Carcosa!?

I have marked this review with the chess symbol for gambit (!?). I picked up Carcosa the new hardback edition up at my local game store. It falls to me being employed and relatively well payed to buy stuff at the store to ensure that our Thursday night table does not given to the Magic players, so I am always on the lookout for small press stuff, the owner knows this and stocks things other than mainstream. I found the writing very inspiring for those interested running weird Lovecraftian game. I am not enough of an affectionatio of the Cthulhu mythos to know how much information is new to this book and how much comes from the novels, but this book exudes eerie creepiness. However, the Thursday night crowd was disappointed that the book was marked with an adult content sticker due to human sacrifice themes rather than actual sex. It is nicely illustrated with pen and ink drawings and different sections of the book are tinted with grayish green and purplish pink. I can  definitely use the monster list, and think the spacee alien weapons, and random robot tables may come in handy as well. I am less down with the Sorcerer class having to haul around a large quantity of different colored human sacrifices (there are 13 different colored human races including the new colors of jale and ulfire, as well as dolm which is a combination of ulfire and blue). There is also the problem that the Socorer has a significant risk of being eaten by whatever he conjurers and the monsters are going to bash his skull in long before he completes his 5 minute ritual. The random roll-up table for what sided dice to roll for your hit dice seemed overly chaotic, even though I did understand the authors statement that actually gives the party a shot against those 59 hit dice, because the monsters could be using 4 sided this time. I doubt I will be using the campaign map or the sample single hex sandbox, but some of the encounters from these may sneak their way in to other things I run. Luckily for me the author has given permission to use his book any way I see fit. In summary not a good pick for those on a limited budget, but filled with ideas to riff off of; "Old schoolly" in the way of the Ardiun Grimoire and the Book of Ebon bindings.