So Geoffrey McKinney's latest projects dropped today- the LotFP redo of Carcosa with illustrations and new material, and the Isle of the Unknown is a new setting done in the style of Carcosa- numbered hexes containing oddball encounters, towns, NPCs, etc.  I purchased Isle of the Unknown today, along with the cloth map & poster.

My first impressions of Isle of the Unknown are largely favorable.  The flavor of it wonderfully original, the magic-users and clerics are all bizarre while still being usable and intriguing, and the mysterious statues which dot the island are just plain cool.

My main misgivings are about the product are the monsters.  They are meant to be unique and weird, but many of them are just plain silly.  Serpentine blue jays, serpentine limbless otters, serpentine duck-billed platypuses dripping ichor.  I'm fairly sure Geoffrey rolled these guys up randomly, so I can't even give him as much credit for the few of them are actually pretty neat.  Each and every monster is illustrated, for better or worse.

When I first read Carcosa, I was bursting with ideas for running adventures there.  The Isle, not so much.  Carcosa seemed to have a lot more dungeons and cities, whereas the island feels more sparsely populated with either.  Carcosa also had the rituals with their lists of components to acquire, which encouraged exploration.  Running this straight out of the book seems like it would mostly consist of blundering around being victimized by strange groves and unlikely animals.

Overall, I think it is a good setting, and beyond all doubt a great read, but I wish I had just gotten the PDF instead of the whole shebang.

Anybody else pick up either Carcosa or The Isle and have impressions to share?

I picked up both; my impression of both is definitely favorable so far, but I've only had time to do a quick scan.

Quote from: Aporon;495276My main misgivings are about the product are the monsters.  They are meant to be unique and weird, but many of them are just plain silly.  Serpentine blue jays, serpentine limbless otters, serpentine duck-billed platypuses dripping ichor.

Yeah, the monster art in Isle is not to my tastes in a lot of ways, but I am sure I can use the pictures as a base for describing the monsters in a disturbing, more interesting way than the images present them.  So, I would call the monster art a bit of a missed opportunity, but not a huge stumbling block for me personally.

QuoteRunning this straight out of the book seems like it would mostly consist of blundering around being victimized by strange groves and unlikely animals.

This also doesn't bother me much, as all I expected out of the product was a big area to explore.  I'd rather give my players reasons to do that exploration that fit what I know they're likely to be interested in rather than this being a series of pre-planned adventures.  Again, that's just me.

Carcosa also looks cool.  There are parts I likely won't use; the gross-out part of the rituals, for example, will be replaced by my own ideas.  And rather than using Carcosa as a main campaign setting, I'm going to use it as an alternate plane that can be reached from my usual homebrew setting.  Still, there are enough gubbins in the book for me to steal, mess with, etc. that I'm happy with the purchase.

I have the original Carcosa (which I plan to use as Venus in the Metal Earth solar system) but I am not going to pick up the new one, at least not right away, as I'm flush with gaming stuff right now. As for the Isle, I don't know; it doesn't sound like my kind of thing really.

Temptation resisted!

I've got some spare project money coming in this week so I plan on getting both.

I have the new Carcosa pdf (hard copy is on the way) and it looks great. I'll be using to add some weird science-fantasy elements Crypts & Things when it's my turn to GM in January.

I'm more hesitant about the Isle. The art deterred me a little. I'll see what people make of the content before taking the plunge.

Anybody know where these can be ordered in the United States? Paying $20 shipping to order directly from LotFP store is more than I'm willing to swallow.

Justin: don't quote me on this, but I believe LotFP supplements tend to make their way to Noble Knight Games sooner or later. (And some old school supplements make their way to the LotfP webstore, which has much friendlier shipping rates for Europeans than straightaway importing...)

Got Isles and from the first scan of the pdf, I think it looks really neat. There's a sort of plot-ideas-everywhere vibe, like the one I got from books like Over The Edge and recently from Vornheim. I agree that the weird-/sillyness of the monsters is a tad over the top and seems rather f*cked up for the sake of f*cked up, but I'm also on the same page as mr. G, that I'm sure that I can grit-up-silly-down the critters, so they'll be surprising and scary.

And I think it looks like well-made book and I'm growing quite fond of the A5 book format.

I'm not really interested in the gonzo and sci-fi elements in Carcosa, so I skipped that one.

So, I decided to breakdown and spend $100 for these two books. Grabbed the PDF for Carcosa, started reading, and...

What the hell?

Basically, the book starts by detailing a lengthy system in which you use a d20 roll to randomly determine what type of dice you roll before rolling them (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12). If you squint hard enough you can almost have this make sense for hit dice (which are re-rolled at the beginning of every combat), but when he goes on to do the same thing with weapon damage (so that every time you make an attack you roll a handful of dice and then use the d20 to determine which of the other dice count) all you can do is start backing away slowly.

Unfortunately, you won't be quick enough to avoid the next page where he lays out the statistical analysis which demonstrates that, on average, the entire system has no effect whatsoever.

And then there's the whole related mechanic where you have to keep track of multiple hit point totals for each character. This extra bookkeeping doesn't seem to actually do anything except add some statistical weirdness to the system.

Then we have the classes. There are only two: Fighter and Sorcerer. The Sorcerer is statistically superior to the Fighter at every level, which means that the only "balance" is that Fighters level up faster. The result? Between 1st and 9th level the Sorcerer will be flat-out better than the Fighter in every way 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, they'll be at -1 to attack and HD while still possessing significantly superior saving throws and their rituals.

Pro-Tip: Never play anything but a sorcerer in Carcosa.

Fortunately I'm here for the ideas; not the mechanics.

Ok, I've been known to drop big cash on an RPG product I probably won't use just to idea mine, but I'm not really sold yet on the whole Dark-Weird-Nordic-Gonzo-Empire Jim's got going over there.

45 USD for a 143 page A5 hardcover + pdf seems high (even if the pdf includes "state-of-the-art" technology) and 21 bucks for a 143 page pdf is high as well.

So, for lovers of Carcosa and/or LotFP, sell me on this bitch.

Quote from: CRKrueger;495552Ok, I've been known to drop big cash on an RPG product I probably won't use just to idea mine, but I'm not really sold yet on the whole Dark-Weird-Nordic-Gonzo-Empire Jim's got going over there.

45 USD for a 143 page A5 hardcover + pdf seems high (even if the pdf includes "state-of-the-art" technology) and 21 bucks for a 143 page pdf is high as well.

So, for lovers of Carcosa and/or LotFP, sell me on this bitch.

Well, here's my (admittedly very biased) two thousand words on Carcosa: http://nitessine.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/review-carcosa/

For the tl;dr, it's cool and atmospheric and weird, with dinosaur-riding barbarians and Space Aliens with rayguns and made-up primary colours and the Great Cthulhu.

Also, the layout guy really went to town on the PDF. Pretty much everything that can be reasonably linked is linked, including the map hexes to their descriptions, and there are layers for printer-friendliness. This is how you make an electronic product.

Unfortunately the PDF for Isle of the Unknown isn't quite that awesome (no linked map hexes), but it's not a bad book, either. Less horror, more weird. Not entirely convinced on all of the monster art, though. Will be writing about it over the weekend.

Quote from: CRKrueger;49555245 USD for a 143 page A5 hardcover + pdf seems high (even if the pdf includes "state-of-the-art" technology) and 21 bucks for a 143 page pdf is high as well.

Well, for starters, it's actually 275 A5 pages.

I'm not sure what "state of the art PDF technology" is supposed to mean. Maybe it's code for "I put two A5 pages on every page so that (a) Justin is screwed when he tries to view it on his Kindle DX and (b) you have to divide the page number you actually want to go to by 2 before you type it in". Because, ya know, that's how the PDF actually works.

(Okay, actually, the "state-of-the-art" apparently means "I included hyperlinks". Of which there are many and very well done.)

Carcosa is not exactly recommended for its mechanical innovations. Although there is a great motivation for not playing sorcerer characters, i.e. "I do not want to be that person. EVER."

Albion is a cooler setting.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;495889Albion is a cooler setting.

Publish it in a deluxe book then, with real art.

I'm not even having a go at you; if it was presented well I would give you money for it.