The magazine was announced as ceasing publication after issue #4 back in November.

Anyway, this is great news. Gaming magazines are a good thing. Besides, Playground covers really weird stuff of a kind that I would never, ever run into on my own.

Now, I just need to find the third issue from somewhere. It’s listed as having the article “Porn Star Dungeons”, which I think is absolutely charming (Zak, is that you?). Also, I would like to reiterate that it really is a roleplaying GAME magazine, not the other kind of roleplaying. Usually. I think.

Welcome back, Playground. Now, I have an analytical essay about the soundtrack of Watchmen to write…

Okay, admittedly, I didn’t believe it was going to be 5E until I saw the announcement. I thought the “big announcement” would be bringing back PDFs or hype for Dungeons & Dragons: Book of Vile Darkness, or something. Turned out that instead, it was vindication.

Because, well, if there’s something we can get out of this, it’s that 4E wasn’t doing very well. It means there was something to those Icv2 reports that Pathfinder RPG was outselling it, after all. Basically, it means I was right or mostly right all along.

Also, the best quote that’s come out of this, thus far:

“4e is broken as a game and business and it needs to go away.” – Scott Rouse, former D&D Brand Manager

It’s not as harsh as it looks when you read it in context, but man, I just want to frame that and put it up on a wall.

But enough of that. There will be time enough for schadenfreude and gravedancing later.

We don’t really have much to go on at this point. What is known is summed up on EN World’s 5e news page. The most interesting and concrete things we have this close to the announcement are that they’ll be taking a page out of the market leader’s book and doing an open playtest, and the statement “The Forgotten Realms has a rich history and we will support all of it. It is for the gamers to decide which time they would enjoy playing in”, which has generally been interpreted to mean that they’ll do a timeline-independent Forgotten Realms. The new game is being designed, among others, by Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell, who aren’t known for half-assing things.

So, it looks like they’re not setting out to fail right out of the game this time around. Will it be enough? Time will tell. For my part, I’m willing to give the game a shot as a player. WotC still has a long way to go before I’ll actually buy anything from them. Besides, I already have Pathfinder RPG and some 200 different D20 books to fulfill all my crunchy D&D needs and Lamentations of the Flame Princess and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia for the old school.

Well, good luck to them. They’re going to need it.

What makes Tales of the Infinite Staircase really interesting is its structure. Unlike The Great Modron March or a Paizo adventure path, it’s nonlinear. After the first adventure, the other seven can be played in any order, and include notes on how circumstances may change in each adventure depending on what the PCs have done in their preceding adventures as well as the point in time when they are tackling each adventure. Of course, they can also be used as standalones.

The obvious question here is “how the bloody hell do you make such a thing level-appropriate?” Eight adventures is a lot of ground to cover, and will easily result in a level-up or three. Well, most of the adventures are suitable for characters of levels 3-6. There’s not a whole lot of combat, either, in stark contrast to some of Monte Cook’s later work, like the nearly two-hundred pages of meatgrinder that is Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

The adventures are connected by the adventure’s plot and the Infinite Staircase itself. The Infinite Staircase is an extraplanar pathway rising from the extraplanar palace of Selûne, Toril’s moon goddess. As its name implies, it’s a staircase that stretches into infinity in the middle of a dark void, curving, forking and turning like something illustrated by M.C. Escher. There are landings on the staircase, and on the landings are doorways. The Staircase connects places where creative endavour takes place – pretty much anywhere there is intelligent life. In the module, it even connects to an illithid city and a formian hive, and neither of those species are known for their high cultural achievements.

The primus motor of the adventure, then, is a phenomenon known as the Iron Shadow. It falls upon places where there is creativity and kills it. It spreads through portals (though not through the Infinite Staircase, as the two are antithetical), and destroys inspiration, motivation, and the will to change wherever it lands.

The structure of the adventure, then, gives a set of locations where the Iron Shadow will land, and the timeline of events. There are eight tales in the book and eight stages of time. The timeline governs when and where the Iron Shadow spreads, as well as the movements of certain key NPCs that are likewise investigating the phenomenon for their own purposes or have been set in motion by its spread. For instance, there is the hound archon paladin Jazriul, who investigates the Iron Shadow, the formian queen Hvix’mnac who seeks revenge for the destruction of her hive, blue slaadi from Limbo and the kyton minions of Quimath, from the city of Jangling Hiter.

Stage 1 is always the first Tale, “Planewalkers”, and after that, each Stage is the completion of another Tale. There are no specific time measurements, but all of the scenarios look like they would take one or two days for the party to complete, with “The Dream Well” perhaps occupying them up to a week.

Interestingly, there is no origin given for the Iron Shadow. Nobody knows where it comes from or why, or who is responsible. It is merely described as “an evil, ultimately destructive manifestation of Order”, and that’s it. I do not know why this is. I could speculate that it’s just one more mystery of the planes, but it’s not explicitly spelled out as such, either. If I were to bet, I’d say the Iron Shadow is related to a metaplot piece that never saw its ultimate conclusion because the line was cancelled. There’s another piece like that in the book, in “A Devil’s Dream”, and it’s not the only loose end the setting left when they pulled the plug (the rumoured but unannounced sequels to Faction War being the most famous one).

Tale 1: Planewalkers

The first tale in the book is intended for characters of levels 3-5. It serves as an introduction to the Infinite Staircase and brings the characters into contact with the Planewalker’s Guild and the lillendi who hire them to look into the Iron Shadow, but what it is actually about is something completely different. Basically, it’s a search and rescue mission that gets sold to the party as a package delivery.

The lillendi, by the way, are the serpent-bodied women who guard the Staircase. They’re patrons of arts and veritable muses, and naturally antithetical to the Iron Shadow. They’re also fairly powerful in their own right.

“Planewalkers” contains a good deal of material about traversing the Staircase – suggestions on the appearances of doors to different places (which naturally reflect their destinations), random encounters, some notes about combat on the Staircase and about the functionality of magic. Falling off the Staircase will hurt, by the way. You may not fall all the way to the bottom, but you will eventually hit something.

The actual adventure is about finding the planewalker Oriam Trascalia, who has disappeared. The Planewalker’s Guild will direct the party to the general area of the Staircase where Oriam is located, but it has been taken over by a glabrezu, powerful tanar’ri, and his allies. The party must make their way past these adversaries to rescue the planewalker, who is stranded on a platform that got separated from the rest of the Staircase when the stairway leading there was broken. Plotwise, it is all very straightforward. Tactically, it gets very interesting.

The area, called Stairway of Desolation in the adventure, is composed of several landings and staircases that branch out. These share lines of sight and hearing, but getting from one to another is tricky. There’s some giant spiders, some manes (in D&D, the very lowest kind of demon) with a set of magical pipes, a human fighter that the glabrezu turned to evil, and the glabrezu himself.

The funny thing is that a glabrezu demon outclasses PCs of the intended level by so much it’s not even funny. To give an idea of the power discrepancy, the Pathfinder RPG version is Challenge Rating 13. In all likelihood, the group will not even possess a weapon capable of hurting one. However, the fiend can be talked with or avoided, or the PCs can try to destroy its lair. I like this. The glabrezu is an obstacle that theoretically looks like it could be fought, but in actuality cannot. You need to be intelligent and perhaps think outside the box to figure out how to deal with it. It’s a useful reminder that not all enemies can be slain – there’s always a bigger fish.

There’s also the planewalker Oriam’s ex-girlfriend, who got him into this mess – Shavanistra, an evil and quite insane wizard. She is hiding just on the other side of a doorway to Abstemious, a city of illithids. The PCs may also run into these. While Shavanistra, at level six, is not an impossible enemy at the assumed party level, illithids most likely are. Another case where discretion is the better part of valour.

In the end, once the PCs rescue Oriam, they are “rewarded” by the lillendi with a mission to figure out what this Iron Shadow thing is and given a list of seven doors where the lillendi know they can find answers. In an amusing twist, two of the doors lead to places that have not even been infected yet at this point in the story – their connection to the Staircase has allowed them to predict future events. Of course, they don’t actually know this.

After “Planewalkers”, the rest of the tales are found behind the seven doors and can be played in whatever order the party wishes.

It’s a funny thing about lillendi and manes… Back in AD&D, they still did irregular plurals. “Manes” is “manes” in both singular and plural, while the plural of “lillend” is “lillendi”. Not so in 3E and later products. Personally, I prefer the irregular plurals.

Tale 2: Lost Sovereignty

Behind the first door on the list is “The Queen’s Domain” – the formian hive city of Klictric on the plane of Arcadia. In “Lost Sovereignty”, the book also pulls off one of its more impressive feats and makes formians seem kinda interesting. I detest their role in 3E as the exemplar race of lawful neutral outsiders, usurping the place of modrons and doing it in the least interesting and blandest way possible. “Expansionist in the extreme, formians are dedicated to spreading their colonies until they have taken over everything and their order is unquestioned. To further this end, they attack all other creatures, usually to put them to work building and expanding cities.” Direct quote from the 3E Monster Manual. While ultimate Order can and should be unknowable, that’s just boring.

But I digress. The Iron Shadow has already fallen upon Klictric, resulting in a flood that has all but demolished the entire hive, when the workers ceased maintaining a dam. The queen of the city, Hvix’mnac, has left to seek vengeance and spread the Iron Shadow, accidentally, to the Spawning Stone of the slaadi [hey, another irregular plural!], in Limbo. Later, in Stage 6, the slaadi will invade Klictric in retribution.

“Lost Sovereignty” is one of the least interesting parts of Tales from the Infinite Staircase. The party can pick up the gnome Hannock Ringfinger, who’s a trader from Bytopia and can be helpful. Also, the module occasionally notes that should the party have Hannock or certain other NPCs with them, it may be appropriate to have them captured or slain at certain points. These NPCs are not explicitly noncombatants, but their stat blocks seem to suggest it (Hannock may be a 4th-level thief, but his Strength is still only 9).

There’s also a dragon, one of the few I’ve seen in Planescape. Talleax is a very young bronze dragon kept by the formians. I say “kept” because Talleax is… “special”. His Intelligence score is 5. Dragons are very rare in Planescape, and I am not entirely certain why. It may be just to distance the setting from the vanilla D&D. I’ve also read a theory of uncertain provenance that dragons, being the powerful and self-centered creatures they are, tend to shape the Outer Planes with the force of their belief quite easily, and tend to be hunted down or driven away whenever they are found (there’s always a bigger fish). I’m not too fond of that theory for a few reasons that should be obvious.

Also in Klictric is something resembling plot, a bariaur disguised as a formian, who plans to usurp the Chamber of Deep Magic, a location of power deep within Klictric (and presently underwater, which puts a certain… damper in her plans) and use it to become immortal. She’s not actually evil, though, and allowing her plans to come to fruition will not destroy the world.

Tale 3: Lord of the Worms

“Lord of the Worms”, then, is something far more interesting. The third Tale takes place on the demiplane of Maelost, which has worse weather than England, and the water that covers most of its surface has acquired an evil sentience and is called the Taker of Life. It preys on the human inhabitants of the demiplane, the Hanim. It is opposed by another being, the benign Dark Dweller, deep within the ridges of Maelost and can teleport beings from one place to another on the surface. A third form of life unique to the demiplane are the valgoss and slaiyith worms. The valgoss are tiny things that can be implanted in a person in a special ritual, much like the goa’uld worms of Stargåte SG-1. A valgoss grants its bearer some special abilities, and the Taker of Life ignores valgoss carriers. In another special ritual, the slaiyith can grant an implanted valgoss powerful magic that only works within Maelost.

I like Maelost. It’s strange, and dark, and foreign, and moody. Black, oily rain falls from the skies to splatter on sharp ridges of rock, making them treacherous and slippery to climbers, or in the deep, dark pools that are the Taker of Life. The native species are bats, bugs, leeches and ravens, with the occasional fly, black pudding or even death kiss beholder. The Hanim aren’t evil, but they lead harsh lives that the Iron Shadow has just made harsher still, and their local leader actually is evil. The Iron Shadow makes the valgoss leave their hosts, making them vulnerable to the Taker of Life.

“Lord of the Worms” is a sandbox. There’s a demiplane to explore and nothing really going on or plot to follow, though at later stages, a few slaadi will pop by and the hound archon Jazriul will make an appearance to wage a short and extremely futile war against the Taker of Life. The Taker of Life isn’t just a bigger fish – it’s the entire damn ocean. Literally. There’s a great deal to do in Maelost, such as meet the Hanim, become a host to a valgoss, investigate the Dark Dweller, slowly figure out that the Taker of Life can’t be killed, and so on.

A peculiar feature of Maelost is that it curves on itself. This does not just mean that the land area is spherical, but also that if you fly upwards long enough, you will begin to approach the surface again.

Tale 4: In Disarray

The fourth Tale takes place in Limbo, where Hvix’mnac has inadvertently brought the Iron Shadow to the Spawning Stone where the slaadi breed. Under the Shadow, they do not, which threatens the existence of the entire species if something is not done. Running around Limbo ensues, including an encounter with a dao slaver. The dao has a bunch of slaves of a species called the shad (apparently from Planescape Monstrous Compendium III), one of whom may join the party in their adventures. His name is Mulk, which would lead to endless hilarity in a Finnish group.

In Limbo, the PCs can discover one of the two things they need to dispel the Iron Shadow’s effect from an area – Navimas, hyper-concentrated essence of chaos. Chaos, apparently, looks like pinkish fluid in a bottle.

“In Disarray” has a few revelations about the nature of the slaadi. It has always felt slightly off that the exemplar race of chaos is actually strictly colour-coded into a caste system, but here we find out that the Slaad Lords Ygorl and Ssendam, in ages past, altered the Spawning Stone to limit the possible forms of the slaadi to the few that we know today, making them easier to rule and preventing the birth of a creature as powerful as they. Sometimes, though, the process fails, and a true slaad is born, and hidden away to a secret nursery.

We also meet Phlegamor, a former death slaad whom the Slaad Lords allowed to attain his true shape, but who then fell from favour and was bound within a magical carpet woven out of the stuff of space and time. The PCs will also end up taking a detour through the carpet in their quest for the Navimas.

Tale 5: Winds of Change

“Winds of Change” takes place in Blurophil, a floating city on the Elemental Plane of Air. It is populated by a people calling themselves the Riven. They are the descendants of those who were exiled from the prime world of Orthos after a powerful military might subjugated the world under one government. That military might was called the Harmonium, and Orthos is where they originally come from. Unfortunately, there’s no note on what the inhabitants of Blurophil think about the Harmonium nowadays. Nothing like a bit of faction persecution to liven up the day.

In Blurophil, the PCs should find Ghuntomas of Thorn, a former member of the Fraternity of Order and the author of the treatise Ever-changing Order, which is a philosophical musing on the complementary natures of law and chaos. The book is needed to figure out how to use the Navimas on different planes to dispel the taint of the Iron Shadow.

Ghuntomas and the Iron Shadow are but a side attraction, though, and the big thing in Blurophil is the serial killer Gasping Strangler. The Gasping Strangler is an air genasi elementalist who’s flipped his lid and started murdering outsiders to the Elemental Plane of Air – anyone who doesn’t belong, like humans, creatures of other elements, aasimar, tieflings, and so on. He’s also killing his way through the alignments of the Great Wheel – he started with a lawful good paladin, and by the time the adventurers show up, has worked his way through lawful neutral with good tendencies, lawful neutral, lawful neutral with evil tendencies, lawful evil, lawful evil with neutral tendencies and neutral evil. Next up would be neutral evil with chaotic tendencies. Only in Planescape…

I can actually see a chaotic good type group figure out the murderer’s pattern and find out his identity, and then wait for him to work his way out of the evil alignments before putting a stop to his rampage. Of course, if they have the shad Mulk with them, the Gasping Strangler might just break his pattern to murder a creature of elemental earth, which is antithetical to elemental air.

I’m not entirely happy with “Winds of Change” as an investigation module. Despite being surprisingly complex in structure, it’s rather too easy for the PCs and the ways of finding out the killer’s identity are too few (and traditional detective work is barely there). It would’ve benefited from an additional page or two of information and especially the fleshing out of the previous couple of victims.

Tale 6: The Dream Well

The sixth Tale takes the party to the Astral Plane and the githyanki city of TorNav’roc, which has just been demolished by an invasion of psurlons. The city is in ruins, and the building housing the portal back the Infinite Staircase will collapse soon after the party arrives. In the city, they encounter all kinds of stragglers, including a troupe of githyanki hunters, who are researching a magical location called the Dream Well.

When the PCs sleep in the city (as they likely will, with their means of escape buried under tons of rubble), they will be visited by strange dreams that repeat each night until they either manage a solution or fail definitively. If they solve the puzzle of the dreams, they will release Aeryv’nir, a githyanki wizard from times past, who managed to get trapped within the Dream Well. Interestingly, the wizard is level 16, and (at least according to Monstrous Manual), githyanki that reach level 12 have their souls devoured by Queen Gith to prevent them from becoming threats.

Adventuring in the Astral Plane is always interesting, since the characters Str score is replaced by their Int score, and their Wis replaces their Dex. It is the plane of the mind, which will pose its own challenges to the fighter who opted to dump Int.

Tale 7: Reflections

“Reflections” takes place in the Outlands, very close to the Spire, in the second ring. If the last Tale made physical combatants suffer, this one will prove problematic to spellcasters, since no magic will function. Here lie Sum of All, a city of the rilmani, and the Mirrored Library, where most of the action of “Reflections” take place.

The Mirrored Library was not built by the rilmani. In fact, it was originally made by a member of a race called kamerel. The kamerel dwelled in the Outlands long ago, when the multiverse was still young. They were xenophobic to the extreme and refused to even acknowledge the existence of other intelligent races unless they absolutely had to. They developed a subtle kind of magic utilizing mirrors that could be operated even this close to the base of the Spire. One of the kamerel, however, felt that the other races rising in the planes might be a threat, and developed a magic item to spy upon them. Hallonac was her name, and she built Timaresh, the Collection of Hated Lore to house the bindery of Hallonac. The bindery is a powerful magical item that captures the essence of any book, scroll or other written work meant to be read by others, anywhere in the multiverse.

That turned out to be quite a bit. However, with the kamerel mirror magic, Hallonac created a library of mirrors that reflects itself endlessly, creating a mirrored infinity of rooms to house the books. Of course, the other kamerel were revolted by the idea that other species could produce writing, so they locked up the place, placed guardians, and tried to ignore its existence. Enter the rilmani, who quickly realized the collection’s value and tried to take it from the kamerel. A war ensued, ending in the predictable defeat of the kamerel, who fled within the mirrors and stayed there.

Until now. The Iron Shadow has fallen upon Sum of All. The rilmani, beings of pure neutrality, are reduced to their essential salts, and the kamerel finally consider it safe to come out. At the same time, kytons from Jangling Hiter are exploring the library, trying to find Ever-changing Order. The party is assumed to also be after the book.

At some point, the rings of the Outlands will fluctuate, and the area will come under the antimagical effects of the first ring. This will dispel the Iron Shadow and bring back Sum of All and its inhabitants, as well as removing what little spellcasting ability someone might still have retained. So, an infinite library of mirrors, a kyton strike force, some kamerel patrols, a team of rilmani and their allies, and the PCs themselves. I foresee much fun with this – fallen shelves, broken mirrors, some good old violence (though the entire thing can actually be negotiated through).

The Ever-changing Order is the other half of the solution to the problem that is the Iron Shadow. It contains the guidelines on how to modify Navimas and apply it in the places affected.

Tale 8: A Devil’s Dream

Above the swamps of Minauros, the third layer of Baator, hangs the chain city of Jangling Hiter. The city is entirely made of chains – streets, houses, everything. Chains hold it suspended above the marsh below and prevent it from sinking. It is home to some seven or eight thousand inhabitants, most of them kytons. The city is afflicted with the Iron Shadow, and the home of the kyton leader Quimath, who is responsible for sending forth the other kyton forces that the PCs may have encountered. Quimath is the BBEG of Tales of the Infinite Staircase, but he is not the force behind the Iron Shadow. He cannot control it, nor does he entirely understand it. He just seeks to spread it, and will be greatly angered if the PCs manage to dispel it from Jangling Hiter. This, incidentally, requires a signed permission from the baatezu.

It should be noted that kytons, though they dwell in Baator, are not baatezu. They are lawful evil and sometimes allies of the baatezu (mostly because they understand that the baatezu could sink them into the swamp if they put their minds to it), but they are not the same race, nor do they share the same goals. The kytons hold power in Jangling Hiter, not the baatezu puppet ruler, Pollux Windscream. The Iron Shadow serves the kytons’ ends, but not the baatezu’s – kytons are hardly creative beings, but the affliction blunts the inventive edge of the baatezu plots and intrigues. There’s a quote from Quimath that goes: “The sooner that people realize that true order comes from imposed structure, the better off the multiverse will be. Strength, such as Baatorian strength, coupled with efficient leadership, such as Baatorian leadership, is necessary for survival. Innovation, individuality and creativity only threaten the necessary, enforced order. Such things are a danger to our beliefs, and our beliefs are the only truth. Therefore, the Iron Shadow paves the way for truth.”

In Jangling Hiter, the party will explore the fortress of Panos Qytel, Quimath’s base of operations. Deep within the fortress, there’s an imprisoned nupperibo. Nupperibo are roughly the lawful evil equivalent of manes – grossly fat little fiendlings, considered the very lowest form of baatezu, and very weak. However, this is wrong. They are not baatezu, but the larval form of a race far older than the baatezu, the ancient Baatorians. This is a metaplot element that was hinted at here and there in Planescape, but never really fleshed out in depth. In any case, this particular nupperibo has been developing for centuries and has already matured into something that is no longer quite a nupperibo as they are usually thought of. It has no particular relevance in the plot of Tales from the Infinite Staircase, but the implications of its existence in the setting and metaplot are tremendous.

Panos Qytel also contains a particularly nasty trap that will cut off your feet. Loss of limbs isn’t something that’s often seen in D&D, any edition.

In Conclusion

Tales from the Infinite Staircase is among the last products released for the Planescape line, and it shows. For one thing, it is not illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, an affliction that mars much of the later Planescape products. The cover by rk post holds its own, but the drab, two-tone interior art of Hannibal King just doesn’t do it to me. Additionally, it feels to me like there is less Cant used in the book. The voice is still that of Planescape, but it’s not quite Michael Caine.

I like the adventure’s structure. Having stuff going on elsewhere in the world, independent of the PCs and their actions, goes a long way towards making the setting feel more alive. To me, this is one of the big things when I run campaigns, and the method presented here makes it pretty easy. (The best method would be to have ten thousand players playing their own games in the same setting and reporting the adventure results to a central authority who then ruled on events in the world and disseminated information about them, but I understand that such a campaign infrastructure is not always available.) It reminds the players that the though the campaign revolves around them, the setting does not, and gives the illusion that the NPCs lead lives of their own and are active even when not interacting with the party.

Does it work? Well, it’s hard to say without running or playing it. It reads like it would work, and if it doesn’t, I am certain it can be made to work with the suitable adjustments and tweaks. It entails a certain degree of work for the GM, but in the age of computers and campaign websites, it would hardly be difficult to keep track of things. I must also admit that in reading the module, I do get a certain hankering to fiddle with rules and conversions to Pathfinder RPG. It amuses me to no end that formians are among the very last creatures from Monster Manual that haven’t been converted in a Paizo product, and most of the rest are animals. I like to think that this indicates someone over there agrees with me.

My next book has been decided, but I am still taking requests.

My Serpent’s Skull campaign kicked off in mid-January and got played for 17 sessions, bringing the group about a third of the way into Vaults of Madness, the fourth book of the campaign. It is my goal to have the campaign over and done with before the summer holidays begin, so that we can start up Jade Regent when we resume studies in autumn. The first adventure, Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv, is one of the finest I have run. Deserted island, fellow castaways you must take care of, supplies low. Fear of the unknown.

The party, currently, consists of Niero Brandt, of Rise of the Runelords fame, a mad alchemist with a multiple personality disorder; Kailn, a halfling sorcerer with an affinity for snakes and sex, which is a terrible combination; Malje, a Chelaxian aristocrat whose (likely true) conviction that Zon-Kuthon is talking to her has become stronger and more vocal as time has gone by; Mogashi, whose family tree has either apes or demons or both in far too close a proximity for present day; and Kuros, a cleric of Milani. The team’s half-elf archer who was in love with his bow, Sujiu, was torn apart by a chemosit (some sort of ape bear creature that’s about three levels under-CR’d)  and reincarnated into a gnome, at which point he decided to leave the party to search for himself. We may yet see him return in a future game…

Apart from that, we got Pathfinder Society resurrected in Finland, just in time for Ropecon. Since we resumed operations in June, there have been at least 65 sessions of PFS in Tampere and the Helsinki region, and more scheduled. I even got my second GM star. Of course, my role has mostly been that of the game master, with the result that I have three “active” characters, precisely one of whom has actually seen play at their current level. My ranger, now level five, was last played at level two, and I have a second-level summoner who’s never been played. Such is the magic of the GM reward experience. I am scheduled to play Feast of the Ravenmoor as part of the campaign next week, though.

And then there was Ropecon! It was pretty much the best ever, and I remain skeptical of the idea it can be improved upon. This is not to say that we are not willing and determined to give it our very best shot, or that this year’s con would not be a thing of beauty. It’s just that… ah, here’s my con report, read it yourself. Part I, Part II.

For my birthday, I got the whole of Planescape. Like, all of it. I’ve been reading through the pile at a very slow clip, and writing about the material here. Though it may appear the project is dead, this is merely an illusion, and I will be posting about Tales of the Infinite Staircase soon. Ish. There’s also a pile of other stuff I’ve accumulated from gracious friends and discount bins that I need to get through, such as the beautiful and strange game that is Everway and the Viking game Rune, which codifies the antagonistic relationship between GM and players in the rules.

Also, WordPress created me this annual report thingy. I’m making it public so you can get a glimpse at the (rather unimpressive) numbers behind the blog.

For 2012

There will be Ropecon. Again. It will be awesome. There will also be Tracon, which I figure will also be awesome.

There will be an English-language Stalker. Hopefully. At this point, I have no hand in the project and can only sit and wait for Ville Vuorela to do his thing. The man just keeps having other important things to do, such as graduating, or working. Once we actually have a product to market, I will advertise the crap out of it. It may happen next week, or next month, or just in time for Christmas. We’ll see.

There will be gaming. Pathfinder Society in Finland has reached the critical mass of players where the campaign keeps running on its own without needing the presence or activity of any single person, which is excellent. Unfortunately, this only applies to the Helsinki region, and Tampere is still more or less reliant on me. I, in turn, have a home campaign to run. I’m aiming to have 20 sessions of those during the year. It’s a nice, round number, and doesn’t require all that much more from me.

There will probably be all sorts of new releases, but except for the Vapauden miekat project, none interest me all that much at this point. I am slightly curious about the rumour mill around a hypothetical Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, but the rumour mill is always abuzz about something and WotC’s doings are of small interest to me. Paizo is releasing the Advanced Race Guide in a few months, which looks interesting but not spectacularly so. They’re also coming out with Distant Worlds for Pathfinder, a sourcebook on the solar system of Golarion, with information on what’s going on in the other planets. I expect green men on a red planet and fun guys from Yuggoth. Also, late in the year, there will be Shattered Star, an adventure path that returns to Varisia and explores the legacy of Thassilon. On the Finnish side of things, Burger Games is working on the first supplement to Praedor, which will finally include the rules for playable sorcerers.

That’s all for today.

Dragon Empires Gazetteer is the inevitable fantasy Asia counterpart to the fantasy Europe and fantasy Africa of Avistan and Garund, covered in the much bigger Inner Sea World Guide. The fantasy Asia continent of Tian Xia is covered in the space of 64 pages between soft covers, and it’s actually pretty good.

Tian Xia is divided into 28 regions. These include states, such as the not-Japan of Minkai, the military dictatorship of Amanandar ruled by an ethnically Taldan warrior aristocracy, and the tengu nation of Kwanlai, as well as wild regions like the Forest of Spirits, the Wall of Heaven mountain range, and the great Valashmai Jungle. Each of these gets a page of description. We also get a few new races. The regular lineup of demihumans can be found in Tian Xia, but only elves and half-elves are found natively.

The kitsune are fox shapeshifters, who are able to switch between a humanoid fox form and a human form that allows them to pass as humans. The racial description hints at racial kitsune feats in Dragon Empires Primer that would enhance their shapeshifting abilities and allow them to turn into a fox. We also get the nagaji, who are a big and burly servitor race bred by the naga who rule Nagajor; the tengu birdmen; the monastic, reincarnated samsarans from the mountains of Zi Ha; and the wayangs, a race of tricksters from the Plane of Shadow.

The races are the beginning and end of rules items in the book, with the exception of the Moon subdomain (of the Darkness domain) dropped into a sidebar in the religion chapter, and the rest of the book is devoted to setting information. The rules items, I suppose, has all been relegated to the Primer. In the religion chapter we also get the list of deities worshiped by the people of Tian Xia. Some of these, like Desna, Pharasma and Abadar, are also found in the Inner Sea region, but most of the lot are local, such as Daikitsu, the goddess of agriculture and patron of kitsune; Shizuru, the Empress of Heaven; Yaezhing, the Minister of Blood; and my absolute favourite, Sun Wukong.

I dunno, I just like the idea of there being a deity of doing stupid crap while drunk. I’m now trying to figure out a way to combine worship of Sun Wukong and Cayden Cailean into the same player character.

In addition, there’s ten pages or so on life in the Dragon Empires. Languages, a few notes on trade, what’s life like for the regular Joe.

Dragon Empires Gazetteer ties in with the Jade Regent Adventure Path, currently in its fourth volume and just entering Tian Xia, and Year Three of the Pathfinder Society campaign, where the year’s metaplot is tied with Tian Xia and the first modules set there have just come out. There’s also an upcoming Pathfinder module Ruby Phoenix Tournament, which I believe will also work as the culmination of the PFS metaplot for the year.

There is one error that I noticed in my PDF. When discussing the lost empires of Tian Xia, the book says that the map on the opposing page should depict the extent of these empires at their height. However, the map depicts the current political makeup of the continent and notes points of interest within regions. Then again, a map of the fallen empires of Tian Xia would mostly consist of three large, overlapping blobs in the middle, forming the Lung Wa, Shu, and Yinxing empires.

The Lay of the Land

Tian Xia is a big continent that, until about a century ago, was dominated by a succession of big empires. The latest of these was the Lung Wa imperium, which dominated most of the landmass until disintegrating around the same time Aroden died. The reasons or circumstances of Lung Wa’s collapse are not elaborated upon, which struck me as a strange and annoying thing to omit. There is a suggestion that it might be connected to Aroden’s death (who was not worshiped in Tian Xia). The three largest splinters are the militaristic Lingshen, the bureaucratic Po Li, and Quain with its thousand heroes and monasteries of martial artists. In addition, there are smaller splinter states that are culturally farther away from the Lung Wa heartland. There’s Amanandar, which is essentially a colony of Taldor. There’s the pacifistic Hwanggot, and the aasimar nation of Tianjing. There’s Chu Ye, which was overrun by oni, and Kaoling, which was taken over by hobgoblins. There’s the sorcerer-ruled Dtang Ma and the pacifistic Hwanggot, which regained their independence when Lung Wa fell. Also, there’s Bachuan, which is ruled by filthy totalitarian communists.

Not all states in Tian Xia are built on Lung Wa’s ruins, though. There’s Hongal, which is a steppe ruled by nomads, and the feudal state of Minkai. They’ve got samurai. There’s also the elven kingdom of Jinin, whence comes the coolest line in all of Dragon Empires Gazetteer: “Ruler: Shogun Jininsiel Ryuikiatsu of the Bamboo Court of Silver Leaves (LG male elf samurai 15)”. There’s the pirate isles of Minata, the naga kingdom of Nagajor, and Xa Hoi, which is a real empire ruled by dragons.

Overall, we get a good spread of different countries. They’re not all nations of hats, but they’re different enough that I can more or less remember their names and schticks after one readthrough. The regions are interesting, and there’s adventure in the air. They’re not living in vacuums, either, but interact with one another – Po Li, Lingshen and Quain are in a Mexican standoff with one another, the hobgoblins of Kaoling threatening the elves of Jinin and the samsarans of Zi Ha, tensions rising on the border between Bachuan and Hwanggot, the tengus of Kwanlai are being forced to shape up into a real nation state by the threat of the kraken-ruled Wanshou to the north.

That’s What She Saïd

I was glad to note that Dragon Empires Gazetteer does not make baby Edward Saïd cry. Well, as far as I’m qualified to judge such things, which may not be all that far. Tian Xia and its people aren’t played up as something mystical or unknowable or inferior (or superior, for that matter) to Avistan. They’re guys you can understand. Heck, they’re guys you’d want to play. Of course, as far as I can tell, the book makes a terrible hash of any mythological material it touches, but we don’t play D&D for historical or mythological accuracy, and in any case, D&D does this to everything. The brand new Bestiary 3 features the iku-turso, an aquatic monster that has precisely dick to do with Iku-Turso, son of Äijö, as he is depicted in Kalevala, our national epic. It’s D&D, it’s what it does. We deal with it.

Tian Xia also isn’t treated as a monolith. Though the Inner Sea Gazetteer presents a single ethnicity, Tian, and a single language, Tien, for the natives of the continent, the Dragon Empires Gazetteer brushes off such simplicity as ignorance born of distance and lack of contact. There are seven different human ethnicities in Tian Xia (the tian-dan, tian-dtang, tian-hwan, tian-la, tian-min, tian-shu and tian-sing), and a bunch of languages. Tien, the official language of fallen Lung Wa, serves as the Common for the continent. There’s variety.

The book also avoids making the Kara-Tur gaffe. Kara-Tur, the original D&D not-Asia that tied in with the original Oriental Adventures hardcover, was a singularly uninspired work. For examples of how much creative energy it was infused with, there’s a mountain nation of monasteries ruled by a High Lama. It’s called Tabot. There’s another nation located on a peninsula extending from the land of Shou Lung towards the island nation of Kozakura. It’s called Koryo. With Dragon Empires Gazetteer, I am happy to note that I cannot draw equivalencies between nations quite as easily. Sure, Minkai is essentially a fantasy Japan, and Hongal is fantasy Mongolia, and Bachuan is a fantasy Communist China, and Zi Ha is kinda like Tibet, but it’s not 1:1. It’s the fine line between inspiration and just plain lazy. There are, of course, things you must have – if your fantasy Asia doesn’t have a fantasy Japan and fantasy Mongolia and a monastery with a bunch of bald guys breaking bricks with their hands, you should reconsider if you really know what you’re doing. These are essential and identifiable tropes. Just mix it up a bit, make it your own, and for all that is good and holy, come up with some good names. Greyhawk’s not-Japan is called, I kid thee not, “Nippon”. Fortunately, it does not exist outside of a label on a world map most fans are happy to treat as apocryphal, if only so they can ignore Orcreich.

In Closing

But back to Dragon Empires Gazetteer. It’s good, and interesting enough that I read it in full from the screen of my laptop, which is not something that can be said of a whole lot of books. I’ll be putting it to good use once my Jade Regent campaign kicks off, sometime next year (I hope) and in Pathfinder Society.

For full disclosure, I bought my PDF copy normally through the Paizo webstore.

The pages of Isle of the Unknown are liberally sprinkled with art, from small monster pieces by Amos Orion Sterns to the full-page magic user illustrations by Jason Rainville. It is laid out in a clear, readable fashion and is nice to look at. Unfortunately, the full-page pieces have printed out rather dark, which is clear when comparing them to the PDF version, which looks much nicer.

The PDF is not as nifty as Carcosa, in that there are no hyperlinks in the text or the map, but what it does do better than Carcosa is pagination. While Carcosa’s page numbers do not match up from page to PDF due to each page spread being counted as a single page, this has somehow been fixed in Isle of the Unknown. I have no comprehension of the wizardry required for such feats, but evidently it can be done. This is the one thing that Isle of the Unknown does better than Carcosa. Mind you, the lack of hyperlinks in Isle of the Unknown is not as bad a thing as it might be in another type of book, because the only thing you would want hyperlinked is the hex descriptions, all of which are easily accessible via bookmarks.

The two books are good examples of how PDF publishing should be done in general. You have all these interesting options to increase usability that the dead tree edition is lacking, so why not use them? I think the bare minimum should be an option to turn off background art so stuff can be printed without wasting any printer ink, a liquid that, by weight, is more expensive than human blood, crude oil, or gold. At least nobody is trying to peddle us files without bookmarks anymore, though I own a few examples like that as well.

Ruleswise, it’s old-school D&D and ought to be compatible with pretty much whatever version you want. Armour Class is expressed in terms like “as leather”, so you won’t even need to figure out whether it’s counting up or down or where the starting point is.

The Lay of the Land

Isle of the Unknown is a sandbox setting. We have an island, slightly under 35,000 square miles in size, divided up into 330 hexes, each of which covers the area of some 86 square miles. Each hex has something of interest. Broadly speaking, these can be divided up into monsters, magic-users, statues and towns. The latter are of the least interest, at least to the writer, and we’re only given population figures and perhaps a plot hook for each.

The book’s setting defaults to a sort of medieval Mediterranean. Architecture and statues are described as Greek or Roman, a few NPCs referred to as Turkish or Arabic and references to the real world are abundant. However, as the preface explains, everything can be changed easily, which is also why no proper names are given. Nearly all of the clerics on the island are described as wearing red surcoats with white crosses, which is how the Knight Hospitallers used to dress at one point in their history. Incidentally, the introduction also mentions that “the societies, flora, and fauna of this predominantly mountainous and wooded isle resemble those of the French territory of Auvergne circa A.D. 1311,” where the Hospitallers controlled a grand priory. While I am not certain and there’s a woeful gap in my education here, I suspect that McKinney is trying to work in a reference to Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne. I wonder if reading the stories would give some sort of context to the isle and its weirdness.

Anyway, the three other things this island has in abundance. Weird monsters! I haven’t counted, but I think there are over a hundred different monsters on the isle. These range from giant parrots that are on fireand humanoid swans with human faces on their chests that shoot strength-draining feathers to a vaguely lizardlike creature that “looks like a slightly elongated raspberry”, and koalas with suction cups. All of them are illustrated, which is nice, since some of them (like the raspberry thing) would be really difficult to visualize otherwise. They don’t have much in the way of context or ecology or any sort of explanation. That’s all up to the GM. What matters is that they’re there, they’re weird, and most of them are hostile.

Then there are magic users. Here and there, scattered across the isle, are secluded magic users with strange and unique powers. They are mostly not hostile, and indeed, fighting them is almost certainly a losing proposition. Not all of them are illustrated, but thirteen of them are illustrated in a series of zodiac-themed, full-page art pieces that I like very much. They are also weird.

Finally, there are statues. Scattered across the isle are mysterious magical statues with strange properties. Some of them are hot to the touch, some of them grant blessings, some of them stand a good chance of killing you. The only illustrated statue is the one on the cover.

There isn’t much in the way of history or background to the isle and its high strangeness, just a list of legends that may or may not be true. The hexes do not exist in vacuums, though, and construct small implied stories of their own. For instance, the villagers in this hex consider the forest in that hex a taboo and may get cross if the PCs go there. Such detail is sparse, however.

In conclusion, Isle of the Unknown is a very good-looking book. It’s an interesting sandbox setting, though the weirdness wanders into the realm of absurd comedy a bit too often to remain effective. The cartoonish art style of the monsters does not exactly help. Still, a capable GM knows what to keep, what to drop and what to adjust, and though it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere, I get the feeling that the setting isn’t even meant to be used straight out of the book.

For a full disclosure, I received my copy from the publisher as thanks for helping him unload the pallets of Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown, and am probably strongly biased.

Basically, there has been a convergence of events and circumstances that have sapped my inspiration and will to do anything beyond the very basics of keeping a campaign going. For one thing, the calendar is slowly rolling over to the ninth week of my interesting cough that remains undiagnosed but has proven quite impervious to a veritable battery of prescription medicine. We don’t know what it is, but thus far it hasn’t killed me, so we remain optimistic that if nothing else, it is susceptible to the march of time. Preferably moreso than I am.

However, now that I’ve got a convention to work on, I feel somewhat energized and should be resuming my regular schedule of updates (sporadic, but rather more frequent than it has been). There’s a selection of unfinished drafts to finish up, gaming to discuss, news to disseminate, books to review, Planescape to revisit. I’m also drafting up a wondrous item for Paizo’s RPG Superstar 2012, with a deadline of January 7th. If the previous years have taught me anything, it is that interesting wondrous items are hard to design and that if nothing else, I’ll have a magic item to post on the 25th. Unfortunately, I’ve managed to misplace my creations from past years. Last year I wrote up a magically treated afterbirth, which I’m rather sorry I managed to lose.

So as not to make this post entirely self-indulgent, I will now give you an adventure outline rolled from the random adventure generator in the 1993 Finnish roleplaying game Elhendi, a high fantasy RPG about elves, which I just picked up the other day.

The quest is given to your characters by (*roll 1d10* 3.) a respected mage (*roll*) who’s also an elf. They wish you to (*roll*) protect (*roll*) a female (*roll*) human, who-(*roll*)-se circumstances are presently unknown, but current location is (*roll*) in a dark forest, which is inhabited by (*roll*) fearsome trolls. Should they accomplish this task, they will be rewarded with (*roll*) new weapons and armour.

Believe me, rerolling isn’t worth the trouble. The tables will not produce anything that’s interesting in its own right, though a capable GM can make an interesting adventure out of even something as banal as this. For instance, if this guy is such a big shot wizard, why isn’t he doing this himself? Is there something he’s not telling us, or can he not be seen in the woman’s company? And who is she anyway and what is their relationship? Romantic? Political? Adversarial? Come to think of it, why is she in the forest if there are trolls in there, and why aren’t we told this? Would the information be harmful to someone if it came out? Scandalous? One might also wonder why the wizard has weapons and armour lying around to be handed to adventurers when the barter economy is a thing of the past.

In tomorrow’s post, I will tell you why Isle of the Unknown isn’t quite as good as Carcosa, but still has one achievement over it.

The wait was worth it.

What we’ve got here is a 288-page, A5-sized hardcover. The art by Rich Longmore is black and white, but the maps of Robert Altbauer are in glorious (and a bit garish) colour. In addition, the pages themselves are subtly coloured, with faded hues of green and purple playing in the margins and behind the text. It does not, I should hasten to add, hamper readability, but makes the whole book seem more like some sort of alien grimoire. The layout is clean, the art is good, and the book is overall a very stylish package. It also has a lovely smell.

There’s also a PDF version available, and it’s one of the best gaming PDFs I’ve seen. It’s layered for printer-friendliness, bookmarked, and linked up the wazoo. Even the map hexes are linked to the pages where they are described. This is excellent work, and I’d like to see it become the industry standard, though I don’t have much hope of that happening. Neither Posthuman Studios nor Paizo, who otherwise know their PDF work, have gone quite this far with their stuff (Posthuman doesn’t have links, Paizo doesn’t have layers). This is how you take advantage of the electronic format, kids. The only complaint I have is that since in the PDF a single page spread counts as a single page, the page numbers on the book and the PDF no longer match up.

What Is It?

Carcosa is a setting and rules supplement for your old D&D game or retroclone. Its native system is LotFP’s house system, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, but pretty much all retroclones are more or less mutually compatible anyway and there’s no reason this wouldn’t work in your campaign of Labyrinth Lord or Mentzer’s Red Box D&D (though like all most retroclone stuff, this one uses the ascending Armour Class [starting at 12, as LotFP's does]).

The genres of the work would be the weird tale and sword & planet. The influences it names or suggests include Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, Howard’s Worms of the Earth and David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, and, of course, Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow. I am also reminded of other things – Jack Vance, August Derleth, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otso Ilmari – though I’m pretty sure that last one is not numbered among McKinney’s inspirations, no matter how unconscious or indirect.

It is like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, if Expedition to the Barrier Peaks had been horror. There are no demihumans in the world of Carcosa, just 13 races of men, each a different colour, from green to white to black to new colours like dolm, jale and ulfire, from A Voyage to Arcturus, though also evoking The Colour out of Space. There’s a very good reason this book doesn’t have colour art outside of the maps. It’s gonna make painting miniatures tricky. There are no magic items, just the technological armaments of the Space Aliens. There is no magic missile or sleep, there are the Blasphemous Glyphs of the Night Ocean and the Ninety-Six Chants of the Leprous One.

The book starts with a few unconventional dice conventions. Under the Carcosa rules, whenever combat begins, everyone first rolls from a chart what their hit dice type will be for this combat and then uses dice of that type to roll their hit points. Your hit dice might be d12s in one fight and d4s in the next. The same is true for Shub-Niggurath. Damage is determined every round in a similar fashion. This is rather quirky, and there’s also a suggestion on how to handle things if you elect not to use these rules. It seems like combat in Carcosa is unpredictable and deadly business.

Then there are a few new rules for characters, including the sorcerer class, which is basically same as fighter, except they can use rituals. Incidentally, Carcosa uses only two character classes – the fighter and the sorcerer. No clerics, no magic-users, no demihuman races. The book doesn’t even use specialists (LotFP’s name for the thief class), but mentions that they will not violate the tone. There are also a couple of pages of psionics rules. Characters with high enough mental stats have a chance of being psionic, which is rolled at character generation.

What there is not is a lot on the setting itself. There are no historical timelines, just mentions here and there that Space Aliens (described like they Greys) have a colony on the planet, the human races were created by Snake-Men untold millennia ago and that the Primordial Ones (Lovecraft’s elder things) manipulated the civilization of Carcosa until someone let the shoggoths out and everything went to hell. There is also very little on the human races, though it’s mentioned that the natives in Peter Jackson’s King Kong are at about the proper level of sophistication.

Oh, and alignment determines only how you stand in relation to the Great Old Ones. Lawful is against, chaotic is for, neutrals try to avoid the whole business.

Then there’s the magic of Carcosa. Spellcasting takes the form of rituals, and all rituals are for summoning or controlling the gods and monsters of the world. There are 96 different rituals in the book, all with names that drip purple prose, such as The Sixth Undulation of the Tentacled One or Serpentine Whispers of the Blue-Litten Pillars.

So, magic in Carcosa applies to the Great Old Ones, and was developed by the Snake-Men. This means it’s Bad Stuff. Pretty much everything that is not a banishment ritual will require human sacrifice, all described in a clinical and detailed fashion, like this: “The Sorcerer must find or dig a large pit with walls and floor of coal. The sacrifices—101 Dolm children—must then be bound and flung into the pit. The two-hour ritual requires the Sorcerer to don the above-mentioned armor and climb into the pit and slay each sacrifice with an obsidian axe. Afterwards he fires the pit.” (The Primal Formula of the Dweller) And there are worse rituals. Like, Josef Fritzl kind of worse. “We could illustrate this ritual but it’d then become illegal to sell or possess under obscenity laws in several major markets” kind of worse. The cover sleeve for the book says “Warning: For Adults Only! Contains explicit descriptions and illustrations of black magic and violence.” It’s not kidding.

The rituals are surprisingly uncomfortable reading, and really drive home the point that people who deal with the tentacled stuff are evil. They are to be opposed. Then there are the banishment rituals for putting down that which (hopefully) someone else has called up and for the most part require no sacrifice whatsoever, though Banishment of the Lightless Chasm, for driving off the Squamous Worm of the Pit, requires you to kill a snake.

It’s charming how naturally you can get a campaign concept and a motivation for your characters just from the spell list. There’s nothing in the book about how adventurers fit in the world or the society (as far as it exists), or what sort of adventures they should or could have, but such things flow naturally from the spell list. I mean, unlike in most D&D settings, where adventurers are outsiders from society and regarded as strange and dangerous people, in Carcosa going out to kill sorcerers is actually a sane and rational reaction. This, to me, is the strongest horror element in the setting.

After the rituals, we get monster stats and descriptions. Carcosa has its own interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Here, Azathoth dwells in the centre of the planet and the races of B’yakhee, Deep Ones, the Great Race, Mi-Go, Primordial Ones and Shoggoths are all spawned by Shub-Niggurath. Cthulhu is still imprisoned in sunken R’lyeh, though. This section also features long, descriptive quotations from H.P. Lovecraft, which I approve of. Yes, you can fight Azathoth. No, you’re not likely to win.

The largest section of the book is the sandbox itself, 400 hexes’ worth of the planet of Carcosa. One of the hexes being ten miles across, this translates to 86 square miles per hex and a total of 34,880 square miles, or slightly larger than the country of Jordan. Each of the hexes has two points of interest described. For an example, let’s take hex 0115. It contains the following two points of interest: “Castle of 6 Jale Men led by a chaotic 7th-level Sorcerer” and “A handful of curious and ancient roadways crisscross the withered heaths of this hex. The roads appear to be made of huge slabs of granite skillfully pounded into the earth. They glow with a soft light in darkness. Any attempts to remove the slabs will fail.”

There’s loads of stuff the PCs can run across and that the GM can build their own plots around. Who is that sorcerer in the castle and what’s his agenda? No idea, it’s the GM’s job to make something up.

Carcosa has a presentation I feel is very typical of old school D&D. You’re presented with a lot of stuff, but very little in the way of advice on how to use it or what to do with it. While it works for your normal Tolkien and Howard fantasy since everyone already knows that stuff, I think that more outré material such as Carcosa could have a bit more hand-holding. Fortunately, the writing is good and positively dripping with atmosphere and inspiration, which eases the Game Master’s job in this respect – and, well, you don’t need to specify that the people who are sacrificing children to call up tentacled abominations from beyond the stars are the bad guys.

We are also given an introductory adventure called “The Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer”, which details, over 20 pages, some of the points of interest in hex 2005. The titular Gardens, of course, are a dungeon.

After that it’s some helpful tables for random encounters, random robots, Space Alien armaments, spawn of Shub-Niggurath and so forth, as well as reference tables for rituals.

My Thoughts

Carcosa is a very good book. Apart from being extremely well put together, it is written in an evocative manner and brings the setting to life despite not really detailing it much. It conjures up images from films like 10,000 B.C. and Salute of the Jugger. It’s a primitive, post-apocalyptic world, where people are preoccupied with survival and appeasing gods whose existence leaves no room for doubt. And they hate you, personally.

It is a weird and terrible place. A bit of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, a bit of Vance’s Dying Earth, a bit of Burroughs’ Barsoom, perhaps shades of Gor in the mixture of high technology and Stone Age culture. Unlike the modern man of Lovecraft’s tales, the mankind of Carcosa is acutely aware of their cosmic insignificance, though probably unable to articulate it.

This is excellent work. If you have an interest in old school D&D and aren’t put off by the more extreme material in the rituals section, you really have no reason not to buy this. I can’t really find anything I could consider an error or mistake or a bad idea. Even the lack of real setting information kinda works to the book’s advantage. It really is an alien, unknown, perhaps unknowable world. There is a sense of mystery and wonder. I am usually not a fan of such bare bones sandboxes, preferring something more akin to Paizo’s Kingmaker adventure path, but damn if this isn’t good enough for me to make an exception. And seriously, that PDF is a thing of beauty.

In the interests of full disclosure, I know James Edward Raggi IV, the publisher, and received my copy of the book (As well as Isle of the Unknown. And pizza.) from him as thanks for helping him unload the four cargo pallets of Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown (I feel like Satan’s little helper). In other words, I’m probably biased as all hell. I’ll try to do Isle of the Unknown over the weekend, but no promises.

And yeah, I say we. The composition of the organizing committee has just been announced, and I’ll be reprising my role from 2009-2011 as the Master of Game Masters. I’m looking to introduce a few final improvements to the GM system at Ropecon and training my henchmen to the best of my ability. This is the last time I’ll be handling this particular job at Ropecon, at least for the time being.

I’m also looking for a subordinate to handle the scenario writing contest, since I’m starting to have credibility problems even in my own eyes.

I’m looking forward to working on Ropecon again. While I doubt anything can top this year’s con, we will do our very best. We’ve got an excellent team (as far as I know – some new faces in the ranks). We even have all three intelligent bears on the committee. We shall rock mightily.

The reasons are the usual ones, not enough subscribers, leading to not enough money.

It’s sad. I kinda liked the two issues I’ve read. Playground covered some really weird and interesting stuff, stuff that I probably would never have run into otherwise. It documented a play culture very different from what I’m used to. It’s not what I would have been interested in playing, but it was interesting to read about. While the Nordic scene has a fairly solid tradition of documenting what they’re up to in the annual Knutepunkt books (next year in Finland!), with Playground we’re losing a more journalistic and approachable take on matters, as well as the articles about stuff that’s not quite roleplaying games but looks kinda like it if you squint like this…

I must shoulder my own blame in this – I never subscribed. Hey, it was €12 at the store, four issues a year, with a subscription for €60. That’s kinda steep for an unemployed student, even though I wanted to support the project.

Well, I will be buying the two issues that are left. I will read them and shelve them with my issues of Dragon, Dungeon, Polyhedron, Living Greyhawk Journal, Magus and Roolipelaaja, other gaming magazines that didn’t make it.