Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Physical Copy of The OSR Adventure - Deep Carbon Observatory From False Machine Publishing For Your Old School Campaign

Deep Carbon Observatory is one of those adventures that gets under your skin and is both a disaster module as well as mini campaign setting all in one. The physical book is perfectly suited for the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess rpg. It's got three things going perfectly for it. The first thing is the adventurers against the weirdness that flows through this adventure like the dark rushing waters theme and the fact that the weirdness factor gets turned up to eleven, then there's the fact that the adventure is well written in an open ended fashion allowing the DM customize it to their DYI campaigns, and finally this physical product is a really perfect balance between the mid range of party adventure and deadly disturbing book. Scrap Princess's artwork is the perfect blend of all of these factors. You can see my review HERE

 The physical artwork is far more imposing onto the mind #@#$ that goes into desperation, malice, and nasty business that's been socked into this ninety two page adventure that leaks with the toxic weirdness that oozes out of Deep Carbon Observatory. This is an adventure in which adventure, opportunity, and murder all collide together in one massive toxic wrapped disaster adventure coupled with some strange monsters coming from the cracks of the pages.
A favorite paperback for size comparison.
 The random tables are easy on the eyes, the prose is very well written by Patrick Stuart, & Scrap Princess.
This is an adventure where opportunity abounds in the rising waters and events of DOC and sometimes those events can and do cut both ways. PC's are going to die in the waters, wastelands, and  
The text is very well laid out and the physical book is far easier to run then the pdf.
 From the encounters to the adventure's path mostly everything here pardon the pun flows together with an old school vibe of the tragic and malevolent in equal turns. I'm very happy to have a physical product instead of a pdf. The lettering is easy on the eyes and the book is well constructed. I do like the binding, its nice and strong.
 There are some nasty pieces of business between the pages and Scrap Princess's art capture's the fury and the power of the raging violence that boarders on David Lynch style energies in places. This is definitely a mid level party adventure with lots of strangeness just waiting to be sprung on your favorite PC's.
 I like the layering of the encounters, the way that the adventure lays itself out in the DM's hands and the style of the writing as well. The encounters here are both nasty but there's a sense of demented whimsy throughout the thing wrapped in a miasma of horror, menace, and utter desolation. Only certain Kult rpg adventures approach this level of strange.
 Graphically the thing is a nice blend of art, weirdness, violence, and old school DYI action packed old school adventure done in a core of Patrick Stuart's writing and design. This isn't a one hit wonder but a waiting hellish and brackish adventure compliemented by Scrap Princess's artwork. This is a completely different level of product then say the TSR era's adventures. This thing get's under your skin and haunts your brain at night whispering hellish secrets to you about the demise of PC's and taunts you to run it.
I love the maps the and the ethos that went into the
design of this little bundle of horrific art and writing. 

Do I think that Deep Carbon Observatory is worth the price of admission? Yes and having a physical copy adds to it's playability by a factor of  two hundred. All in all I can't thank my friend for the gift of this wonderful little book Grab this one before it get's away.

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