OSR Commentary Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa rpg & Carcosa OSR Resources For The Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg

 So today on the blog we talked about returned into the fold of Lamentations of the Flame Princess & for me as a DM there's a lot of unresolved issues with Jeffrey McKinney's Carcosa. Carcosa is personal as a DM for there's been at least two campaigns there including a recent romp. 

Because of the 'point crawl' nature of Carcosa over the years there have been lots of encounters. And these include running Nazi fleeing losing World War II from the Earth's moon. But this was before someone alerted me to Lost Carcosa. Lost Carcosa really expanded the setting with a 11 new spells for use with either the Cleric or Magic-User classes, 
21 new magic items,  7 regions, detailed with encounter tables,  50 possible things to find in each region, 
Simplified rules for wilderness generation and exploration, & brief biographies of prominent NPCs and deities. 

So what we've done is used Lost Carcosa by Tristan Tanner as another region of the world of Carcosa one which follows on the heels of Robert W. Chambers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard in addition to the McKinney version. So Lost Carcosa  simply expands upon the material laid down in the Lamentations version. 
So our own version of Carcosa is the place of the lost or damned. A place where player's PC's will be unlucky to survive & with their sanity intact. To me Carcosa is Geoffry McKinney's baby and when paired with the Carcosa Grimoire then things get really interesting! 
Here's the content of the Carcosa Grimoire: 
Random Situations for Carcosa Villages
Carcosa Revised, Again
Carcosan Ethnology Random Tables: Customs
Carcosan Ethnology Tables: Architecture
Carcosan Ethnology: Clothes
Carcosan Ethnology: Body Modifications
Infernal Pigments
Monster: Yix’Caahl
Monster: Enslaver
Monster: The Omniscient Oracle of the Refulgent Maze
Predatory Mantis
Swamp Fell
Nameless Folk
Artifact: Rejuvenating Bath
Magic Item: The Plains of Whispering Glass
NPC: The Witch
New PC Class: The Brothers of the Skull
Carcosan Name/Title Generator
Wilderness Wandering Monster Table
Underworld Wandering Monster Table
Monsters
FAQ

Carcosa is a Lovecraftian Hellscape that over the years I've subject my players to over & over again. Never underestimate the power of dealing an OSR game with resources that the players have never heard of. 

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! 

 Lost Carcosa By Tristan Tanner For Your Old School Campaigns or OSR Fantasy Role Playing Game Is Available Right Here! 

Adventuring in the OSR Lovecraftian Nightmare - The Free 'The Carcosan Grimoire' & 'B4 The Lost City' by Tom Moldvay

 "Herein lies a wealth of imaginative and horrific material for use in D&D campaigns, especially those campaigns inspired by Supplement V: CARCOSA. Everything herein is, of course, entirely optional. That said, nothing held between the covers of this tome would I hesitate to use in a D&D campaign. 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."

This blog entry picks up right from here.  When it comes to fan projects that actually make a supplement better  'The Carcosan Grimoire' from '09 falls into that category. This book includes new monsters, new Carcosa factions, new spells, and advice. This book is pretty much a fan based expansion on the original  Carcosa book. And it shows. You've got some great material here that fits squarely within the Carcosa universe. Does  'The Carcosan Grimoire'  fit the Lamentations of the Flame Princess version of Carcosa?! The answer to this is a square yes in spades. The material here is one part origina Filmation style He Man on acid with bit of Saturday morning Kaiju. 

 

Using some of the material from 'The Carcosan Grimoire'  I ran an OSR horror campaign along with a bunch of Star Wars fans through 'B4 The Lost City' by Tom Moldvay. That particular modules does extremely well as a desert addition onto Carcosa. Simply treat the religion of the inhabitants as 'real' & the expanded city locations leading to other worlds of B/X D&D. The Lost City itself on Mystara snared some folks because it was located in the  Alasiyan desert, between Parsa and Sulba, Ylaruam. This is thanks to the 'Mystara module & placement' article from the Vaults of Pandius.   A very nasty way of getting PC's stuck on Carcosa. 

Carcosa has been my Lovecraftian nightmare realm since it came out by Geoffrey McKinney & over the years the unreality of Carcosa has bled into lots of other realms including Earth. 'B4 The Lost City' by Tom Moldvay is perfectly suited to take on PC's Robert E. Howard 'Red Nails' style. The OSR Grimoire author put together the 'B4 Lost City Campaign Companion which is an absolute must & available on The Vaults of Pandius website here.

I've used B4's factions as counterpoints to Carcosa's tribes & have had them at war with each other for years now. The Cynidicean sorcerers of 'The Lost City' are often some of the nastiest that PC's can run into on Carcosa. They've also popped up from time to time in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea on various missions.