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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by J C S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/14/2024 09:07:11

Ran this in 5e, making modifications to stats as necessary, and my players had such a blast and it was so packed with good, interesting tidbits. Cannot recommend highly enough.

Added later:

This campaign turned into a several year saga with 2 separate arcs. In the first, we essentially ran Deep Carbon Observatory in 5e. The second was their continued adventure in the World Below (basically the Underdark) via the observatory. We're just wrapping up the second one now. Players have gone from 1st to 17th level, and it's been a blast.

I was to re-state that I cannot recommend this highly enough. This is the first module I ever ran as a campaign; the first outside adventure I felt was interesting and evocative and fun enough that I could and wanted to make it my own for long-term play. The other long-term campaigns I've run have all been homebrew. Other than that, other people's adventures have always only been for one-shots or very short campaigns.

This is all to say, I have a high standard for things I will take my players through for literal years. So far, this is the only one that has ever met that bar. It's quirky and weird and there's a lot of odd bits you might want to smooth over some, but it works, in a way very little else does.

Part of that is its openness. It blends a very sandox-y ability for PCs to go anywhere and mess with anything, with outside catastrophes and timelines that make it have an endpoint that you are working towards, so that it actually feels like an adventure and not just a setting.

It's just real good. It can be confusing at first for folks who are used to WOTC or other big companies with very specific style guides and careful layout. There are pieces where the information takes a second to put it all together (though the remastered version is much better about this). Scrap Princess' art can also seem amateurish until you start to see the skill behind it.

But keep going, and you will understand the terrible reality of the brilliance and synthesis of the themes of the adventure and the art. It's one of those things that just becomes more genius the more you look at it. Seriously, check it out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by Christopher [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/10/2023 17:17:21

Very original and truly great as a setting a premise, but not usable as written in some cases, such as the HP and stats of some antagonists being wildly misaligned with their purpose in the module. Still a modern classic in the OSR scene, though the art-punk sensibilities have not aged well.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by isaiah [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/04/2023 10:45:53

Astoundingly good. DCO is rich with interesting characters, evocative environments, and compelling stories. The atmosphere of the entire adventure is laced with a great mix of exciting tension and unsettling horror that kept my players wanting more. DCO Remastered is worth every penny.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Demon-Bone Sarcophagus
by Tom H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/08/2023 14:47:02

Some interesting ideas, but could have used multiple editing passes, significant development work.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Demon-Bone Sarcophagus
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Deep Carbon Observatory
by Patrick M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/30/2022 11:45:46

An extremely wierd and evocative adventure and a great prequell to Veins Of The Earth. When I ran it, it started my campaign and was fondly remembered as the best adventure we ran.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory
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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by Isla L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/26/2021 15:36:25

One of my favorite TTRPG modules and one of the finest pieces of surreal, funny, cosmic, oddball horror I've ever come across.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by Ariel A. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/19/2021 11:33:17

Perfect. Quality of life fixes for the original adventure, which was already excellent to begin with. One of my favorite adventures and potential campaign starters.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Deep Carbon Observatory
by Nick M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/30/2021 02:49:31

I feel cheated that I downloadded the original version which is vague at best and then a revised version was released which seems to be abetter version explanation of the game.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory
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Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
by Derrick L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/09/2021 13:08:36

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that this is my favorite "adventure" ever made. The remaster only improved what was already a great piece of art. Now, to get even more prententious I'll say why I love it so much.

  • Everything is moving, everything is energetic and progressing in carrowmore and in the wider world. Most modules do this by boring you with like ten paragraphs of stuff but Stuart simply tells you the child you failed to save will grow up to be someone that preys on people or that the By-Frosens are taking over the world. These are the "further in the future" bits but immediate consquences and moving parts are utilized throughout.
  • It's really funny. Maybe it won't be funny to other people, but I think stuart nails a particular type of dark humor that I love and have found to be most successful in roleplay. The absurdity of the dueling wizards, the deadpan statement that your presumed rivals at the start have died ignominous deaths only to be replaced by the much more threating crows, great stuff.
  • Creative and Weird while still being intelligble. So, so many weird settings fall flat because they are strange without being engaging. Stuart is great about this in general but DCO executes this at a level higher than even his other output.
  • At first I found the lay out of the book to be offputting, but I've realized I wouldn't like it half as much if it was "optomized" as so many other modules are. Don't get me wrong, 9 times out of 10 I would much prefer a well laid out bullet point heavy visually "intutive" adventure, but if DCO were laid out like that I would not have sat with it and read it all the way through the way I did. I would not have savored the writing or the slow accumulation of facts nor apperciated it as much. DCO is of a particular level of execution where it rewards this extra level of engagement. To put it simply, because it was so good and I loved reading it so much the cognitive load of running the game decreased, I didn't need the fancy cool layout tricks or whatever because I cared about it in a way I don't care about other supplements I run. To cut to the chase: the artistry of the thing was so good the "Work" of running it melted away.
  • It's just really fucking cool. So many supplements have like 1 or 2 cool things, but DCO is crammed full of them. I mean, I've bought supplements at this same price that provide maybe the total cool factor of ONE by-frosen and you get TWO of them plus a million other great things. Here's a short list of insanely good stuff in here (spoilers ahead):There's a room with a slime that grows more intelligent the more of it is in one place that players can talk to/be devoured by. There's a portal to a dinosaur dimension. There's a giant that squeezes into small places because he has cartliege instead of bones. There are golems with poleyhederal heads. A war between salamander people and a tribe living beyond the dam. This isn't even a 1/10th of all the cool shit in here! OH YEAH THERE'S A DEADLY COW SIZED PLAYTPUS.

Just get it. It's great. If anyone knows Patrick Stuart Or Scrap in real life please bribe them or find out what they love most in this life and hold it hostage until they put out the follow up adventure.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory - Remastered
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Deep Carbon Observatory
by Luke M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/18/2020 13:49:40

With this adventure now becoming pay-what-you-want with the remaster (and physical book pre-order open here http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2020/05/dco-remastered-pre-orders-are-open.html), I feel like its worth it to finally review this adventure, sorry it took so long, I forgot to do so after buying and running it!

To start, I paid for the physical version to be sent to me (which had the PDF included, so I was able to read through it a few ((hundred)) times before it arrived), which came in the form of a nondescript book that looks very simplistic, but with the very ominous front cover art you can see here.

Which is a good place to follow up: the art. Holy wow, the art is magnificent. Scrap Princess has done a marvellous job of encapsulating the truly creepy and weird nature of the whole adventure. Every single piece of art that I saw kept me engaged with how the adventure was playing out while prepping, which is a HUGE deal for adventures. Art is so important to keep a GM interested, otherwise it's just a bunch of text! From machines, monstrous creatures, to the PEOPLE! The people depicted in the book are frightening people, which further reinforces the desperate and gloomy nature of the inciting incident for the adventure.

Speaking of the inciting incident: the text. The text is constructed in such a fantastic way that, combined with the art I described, gives any reader a feeling of omnipresent doom and pessimism. This is NOT a nice place, and VERY bad things have happened, are happening, and will happen. The entire adventure just has this aura of dread, which was translated to my players.

How it went the first time I ran the adventure: great! They were creeped out. Thoroughly. I will submit to a little bit of hubris that I run horror adventures quite well, because I greatly enjoy them, thus they are presented effectively. But I could not even HOPE to come up with the kind of creepy, malicious and sometimes outright WEIRD things that DCO portrays. Without spoiling much: It has toads the size of obese men, people who have turned to cannibalism at the drop of a hat, which my players reacted to with extreme disgust, and had them realising just how AWFUL the sudden destruction and mayhem was that it turned the villages to such barbaric natures.

The titular Carbon Observatory? They wanted to leave. Immediately. As soon as they descended into it, they wanted out. They hated it in the best way. The descriptions given, the strange and terrible things inside each of the rooms creeped them out so much that they HAULED. XXX. out of there as soon as they got a sizeable chunk of treasure.

Buy this adventure, pre-order the physical copy, get the PDF from the new Deep Carbon Observatory: Remastered. It's incredible, fantastic, creepy, weird and well worth your cash.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory
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Fire On The Velvet Horizon
by Gus L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/11/2020 22:37:35

Strange monsters. Not sure I'd use this book as I write my own beasties, but it's a fine example of a monster manual that goes a bit far - tells strange stories about a strange setting through the medium of dreamlike terrible beasts. Even if you don't intend to use its content, it's worth a look for new ideas about what an RPG monster can be and how they might work beyond being punching bags full of XP. I suspect the prcing here is to discourage PDF purchasers, as I'm pretty sure the book is meant to be print only?



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fire On The Velvet Horizon
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Silent Titans PDF
by Gus L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/10/2020 11:38:48

There's a lot in this. It's all slathered in wonderful art and poetic writing. At the core there's a regional sandbox with solid faction conflict and memorable, well characterized NPCs.

Let's talk about the aesthetic though. Silent Titans is weird, in a good way. Not candy colored Vancian psychedelic weird, or slavish copy of Planescape weird, but a deeply personal seeming archly malicious British satire weird. This is the Screaming Lord Sutch of Rpg settings and it might be hard difficult to grasp without a certain understanding. For all that it's extremely playable, but seems to demand considerable commitment to its world. Even if it offers ways to insert it in a larger more typical campaign, Silent Titans aesthetic is powerful and alluring enough that it's likely to take over from whatever Tolkien pastiche one might have been running.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Silent Titans PDF
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Deep Carbon Observatory
by Ryan K. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/08/2020 20:43:31

The opening is incredibly fun, the rest is awkward, the boss monster is scary, the maps are awful. This game is explicitly for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons system. Don't let people church it up, we're all playing dungeons and dragons heres.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory
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Deep Carbon Observatory Remastered MAP PACK
by Ryan K. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/03/2020 21:16:24

This game is unplayable without these maps. Every dungeon map should be like this.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Deep Carbon Observatory Remastered MAP PACK
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Uncertain Worlds
by Tom S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/27/2020 13:29:32

This is a cool collection of ideas - lots of good, game-able morsels in here, and all for an unreasonably reasonable price!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Uncertain Worlds
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