Topic: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Geof McKinney will be sitting down with Fitz from Game Knight Reviews for a video interview in a few weeks. They'll be talking about game design, particularly focusing on his work for Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

In fact, he'll be answering questions about Carcosa. If you have any questions about this product, please post them here.

My name is Ed Healy, and I am the Gamerati

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

What literary sources influenced your work on Carcosa?

What RPG system do you use in your home campaign? 

How have you dealt with controversy surrounding the dark nature of the magic in Carcosa?


Patrick DeLise

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Has the controversy surrounding Carcosa had any influence on the subsequent writing you out out. (Did it have a chilling effect on your work?)

Have you read any criticisms of the rape and other controversial parts of Carcosa that you felt were interesting, valid, etc. (As opposed to shrill, knee-jerk, etc.)

What's the origin of the setting. Did it come out of your own home D&D games?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

You've mentioned that you started running the first Carcosa campaign using Gamma World.  Did you retain Gamma World hit points throughout the campaign when you switched to Castles & Crusades and later OD&D?  Did you intend for PCs to use Gamma World style hit points when you wrote Supplement V?

Is there any chance we'll ever see the Putrescent Pits of the Amoeboid Gods megadungeon you mentioned some time ago?

When writing encounters for each of the hexes in Supplement V, did you use a chart to determine the broad nature of their contents, or did you merely make things up as you went, distributing encounters by hand?  How did you determine the village populations?

Have you used Supplement V's dice conventions in your own campaigns?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

In some other interviews and posts I have read, you mention that your home campaign extended further than the current available map in the published version. Is there any chance of you expanding Carcosa at some point to include those areas?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Isle of the Unknown NPCs, monsters, etc. all have 'non-standard' abilities and configurations. Nothing looks like a Goblin, or cast spells like a Magic-user, etc. Nor are there renamed substitutes for the standard array of such creatures.

Why is this element of surprise or novelty so important?

Why are such elements such as details about the human inhabitants, basic stat blocks, etc so irrelevant?

While it does seem true that you want Isle of the Unknown to be used, as a working supplement for a campaign, it does seem like you are asking your audience to engage in a different style of play then that which they are used to. That seems to move Isle of the Unknown from the realm of 'useful gaming supplement' into the realm or art, where you 'ask the audience to see things your way, not their way' to paraphrase Rothko.

Is this true? Do you want people to see and play D&D in a different way?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

I would like to know about creator of Carcosa one thing, some of the stuff is seriously icky, like place the author, publisher and anyone who bought the book on watch list to make sure level icky, but descriptions on the other hand are quite clinical and thus don't give me vibe that you are throwing that stuff at reader just for sake of posturing and trying to be edgy, how do handle that stuff on the gaming table, I mean do you just sit around table eating pizza and throwing dice and casually describing child molestation and murder?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Where did the weird dice system come from and why? "Fuck you, that's why." is not accepted as answer no matter how cool catchphrase it has become surrounding the game.

Last edited by MutieMoe (2012-05-30 09:46:48)

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

The colors of Ulfire and Jale originate in David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus.  I've found no reference to it, but is Dolm similarly derived from a piece of source fiction?

Were the Bone Men inspired by Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar Ghouls?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Are sorcerors gimped on purpose?

It seems to me that power comes out of the barrel of a gun and ability to kill from distance with advanced technology, and not out of summoning stupid monsters that get to resist your control and who have to crawl up close and personal to engage enemies with their tentacles.

I mean that sort of directs the campaiging to shooting wizards in the face with lasers, that is of course great but was this some sort of buried intent beneath seemingly neutral sandbox presented as toolbox design?

Last edited by MutieMoe (2012-06-01 09:26:08)

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

I've noticed that many of the spells require sacrifices of large numbers of beings.  With that said, is there any way to run a heroic campaign using the Carcosa rules and setting, or is this strictly for running games straight out of 'The King in Yellow' or 'Zygote's Fables'?

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Has the controversy surrounding Carcosa had any influence on the subsequent writing you out out. (Did it have a chilling effect on your work?)

Here's your answer, in video format, from Geof.

My name is Ed Healy, and I am the Gamerati

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

Mathias wrote:

Is there any chance we'll ever see the Putrescent Pits of the Amoeboid Gods megadungeon you mentioned some time ago?

Geof answered this question, here: Putrescent Pits of the Amoeboid Gods (Geof McKinney)

My name is Ed Healy, and I am the Gamerati

Re: Ask Geof About Carcosa

funkaoshi wrote:

Have you read any criticisms of the rape and other controversial parts of Carcosa that you felt were interesting, valid, etc. (As opposed to shrill, knee-jerk, etc.)

Geof answered this question.... in this video.

My name is Ed Healy, and I am the Gamerati