Blogging lesson: don’t serialize rules ideas, because you might lose focus mid-stream and then you look stupid. I had every intention of following up the Cleric spell rules with rules for M-U spells and magic items as a whole, but I lost my mojo. Hopefully the Cleric content has provided food for thought for DMs interested in bringing their campaigns to CARCOSA for a one (or more) shot, perhaps improvise additional rules in the same vein if you need them.
I’ve hit a bit of a CARCOSA writers block. I wrote up hex 1110 for a hexcrawl over the holidays, but I’ve never been very satisfied with it and tinkering isn’t leading to any improvements. I wrote a short adventure and outlines for a couple more over the past couple months, but again… something’s just not right with any of it.
I’m putting the blame on Thomas Ligotti and Lord Dunsany. I’ve just read them for the first time and they’ve sort of hijacked my creativity. Ligotti was a mixed bag for me – he’s kind of a one-trick pony, but he does that one trick really well. This is based only on reading Teatro Grottesco so maybe I need to give him more of a chance, but right now I feel no real compulsion to explore. Dunsany also a mixed bag, but I’m much more inspired by his world. Again, this is a guy who does one thing very well. Gods of Pegana is awesome and I’m inspired to create a D&D setting book for it. I think I’d just mash some of Time and the Gods in there as well, mostly just for the evocative names. Going to read Welleran soon and looking forward to it.
But in the past couple days I’ve come back to CARCOSA and found I’ve lost the voice, probably due to cross-contamination from these other authors. I’m working on a beginning hexcrawl, a place from which to launch a CARCOSA campaign — a small village in a relatively tame hex (I’m thinking 1014) with several adventures that can lead to bigger things. Slavers to hunt down. A sorcerer who gives you a map. Deep Ones doing shitty Deep One stuff. Velociraptor ambushes. Some books from authors of dubious sanity. I’m scavenging the few parts that work from the half-ass shit I wrote previously and hopefully can use those as a springboard to create the rest. Skimming non-standard sources to expand my thinking: the Conan boxed set, Talislanta, Stars w/out Number… I even peeked inside F.A.T.A.L. for the first time in a while. Going over hexcrawls in Fight On! with a fine-toothed comb.
But I need to get back into the proper creative frame of reference, so I’m re-reading Supplement V in order to calibrate. As always, I’m reading Swords & Stitchery, which can be dangerous because it threatens to send me off on a Terminal Space trajectory. And I’ve just discovered Songs that the Hyades shall sing…, which I’ve only glanced at thus far but it already has me not quite back in the saddle, but at least looking thoughtfully at the horse. And then there’s JOESKYTHEDUNGEONBRAWLER, who needs no introduction.
Probably a “This Is CARCOSA” post or two would work wonders. More coming soon, hopefully…
The Doomed World CARCOSA 
I am thrilled to see you post again! Your blog was one of the first I began reading when I discovered Supplement V CARCOSA a few months ago. “The Doomed World of Carcosa” was a huge inspiration for me to start the “Songs That The Hyades Shall Sing”.
It got me to write up some of my old campaign ideas and mix them up with Geoffrey McKinney’s vision of Carcosa. Also, thanks for the mention in your post! 🙂 (hmmm maybe I should do a blog update in near future myself…)
Hope to see more!
More drawings, too. That Goar is a slice of Bakshi.
Welcome back! Check out today’s entry! I was using your entry on D&D as inspiration & guideline!
To quote Paris Hilton, “That’s hot.”
I like Ligotti (based on Teatro Grottesco) but it’s been hard tracking down more of his stuff… no idea of how he varies.
What do you perceive as his ‘one trick’?
When I reach the burnout moment on a project I’ve found it’s usually best not to fight it but to get far and fast away from the subject… if possible. I usually find inspiration in something that bears no resemblance to the thing I’m was trying to find inspiration about.
The first story “Purity” really blew me away, and “The Red Tower” is something I want to drop into CARCOSA. But the rest of them blend into one another with a pervasive sameness: creepy narrator who’s either a frustrated artist or works a mind-numbing job, whacked out world that is taken at face value, pervasive sickness, the precisely repetitive style. For the first couple stories I was really enthusiastic, then the same themes keep getting explored and it turns a little wearying, and by the end I had soured even on the ones I originally liked. Lots of theme and style, but very little gets done with it. I like the world he’s building, but I’d like to see some new views of it.
I stepped away from writing for all of February and March. Now i’m finally feeling a little bit of an itch, and the preliminary results are encouraging.
I am a big fan of Thomas Ligotti. After reading his later work I am feeling he is better in smaller doeses, though. Teatro Grottesco is great, but it is really one big story in multiple parts.
Ligotti have this skill of making you feel something is very wrong with the very reality itself. Somehow basic phrases pick up sinister meaning, that is his big gift of how to use language like that.
When it comes to ideas, his collections like Songs of a Dead Dreamer or Grimscribe, which are more like proper collections of individual stories are worth checking out. Thus the stories therein are more varied.
I find it interesting that you have read Ligotti to catch some wierdness inspiration for Carcosa. When I first read Carcosa, and when I first read Kult, I felt the whole world turn very bleak. There was a new desperate wrongness of the world. Just like when I read Ligotti. Up until now I had not been able to connect those two feelings. Thank you.