Carcosa/Gamma World Actual Cross Game Event - Lost In The Yuthlugathap Swamps With Five House of Hammer Prehistoric Film Influences

So today I got a chance to throw back a few beers & get together with friends for a bit of Gamma World second edition/Carcosa mash up event & five favorite prehistoric & cult classic monster movies playing in the background. We're going to go in for some serious cult films today. We'll start with the house of Hammer prehistoric trilogy One Million Years B.C. (1966), Slave Girls (1967), The Lost Continent 1968, & When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970).
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. And its a perfect example of the type of primitive conditions that folks are dealing with on Carcosa.

Or As I like to refer to em Appendix 'C' films for Carcosa. Sure I can't be at GaryCon but that doesn't stop us from doing a bit of retroclone old schooling. One of the players in last night's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea/Islands of Purple Putrescence game was messing around with a time/space pylon. This caused the pylon to appear in today's game & suck in the party of adventurers from Gamma Terra! And where were these poor mutant bastards and adventurers deposited? Well right over on LoFP's Carcosa & what they didn't know is that the party had picked up a shape shifting serpent man half caste priest named Nadri'al (this priest was on the Purple Islands doing a bit of recon work for his own sinister goals). The PC's ended up in The Yuthlugathap Swamps.



They ended up running into a band of Amazon women who worshiped a scared white dinosaur species which I liberally stole from the '67 film Prehistoric Women.
There are several key plot points I borrowed for today's game including the assassination of one of the Amazon women's key leaders by our serpent man/assassin NPC. 


"David Marchant (Michael Latimer), a British explorer, along with Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) and a guide are pursuing a leopard on an African safari. The Colonel takes aim but misses and only wounds the animal. With the guide warning that it will soon be dark, David decides to find the beast and put it out of its misery before following the party back to camp.
Walking some way, he passes various trees with a picture of a white rhino but ignores them. Finally, the weakened leopard attacks him and he shoots it dead, whereupon David is ambushed and captured by a primitive tribe. They accuse him of disturbing the spirit of the white rhinoceros, and take him to their leader's temple. As the high priest/leader makes his decision, David notices a large, ancient stone statue of a white rhino and realizes this is what the tribe worship"

The players were forced to flee into the wastelands & besides a whole host of lizard men, and some mutated crabs they dealt with several encounters with Grey Aliens & their flying saucers. They dodged most of these encounters and learned very quickly to run away. But they quickly dealt with a tribe of  Blue Men who wanted to sacrifice them to Shub-Niggurath spawn they worshiped because of the color of their hair. Obviously a nod to Hammer's When Dinosaur's Rule The Earth.
But what really freaked the players out was running into their boat from a 2011 Carcosa game that had been taken its nods from The Lost Continent from 1968. One of the mutant fools erm adventurers was killed by the vampire sea weed that was still aboard. The rest of the PC's blew the boat to kingdom come with an energy weapon they had recovered and continued on after the serpent man. This was  after he had almost succeeded in killing them in some ruins. He left them to die with a group of killer robots! If it wasn't for the party's mutant warriors they would have been toast.

They finally found the gate way back home but it was guarded by a group of tribes whom I lifted directly from Creatures The World Forgot from '71. There was a bone man sorcerer living in disguise among these people as a priest of a particularly nasty spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The players figured out who he was after he met with the serpent man assassin in the triple moonlight that night. The party followed him back to his cave and that's where they discovered his dimensional gate way. He cooked one of the mutants with a death ray but the party managed to take him out with a laser pistol they had. The serpent man NPC managed to slither away in the confusion.

All in all for a spur of the moment one shot I think things went rather well, the THE YUTHLUGATHAP SWAMPS module worked rather nicely because of its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition gaming background. This made it rather easy to blend with Gamma World. I ended up using a good bit of second edition Gamma World to round out some of the system and artifact kinks. Everything went off without too much of a hitch thanks to the notes in the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Several of the charts from Islands of Purple Putrescence also came in handy to round out some of the random elements of today's game. So all in all it was a great one shot game.

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)."

Carcosa/Gamma World Actual Cross Game Event - Lost In The Yuthlugathap Swamps With Five House of Hammer Prehistoric Film Influences

So today I got a chance to throw back a few beers & get together with friends for a bit of Gamma World second edition/Carcosa mash up event & five favorite prehistoric & cult classic monster movies playing in the background. We're going to go in for some serious cult films today. We'll start with the house of Hammer prehistoric trilogy One Million Years B.C. (1966), Slave Girls (1967), The Lost Continent 1968, & When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970).
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. And its a perfect example of the type of primitive conditions that folks are dealing with on Carcosa.

Or As I like to refer to em Appendix 'C' films for Carcosa. Sure I can't be at GaryCon but that doesn't stop us from doing a bit of retroclone old schooling. One of the players in last night's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea/Islands of Purple Putrescence game was messing around with a time/space pylon. This caused the pylon to appear in today's game & suck in the party of adventurers from Gamma Terra! And where were these poor mutant bastards and adventurers deposited? Well right over on LoFP's Carcosa & what they didn't know is that the party had picked up a shape shifting serpent man half caste priest named Nadri'al (this priest was on the Purple Islands doing a bit of recon work for his own sinister goals). The PC's ended up in The Yuthlugathap Swamps.



They ended up running into a band of Amazon women who worshiped a scared white dinosaur species which I liberally stole from the '67 film Prehistoric Women.
There are several key plot points I borrowed for today's game including the assassination of one of the Amazon women's key leaders by our serpent man/assassin NPC. 


"David Marchant (Michael Latimer), a British explorer, along with Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) and a guide are pursuing a leopard on an African safari. The Colonel takes aim but misses and only wounds the animal. With the guide warning that it will soon be dark, David decides to find the beast and put it out of its misery before following the party back to camp.
Walking some way, he passes various trees with a picture of a white rhino but ignores them. Finally, the weakened leopard attacks him and he shoots it dead, whereupon David is ambushed and captured by a primitive tribe. They accuse him of disturbing the spirit of the white rhinoceros, and take him to their leader's temple. As the high priest/leader makes his decision, David notices a large, ancient stone statue of a white rhino and realizes this is what the tribe worship"

The players were forced to flee into the wastelands & besides a whole host of lizard men, and some mutated crabs they dealt with several encounters with Grey Aliens & their flying saucers. They dodged most of these encounters and learned very quickly to run away. But they quickly dealt with a tribe of  Blue Men who wanted to sacrifice them to Shub-Niggurath spawn they worshiped because of the color of their hair. Obviously a nod to Hammer's When Dinosaur's Rule The Earth.
But what really freaked the players out was running into their boat from a 2011 Carcosa game that had been taken its nods from The Lost Continent from 1968. One of the mutant fools erm adventurers was killed by the vampire sea weed that was still aboard. The rest of the PC's blew the boat to kingdom come with an energy weapon they had recovered and continued on after the serpent man. This was  after he had almost succeeded in killing them in some ruins. He left them to die with a group of killer robots! If it wasn't for the party's mutant warriors they would have been toast.

They finally found the gate way back home but it was guarded by a group of tribes whom I lifted directly from Creatures The World Forgot from '71. There was a bone man sorcerer living in disguise among these people as a priest of a particularly nasty spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The players figured out who he was after he met with the serpent man assassin in the triple moonlight that night. The party followed him back to his cave and that's where they discovered his dimensional gate way. He cooked one of the mutants with a death ray but the party managed to take him out with a laser pistol they had. The serpent man NPC managed to slither away in the confusion.

All in all for a spur of the moment one shot I think things went rather well, the THE YUTHLUGATHAP SWAMPS module worked rather nicely because of its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition gaming background. This made it rather easy to blend with Gamma World. I ended up using a good bit of second edition Gamma World to round out some of the system and artifact kinks. Everything went off without too much of a hitch thanks to the notes in the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Several of the charts from Islands of Purple Putrescence also came in handy to round out some of the random elements of today's game. So all in all it was a great one shot game.