Proteans
Hook Spider
Translucent Mantis Shrimp
Blackfoot Gigaferret
Lamenters
Cholerids
Crawling Piranha
Radiolarian
Zombie Coral
Fossil Vampire
Trilo-Bite
Silichominids
Cambrimen
Ultraviolet Butterfly
Fungal Hijack Crocodiles
Civilopede
Still-Tor-Men
Myconid Slaves
AntiPhoenix
Archeanids
Slime Shark
ToRaptoise
Sonic Pigs
Gilgamash
Atomic Bees
Panic Attack Jack
AnglerLiche
Splinterlad
Igneous Wrath
EigengraΓΌ
Knotsmen
Ignimbrite Mite
Pyroclastic Ghoul
Blastomycosis Megaspores
Meanderthals
Tachyon Troll
TitanSkull Hermit Crab
Spotlight Dogs
I know what most of these are. Still not sure how zombie coral works. Spotlight Dogs are terrifying, halogen howl wolf whippets with thumbs, pack predators, matt black like new guns.
There are three intelligent race thing in there.
Proteans - white, blind sinous salamandermen.
Cambrimen - ancient pre evolved pseudomen, transparent skin, undifferentiated organs, segmented bodies, slow and stupid.
Archeanids - aysymmetric stews of ancient phylum chemistry.
The Tachyon Troll is already badly woulded from the fight your about to had, but if you dont heal it with the edge of your blade the temporal distortion will kill you with years. Plus, it's trying to eat you.
I need 12 more so I can fill out the main encounter chart. Noisms is right. Making new monsters is hard. (My hook spider is different to his and I thought of mine first)
This looks awesome.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of LotFP's grindhouse sensibility? You talk about Isle of the Unknown a fair amount, and I've been going through Carcosa and it's rather more squicky than I imagined. I already knew I was going to have to convert a fair amount of stuff (wanna do a campaign vaguely in the style of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell instead of Lovecraftian science fantasy nightmare) but I can't imagine using a fair amount of content, as interesting as the rest of the book is.
I guess what gets me is what the reader's reaction to the content is supposed to be. Like, if a heavy metal band releases an album with a skull with worms exploding out of its eyes on the cover, I would imagine that their listeners appreciate it as disturbing imagery without being particularly disturbed themselves. I'm pretty sure most people would find Carcosa upsetting from a conceptual standpoint.
None of this is an indictment of Mr. Raggi, and I'm not saying I won't use any of Carcosa, and it is a fine-looking book. I don't know. Just wanted to know what you thought.
Turning Carcosa into Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel sounds insane and awesome.
ReplyDeleteYou could pull a ZakSmith, copy the pdf into word then use find and replace to turn all the mentions of 'sacrifice' into 'tea', 'rape' into 'play music' and 'strangle' into 'cut socially'.
So to summon a cthuloid horror you need to find and have tea with a young maiden, then play in a string quartet with her, but then, at the last minute, make a snide remark about her impending marriage. Then Shub-niggerauth appears.
I think the weird/upsetting stuff in Carcosa and Grindhouse acts as a kind of shibboleth. It probably has a powerful effect on focusing the market and conversation around people who either like, or don't give a shit about, stuff like vaginamonsters or ritual rape. In a strange way it's probably part of the cultural potency of the product. I think I understand why McKinney put that stuff in. And I suspect he suspects that even most people who buy it will not use many of the darker aspects.
It's a very OSR thing to do, piling as much moral, intellectual and artistic responsibility as possible onto the DM so you can watch them go mad like a failed philosopher king.
I don't think I would use most of the sex stuff or the child endangerment stuff. I have pretty strong but tacit limits for that kind of thing, (of which I'm generally unaware until it comes up in play). My Isle of the Unknown is (or was) pretty vanilla. Shaped by the collective unconscious of three teenagers and one old nerd. I think there was one occasion where I had to play liberal patriarch and stop the Teens being dodgy. But that's Teens, and if its teens and one adult then you are more responsible than if its functional grownups sitting round a table.
man that was a long answer, which maybe didn't get to the point, sorry.
Seeing Zak S slot his campaign into the hex descriptions is what made me decide to get Carcosa. I think it will work well. Susanna Clarke's supernatural is weirdly similar to Lovecraft's stuff; the man with the thistledown hair was a powerful, inscrutable and dangerous creature from another dimension that hurt everyone he came in contact with. I think Clarke's fairies are a bit more interesting, too, at least in the context of a game. A lot of the Carcosa monsters are "human shaped mass of something gross", "flailing blob of something disgusting", and "random collection of appendages". I think my players would be more interested in making a deal with the King of Red Roses or the Terror Doll than hearing about how the Squamous Worm of the Pit is venting ichor all over the place.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about Carcosa. It seems like a lot of LotFP stuff is as frustrating as it is good. Like, there is a great deal of useful content in Carcosa, but a fair number of hexes seem like they were made using a random table. Isle of the Unknown sounds like it has its problems, too--dozens and dozens of fiery serpentine pandas and giant red ducks and magical valleys and powerful wizards, but not much in the way of motivation or purpose. It almost seems like Raggi is trying to normalize the Weird over anything else. Cultural potency. You may not (probably won't?) actually use the Monolith Beyond Time and Space or gruesome rituals or hundreds of whimsical animals, but hopefully reading about will make you more inclined to make your adventures weird in the future. I know Carcosa has definitely changed what I want to for Strange & Norrell. Before I was going to have a somewhat whimsical wilderness hex crawl based out of a shamelessly ahistorical pseudo-London, but now I am thinking fairy warlocks with Monstrous Television style names riding around on castles carved from glaciers and giant hermit crabs. Roman liches trapped since the Gallic Wars by long-dead druids . Moon Giants. Colonies from Hell.
Glad I got the book, though.
You still have the blog Matt?
DeleteI found Your Dungeon Is Suck a few months back and deleted my blog in a moment of weakness/fit of self-loathing. I will probably set one up again though, since I'll actually have a campaign to think about and prepare for, not to mention more time.
DeleteWhat's a fungal hijack crocodile?
ReplyDeleteBasically this-
Deletehttp://www.newsreporter.in/threatened-albino-crocodile-found-in-bhitarkanika-national-park-in-odisha
plus this
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2010/08/05/unknown-cave-insects-probably-moths-attacked-by-fungus/