Switching Gears to the Unknown and the Weird

I've been delving fairly heavily into Carcosa during my previous bed bound two days.  It was probably the prefect way to first really read Carcosa, as it made the sick stuff seem even sicker and otherworldly.  I haven't looked that closely at the rituals, as I suspect they won't come much into use except as tools for NPCs, plot hooks and the like, but I did start to poke around the Hex Crawl, and there is much to like.  I'll return to Carcosa later.

In the meantime, I've been spending more time reading the Isle of the Unknown, which is a more standard fantasy style Hex Crawl.  Much to like here.  I could run a campaign using this fairly easily with what I've reads far.  (Carcosa would be much harder for ME to run without some heavy tweaking - but that's me.

I've also spent some time with the Weird Adventures from Trey Causey.  This is actually fun to read!  I'm not saying that reading RPG material isn't enjoyable, but Trey works well with the Pulpy source material. He had fun putting this together and it show.  More when I've gotten thru more.

Off the next two days (thanks Doc!) so expect me to get some more non-feverish reading done. I still don't know which came first: me reading Carcosa or me getting sick ;)

Crap, I need to get back to building my LotFP Bard class too!

Carcosa (and Isle of the Unknown) Have Landed!

I guess there is an advantage to living in the Big Apple - I get Raggi's stuff from the other side of the pond relatively quickly.

Now, I've been slowly pouring over the PDFs of both Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown for the last few weeks.  They were impressive, but with so much else on my plate, both on the virtual review pile and at work, I never really gave them a solid look.  I have the dead tree versions in my hand now and I am beyond impressed.

Raggi (and of course, the writer of these two releases, Geoffrey McKinney) has added two amazing books that I'll be happy to pass around at the next Gathering of Fools, so as to show my friends the quality works of independent RPG publishers these days.

Carcosa is printed on high quality, parchment lile paper.  At least, that's what I'm calling it, I have no expertise in the field of paper.  Unlike Vornheim, I don't have to go blind trying to read it.  First printing of 2000 copies.  Woot!  I am very excited to snuggle up with this.

Isle of the Unknown uses a stiffer, smoother paper.  Why do I care about paper when 90% of my RPG purchase are in PDF?  How the f' should I know?  The full color artwork is on just about every page.  It looks good and feels good.  I'm going to need to break out my book light for these.

Carcosa includes a fold out map / periodic table / entities and ritual key on a thin glossy cardboard.  Isle of the Unknown includes a poster of the cover / keyed map of the Isle of the Unknown on the same type of paper / cardboard.  Pretty neat.

We also get maps for the two books printed on a vinyl / latex thingie (think of one of those maps thorn into you Ultima / EQ game box, but not on cloth).  The hex numbers aren't easily readable, but  these are more novelty then anything else, so that's forgivable.  All in all, an excellent surprise in the mail today.

I'll follow up with reviews over the next week or two.

The Carcosa PDF Is Pretty Damn Good!

There, I said it.  Jim did a very good job with the hyperlinks in the Carcosa PDF.  I've been clicking and clicking.  And clicking some more.  Artwork looks pretty too.  Now if I can only read the text and make my sanity roll...

Yes, I just ordered the Isle of the Unknown and Carcosa in hardcover from Raggi's site.

My peek last nite at Isle of the Unknown was my reviewer copy.  I was impressed with my short look, but I'll be putting time into reading these two over the weekend.  I have a feeling they will both require more then a mini-review to do them justice.

Hopefully I won't come out too scarred from the experience ;)