' or secret society Mithraic mysteries and such are still seen as a cult of chaos by the Sol Invictus. And they are dealt with accordingly. The setting a  of historical fantasy world set in England during the period of the War of the Roses ie. 1453-1485 is a very unforgiving place. 

And even the old Roman gods are looked on deeply with suspition & a side glance towards blatant Chaos worship. And it's these leanings that give Dark Albion's setting both it's unique flavor & the  Lion & Dragon rpg part of it's percision as an OSR game. 

The time of  the pre War of the Roses ie. 1453-1485 was supposed to be a place of new beginnings and happenings. The War of the Roses pushses that back to the background for an almost pseudo horror feel as the edges of the map take on sinister and dangerous connotations. All of the while the threat of Chaos looms in the background waiting to take on anyone stupid enough to fall to the various cults wiles. 

And within these cracks are where adventurers of all stripes ply their trade. The further reaches of exploration both historical & edged have their place with both Dark Albion & Lion & Dragon. 

Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos By Rpg Pundit  For OSR & Old School Campaigns Is Available Right Here. 

Review & Commentary On Womb Cult by Andrew Marrington from From Grimm Aramil Publishing For The Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg & Your Old School Or OSR Campaigns

 "A race of alien-human hybrids hides in a rural area, disguising its activities as those of a witch cult. It offers the power of witchcraft to gullible countryfolk; all it asks in exchange is that they serve as the cult’s wombs, to keep their hybrid lines viable, as they have since Time Immemorial.

But a change has swept Europe. No longer are stories of witches dismissed as superstitious ravings of uneducated peasants, and now, the witch hunters have come to put an end to the Womb Cult...

An adventure for low level characters for Lamentations of the Flame Princess"

Third party Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg products have always been hit or miss for us. But  the recommendation of a friend does carry some weight & boy is this one solid. 'Womb Cult' by Andrew Marrington from From Grimm Aramil Publishing is a forty four page adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg that packs in the weirdness. And unlike other LoFP products this one actually delivers the alien goods. 


 Womb Cult is an adventure with a cross witchcraft & alien invasion theme as a basic adventure starter package. Man this one is well laid out, gives the punch to the PC's straight out of the gate, & the whole cloth of the adventure is well done. This isn't an adventure that exploits women but an adventure that exploits everyone.. period. You can drop this adventure into the back end of rural England during the English Civil War or the Hundred Years War campaign. 

The layout here is concise, the themes a cross between disturbing & the high weirdness of a 50's Science Fiction movie on the late night channel on cable, the encounters are nasty. 

'Womb Cult ' is the type of low level adventure that I wish had been out when I running LoFP Carcosa or 'World of the Lost' by Rafael Chandler. The reason is simple 'Womb Cult '  takes the tired cliché of a beginning adventure & turns it into a campaign spring board. For LoFP's 'Womb Cult ' turns up the adventure without sacrificing the content. This is a pure alien invasion of the worst kind & it shows. But this isn't a nega dungeon of the usual Lamentations variety instead  'Womb Cult ' is a campaign beginning or spring board. 

The production values here are top notch & the artwork is on point for an LoFP third party product. Is this a winnable adventure for a party?! Its gonna depend upon the players expectations & what they choose to do. There are some direr & dangerous things here in  'Womb Cult '. 
Don't make any mistakes here  'Womb Cult ' isn't for the kids folks. This is a Lamentations of the Flame Princess module so there's adult themes, ideas, & some icky content for everyone. Can  'Womb Cult ' be used with a traditional Dungeons & Dragons style game?! In a word, yes! 

You could drag & drop  'Womb Cult ' into the back end of a Greyhawk campaign or even Mystara with little effort. But  'Womb Cult ' is a hard core Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure. Could it be used with other OSR systems?! Oh most certainly. 

First of all  'Womb Cult ' could easily be used with an Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg campaign in spades. The whole thing lock, stock, & two smoking blunder buss barrels could be dropped into that system using ACK's Guns of War book. Because of the black powder weapons & such. 

'Womb Cult '  could also work very well into a black powder Castles & Crusades game campaign. The science fantasy high weirdness makes this a very easily adaptable adventure. The cult operating in some country back water means that they can spread quite easily throughout a region.  The PC's could have a Hell of a time eradicating it. 

And this also means that 'Womb Cult '  could work very well as a heresy within a Dark Albion or Lion & Dragon rpg campaign. There's tons of mileage that a DM could get out of this adventure. 

Is 'Womb Cult ' perfect? No its not but it provide a really nice alternative beginning adventure & tool kit for a from the ground up Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg game campaign. This adventure played right could provide years of 'cat & mouse' play easily & could be used as the basis for an entire alien invasion from the ground up within a campaign. Its nice to see an alternative 'alien invasion'  adventure that doesn't use the usual Mind Flayer adventure. 'Womb Cult ' is in fact a solid OSR module & very well done. FYI 'Womb Cult ' was bought with my own money & I will be running it for my players coming up.

Depravity of Monsters - Drawing From The Darkness of Appendix N & Dungeons

 Monster placement is essential in Dungeons & Dragons adventures but what happens when the monsters bring the dungeon with them?!

Last night I got a chance to sit in on one of my favorite Atomic sci fi films Them from 1954. I was thinking about the film's influence on me when it comes to running adventures. The pacing, investigative aspect of the monster movie, and even the lay out of the lair of the mutant ants. Everything here is really solid for running old school adventures.Them has an expert hand in the form of director  Gordon Douglas.

And the cast fits all of the 50's Atomic era horror stereo types including  Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, James Arness, Onslow Stevens, &  Joan Weldon as the lead scientist's daughter. Here's the plot & I want you to pay attention to the layout of the film's plot;

"A nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert; they quickly become a national threat when it is discovered that two young queen ants and their consorts have escaped to establish new nests. The national search that follows finally culminates in a battle with Them in the concrete spillways and sewers of Los Angeles."

Everything here centers around the monsters, their habits, & ecology. This is especially true of the monster's lairs or dungeons. The monster's very presence creates the dungeon environment in the film. This is something we see time & again in the pulp era. The monster menace creating the disruption of the dungeon location on the locals.
This sort of plot device is something I've used time & again in a wide variety of original Dungeons & Dragons affairs & it goes all the way to the pulp era. HP Lovecraft used it to great effect in the Dunwich Horror.


The investigative element, the horror on the locals, the rousting of the locals, and finally the reveal of the giant menace in the wilderness setting. The monster breaking through reality is creating the dungeon location unto itself. To certain extent this is also true of the menaces that we find in H.G. Wells War of the Worlds where the Martians bring their own brand of terra forming to bare.

An army of Martian fighting-machines destroying England. (1906)


As I said yesterday the monster is the other & the invasive species on the reality of the campaign. They can easily set the tone of the dungeon from science fantasy all the way to straight up horror. The corruption & chaos of monsters is inherit within their unreality and invasiveness. These are things that straight up foreign to our reality setting out their own reality as the 'norm'.
A modern interpretation of this can be seen in John Carpenter's The Fog. Again the monsters are bringing the menace. Carpenter drank from the same heady cocktail of pulp resources, Atomic monster movie films, & old school fantasy sources that coloured both Arneson & Gygax.



This is the creeping slow corruption of chaos within OSR circles can be seen  in Dark Albion. The monster ecology of Rpg Pundit's frogmen is something he talks about today. 

As for my campaigns I've got a totally different take. The Frogmen brought their own reality & military might with them in the form of their frog demon masters. Their own occult might trumps the will of the Conquering Sun where it can.


When you get into Clark Ashton Smith then we get to the heart of how the corruption of the dungeon is brought by the monsters. His Averoigne stories & Hyperborean tales are key pieces to bring on the dungeon crawling into the 'normal' reality of the campaign. Coming of the White Worm, The (1941) is a perfect set up of the invasive reality of the monster god coming to call with its crawling freezing corruption on the normal world of Hyperborea. And within The Mandrakes, (1933) we get the small side of it in spades where Averoigne's weirdness shows through the cracks. No doubt those cracks will widen into full bloom of dungeon weirdness.  What is the end result of the weirdness of the dungeon? The final washing away of the former reality of law possibly seen with major traces of chaos & corruption being left behind in Robert Howard's Conan story Red Nails.
"It was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudohistorical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction. Due to its grim themes of decay and death, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales."


The monsters have come & gone leaving only their corruption behind in the lone city of decay. The monsters may have gone but their moral corruption is far more reaching in the mental realms of the inhabitants because they've left the stain of inhuman
cultural decadence.  "Robert E. Howard's stories often express the author's belief that civilizations carry the seeds of their own destruction. Howard found in the lost city genre a vehicle for expressing these views."
"The theme of cultural decadence maintained its grip on Howard's imagination. In early 1935, he remarked to Novalyne Price:
"You see, girl, when a civilization begins to decay and die, the only thing men or women think about is the gratification of their body's desires. They become preoccupied with sex. It colors their laws, their religion – every aspect of their lives."
Its not about sex but cultural degeneration &  depravity seen again & again in Sword & Sorcery as societies fall. Not all of the monsters live in the dungeons but many of the worst are those that serve these inhuman fiends.  Monsters often bring the worst of the weirdness with them.

B10 Night's Dark Terror By Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, Phil Gallagher For Your Old School Pulp Adventure Campaign

 "Barely one day's march from Kelven, the uncharted tracts of the Dymrak forest conceal horrors enough to freeze the blood of civilized folk. Those who have ventured there tell how death comes quick to the unwary - for the woods at night are far worse than any dungeon. But you are adventurers, veterans of many battles, and the call of the will is strong. Will you answer the call, or are you afraid of the dark terrors of the night?

Way back in the early Eighties I read a lot of X men comic books & I noticed that the group did a ton of wilderness based adventures. In fact if you begin looking into super hero comic books & graphic novels there's tons of lost world & such settings thrown into the mix. B10 Night's Dark Terror.  B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) was made  the TSR UK brain trust of Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher. 


B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is an old school adventure that I've used time & again with a wide variety of old school & OSR retroclones. Dungeon mastering B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) includes OSR systems like  Dark Albion & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2nd edition recently.

But I can already hear the groans from the reading audience, what the hell does one module have to do with two OSR game systems  & does this tie into the Thirty Year War? Wherever Chaos touches or washes against reality we've got mutation, supernatural issues, and the old Elven hills & pagan groves in some places are still opening upon Fairyland."The characters encounter a town under siege by goblins, a ruined city, and a lost valley" The Elves are doubling down on taking over a wide variety of realities & Fairyland is basically using old fairy rings & ruins across the planes. How does this work?
Fairyland is a rolling planar demi realm accessed as a higher parasitic dimension that touch on other realities.


For my purposes of 'The Otheworld' is another aspect of the realm of Fairyland that reflects the weirdness & the dangerous occult chaos of the other dimensional realm of the Elves. Each & every time these higher parasitic dimensions touch a reality they bring the subtle energies of chaos with them. So essentially each time a cult accesses an aspect of Fairyland it brings these places back into the world along with the chaotic ecological system. Dungeons are not simply created their borne of the chaos of the realm of Fairy.


D&D Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), by Rob Kuntz & James Ward, is the fourth of four supplements for the OD&D game. It was published in July 1976 & has a solid roster of Celtic gods & heroes who have fought the powers of Fairyland to a stand still.  The 'Otherworld' is also an origin source of kings, heroes, & the destiny place  of warriors, knights, & wizards.

"The Otherworld was also seen as a source of authority. In the tale Baile in Scáil ("the phantom's ecstatic vision"), Conn of the Hundred Battles visits an Otherworld hall, where the god Lugh legitimizes his kingship and that of his successors.^{[1]"These various rolling dimensional aspects of  'the Otherworld' empower both the adventurers & heroes as well as fuel the whole of Fairyland. The original purpose of the place has been perverted.}
B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is a perfect pulp adventure to use because  this is a transition module and takes PC's into the big leagues! That's right set B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) in some back part of Europe in middle of the Pulp Age or  the Golden Age of Superheroes and they're going to get noticed big time! 

Modern weapons are not going to be a huge deciding factor if your adventurer or pulp hero is looking down the business end of an owl bear! Way back in the Eighties many of the independent comic book companies had their own super hero & pulp teams encountering & recruiting wizards, clerics, thieves, etc. from Dungeons & Dragons style worlds into their ranks.

No one batted an eye & the number of Arthurian heroes that Marvel & D.C. used is numerous. The fact is that dungeon masters back in the Seventies & Eighties used whatever mythical or  fictional characters they needed as NPC's.

B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986) is a stepping stone module & even with modern pulp style adventurers is going to be a challenge. 
So let's update this a bit with some more background. Dark Albion action with the Elves of Fairyland going full invasion with OZ & Wonderland playing a huge part in DM Steve's game last night & it took place in an alternative Earth 19th century. A campaign that I wrote by the way. But already DM Steve has been modifying & messing with it. 



So what does this have to do with B10: Night’s Dark Terror (1986)?! Everything as our PC's found themselves in the Otherworld & even playing a werewolf I had B10 wilderness messing with me because it was a part of Fairyland. Imagine it like this, the whole of Earth has been pushing agaisnt the wilderness with the second Industrial Revolution in full swing due to the Martian Invasion round one. The Elves, Fey,etc. are taking a very dim view of this & have been exploding Wilderness from their world into ours! The chaos & weirdness of their world has been converting lots of folks on the fringes into Elven cults straight outta of Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos



Now all of this ties back into Brian Young's Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum 2nd Edition. Which outlines the Castles & Crusades take on the Celtic Fey & their cycles. Some of the factions of the Fey have been helping the PC's And some have been actively hindering them in very nasty ways. 




Much of what's in Brian Young's Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum 2nd Edition easily ties into the works of Welsh author Arthur Machen. More on this all later. 

Ribbit & Death - OSR Commentary on D2 'The Temple of The Frog' By Guy Ritchie & Dave Arneson

 "Green Death...

That's what old hands call the Great Dismal Swamp. For centuries, this tangled maze of sluggish watercourses, stagnant ponds, and festering marshes has defended Blackmoor's southwestern frontier. Large armies and smaller parties have disappeared altogether inside its vast, dripping, claustrophobic corridors.

Among those who have dropped from sigh in this arboral hell is young Rissa Aleford, one of Blackmoor's most important leaders. Carried off to the sinister City of the Fron, she is now being held by the eccentric Monks of the Swamp. By making the baroness captive, the deranged monks have serioulsy weakened Blackmoor at a time when enemies already threaten it from all sides.

Yet, even as the Froggies gloat, the king of Blackmoor dispatches a small band of bold adventures to the rescue. Deep into the Great Dismal Swamp they must go - far from sunlight and sanity - there to seek and save the swamp, there to find the Temple of the Frog."

Today was one of those days where I grabbed DA2 Temple of the Frog by Guy Richie & Dave Arneson right off the shelf today.  Its been a very much a roller coaster of a day from ups of the repair business taking off to the lows of having the wind knocked outta of my sails today because of Covid. More on that another time, but let's get back to The Froggies cult for a moment. If there's one NPC who appears behind the scenes again & again its "Stephen the Rock". 

'Stephen The Rock' looks exactly like a wild eyed version of Brainic Five from The Legion of Super Heroes comic book. Why?! Because Havard wayback in 2010 on his blog got the lowdown on the villain from one half of the team that created the villain in this case  Stephen Rocheford.  So Havard uses a piece of Legion of Super Heroes comic artwork & from then on he was an evil version of Brainic five in my campaigns. 



So my version of Stephen The Rock has been tweaked quite a bit especially after becoming a pawn for the god Tsathoggua. Why?! Because it amused the Great Old One & Stephen The Rock was another in a long line of pawns across the planes of existence. The Great Old One's favor allowed Stephen to gaze along the lines of pararell & alternative worlds for other versions of the FTS. Beagle that mirror his own vessel's demise. Stephen wanted that sweet,sweet, Beagle technology that has allowed him to build up his cult of Froggies across the planes. This is sort of in keeping with  "Patterns of Force" (1968), an episode of the original Star Trek (1966-1969). It also feeds the growing paranoia & mental delusions of Captain Bork Riesling

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” ― Frank Herbert & with this Frank Herbert qoute we find that Stephen The Rock wasn't alone. Commander Stephen Rocklin (DA2)  Commander and Chief of Security had a good portion of the U.S.S. Beagle's crew following his flute of corruption according to Havard's blog again! When Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor,starts to play from the Dismal Swamp its time to run! 
The temple & its attendantly dangerous genetically modified giant frogs played a huge part in a recent 2019 Lion & Dragon rpg mini campaign. Stephen 'The Rock' or Saint Stephen was at it again! 

 Antidullivan Miniatures's Labyrinthodont set. are excellent stand ins for the giant frogs of the Dismal Swamp. 

This time Saint Stephen was in league with Dark Albion's French demonic frog rulers except this time it was a part of the Lion & Dragon Rpg 

So how does DA2 'The Temple of The Frog' apply to Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg. Well there are two distinct possibilities. One is the fact that 'The Temple of the Frog' & its attendent city are domains unto themselves seeded with USS Beagle technology & personel;"Stephen together with Brand Kirk, Dygar Mendel, Lynn Raupp, Willis Strom and the cyborg Norn fled into the nearby swamps. There, Rocklin reorganized the Order of the Frog, a local cult where he now became known as Saint Stephen. Using Beagle technology, they created a race called Frog Men using DNA from the local swamp fauna."  This also applies to the ancient past of Greyhawk as well;"Although the main focus of this website is the connection between Mystara and Blackmoor, I have decided to include other possibilities for Blackmoor aswell. Blackmoor was created by Dave Arneson, but was in the early days transplanted into Gygax’s Greyhawk milieu. The Duchy of Ten(h) and the Great Kingdom were all products of the Castle & Crusade Society, in turn a creation of Gary Gygax. In the early days, it was unclear where Greyhawk ended and Blackmoor began. However, in their later incarnations, the Greyhawk and Blackmoor settings grew apart. As David Ross wrote in his Blackmoor Gazetteer:

"As for the Blackmoor within Greyhawk, no-one has ever insisted that we reconcile the two. Greyhawk’s Blackmoor may be a source of creative material but should by no means be considered part of Blackmoor Canon."


This means that the central figure of Greyhawk's Blackmoor has some very dangerous & unexpected meet points.  Greyhawk's Archbarony of Blackmoor has some very interesting things to say about this very unexpected Greyhawk & Blackmoor connetions. This also means that Greyhawk is open as a domain for ACK's. 


 Its here where the party can exploit the far reaching implications of the Galactic Fediation with regards to how & why their appearance mirrors the degratation of such Federation officers. We see this with the increased power of the White Star Galaxy rpg within my own mini campaign. But was this comes with the power of the federation when they warn about the Blackmoor system. 



The bottom line is that the Froggies are a force & faction unto themselves. Their very nature  demands this! Power craves power for itself! 

The Sweet Spot - The Campaign Mid point between the Lovecraftian, The Sacred & the Profane

"What weird ceremonies occur in that squat stone village beneath twisted and bloated trees? What incomprehensible customs do the men practice, and in what sort of alien architecture do they lurk? All such questions can be easily answered with the aid of the treasures in your hands."
' The Carcosan Grimoire'

'Is there a mid point between the Lovecraftian, The Sacred &  the Profane?' This is the question that I've been sorta forced to confront with old campaign setting material. Events surrounding the Lamentations of the Flame Princess product lines & brands have rattled other OSR bloggers. Even my circle of local dungeon masters has mentioned it. Why!? Lamentations was/is a pillar of the OSR. Mentioned in the same breath as OSRIC & Goblinoid Games Labyrinth Lord..

So the spine on my well worn copy of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition's Lovecraft's Mythos  section. Again & again I find myself drawn back into the whirl pool of nostalgia,game play, & dangerous thoughts. 
Talking with friends & former players something has come up again & again, 'There's no difference between demons & Lovecraftian minions! Their both worth the experience points even if thematically their completely different monsters!' But are they!? Both the entities of the Abyss & the Chaotic monsters of the Mythos seem to almost spring from some primal place deep within the lizard brain! Last night I found myself going over an art book of Keith Parkinson that sits on a lone table & gazing at this particular piece of his. Mr. Parkinson did a number of iconic pieces of artwork for the Rifts game & while this piece isn't from that game line it does spark the imagination.
Its actually from here.  Its a great piece of wall artwork but can an rpg  setting actually be the both the alien source & the central fantasy adventure  spoke at the same time?! I believe the answer to this is yes! 

Time & again my campaign notes find their way into my hands. The original free 

'Carcosan Grimoire' book firmly in my mind & in my hand points the way. This book by a community of contributors &  Cameron DuBeers, marks a bunch of unwelcome additions to the setting of  Carcosa.

 

CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2.

Each & every single time my version of Cha'alt/Carcosa interdimensionally merges with & enters the planar eclipse of a setting madness, raiders, demon worms,etc. descend!  A campaign setting such as sections of Greyhawk know that madness & destruction follows  these periods. These  being woven into the very mythology of a campaign. 

And its this sweet spot of fantasy & the Lovecraftian where the lost come in. On Greyhawk desert raider armies came out & wait for the 'scared merging'!  The demon worms rally their troops near the borders of reality in the shadow of the black pyramid on Cha'alt! 

This is one of the reasons why demon hunters, paladins, & knights are so important! Not only do these raiders take hundreds of captives & slaves. But they leave behind cults, techno occult relics, monsters,etc. All at the command of Carcosa sorcerers, black wizards, intergalactic gangsters, & far worse! 

While Cha'alt & Carcosa are both gonzo in the extreme both in completely different directions. Something I learned from Rpg Pundit's Dark Albion & Cults of Chaos that the gonzo if twisted a little bit works very well for the very dark occult. 

This was something that I found after merging Dark Albion, Cults of Chaos, the Lion & Dragon rpg with Castles & Crusades. Not because the  Lion & Dragon rpg  sucks quite the opposite but because it works very well as tool kit along with the Dark Albion campaign setting. 

There are several reasons why all of this works for a Dark Europe alternative Earth campaign:

1.  All of the above OSR & old school material works very well together. 
2. The players have many options to take a party of adventurers in directions that standard campaigns don't usually go. 
3. The European pseudo historical setting takes its cues from real world history & the DM can twist these in interesting & unexpected Lovecraftian directions. 
4. Pulling from real world history makes things very exciting I've found its not that well known among certain circles of gamers. But it can cut the quick of Call of Cthulhu players because alternative Earth material makes them flustered. 
5. While the mythos is well known lesser aspects of it can make events very unexpected especially if the DM draws from other Lovecraft circle authors such as Robert Bloch. 
6. There are tons of variation monsters the at DM can insert or subtract as needed. 
7. Alternative NPC classes & means take the players out of their D&D hide bound comfort zones 
8. Demon Hunters make excellent antagonists for parties! 
9. War & conflict are fantastic campaign motivators! 
10. Dark Europe is rife as a pseudo historical setting.