Deep Carbon Observatory

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,...See more 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.

The link to Gus L's maps seems to be broken. Those maps are available here: http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/07/deep-carbon-observatory-maps.html

Not part of the Halloween sale? Bummer.

I bought this with the Relief Bundle, and I see it's for D&D, but which edition?