Interview: Geoffrey McKinney

The release of Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, an imaginary fifth supplement to OD&D, in 2008 caused quite a stir at the time – so much that I devoted four posts to reviewing it on this blog. What set Carcosa apart was its singular vision of old school fantasy roleplaying seen through the lens of an idiosyncratic interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft. Since I was already devoting the entirety of this month to HPL and his legacy, I thought it might be interesting to ask McKinney a few questions about Lovecraft, Carcosa, and roleplaying games. 

1. What first drew you to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and how did they shape your vision for Carcosa?

In the spring of 1980, I bought the D&D Basic Set (with the rule book edited by Dr. Holmes and with module B2) and the Monster Manual, and I started playing D&D with some friends who had already been playing for a few months. In the second half of August 1980, I had enough money to buy the Players Handbook, but when I got to the toy store, I decided to instead buy the brand-new Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia (DDG). The Cthulhu Mythos section melted my 10-year-old brain. The gloppy Erol Otus illustrations are still my favorite Mythos illustrations of all, and his Shub-Niggurath is one of the best D&D illustrations of any sort.

The dark, mysterious text accompanying Otus’s art deepened my fascination. In fact, the sixth word of the first sentence left me unsure whether the Mythos was a 20th-century creation or whether some unhealthy ancient men actually believed in and worshiped these beings: “The Cthulhu Mythos was first revealed in a group of related stories by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft.”

The six pages of the Cthulhu Mythos immediately seeped into our D&D games, adding a generous helping of Cthulhoid gods and monsters; dark magics to conjure, dominate, and banish them; and human sacrifice.

Carcosa is basically D&D seen through the lens of “DDG’s Cthulhu Mythos, all the time”.

2. In what ways do you see Carcosa as diverging from Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, and in what ways do you think it reinforces it?

Carcosa is definitely the version of the Cthulhu Mythos presented in Deities & Demigods, and as such does not strive to be “true” to Lovecraft’s stories. Carcosa is pulpy, sword & sorcery D&D fun. Sure, the setting is dark and bleak, but you can (for example) blow Cthulhu away with technetium pulse cannons rather than cower and hide.

3. You incorporate many of the Great Old Ones and other Mythos entities. Did you approach these beings differently from how Chaosium might?

All the monsters in Carcosa were taken from the 1974 D&D game, inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods, or they crawled out of the dark corners of my own imagination. I have never played Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, so I am not familiar enough with it to compare it with Carcosa.

4. The setting of Carcosa feels like a fusion of Lovecraft, planetary romance, and pulp science fiction. Do you think Lovecraft’s legacy fits naturally into that blend, or did you have to reshape it?

I like to refer to Carcosa as “weird science-fantasy”. Virtually everything in it grew from the seeds in the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Carcosa’s psionics sprang from DDG’s description of the Great Race. Carcosa’s high-tech grew from DDG’s descriptions of the Primordial Ones and of the Great Race. Of course, Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time” and At the Mountains of Madness include these elements. I would not say I reshaped Lovecraft’s legacy but rather fleshed it out.

5. Do you think there is room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos or is everything inevitably tainted by dread? Does Carcosa reflect that?

There is definitely room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos, particularly when looked at through Dunsany’s Pegana and some of his other early tales. My own favorite of my books is the Carcosa module, The Mountains of Dream. I tried to infuse it with that Dunsanian/Lovecraftian sense of wonder and awe.

6. In traditional D&D, magic is a tool. In Carcosa, it is a moral and metaphysical hazard. How much of that came from Lovecraft, and how much from your own take on sorcery?

At risk of sounding like a broken record, it came from the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Of DDG’s seventeen pantheons, only the gods of the Cthulhu pantheon are unanimous in demanding human sacrifice (DDG, pp. 136-137). Couple that with DDG’s description on page 48 of the spells contained in the Necronomicon. For example, “It would appear that spells are given for summoning all of the Old Ones and their minions, and some spells for their control and dismissal, although these latter are not always effective. The spells are very long and complicated, and not entirely comprehensible without long study and research.” Carcosa’s sorcery attempts to flesh out these four paragraphs from DDG.

7. How did you approach the balance between evoking Lovecraftian horror and making a setting that is actually playable and engaging at the table?

The gods, monsters, sorcery, and setting itself of Carcosa evoke Lovecraftian horror just by existing. The player characters can arm themselves with advanced technology and/or with sorcery and psionics to lay waste to the blasphemous abominations that are practically everywhere on Carcosa. It is not about being afraid of Cthulhu and his ilk. Instead, the player characters can strive to amass enough might and firepower that Cthulhu and everything else becomes afraid of them.

8. Would you ever consider returning to Carcosa or Lovecraftian themes in a future project or is that ground you feel you have already covered?

Generally speaking, every time a DM puts something such as purple worms, black puddings, mind flayers, Juiblex, Kuo-Toans, gibbering mouthers, slaadi, etc. into his campaign, he is injecting some good old Lovecraftian horror into his game. As for me writing additional Carcosa books, that is out of my hands. If the Muses sing to me again the dark songs of Carcosa, then yes. We must wait and see what implacable Fate decrees for the future.

9. Have your thoughts on Lovecraft’s work or worldview changed over the years?

I have read and re-read Lovecraft since the early 1990s. While I enjoy his works as much as ever, I have come to agree with Lovecraft that his four favorite authors (Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and M. R. James) are even better. I highly recommend the following:

by Lord Dunsany:

• The Gods of Pegana
• Time and the Gods
• The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
• A Dreamer’s Tales
• The King of Elfland’s Daughter

by Arthur Machen:

• “The Great God Pan”
• “The Inmost Light”
• “The Shining Pyramid”
• The Three Impostors
• “The Red Hand”
• The Hill of Dreams
• “Ornaments in Jade”
• “The Great Return”

by M. R. James:

• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• A Thin Ghost and Others
• A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories

by Algernon Blackwood:

A great many of his weird stories, preeminent of which are:

• “The Willows”
• “The Wendigo”
• Incredible Adventures