Quote from: misterguignol;498784To me it actually read like a morality tale: horrible people do horrible things in their greed for power and are punished horribly.

This actually came up in the previous thread on Carcosa re the difference of the presentation of graphic sexual (and other) violence in fiction vs. in RPG play.  In a nutshell, I would contend that there is a difference.  In the case of RPG play there is much less separation between the consumer (player rather than reader) and the material.  In the RPG the players make a choice to participate, even if it is "We do what must be done".  Remember what must be done, exactly, in this case.  That is a significant point in my mind.


-TGA

Quote from: misterguignol;498882You and I both know that he did nothing of the sort.  You're capable of making your argument without resorting to these kind of strawman tactics.

Fair enough, but I am frustrated by some people's lack of good faith.  I know, its the Internet and all.

I can respect the positions of people like you and Benoist.  However, there are some who seem to want to label anyone who has a problem with this stuff as "prudes" and seem to want to trivialize the real issues with this game.  You have not trivialized them, but just have a different POV about what that means to your gaming.  I can respect that.

Trivialization of this kind of material I can't respect.

-TGA

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;498891Fair enough, but I am frustrated by some people's lack of good faith.  I know, its the Internet and all.

I can respect the positions of people like you and Benoist.  However, there are some who seem to want to label anyone who has a problem with this stuff as "prudes" and seem to want to trivialize the real issues with this game.  You have not trivialized them, but just have a different POV about what that means to your gaming.  I can respect that.

Trivialization of this kind of material I can't respect.

-TGA

I get where you're coming from; I realize that we have a difference of opinion here, but I think it's no more than just that: a difference of opinion.

And yet, SoIaF gets TV series with all  the child/teenager rape, and Black Company or Malazan Book of the Fallen or Wheel of Time don't.

Bloody world, eh?

Still guys, I think all valid points had been raised here. Some will never want to play something like this - as they find it disgusting. Some of us believe this to be an interesting exercise in graphic horror. We should concentrate on writing here, I'd say.


In my opinion, Carcosa is a mediocre supplement. Mostly because writing is rather poor for the first part. See, OHT actually's got a point, though he made it only deep into the discussion.

That list of rituals? It's tedious and sooooooo boring. I mean it. Sacrificing little girls was it's only saving grace, as it made me curious what degeneration will come up next, but I still only managed to read half of it. On the expurgated version, I only bothered with few first. In other words, in my opinion, the brutality here is used as an excuse for writing actually interesting and well designed spell list.

On the contrary - the interesting section is actually the monstrous ones. We have the classic Mythos Crew 1930s, with special rules and descriptions from Lovecraft quoted on them - nice touch. They are ridiculously powerful, as they should be. Later on - we have a lot of new monsters, we have also some Lovecraftian ones (with descriptions quoted from original again), some monsters have more or less bizarre and interesting rules how to kill it. That part of the book is probably the one worth buying this supplement, if you want to sick some Mythos monsters on your players.

The final part of the book - the world design, is well, rather...specific, to say at best. It's but a list of encounters that correspond with each hex on the map. I guess it makes the Carcosa both a very detailed, and a very not so detailed world at the time, since all the fluff we need to pick up from ritual, monster and PC descriptions. Attention to the detail is certainly noteworthy - a pity that the author did not bother with describing perhaps the lifestyle of humans of Carcosa, and cut down on some of those recipes.

Because as you may had noticed, the main problem with Carcosa, is overdetailing. The entire island is detailed down to a single encounter, save for some random encounte- oh wait, there's no random encounter table. Does that mean we're supposed to drawn our own, or that the author desires no such things to be in the world of Carcos? I will give credit for the former- but with the design of this supplement like this, I highly suspect the latter. The mutation table, however, is a nice touch.

Now, to finish this review, let's go back to the start for a moment. The player creation is rather simple - you have two classes, Fighting Man and Sorcerer, whose balance would give today's balance fanatics in RPGs a stroke. Some additional fluff for the world is also found at the beginning, again, only as a description of the only player race - in fact, any fluff you will find in this supplement, is only next to descriptions of things. However, the part of the beginning chapter of the Carcosa is what baffles me the most - the rules for rolling dice when playing Carcosa.

Now, I did not play OD&D, so perhaps you were supposed to roll dice for your hit points before each fight - but why, why do I have to first roll a die to determine what die I will roll for my hitpoints and later, my damage? This seems like a very, very overcomplicated design, and the reason of "So the players never know the true toughness of the monster" is not a good enough to complicate the lives of poor players.

In my opinion, Carcosa could had been a great supplement, detailing a weird, terrifying world. Instead, the mediocre, overdetailed design combined with only decent writing and somewhat unnecessary controversial descriptions of the rituals, condemned what could be a great supplement into obscurity.

Quote from: Rincewind1;498911In my opinion, Carcosa is a mediocre supplement. Mostly because writing is rather poor for the first part. See, OHT actually's got a point, though he made it only deep into the discussion.

Thanks for the detailed review, Rincewind.  It is very helpful.

Quote from: Rincewind1;498911In my opinion, Carcosa could had been a great supplement, detailing a weird, terrifying world, a book that could had changed the future line of DnD, for as we must remember, it was one of the earliest supplements for the original game. Instead, the mediocre, overdetailed design combined with only decent writing and somewhat unnecessary controversial descriptions of the rituals, condemned Carcosa into obscurity.

To be clear, Carcosa (aka Supplement V) was published very recently as part of the OSR.  It was not an actual supplement for OD&D published by TSR.  Just wanted to clear that up to avoid any confusion.


-TGA

Pardon the folly of the youth - what's OSR? Care to just fix that part? ( I thought of throwing this on the site here). Ah - doesn't matter (well, still does, but not for that). So I guess it was not so extraordinary after all? Fixed the review then.

Quote from: Rincewind1;498920Pardon the folly of the youth - what's OSR? Care to just fix that part? ( I thought of throwing this on the site here). Ah - doesn't matter (well, still does, but not for that). So I guess it was not so extraordinary after all? Fixed the review then.

OSR = Old School Renaissance.  Basically, people who are interested in playing, promoting, and writing material for older games and clones of older games.  (Especially older versions of D&D.)

Quote from: Rincewind1;498920Pardon the folly of the youth - what's OSR? Care to just fix that part? ( I thought of throwing this on the site here). Ah - doesn't matter (well, still does, but not for that). So I guess it was not so extraordinary after all? Fixed the review then.

Oh no problem!  OSR stand for "Old School Revival", or a movement over the last few years to revisit old school gaming (in particular earlier editions of D&D) to find things that are applicable for gaming today.  The creation of numerous "Retroclones" (the republishing of old games without elements that are still under copyright) has been an outgrowth of this movement.  On a personal note, my gaming has been impacted much for the better by the OSR and by retorclones.  My personal fave is Swords & Wizardry (basically OD&D).

I think that one of the several reasons why Carcosa was roughly received by some was the impression that Geoffrey McKinney's use of the "Supplement V" title was an attempt to hijack the respectability of the D&D brand to promote his game.

-TGA

Quote from: misterguignol;498923OSR = Old School Renaissance.  Basically, people who are interested in playing, promoting, and writing material for older games and clones of older games.  (Especially older versions of D&D.)

Your explanation was more succinct than mine!


-TGA

I thank for both, though I of course googled that as well . I was actually just making a short post, and it suddenly actually spiralled into a review of Carcosa. Even if a bit unkept, but at least not overdetailed LIKE THAT SUPPLEMENT, I hope.

Quote from: Benoist;498835You see, if I am warned about stuff like this before I sit to the table, as in "we are playing a really dark fantasy game with some pretty horrific stuff going on in this weird outer world of Carcosa", that I know the people I'm playing with, that it isn't a teenage wankfest and the like, I'm pretty cool with playing really horrific stuff like this. That's graphic horror to me.

Reading the transcript, I didn't get the impression this was anything more than a dark tale featuring graphic, amoral behaviours on the characters' parts. That said, I for sure recognize it's certainly not for everyone. Many people will not be up for it for a wide variety of reasons, and I'm cool with it. Put a large "for mature audiences, this game deals with graphic, violent, amoral topics and behaviors. Player discretion is strongly advised," and I'm fine with it.

I haven't read Carcosa or Isle of the Unknown, and so don't wish to condemn either, but I can't help but wonder if you would be saying the same things had someone associated with the forge been the author.

Quote from: soviet;498931I haven't read Carcosa or Isle of the Unknown, and so don't wish to condemn either, but I can't help but wonder if you would be saying the same things had someone associated with the forge been the author.

See, this is the reverse of "FATAL is Bullshit but Poison'd is good" argument. Probably not, but because of anti - indie mechanics bias.

Because if someone wanted to make a truly cutting edge Carcosa, you'd probably have a mechanic of Virgin Drip, which was the amount of virgin girls you had to rape before being able to conduct a given ritual.

Quote from: Rincewind1;498935See, this is the reverse of "FATAL is Bullshit but Poison'd is good" argument. Probably not, but because of anti - indie mechanics bias.

I'm not saying any of these games are good or bad. I'm just wondering how many of the people defending Carcosa now were also loudly condemning Poison'd a couple of years ago, and what the difference might be between the two situations. Fair play to Pundit for at least condemning both equally.

I will actually say Poison'd is much better, if only by the merit that it's easier to read and quicker to play. I'd paraphrase Oscar Wilde, but I had done so too many times already. Short version: No bad games, just poorly written ones. And of course, some just hate story games/rpgs with storygaming mechanics.

Quote from: soviet;498940I'm not saying any of these games are good or bad. I'm just wondering how many of the people defending Carcosa now were also loudly condemning Poison'd a couple of years ago, and what the difference might be between the two situations. Fair play to Pundit for at least condemning both equally.

Here's how I see it:

I am going to dump the yicky bits I don't like from Carcossa.  There will still be plenty there for me to plunder for my games.

If I dumped all the yicky bits from Poison'd or FATAL there wouldn't be enough left to make it at all worthwhile.