Hideous dark secrets await...
I received the pdf version of James Raggi’s re-release of Geoffrey McKinney’s infamous Carcosa “supplement V” two days ago, and have been reading it voraciously since. I haven’t received the physical version yet, so can’t comment on that, but my main interest was the content so I’d like to give a review of it here. It’s my first reading of Carcosa – I missed the original version and the controversy surrounding it – so I’m going to review it as if nobody knew what it was. I have wanted this product since I read the controversy, since much of the material contained within it is relevant to my own campaign ideas, which can involve a certain amount of ritual sacrifice and happen in worlds with an underlying morality that I think has similarities to that of the “lawful” or “neutral” residents of Carcosa – that of sometimes making very unpleasant bargains with evil powers in order to further a greater good.
Background
Carcosa is a science-fantasy/swords and sorcery setting, a planet far from earth in which the ancient gods of the cthulhu mythos slumber (and sometimes wake), and humans live in small and scattered settlements, terrified of the evil powers that dominate the world. The appendix to this edition describes the state of Men[sic] nicely thus:
Man has not populated the world of Carcosa with the monsters of his imagination. Instead, the monsters of Carcosa infect the nightmares of man. Nor has man imagined mythological spirits and projected them upon his surroundings, later refining his mythologies with philosophy and theology. The world of Carcosa is fraught with the like of the Old Ones and their spawn, the legacy of the extinct Snake Men, and Sorcery.
Humans were created by the Snake Men and placed on Carcosa as slaves and chattel to be used in vile sorcerous rituals by which the extinct Snake Men summoned, controlled or banished the Old Ones and their related entities. The Snake Men are long gone, but their legacy remains in the world that is presented to us: Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Old Ones, strange mutations and sorcerous effects, and lesser and greater Old Ones who are either imprisoned within our outside the planet, or roaming the planet itself looking for prey. The planet also hosts some Space Aliens, whose artifacts and high-tech items adventurers may be able to find and use.
In this world there is no magic, though there are some psionics. The only magic available to humans is that of sorcery, which enables one to summon, bind, imprison or banish evil entities. However, aside from banishment these sorcerous invocations depend upon rituals which invariably involve the degradation, torture and murder of humans. The 13 races of humans come in distinct colours, and these colours are coded to different rituals; in order to gain power over the elder gods one must find a suitable number of the correct humans of the right colour, age and sex, and then do what is necessary to raise the entity, in a ritual whose contents are themselves difficult to learn, and require precise ingredients collected from rare locations across Carcosa. Being a sorcerer is neither easy nor sensible. Being a sorcerer’s chattel is far, far worse.
So, the world of Carcosa is a brutal and nasty place, where humans were invented to be used, and continue to use each other in the manner that their extinct progenitors planned for them. It is a world where moral decisions are made in a very, very different framework to that of many other fantasy worlds; but it is my contention (and I’ll outline this below) that the moral framework for decisions in Carcosa is simply reflective of a different period in our own history, and the decision to play in Carcosa will simply represent a preference for playing in a different historical milieu to the one we’re all used to. No big deal, really, right?
The Rules
Carcosa is presented as a supplement to Original D&D (OD&D), so it doesn’t present a system per se. Rather, it contains a new character class, the Sorcerer, and some kooky ideas for dice rolling and determining hit dice that I’m not sure I’ll comment on until I’ve played with them. It also presents a wide range of new technological items (of the Space Aliens), new monsters (connected to the Old Ones) and a set of rituals for the Sorcerer. The book also makes clear that on Carcosa there are no PC classes except the Fighter and the Sorcerer (and the Specialist, if you want). There is no magic but sorcery, and no clerical magic of any kind. If you want magic on Carcosa, you have one choice: summon an entity of purest evil, and bend it to your will.
The Sorcerer character seems little different to the Fighter, though I don’t have any OD&D rulebooks so can’t tell the details. Perhaps its XP progression is slower and its saves slightly better, but otherwise it seems broadly similar. In my opinion (and I think Grognardia agreed with me on this) this is a big weakness. The sorcerer is basically a slightly inferior fighter who gains levels more slowly, and can only differentiate him or herself from the Fighter through the long and arduous task of learning a ritual and then binding an entity to his or her will. At this point the sorcerer becomes almost invincible, or dead. I think it might be better if the Sorcerer started off with some differentiating power, such as e.g. a single banishment ritual, or psionic powers. The way the rules are structured, they open the very real possibility that you could start play as a sorcerer with no special abilities or powers of any sort, while your fellow player started off as a fighter with psionics! If, on the other hand, Sorcerers gained psionics from the start and advanced in them slowly, they might be more … enticing. The possibility that one day you can summon Cthulhu and maybe, if you’re lucky, he won’t eat you but will serve you for 72 hours, is not a great lure for the average player. Especially if summoning Cthulhu means you have to rape a couple of children and murder them in a pool of acid.
Also, learning rituals appears to be very difficult, so it’s possible you could play a sorcerer for a lot of levels and never get to use any special powers. So, I can’t see the point of distinguishing the sorcerer from the Fighter.
The Rituals
In truth, the rituals are one of the main reasons I got this book. There are six types of ritual, and only one of them can be conducted without doing something nasty.
- Banish: these drive a specific entity away, for varying times, and are usually quick and easy to perform
- Invoke: these put the sorcerer in contact with some horrific extra-dimensional being that will answer questions that the sorcerer puts to it
- Bind: these grant complete control over the subject entity for a given period of time. At the end of this time, it’s wise to have your banish ritual ready
- Imprison: these trap an entity in some extra-dimensional or subterranean prison, possibly forever, and are the surest way to ensure that it doesn’t come back without the intervention of another sorcerer. All imprisonment rituals seem to involve human sacrifice.
- Conjure: these summon an entity, either from wherever it is now or from its prison. They don’t guarantee control over the conjured entity, however, so it’s a good idea to bind it first
- Torment: these cause a chosen entity to suffer horribly, reducing its hit dice and/or forcing it to obey the sorcerer and/or answer questions
So, it’s possible to see that there are ways in which these rituals, even though they involve human sacrifice, can be for the good of all. In fact, one can imagine a “lawful” sorcerer traveling the earth, forcing every sorcerer he finds to teach him their rituals, then killing them and imprisoning any deities they had the power to conjure. This would involve a lot of pain and slaughter but at the end of such a successful campaign the world would be free of deities and no one but the PC would be able to conjure them again. Is this worth a bit of child murder? Don’t answer me unless you live on Carcosa.
The rituals themselves are very nicely written, in a portentous style that is very evocative of the Cthulhu ethos, and involves a lot of words like “blasphemous,” “ineffable” and “canticle.” The descriptions have an underlying sense of horror, but are themselves clinically written and detailed, capturing both the mechanical elements of the ritual, its arcane meaning and its horrific consequences in just one or two concise paragraphs. They’re also key to establishing the philosophical and theological background of the world of Carcosa, and in my opinion one can’t really properly describe the world without reference to these rituals. Once one has read this tome of rituals, the descriptions of the communities of the world – tiny enclaves of humans, largely the same colour, suspicious of outsiders and often treacherous and warlike – make a great deal of sense. It also sets the tone for a world steeped in horror.
My main criticism of the rituals would be that it’s not clear how they mesh together – does one bind a creature before or after conjuring it? Why would one torment an entity, and what are the key differences between banishment and imprisonment? Ideally, I would have liked a couple of examples of rituals in use: perhaps a description of a sorcerer’s attempts to conjure a particular entity – how he found the ritual, the order in which he enacts them, and the benefits. For a GM’s section this would be particularly useful, since it would enable a GM to work out how to mesh the quest for and consequences of a ritual into adventure planning. Without this we have to work out the details ourselves, which is fine, but I paid 35 euros for this book so I could read the ideas of the person who wrote it, so I’d have liked a few examples or ideas to support the use of rituals in the game. Also, I would like to know more about what one gains from summoning the entities. The entities all have their stat blocks given, but they are largely for combat, and this means that really the sorcerer seems to be just taking a great deal of risks to invoke a great big weapon. It would be nice if conjuring a given beast gave the sorcerer some benefits (like a kind of familiar), so that even without going into combat the sorcerer got some non-Fighter-oriented benefits. Otherwise, why not just go to hex XXXX and grab the Space Alien Tank there – a much safer way to do 4 dice of damage than summoning It of the Fallen Pylons, which, incidentally, requires casting eight Red Men through an extra-dimensional vault into outer space, and making a save vs. Magic at -4 to avoid joining them yourself.
Despite these limitations, the rituals lend the world of Carcosa a particular feeling of grim horror and foreboding that is both very Cthulhu-esque, and very atmospheric even if, like me, you haven’t read much Lovecraft.
Entities, Monsters and Maps
I really like the entities and monsters presented in Carcosa. The entities have evocative, sinister names and are very, very nasty, and the main monsters arise in almost infinite variety through the random generation tables. Robots and cyborgs follow a similar range and would make both interesting allies and formidable adversaries. The book comes with a hex map of a section of Carcosa with two possible encounters for every hex described. Some of these hexes offer opportunities for further adventuring in dungeons or castles or forests, and give simple adventure hooks; others present towns to explore and conquer, or simply monsters or the opportunity to learn rituals, find ancient technology, or uncover strange objects. It’s a really weird and compelling map that sets out a world completely different to the average D&D setting. This world is definitely not to everyone’s tastes – brilliant Yellow-colored men carrying laser pistols and riding mutant dinosaurs to war against Cthulhoid entities is maybe not everyone’s cup of tea – but if you like science fantasy then it has a lot of material to explore.
Presentation
I can’t comment on the physical book, since I haven’t received it, but I certainly can commend the presentation of the pdf format. I’ve been reading it on my iPad, and it’s a joy to use. The pdf is extensively hyperlinked, so if you’re reading a ritual and want to know what the creature it summons is, you can jump to the creature; then you can use the list of rituals related to that entity to jump to a different ritual, or to go back to where you were. Ingredients that can be found in certain hexes include a link to those hexes; if a particular hex in the map is related to other hexes, those hexes are listed next to the text, so you can jump to them. The hex map itself is hyperlinked, so you can click to the description of any hex – sadly, on my iPad the bit of the map I tap doesn’t work, and I get directed instead to the column left of where I wanted to tap, but this is not an insurmountable problem (I just tap slightly more to the right) and I don’t know if it’s a problem in the original text or in its translation to my iPad. It would be nice if the hex descriptions included a link back to the map (perhaps in their name?) so that one could explore the map more rapidly, but this too is not an insurmountable problem. The linking is an excellent idea and really makes the pdf useful.
Other elements of the presentation also really appeal to me. I like the font and the style on the edges of the pages – perhaps the patterns at the top of the page are a little overdone, but they suit the theme. I like the layout of things like rituals and monster descriptions, with the text next to the title and then all the hyperlinks below the title, next to the text; and the artwork suits the world very well. Unlike usual OSR artwork, it’s actually good, and the sketch-like style gives a sense of hurriedly glimpsing horrors, like seeing a massacre through grainy camera footage rather than being a direct eyewitness. This suits the content – especially the rituals and monsters – very well. It’s a very well-presented and laid out text.
The content is also very well written and maintains its Cthulhoid theme pretty much seamlessly across the whole book. This is a fine achievement and really makes the book stand out as a work of fiction as well as a gaming supplement. It’s rare I think to find a world setting that maintains a coherent theme across world content, presentation and writing style, and through the combination of the three builds up a distinct atmosphere. This book does that, in spades, and in that sense I think it’s a masterful work.
I do have some complaints about the content, though. In addition to wanting more detail on the mechanics of rituals, I would have liked more context to the world as a whole. After just a page or two of introduction the book jumps straight into the rules, and further exposition of the background to the world only comes in an appendix, which is very short. Even though the rationale for this – not wanting to bias the Referee, so that they can be free to interpret Carcosa as they like – is perfectly understandable, I’m not into it. I want Geoffrey McKinney’s bias in my interpretation of his world, and I’m adult enough to get rid of what I don’t like. I would like his bias at the beginning, because as it is I have waded through the whole book before I discover why certain rituals use certain colors of human, etc. This problem is even more pronounced in the sample adventure, Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer, which is not really an adventure at all but a more detailed exposition of a single hex in the map. Some context to this adventure, perhaps background details to the tensions and regions of the hex map, how PCs might be drawn into differing factions or adventures, and what the political circumstances in the region are, might help. The motivations and perspectives of the various denizens of the map are not clear, and the reasons for selecting it as an adventure are just not there. It’s usable, but it doesn’t add anything to the main hex map except more detail. I would say this is a general structural problem in the text: it isn’t set out in the flow of Introduction/Body/Conclusion, but just as a random scattering of information with a rough flow. Even the appendix setting out the basic circumstances of humans on Carcosa is missing a conclusion: it just ends with a description of the uses of Space Alien technology. Repeatedly missing this structure means that the work is sometimes contextless, which is a shame given the depth of its actual content.
The layout, though generally excellent, suffers some minor flaws and I think James Raggi may have been guilty of over-egging how much he has added to the original. The editing is sometimes a bit weak, with obvious errors in presentation (such as italicizing a book title, then putting other book titles inconsistently in quotes, in the same paragraph of the introduction). Indeed, there is even an error in the preview – e.g. page 129, Hex 0502, has inconsistent pronoun usage (it and he to describe the Mummy). Also I think the linking is incomplete – sometimes a description will say “cf. [ritual name]” where it would have been much better for it to have the link to [ritual name]. Of course I’m happy to forgive tiny errors, because overall the layout is excellent and the writing very concise and clear.
The Controversy
This review isn’t meant to be about the controversy, but I guess I should cover it. Two (?) of the rituals involve the rape and murder of children, and most of them involve the torture and murder of humans. This has led some to say that Carcosa goes too far, that it brings disrepute onto the gaming world, and that it is itself a morally repugnant work. Well, it’s certainly morally repugnant, but much of what happens in role-playing is morally repugnant. In standard D&D most adventuring parties happily torture and murder captured enemies, and exterminate without mercy those who are racially different to themselves, on the very dubious moral assumption that our enemies have no humanity of any kind. D&D explicitly states that elves have no soul. This is a moral framework that is taken pretty much straight from the playbook of 19th and early 20th century western Imperialism[1], and although we are supposed to believe that our D&D worlds make these ideals objectively true, rather than subjectively true, I don’t think this really exonerates the worldview contained therein.
So the world of D&D as most of us are used to playing it is pretty morally repugnant as well, and it explicitly allows for or describes the use of human and non-human lives as tools for the benefit of the PCs. What else is necromancy but the most horrific misuse of humans? What about the Imprisonment spell, or Dominate Monster? Sure, the Player’s Handbook doesn’t say “You can use this spell to rape anyone you want,” but it’s pretty obvious that this is what evil people will do. And most PC groups at some point have used enslaved/captured/charmed/dominated NPCs as meat in the grinder – for trap finding, for attracting the monster’s first, worst attack, etc. I think the old school blogosphere makes quite a point of doing this with henchmen and hirelings.
So what is the difference with Carcosa? It makes the moral framework of D&D explicit, and I think this offends a lot of people who would otherwise have enacted many of the components of the rituals in their ordinary play. But in presenting this moral framework explicitly, is Carcosa asking us to play in a world that is any different from 15th century Europe, which is the moral exemplar for much of our gaming worlds? What distinguishes a sorcerer in Carcosa from the leaders of the USSR in Afghanistan, any of the players of the Great Game, or the British in India? D&D’s implicit morality is, largely, that of 19th century colonial Europe; Carcosa’s implicit morality is that of crusader Europe or the vikings. If we can accept one, and play it at its most invidious, then we can surely play in the other without compromising ourselves overmuch.
Furthermore, I don’t think these rituals need necessarily be construed as irredeemably evil. In Hex 2013 of the Carcosa map is a village of 497 Jale Men ruled by “She of the Lake.” She is slowly building up an empire and “her hunger for slaves and captives to fuel her sorceries is bottomless.” So if my PC summons the Lurker Amidst the Obsidian Ruins through the murder of four Black Males, and binds it to me using the horrific Primal Formula of the Dweller (which requires my PC to kill 101 Dolm Children with an axe), then sends the Lurker to kill She of the Lake and her main minions, have I not done the world a great service? And what harm have I done to the world if instead of killing the two Yellow Men bandits who survived a bandit attack on my party, I inflict them with a fatal disease and sacrifice them in the ritual called The Encrusted Glyphs of the Deep, which imprisons the Leprous Dweller Below in a primordial city in the Radioactive Desert?
Carcosa presents us with a morally repugnant setting, but as mature adults we can negotiate it in a more sophisticated way than merely averting our eyes and declaring it wrong.
Conclusion
If you like your worlds to be dark, cruel, primitive and full of evil and hard choices, then Carcosa is for you. If you want to play in a Science/Fantasy Swords and Sorcery setting with or without bizarre and evil sorcerous rituals, this book is a great starting point and will give you endless hours of crazed sandbox adventuring. It’s a very nicely laid out, excellently written and well-crafted addition to the gaming world, and I think James Raggi should be encouraged in his efforts. He brings a huge amount of energy and creativity to the OSR, and should be justifiably proud of his achievement in presenting this setting in this format. But of course the ultimate credit should go to Geoffrey McKinney, who has crafted a genuinely disturbing, morally dubious, occasionally repugnant, but very well-written and ingenious world setting that, while not to everyone’s tastes and a little more controversial thank I think is warranted, is definitely a brilliant and amazingly creative work. I hope that he and Raggi will work together again in the future to produce more material of the same high quality and style, and I would definitely like to see more material for the Carcosa setting – whether or not I ever get a chance to play it.
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fn1: please do not take this to mean that I think only Imperialists believed these things; this is the particular historical framework that western Europeans draw upon when they make these moral statements.
Compromise and Conceit 
December 17, 2011 at 4:17 pm
You think that Game of Thrones is misogynistic because it uses gender related swearword and allegedly glamorises prostitution, but you can see the redeeming features of a game that locks cool powers behind rape murder and child abuse? A game that not only uses racism as a source of power, but also colour codes the races for your convenience then says they can’t interbreed?
“Sure, the Player’s Handbook doesn’t say “You can use this spell to rape anyone you want,” but it’s pretty obvious that this is what evil people will do.”
Can you see how the difference between saying it and not saying it is the difference between D&D and FATAL?
“D&D’s implicit morality is, largely, that of 19th century colonial Europe”
This I just have to disagree with. When played in high school, D&D’s morality is of the same cloth as a computer game where the baddies fade away when they hit the floor. It’s a rare game where the players encounter goblin women or orc children. And later on the range of games broadens out to people who never realise that slaughtering orcs is attempted genocide to the ones that justify it as their always chaotic evil to the ones who try to impose modern Western morality on their fantasy world.
To raise an example, how many games/modules have you seen where the PCs have to free a bunch of slaves or lead a slave rebellion? Now how many where they have to capture slaves?
“If we can accept one, and play it at its most invidious, then we can surely play in the other without compromising ourselves overmuch.”
Based on the review you linked to and this one, I disagree. If a group kicks the doors of a dungeon open then kills all the people with green skin there they can just be ignorant. But capturing a bunch of humans with different coloured skin then raping and torturing them is a bit too in your fact for any plausible deniability to apply.
I’m not the sort to bother condemning much, so I won’t bother here either. Some of the ideas (i.e. a world where magic flows purely from dark gods and carries a horrible price, humans being a slave race constructed purely as sacrifices) are interesting and can have fun stuff done with them. If the rituals just required the life blood of different mixes of races (without specifying more than that) then I’d probably defend it on the basis that none of the races correlate to real world races and being true to the theme of magic being a sometimes justifiable evil, but anything where you specify a particular way to kill a kid is something that is better omitted.
December 17, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Here we go again, it’s 2008 all over.
Paul, your comment reads like someone who either hasn’t read the supplement or briefly glanced through it only to find the nasty bits.
“…a game that locks cool powers behind rape murder and child abuse…”
No it doesn’t. No banana for you. Back in 2008 McKinney pointed out:
“Only about 1 out of 6 of the rituals will work without human sacrifice. All of the rituals that require human sacrifice are inherently dangerous for the sorcerer to perform. Conversely, none of the rituals that do NOT require human sacrifice are inherently dangerous to the sorcerer.
In short, evil sorcerers have more guns than do good sorcerers. But the evil sorcerers’ guns often blow-up in their faces (often with fatal results), while the good sorcerers’ guns never blow-up in their faces.”
…which makes a lie of your accusation above. Characters can utilise sorcery in Carcosa without resorting to murder. They may limit themselves in doing so, but they’ll have a much higher survival rate than those risking the more sinister rituals.
It’s important to point out that Carcosa isn’t “a game” but a supplement for the original version of D&D. So people playing a Carcosa campaign are playing D&D, not some new game invented by McKinney.
It’s also important to emphasise (from the book itself):
“Please feel free to add to this book, or to delete or change anything within. There is nothing in this book (or anywhere else) that is “official” Carcosa.”
Within a couple of weeks of releasing Carcosa in 2008, and in response to criticism much like yours, McKinney released the “Expurgated” version, of which he said:
“I went through it and edited the rituals, making them as uncontroversial as the spells in the AD&D Players Handbook.”
The resulting document is 2 pages shorter than the original. Thus, the controversial content consists of about 2% of the book.
I’d love to hear what people think about the other 98%.”
Yep, the Expurgated version was 2 pages shorter than the 96 page original, that’s how little “offensive” content it contained. However, despite that he continued to be foully accused of such things as promoting child molestation, as did anyone found guilty of saying they liked the product.
The truth is that back in 2008 most of the vociferous opponents of the supplement hadn’t actually read it. Thus we saw behaviour akin to a witch hunt. It’s tragic that some gamers turn on their fellows in much the same manner as the Evangelical Christian movement attacked gamers back in the 80s, and with much the same logical basis.
As for the racism accusation, that too suggests an ignorance of the source material. “Humans” on Carcosa are not a single species, but rather separate races. To quote the book “Snake-Men genetically engineered the thirteen races of man as sacrifices for their sorcerous rituals.” Carcosan men are not divinely created beings, but lab rats of an extinct inhuman race.
It’s fine to say “I don’t like it”. It’s unfair but OK to judge an entire work on just a minute part of it (despite the fact that we gamers can and do pick and choose which bits we’ll use from any game or supplement – the Expurgated version proved that the material in question wasn’t indispensable). It’s dishonest and unfair to infer or accuse another of being immoral simply because they have an opposing opinion, especially when based on such flimsy and inaccurate evidence.
December 17, 2011 at 9:51 pm
I was hoping not to get too bogged down in the controversy, but I guess it’s to be expected, so …
Paul, my problems with Game of Thrones were also about the eroticization of rape and its acceptance as a normal part of social relations (e.g. the constant threats of rape in ordinary court life for the elder sister). This is not a facet of Carcosa at all. There’s no sense in which its pornographic or salacious or titillating, and the tone is completely different to, say, the Gor novels. Also, there is no racism that I can see in this book – there are no differences between the races and no sense in which the races have different racially inherited moral traits. They are all exactly equal, with no moral or physical difference except their skin colour and the rituals they are components of. This is radically different from the D&D that the game inherits from, and I can’t see how it can be seen as racist. Of course there are the common problems of sexism in these kinds of games – the assumption that the Sorcerer is male is built into the rituals, and everywhere we read about the race of “Men” and the PCs are always referred to as “he,” etc. But I can’t see in the rituals themselves any particularly pornographic or eroticized elements. They’re purely and simply descriptions of evil, like a how-to guide or something, just exactly what you would expect if satanism is real, and there’s no requirement for anyone to participate in them to achieve character fulfilment. The game gives you an open question about what you’re willing to do to achieve power. It’s an interesting question in light of the kinds of things that players are willing to do in ordinary D&D.
Some might say it’s easy to construct this game as one in which the Sorcerer class is an NPC class, or PC sorcerers only use banishment spells. You can read the entire section on rituals as a description of what the PCs need to avoid or be opposed to, kind of background material for describing the evil of the world. Or you can treat this world setting as an unplayable one, and see the rituals as an attempt to describe the reality that underlies the Cthulhu mythos. I personally don’t think this works – I think the game is designed to be played with sorcerers as sorcerers doing sorcerous things, it’s an integral part of the package. I would even say that McKinney’s claim that one can play a “lawful” or good sorcerer opposed to Cthulhoid evil without ever committing a ritual sacrifice is slightly disingenuous. The most “good” thing a sorcerer can do is not to banish an entity, but to imprison them, and imprisonment exacts a heavy toll in human suffering. So I think the more difficult moral question that this game asks is, are you willing to play in a world where defeating evil will require a terrible price in human lives and terrible acts by those opposed to the evil? I find these questions interesting and compelling, and in my experience they make for a fun gaming experience. But I agree that the level of detail in this game is not necessary to enjoy exploring that type of dilemma, and these books are definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. I certainly accept that many people will think these things are “better omitted,” and I don’t think they’re wrong (and as you know, I don’t have much interest in the “free speech” issues connected with this sort of problem).
When I talk about D&D’s implicit morality, I don’t mean the morality of the games as adults play them in all their diversity (though actually I guess I implied that in the post). I mean the morality set out in the rulebooks, which is a pretty shallow and colonial view of race, and elides a whole bunch of obvious evils in its discussion of magic and war. Just as it is played in many ways by many players, so I’m sure Carcosa will be (if it is playable). Maybe I should change that part of the post …
David, thanks for commenting here. I don’t think Paul is accusing anyone of being immoral simply because they have an opposing opinion, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go down the accusatory path (he even explicitly refuses to condemn it, the wishy-washy bastard). Also, I have to dispute your claim that the controversial content consists of about 2% of the book. While it may only be 2% in volume, it contributes a huge amount to the tone of the setting, and I don’t think you can assess it on word count. I haven’t read the expurgated version but I can’t imagine it has the same sense of horror or evil that the full version has. These rituals, for good or bad, set the tone of the book. They distinguish it from D&D through their willingness to explore the world of forbidden magic, and they make explicit the possibility that the players can enact fantasies of horrible deeds perpetrated for no reason but naked power. They’re a very important part of the book. What I find fascinating about this setting is the possibility of tortured moral decisions: of deciding whether or not to commit mass murder in the aim of a greater good, and where such decisions take you. Just as D&D’s race politics strips some “facts” (like moral inferiority of some races) of their scientific uncertainty, and in making them true suddenly changes the moral weight attached to deeds like genocide; so this setting brings to life the notion of absolute evil, and changes the moral calculus attached to decisions about sacrificing the few to save the many. In the real world, warmongers throw young men to their deaths for dubious reasons and often to suit the banal needs of realpolitik, and decisions are made which are fraught with complexity and compromise. But in Carcosa, absolute evil is real and the decision to throw those lives away in order to end it takes on a different moral weight. I think that’s an interesting new perspective for D&D, and refreshing compared to the comfortable knowledge that you never need to be introspective about the bad guys you killed.
I guess this controversy has been done to death, and I’m not sure if McKinney himself ever bothered to suggest that there could be any moral lessons underlying his setting. But I think there are many different approaches one can take in this setting, and some of them lead to some interesting questions about how people would actually have to behave if these ultimate evils were real and people knew about them. It’s dark and nasty, but it intrigues me.
December 18, 2011 at 1:25 am
Excellent review and refreshing take on the underlying implications of the archetypal D&D milieu. McKinny has really got something interesting here.
December 18, 2011 at 5:27 am
“I don’t think Paul is accusing anyone of being immoral simply because they have an opposing opinion, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go down the accusatory path…”
I certainly wasn’t accusing Paul of imposing labels, but there is definitely a subtle inference underlying his comment. On the Expurgated version versus the original, I have both and the former reads much like the latter, losing none of the bleak sense of hopelessness and horror.
OH and I meant to add to my comment that, like Chas above, I too found this an interesting and well-written review.
December 18, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Thanks for the positive comments, Chas and David.
December 19, 2011 at 10:52 am
“Paul, your comment reads like someone who either hasn’t read the supplement or briefly glanced through it only to find the nasty bits.”
I explicitly said “Based on the review you linked to and this one…”
Please note that I also said I didn’t condemn the overall thing. Just that I felt some elements went too far in their graphic nature. I saw precisely one of those in the older review (“An eleven year old girl must be raped eleven times and strangled with her own hair to Summon the Amphibious Ones.”) My criticism is muted as my exposure is small. I reserve the right to hate everything else about it (from artwork to mechanics to author’s name) at a later date if ever get more exposure.
”It’s important to point out that Carcosa isn’t “a game” but a supplement for the original version of D&D. So people playing a Carcosa campaign are playing D&D, not some new game invented by McKinney.”
Why is that important? I never said they weren’t. I made a comment about morality of play in D&D not being as colonially based as Faustus claims. My assumption there is that we can assess D&D morality based on player ignorance/indifference rather than Faustus’s divining over musty text. Though I believe that in part because Faustus concludes that every text is racist/sexist, which makes the conclusion both foregone and pointless.
”I’d love to hear what people think about the other 98%”
Well let’s see. I said “Some of the ideas … are interesting and can have fun stuff done with them.” Again, I just said that gruesome descriptions went too far.
”As for the racism accusation, that too suggests an ignorance of the source material.”
Yeah. Before that complaint works on this blog you need to go read Faustus’s earlier posts on goblins and orcs implicitly and Westrons explicitly representing black people or other races. I also said “humans being a slave race constructed purely as sacrifices” was cool. Constructed there was an explicit reference to the nature of humanity as a created race in the setting, so it appears I’ve managed to grasp what you felt was a key point.
“It’s fine to say “I don’t like it”.”
I didn’t.
”It’s unfair but OK to judge an entire work on just a minute part of it”
I actually said I disliked the minute part of it. I don’t think I need to read 96 other pages to say I dislike 2 of them that cover child abuse (or abuse of anyone) in more detail than I like in my games.
”It’s dishonest and unfair to infer or accuse another of being immoral simply because they have an opposing opinion, especially when based on such flimsy and inaccurate evidence.”
What luck I didn’t do that. I said “anything where you specify a particular way to kill a kid is something that is better omitted.” I stand by that opinion and would actually suggest it’s a very good opinion to have. I urge you to embrace this opinion too.
Let me turn this question around on you. Do you feel that the 2 pages of material is critical? If not, why not just say as much as “You need to kill X Orange mena and Y Yellow women in a horrible sacrifice” instead of “An X year old Yellow girl needs to be abused X times then killed”? You’ve said that the two omitted pages don’t change the tone. I’m actively in favour of the moral debate that Faustus says this promotes because I think it’s a fascinating debate.
I get the feeling you’re fighting the last war. My comments were very mild except for the first paragraph which teases Faustus for endorsing this but abusing HBO’s Game of Thrones [1].
Unlike Faustus I am a fan of free speech for the sake of free speech. I do embrace the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. [2] I just have to agree with detractors when/if they say things like “This things bring the hobby into disrepute” because the some things games are better without. And instructions on how killing kids in horrible ways to gain power is true even in a fictional universe. It adds nothing to the game that a less demonstrative sacrifice wouldn’t but does give wowsers ammunition.
@Faustus:
” They are all exactly equal, with no moral or physical difference except their skin colour and the rituals they are components of.”
This is only true of the human (PC) races in the setting. In D&D you dislike goblins/orcs being made explicitly evil/lesser than the PC races. But in this setting the elder beings sound like they’re straight Cthulhu ports: always eldritch horrors that can only be dealt with via banishment or imprisonment. Why does your condemnation of racism only extend to bipedal races? Can’t you see the essential humanity of the octopoid horrors underneath a thin mask of “Other”-ness?
For shame.
[1] On a related note, do you think HBO’s Game of Throne’s is overtly sexist? Because Faustus does.
[2] Not least due to an earnest belief that the theatre is on fire.
December 20, 2011 at 5:46 am
“I reserve the right to hate everything else about it (from artwork to mechanics to author’s name) at a later date if ever get more exposure.”
Naturally.
“”It’s important to point out that Carcosa isn’t “a game” but a supplement for the original version of D&D. So people playing a Carcosa campaign are playing D&D, not some new game invented by McKinney.”
Why is that important? I never said they weren’t.”
Sorry, I thought you were specifically talking about Carcosa when you said “a game that locks cool powers behind rape murder and child abuse”.
“Before that complaint works on this blog you need to go read Faustus’s earlier posts on goblins and orcs implicitly and Westrons explicitly representing black people or other races.”
OK, I had no idea that you two were having a debate that spanned multiple blog posts, I didn’t mean to intrude. I do believe that comparing the colours of the “humans” in Carcosa to the real world races of our world is clearly misrepresenting the author’s vision. Carcosa skin colours are bright, garish and artificial looking:
“Skin color is pronounced and vivid. A Green Man’s skin, for example, is as green as grass. Black Men have inky black skin. Bone Men are transparent, with only their bones opaque. White Men are white as bleach.”
My point being that these colours aren’t the skin colours we are familiar with here on earth. No Carcosan could pass as a human if they walked on Earth. So once again, brandishing the racism label in reference to the Carcosa supplement seems weak. But if your comments have nothing to do with Carcosa and everything to do with a previous argument between you and FN then disregard all I’ve just written.
““It’s fine to say “I don’t like it”.
I didn’t.”
Nor did I say you did. 🙂
“”It’s dishonest and unfair to infer or accuse another of being immoral simply because they have an opposing opinion, especially when based on such flimsy and inaccurate evidence.”
What luck I didn’t do that.”
And what luck that I didn’t accuse you of accusing. I do however stand by the opinion that your first paragraph of your first comment very subtly infers a link between an individual’s personal morals and their approval of any game that contains certain elements. However, if that was not your intention at all I apologise.
“I stand by that opinion and would actually suggest it’s a very good opinion to have. I urge you to embrace this opinion too.”
I do actually. But I also understand why the author included such references as an attempt to illustrate to inhumanity and utter horror of his imagined world. I do think it could’ve been achieved less graphically and have said so publicly before, although as that was a previous conversation with someone else you wouldn’t know that.
“I get the feeling you’re fighting the last war.”
You’re probably right Paul. And I get the sense that I’ve interrupted an ongoing private conversation.
“Unlike Faustus I am a fan of free speech for the sake of free speech.”
Meaning you accord Geoffrey McKinney the same right, however distasteful to some? I too believe in free speech, but without a sense of responsibility and consequences it can be used as a tool to rob others of their rights (and no I’m not accusing you of that).
December 20, 2011 at 10:57 am
Right! Now that we’ve established that neither of you said what the other person thought you said …
David, you haven’t walked into a private conversation, except inasmuch as no one except Paul reads my blog. It’s a historical debate here: I put up a series of posts on Tolkien and racism, and also tend to point out such flaws in books I review. Paul was trying to do a gotcha on me, but the races as presented in Carcosa don’t meet the basic conditions for me to consider McKinney’s work racist. Which brings us to this:
It’s true, I should embrace Infernal Outsiders as well. I believe they prefer the term “differently pseudopodded” to the more commonly used “octopoid horror.” I can certainly embrace this form of moral relativism, and I think the elder gods would agree with us. Pass me a few children, won’t you, and we’ll ask them!
In fact, I think I’d much rather invoke the opinion of the Elder Gods than open up the debate on free speech here. Next person to do so gets thrown into the gaping maw of Nyarlathotep!
December 20, 2011 at 11:39 am
“Sorry, I thought you were specifically talking about Carcosa when you said “a game that locks cool powers behind rape murder and child abuse”.”
Hmm. Fair point. Sorry, partly I meant game in that sense of an “this thing that we’re discussing” but mostly in the sense of “I wanted to tease Faustus about his choices of when to raise objections and need a word to describe the thing discussed”.
“OK, I had no idea that you two were having a debate that spanned multiple blog posts, I didn’t mean to intrude.”
No worries and no intrusion.
”I do believe that comparing the colours of the “humans” in Carcosa to the real world races of our world is clearly misrepresenting the author’s vision.”
I agree that the nature of the races came across clearly in the reviews so that it was clear that they weren’t real world races. But I disagree that these mean they can’t be used to examine and discuss real world racism (though real world racism has less “I’ll cut you up to get magic powers”). Races such as elf/human/dwarf can be used to demonstrate racism in a non-confrontational way in a game and the Carcosan races also allow that.
Where I think Faustus and I disagree is that he believes games (such as D&D) have all sorts of racism built into them by the authors (colonialist/imperialist) assumptions I tend to assume the authors just needed an enemy to fight in a game that grew out of strategic tabletop battle games.
“““It’s fine to say “I don’t like it”.
I didn’t.”
Nor did I say you did. ”
Touché.
”I do however stand by the opinion that your first paragraph of your first comment very subtly infers a link between an individual’s personal morals and their approval of any game that contains certain elements. However, if that was not your intention at all I apologise.”
Mostly I wanted to query Faustus’s arbitrary choices on when to get offended. I’m the one here who explicitly rejects being bound by his prior moral choices. You lot (including Faustus) are the ones attempting to defend a consistent moral vision (which I regard as a mug’s game – it’s too easy to find corner cases that break “rules”).
”And I get the sense that I’ve interrupted an ongoing private conversation.”
Hmm, I concede that my ongoing nettling of Faustus does form a conversation, but please don’t feel it’s private in any way . Faustus would be most wroth if I drove away other commentators by being cliquish [1]. Stay! Enjoy the ambience. Join the chorus telling Faustus that we just can’t see the conservative imperialist assumptions he claims to divine from Lord of the Rings. [2]
““Unlike Faustus I am a fan of free speech for the sake of free speech.”
Meaning you accord Geoffrey McKinney the same right, however distasteful to some? I too believe in free speech, but without a sense of responsibility and consequences it can be used as a tool to rob others of their rights…”
I agree he has the right to write (almost) whatever he wants. But I also support the right to raise objections and make suggestions that he voluntarily don’t write some things. Gamers get enough poorly justified scorn poured on them, providing some justification is something better avoided. Which links back to your comment about a sense of the consequences of what you write.
[1] And I’d miss the opportunity to use the word wroth! Thank god I can finally tick that off my list of words to type.
[2] I suspect that some of his divinations from novels that he claims are biased political tracks would take communions with Dark Gods to understand.
December 20, 2011 at 11:41 am
Rats. The boxes I see in the prior comment were attempts as smilies that have copied/pasted poorly. Please read them as friendly squares endeavouring to communicate humour or welcome 🙂
December 20, 2011 at 12:09 pm
I do think this is an important consideration, and I think I defended Greg Cristopher a while back when he made such a suggestion about some piece of work (I can’t remember what). But fortunately this is an OSR product, so it’s not going to be noticed by anyone important…
December 20, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Yeah, you say that now, but the instant Fox News googles “D&D” and “child sacrifice” you know they’re not going to count the number of pages its on or investigate whether its presented in a negative light as something that bad guys do…
December 21, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Thank you both for your explanations, the subtleties that eluded me are now clear. 🙂
“the instant Fox News googles “D&D” and “child sacrifice…””
Not that it would get in the way of a good story for a journalist peddling sensationalism, but Raggi is diligent in labelling the item as Adults only on the vendor sites.
December 24, 2011 at 8:06 am
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