Warriors of the Red Planet Update

Art by Frank Frazetta... as if you didn't know.

It had been a while since we last heard from Al and Thomas Denmark about their Baroomian Swords & Wizardry supplement Warriors of the Red Planet. In our last installment back in September, the game had gone into layout. Then, after many long months of silence, Thomas posts a sample of how the final book might look.

I'll give you a moment to look it over.

Wow! Full color and professional layout! If this looks anything like the final product then Warriors looks even better than I ever expected! I would have been satisfied with a black and white .PDF composed on MS Word or Pages, but Thomas springs this serious professional shit on us. Work of this calibre cries out for a hardcover!

Thomas says that he is trying to get this finished by the time the House of Mouse releases "John Carter" to theaters in early March. Personally, While I'd just be happy if he get's this released by GaryCon where I can run some pick-up games, it's a excellent date to shoot for. In my college Mass Communications courses, they taught us the concept of "synergy:" using multiple forms of products or media to promote another.  Even if the movie flops horribly, it will get gamers excited about Barsoom in particular and the Swords and Planet genre in general. The best thing is that despite the entertainment industry's sway over copyright and IP law, most of Burroughs' work from this era (including the early John Carter tales) are in the public domain, you won't have to fork over huge licensing fees to Robert Iger to get in on the fun.

Along with Warriors, I'm hoping to see other game companies ride the "John Carter" bandwagon and follow suit and produce a whole bunch of Barsoomian-style products. Paizo is going to release their Distant Worlds campaign setting book for Pathfinder late next month. I was expecting Adamant Entertainment to come out with some more material for their Mars campaign setting for Savage Worlds and d20, but they seem more preoccupied with other projects (apparently they seem more pre-occupied with a RPG based on a pulp movie from the 80s than cashing in on an upcoming media event). However, more is needed. We need scenarios. We need airship deck plans to play out epic boarding actions taking place high above the Martian deserts and  paper miniatures for those who can't paint. Speaking of which, there are plenty of excellent "NOT Barsoom" figures available on the market which I will be reviewing in very near future, but perhaps will shall see more and more come out as the months go by. (Hey! Reaper! Are you guys listening?)

While we are waiting, I'll be here, plotting and planning my own adventures on the Red Planet (and possibly beyond). Of course, being a Burroughs purist and not a Disney-fied Family Values Fascist, my Martians will be appropriately attired...

Art by Chad Spliker

My answers to the Porn Lord's questions...

Zak S., everyone's favorite game-blogger/game-writer/game-artist/erotic-performer has published the following questionnaire to GMs on his blog. Here are my answers:

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

A trap a long-dead that a human minister devised to imprison a "demon" (i.e a Colour Out Of Space) for a Call of Cthulhu game I ran once: a stone box with Elder Signs inscribed on each wall. The minister would sit in the box as bait and trip the box shut entrapping the being as energy being sucked him dry.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Back in March of last year where I ran a Humanspace Empires game at GaryCon.

3. When was the last time you played?

Last Sunday. We played Star Frontiers.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

For a The Day After Ragnarok campaign I had planned: "Follow our adventurers through the wastelands of Wisconsin as they journey to the rowdy, libertine, pirate city of Green Bay!"

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Dream up new and better ways to torment them.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Chips, peanuts, pizza, burgers, subs, gyros, fried chicken, sushi, lasagna, prime rib, crown roast, turducken, antelope, bengal tiger, humpback whale, velociraptor, babies (as an atheist, I must keep up appearances)...

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Right now, at this point in my failed and useless life, I find living physically exhausting. Seriously, right now my intellectual plate is rather full and I prefer to play than GM. It's less taxing on my tired, overtaxed, noggin.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

A futuristic marine cadet is on his first cruise in a long-running science fiction campaign.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Depends on the setting. If we're playing the Standard Fantasy Tolkien-Inspired RPG Setting (TM) then no, we're not at all serious. It's been done so often that a little humor thrown in makes it more palatable. If the game is something new and different, then we start to treat the game seriously (unless the game is meant to be funny).

10. What do you do with goblins?

Serve them boiled with stuffed kobold.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Well, there was my Easter-time zombie apocalypse pitch.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

(chanting) "RAPE THAT PIG! RAPE THAT PIG RAPE THAT PIG!!!"

You had to be there to appreciate the proper context.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?


Pathfinder Core Rules to remind myself why I like OSR-style games.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

I'd say my favorite is Bryan Gibson, who's done some amazing work (particularly mechanical designs) for Traveller over the years.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Not yet...

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

I introduced my friends to Deadlands: Reloaded by running a quick, page-scenario featuring a rogue Automaton trying to defend his former family from Darius Hellstromme's goons. Lots of gun slinging, dopey cowboy accents, and misadventures with dynamite.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

A warm, clean, room with lighting that can be dimmed for scary games with a large table to accommodate maps and miniatures, comfy chairs, wi-fi, bookshelves with all the needed books, easy kitchen access, and about three or four nude Tsolyáni clan maidens to fan me or lounge seductively on plush cushions at my feet.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Dungeons & Dragons and Transhuman Space; the opposite ends of spectrum between high fantasy and hard science fiction.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

M.A.R. Barker and Carl Sagan.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

I like players who can actually get into their character rather than someone who just "runs" a character like a glorified wargaming ministure. Give us something to imagine! Give your character a funny voice and a personality. Make me laugh. Make me wince. Don't just sit there and blandly announce what your PC is doing. Give your character some life!

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

Using my education and background in journalism, I helped a GM by role-playing a reporter for an interlude in an online sci-fi game.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

Two come to mind:

• Tékumel: Savage Worlds Edition
• Buck Rogers XXVc: Second Edition

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Not in very much depth. People either give me very odd look or smile condescendingly as if I were a mentally handicapped child when I mention that I game.

A flock of Mi-Go.

After seeing "The Whisperer in Darkness" I've been going over my collection of Lovecraftian miniatures for future Cthulhoid role-playing. Here are some samples:

Mothers, lock up your daughter's... brains. (RAFM)

"Back! Back foul beings from beyond the stars!" (RAFM and Reaper)

Dungeons & Dragons! Now with Pop-O-Matic Dice!

As I'm sure we've all heard, WotC has announced that the fifth edition of D&D is now in the works.

Yawn...

Unless WotC reinvents the wheel and comes up something truly spectacular that revitalizes tabletop fantasy role-playing (highly doubtful), I 'm just not interested. I've my got copies of Moldvay/Cook, the first edition trifecta (Player's Guide, DM's Guide, Monster Manual), my collection of retro-clone PDFs and books, Empire of the Petal Throne, my remote control, my ashtray...

AND THAT'S ALL I NEED! 

Oh Drune Where Art Thou?

Last year, I came across Ix, a fantastic gaming blog run by a fellow known as The Drune. The Drune's approach to the OSR was a unique as it was entertaining and the ideas that sprung from his site where nothing short of inspiration. One of these ideas was to take M.A.R. Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne, tweak the rules here and there, then rewind the game's history back to the time before Tékumel got dumped into a Bethróm when far-future humans, Pé Chói, Ahoggyá, etc. cruised the galaxy in starships, wore ray guns on their hips, and wielded fantastic psychic powers.

The result? Humanspace Empires: The sci-fi OSR experiment that stole my black and cynical heart last year!

After some successful playtest games, both on and off-line, everything seemed to be going fine. Then, last summer, Drune went off to deal with his "real life" job. Then *poof!* He was gone.

Does anyone know if Drune is still alive and well? I shot him an email a couple of week ago to find out if he was still with us, but I didn't get a response.

Perhaps if we all send a massive psychic vibration through the hyperspacial void, he will return to us.

Drune...  DRUUUUUUUUUUNE...

My 25th anniversary...

Twenty-five-years-ago, December 1986, a couple of days after Christmas. I was 12-years-old and my Uncle Bob had sent me a $25 gift certificate for Toys R Us. I was rummaging the isles, at the Brookfield, Wisconsin store, looking for something really cool to go along with the gyroscope and the box of microscope slides I had already picked out. I was passing the "Clearance" bin and looked in hoping there was an out-of-print Atari game cartridge or some other bargain.

It was then I saw it.

The game that started me down the dark path.

One of the corners was crushed, but it was $8 and the Larry Elmore's cover art was sooooo cool. I had only heard of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but never played them before. My curiosity and love of all things science fiction got the better of me. I snatched it up right away.

Thus, my life as a gamer began, and I don't think it's going to end until I'm a corpse.

Review: Carcosa (PDF Edition)

Can't you feel the pure EVIL emanating from the cover art?

The wait is over fellow slasher-flick self-abusers! Jim Raggi at Lamentations of the Flame Princess has just released the new-and-improved Second Expanded Edition of Geoffrey McKinney's immortal (and infamous) Carcosa! This time, there is no censored "Expurgated" version for the faint of heart. Now we are made to stare into the bottomless abyss of Lovecraftian horror and witness all the blood, guts, gore, ritualistic rape, human sacrifice, and tentacles (Oh! So many tentacles!) that goes with it.

This should be fun!

I heard about Carcosa as I was just getting into the OSR phenomenon and just as the "controversy" surrounding the First Edition was dying out. In full accordance of the Streisand Effect, I purchased a .PDF copy directly from Geoffrey McKinney. At the time, I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but I soon discovered that I was greatly impressed by that little document. It showed me that it didn't take much work to replace the bland, boring, "traditional" RPG fantasy setting and replace it with something weird and wonderful. I desperately want to purchase the hardcover version of this book. However, with shipping costs figured in, it's just a little out of my price range at this time. (I'm only a poor, underpaid, corporate grunt.) Therefore, I'm reviewing the .PDF edition available from LotFP as well as from DrivethruRPG.com/RPGNOW.com.

For the uninitiated, Carcosa was originally a fictional city created by Ambrose Bierce, later expanded upon by Robert Chambers, and eventually incorporated into H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In McKinney's version, Carcosa is a planet located somewhere in the Hyades star cluster. The setting is an amalgam of Lovecraft, Howard, and Burroughs, as primitive--and multi-colored--humanoids struggle to live, thrive, and survive on a hostile world surrounded by dark sorcery, powerful alien technology, and creatures from beyond the veil of space and time. McKinney does not bog down the reader with reams and reams of flavor text, giving the GM just enough background story to get started and make Carcosa their own.

The first portion of the book is dedicated to setting-specific rules. This new edition of the rules are designed to work with Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, but with a little tweaking, can be used with any version of the Gygax/Arneson fantasy game, either original or retro-clone. Humans are the only race available. However, they come in a myriad of skin colors from candy-apple red to transparent with only the bones showing beneath! The only two classes available to the player character are the traditional Fighter and a new class: The Sorcerer. Sorcerers operate just like a Fighter, but has the capability of casting blasphemous rituals (more on those later). Along with new magic system, any character also has the potential of possessing psychic powers depending on their INT, WIS, and CHA scores.

One of the more unique rules in Carcosa is how character hit points are determined. Under these rules, hit points are not generated on creation and the hit dice used are not "fixed" per class. Instead, at the start of combat, all characters and monsters not only roll to find out what their hit points will be that round, but they all must determine what type of hit dice they'll be using. Therefore, in one combat it's possible for a player to need to roll d12s to determine hit dice in one encounter, but blow their roll and have to roll d4s the next. These rules throw a bit of randomness into the game where the party has to wonder if it's really worth fighting that swarm of monsters or band of tribesmen or try a more diplomatic approach.

Now we get to the part of the book that caused all the ruckus the first time around: Sorcerous Rituals. Forget the usual Vancian magic you find in most fantasy games, the rituals found in Carcosa are designed to conjure, torment, bind, imprison, or banish the various monstrous deities found in the setting. Many of them require components that are found at various locations, but all of the rituals, except for spells of Banishment, require human sacrifices that usually must be tortured and/or sexually violated in hideous ways.

Now, if you find the rituals horrific and very unsettling, GOOD! (Also, congratulations! You're not a sociopath!) They're supposed to be. In the tales of Howard and Lovecraft, magic was the pursuit of the mad and depraved. It was something that the protagonists did not use lightly, if at all, and you could be sure that it very often had some nasty side effects. These ceremonies are usually meant to be witnessed by the party before they swoop down to dispatch the insane NPC summoner-of-all-things-chaotic and save the swooning damsel/s. "Good" sorcerer's might try to stick the the Banishment rituals; however, a clever GM could easily create a "lesser of two evil's"where the party must decided whether the lives of a few humans are worth the destruction of everything.

Along with some original monstrosities, the bestiary is full of various creatures that will appear familiar to any Lovecraft aficionado: Deep Ones, Mi Go, Shoggoths, Yithians, Nyarlathotep, etc.. However, McKinney has his own unique interpretations on these terrors, so Mythos fans should not expect anything that's purely "canonical."

The digital edition of Carcosa is perhaps THE most impressive example of PDF technology I have ever seen: Locations on the map are linked to individual hex descriptions, ritual are linked to the various monsters they affect and vice versa, there are links to monsters and rituals in the text of the included adventure. It makes the document incredibly easy to navigate and reference.

The Addendum section includes tables for creating alien weaponry, generating new monsters, disgusting mutations that can afflict your PCs, and others madness. Also, McKinney included his introductory dungeon crawl campaign Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer. Since I always try to avoid reading any scenario or campaigns until I've decided whether I'm going to run them or play in them, I won't review that portion at this time.

Carcosa is a dark, morally ambivalent, and unsettling universe, full of wonders and terrors, that is not for immature or the closed-minded. I would not recommended it for new gamers who are just getting into the hobby, and I would certainly not recommend it for kids (unless they're that rare kind who is wise beyond their years). In other words, it's the perfect setting for adults who have grown tired of the bowdlerization of the hobby since the Satanic Panic and who hanker for an campaign that doesn't treat them like a child.