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Deep Carbon Observatory
Deep Carbon Observatory is an adventure for Dungeons and Dragons.
The adventure takes players from a town devastated by an unexpected flood, through a drowned land where nature is turned upside down and desperate families cling to the roofs of their ruined homes, hiding from the monstrous products of a disordered world, through the strange tomb of an ancient race, to a profundal zone, hidden for millennia and now exposed, and finally to the Observatory itself, an eerie abandoned treasure palace, where they will encounter a pale and unexpected terror which will seek to claim their lives.
The adventure is suitable for a lucky mid-range party, a stupid high-level party or an exceedingly clever low level party. It is difficult, with a meaningful possibility of character death. Should you find them, and defeat their guardians, the treasures of an ancient culture will be yours.
At the final point of the Observatory is a glimpse of another world.
Deep Carbon Observatory is about 90 pages long, 20,000 words with four maps and extensive artwork by Scrap Princess.
Stats are minimal and given for LOTFP but should be easily transferable into any simple D&D system.
The adventure takes players from a town devastated by an unexpected flood, through a drowned land where nature is turned upside down and desperate families cling to the roofs of their ruined homes, hiding from the monstrous products of a disordered world, through the strange tomb of an ancient race, to a profundal zone, hidden for millennia and now exposed, and finally to the Observatory itself, an eerie abandoned treasure palace, where they will encounter a pale and unexpected terror which will seek to claim their lives.
The adventure is suitable for a lucky mid-range party, a stupid high-level party or an exceedingly clever low level party. It is difficult, with a meaningful possibility of character death. Should you find them, and defeat their guardians, the treasures of an ancient culture will be yours.
At the final point of the Observatory is a glimpse of another world.
Deep Carbon Observatory is about 90 pages long, 20,000 words with four maps and extensive artwork by Scrap Princess.
Stats are minimal and given for LOTFP but should be easily transferable into any simple D&D system.
85 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 27, 2019
Some of the best writing you will find in an adventure. On its own, this is an excellent dungeon-delve with some insane encounters and treasures. As a source of inspiration DCO is one of the most evocative pieces of writing I've come across. I've spent the morning hand-picking NPCs, treasures and events to paste into my own campaign and still feel that there is a ton of value to be had from what I've left untouched.
October 22, 2016
This module was written by Patrick Stuart, an RPG blogger who is part of the OSR movement, and also has some fascinating analysis and breakdowns of Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur.” Stuart has a way with words that I find captivating, engrossing, possibly even spellbinding.
Just as important to Stuart’s writing, is the art. Scrap Princess is an artist like no other, whose chicken-scratching-angry-minimalistic style is the perfect fit for the book.
So first things first, this adventure is HUGE. I don’t mean long, and I don’t mean it’s a megadungeon (though it is a very big dungeon) – I mean that the adventure states and implies an entire world, even universe, to set your setting in. This is not so much necessarily an adventure, as it is a campaign starter. It is a way to set the mood and tone of everything that will come. There is so much insinuated backstory in the People of the Reeds and their dead kings. There is an entire ecology never before explored, that of the newly-drowned-and-recently-drained lands, filled with cuttlefish, eels, giant crabs, and their predators and prey. There is a history and story of the underworld unlike anything I’ve ever read.
And then even when you’re done with just the material, just the text of the adventure, Stuart supplies a timeline that hints at a future, both dark and magnificent, and filled with adventure possibilities. This basic timeline that ends the book (in a chapter titled, “In Case of Speak With Dead,” which by itself has so many hints and suggestions as to the mood and timbre of the adventure – Stuart is saying, “We’re not supplying the PCs with ANYTHING, but if they’re smart enough to try to talk to the dead drow on the pedestal, they may learn something useful.”) provides immediate followup story ideas, as well as a drawn-out diagram of Things To Come. And these things will happen if the PCs don’t follow up on them, or if someone doesn’t rise to stop them. Or maybe they’ll happen anyway. Either way, there’s a lot to do after this adventure.
The story does not present itself in the traditional way of adventures. Most adventures have PCs going from point A to point B, rounding up clues, and those clues will lead them to point C, and so on and so forth. In most published adventures, the stories are second to the action, and usually wouldn’t even exist without combat in between the scenes. NPCs exist for the purpose of aiding the PCs, and story elements are introduced just to move the PCs along. This is not the way of Deep Carbon Observatory.
Instead, we (the players AND the GM) are fed the story one little piece at a time. All we (the players AND the GM) know at the start is that there is smoke to the north, and the town of Carrowmere has been recently and drastically flooded. How did it happen? Who or what is responsible? And what does it mean? These things we slowly piece together over the 90-ish pages of the adventure, and even in the end, a lot is left to the imagination.
The way that NPCs are presented in the beginning is more like a dozen little scenelets, than just a list of people to interact with. They are set up is in horizontal rows, each row with three scenes, which then lead to new scenes. Stuart recommends giving each row only d4 minutes before moving one. This means The PCs cannot save or even talk to everyone. The world keeps moving. Each scene happens whether or not the PCs interact with it, and most of what’s happening is dark, sad, and leaves little hope for the people of Carrowmere. For example, this is one of the first opportunities PCs have to interact with the people of Carrowmere:
"A petty cleric clutching a floating log shouts ‘all is lost’. Selminimum Tem is the only survivor of his village. He has the key to the church. He will drown soon."
This says all the PCs need to know on whether or not they will act on the scene. Maybe they don’t care about one drowning man (especially when there are multiple drowning children nearby?), or maybe they just cannot get to him in time. Either way, he will drown soon. Beautiful.
This brings me to my favorite part of the entire adventure, which I briefly mentioned in my introduction – the prose. Stuart’s writing is lovely. It is filled with a dark, morbid simplicity, with little embellishment. Not that he needs it. His descriptions say not only everything that needs to be said about a scene, without cluttering the book with superfluous text, but also approach a sort of literary beauty in their directness. Take this, from a possible encounter about halfway through the adventure:
"The Roc Bridge: The Roc’s bowed wings make a beautiful but alien bridge across the churning water. The body of the bird twitches slightly, devoured by whatever lies beneath. Looking down, you see leeches, sized like men, feeding on the bird. Not yet fully dead its head lolls half sunken and gasps. The ‘bridge’ will be consumed in d4 hours. It may be possible to save the Roc. It will not be grateful if you do."
“It will not be grateful if you do.” Will the bird attack, in death-approaching delirium? Will it scream in pain, cursing the PCs for “helping” it? Will it die in agonized silence, its large eyes fading, yet staring balefully at its would-be saviors? We don’t know. It’s an option the PCs have, they can attempt to save, or they can simply use the roc as a bridge, quickly thereafter forgetting about the life of a creature they used as nothing but utility.
In fact, the entire adventure has that same mournful quality to it, which is fitting both due to the disaster that has recently rocked the region, as well as Stuart’s typical writing style.
The module is great. I have only one real criticism, and I’m not bringing anything new to the table here, but the maps leave a lot to be desired. The final dungeon has a relatively complicated layout, and while stylistically, the drawing of the observatory is a perfect fit, practically, it makes it very hard to tell where to go and what leads where. The same can be said for the region maps as well. The two outdoor maps work well enough (though a slight bit more detail would be nice), but the map of the dam is pretty hard to follow, and some of the descriptions in the text don’t quite seem to match up.
Either way, this is a module everyone should at least read, and many people should play. It is well worth your time to do both. And in doing so, you’ll contribute back to the community and people like Patrick and Scrap to continue doing what not only they love, but what the RPG community needs.
Just as important to Stuart’s writing, is the art. Scrap Princess is an artist like no other, whose chicken-scratching-angry-minimalistic style is the perfect fit for the book.
So first things first, this adventure is HUGE. I don’t mean long, and I don’t mean it’s a megadungeon (though it is a very big dungeon) – I mean that the adventure states and implies an entire world, even universe, to set your setting in. This is not so much necessarily an adventure, as it is a campaign starter. It is a way to set the mood and tone of everything that will come. There is so much insinuated backstory in the People of the Reeds and their dead kings. There is an entire ecology never before explored, that of the newly-drowned-and-recently-drained lands, filled with cuttlefish, eels, giant crabs, and their predators and prey. There is a history and story of the underworld unlike anything I’ve ever read.
And then even when you’re done with just the material, just the text of the adventure, Stuart supplies a timeline that hints at a future, both dark and magnificent, and filled with adventure possibilities. This basic timeline that ends the book (in a chapter titled, “In Case of Speak With Dead,” which by itself has so many hints and suggestions as to the mood and timbre of the adventure – Stuart is saying, “We’re not supplying the PCs with ANYTHING, but if they’re smart enough to try to talk to the dead drow on the pedestal, they may learn something useful.”) provides immediate followup story ideas, as well as a drawn-out diagram of Things To Come. And these things will happen if the PCs don’t follow up on them, or if someone doesn’t rise to stop them. Or maybe they’ll happen anyway. Either way, there’s a lot to do after this adventure.
The story does not present itself in the traditional way of adventures. Most adventures have PCs going from point A to point B, rounding up clues, and those clues will lead them to point C, and so on and so forth. In most published adventures, the stories are second to the action, and usually wouldn’t even exist without combat in between the scenes. NPCs exist for the purpose of aiding the PCs, and story elements are introduced just to move the PCs along. This is not the way of Deep Carbon Observatory.
Instead, we (the players AND the GM) are fed the story one little piece at a time. All we (the players AND the GM) know at the start is that there is smoke to the north, and the town of Carrowmere has been recently and drastically flooded. How did it happen? Who or what is responsible? And what does it mean? These things we slowly piece together over the 90-ish pages of the adventure, and even in the end, a lot is left to the imagination.
The way that NPCs are presented in the beginning is more like a dozen little scenelets, than just a list of people to interact with. They are set up is in horizontal rows, each row with three scenes, which then lead to new scenes. Stuart recommends giving each row only d4 minutes before moving one. This means The PCs cannot save or even talk to everyone. The world keeps moving. Each scene happens whether or not the PCs interact with it, and most of what’s happening is dark, sad, and leaves little hope for the people of Carrowmere. For example, this is one of the first opportunities PCs have to interact with the people of Carrowmere:
"A petty cleric clutching a floating log shouts ‘all is lost’. Selminimum Tem is the only survivor of his village. He has the key to the church. He will drown soon."
This says all the PCs need to know on whether or not they will act on the scene. Maybe they don’t care about one drowning man (especially when there are multiple drowning children nearby?), or maybe they just cannot get to him in time. Either way, he will drown soon. Beautiful.
This brings me to my favorite part of the entire adventure, which I briefly mentioned in my introduction – the prose. Stuart’s writing is lovely. It is filled with a dark, morbid simplicity, with little embellishment. Not that he needs it. His descriptions say not only everything that needs to be said about a scene, without cluttering the book with superfluous text, but also approach a sort of literary beauty in their directness. Take this, from a possible encounter about halfway through the adventure:
"The Roc Bridge: The Roc’s bowed wings make a beautiful but alien bridge across the churning water. The body of the bird twitches slightly, devoured by whatever lies beneath. Looking down, you see leeches, sized like men, feeding on the bird. Not yet fully dead its head lolls half sunken and gasps. The ‘bridge’ will be consumed in d4 hours. It may be possible to save the Roc. It will not be grateful if you do."
“It will not be grateful if you do.” Will the bird attack, in death-approaching delirium? Will it scream in pain, cursing the PCs for “helping” it? Will it die in agonized silence, its large eyes fading, yet staring balefully at its would-be saviors? We don’t know. It’s an option the PCs have, they can attempt to save, or they can simply use the roc as a bridge, quickly thereafter forgetting about the life of a creature they used as nothing but utility.
In fact, the entire adventure has that same mournful quality to it, which is fitting both due to the disaster that has recently rocked the region, as well as Stuart’s typical writing style.
The module is great. I have only one real criticism, and I’m not bringing anything new to the table here, but the maps leave a lot to be desired. The final dungeon has a relatively complicated layout, and while stylistically, the drawing of the observatory is a perfect fit, practically, it makes it very hard to tell where to go and what leads where. The same can be said for the region maps as well. The two outdoor maps work well enough (though a slight bit more detail would be nice), but the map of the dam is pretty hard to follow, and some of the descriptions in the text don’t quite seem to match up.
Either way, this is a module everyone should at least read, and many people should play. It is well worth your time to do both. And in doing so, you’ll contribute back to the community and people like Patrick and Scrap to continue doing what not only they love, but what the RPG community needs.
March 18, 2016
Deep Carbon Observatory is a haunting adventure; and a perfect place to hide one of the tablets of Enki. There is a lot of very cool stuff in it, and players running through it will encounter wonderful weirdness.
Its main flaw is lack of organization, and hiding things from the Dungeon Master. The event that causes the adventure is hidden in one line in the appendix. The maps, while they fit well with the feel of the piece are not easy to read and likely to lead to errors in running the game. (A fan has made some easier-to-use maps of the observatory itself, though not the areas around it, that I highly recommend.)
You will still need to read very carefully and take copious notes to prepare to run this, as somethings mentioned in the keys later are clearly visible much earlier, such as the pillar of steam mentioned on page 42 as now dying down, but having been visible in the town that is on page 1.
Despite its organizational flaws, this is highly recommended if you need some weirdness for your campaign.
Its main flaw is lack of organization, and hiding things from the Dungeon Master. The event that causes the adventure is hidden in one line in the appendix. The maps, while they fit well with the feel of the piece are not easy to read and likely to lead to errors in running the game. (A fan has made some easier-to-use maps of the observatory itself, though not the areas around it, that I highly recommend.)
You will still need to read very carefully and take copious notes to prepare to run this, as somethings mentioned in the keys later are clearly visible much earlier, such as the pillar of steam mentioned on page 42 as now dying down, but having been visible in the town that is on page 1.
Despite its organizational flaws, this is highly recommended if you need some weirdness for your campaign.
January 23, 2019
Dark, and horrible things await you underground. The path to the observatory is littered with impossible choices and horrific consequences. This is not a story for a party faint of heart. For those of you who enjoy a startling bleak setting where you are forced to make difficult decisions and face (very) unlikely odds, you could not choose a better adventure.
March 25, 2015
Incredibly well done, dark and sympathetic and unique. I look forward to using portions of this throughout my current campaign.
February 1, 2017
A fun and twisted pre written for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It nearly convinced me to drop my players into this meat grinder.
August 21, 2019
64th and 65th books of 2019: DEEP CARBON OBSERVATORY by Patrick Stuart and DUNGEON OF THE UNKNOWN by Geoffrey McKinney - two adventure scenarios from the Old School Renaissance scene: I’m combining the blurbs for them not only because I read them back-to-back, but because my reaction to them differed in a way that was interesting (at least to me). Both authors do a great job with presenting vivid, idiosyncratic, original Weird Horror elements: the dedication to and love of the material is evident in both works. Simply in terms of content, both are inspirational, in the sense that reading them made me want to put these concepts and ideas into motion. However, in terms of procedures and orientation to actual use, I think there is a significant difference between the two adventures. While both take the same kind of Old School-inspired (or, perhaps “Old School”-inspired) position of leaving lacunae in their procedures, one of the adventures (DUNGEON) seemed to me to be immediately playable and, more importantly, to be written towards the purpose of being played, while the other (OBSERVATORY) seemed unplayable as written, and to be written towards the purpose of being appreciated by people who write blogs and social media posts about “Old School” games. DUNGEON gives you the ingredients to set up a dynamic situation, whereas OBSERVATORY reads like an odd kind of novel (the tell, to me, is the group of powerful NPCs who are meant to be rivals to the PCs, and the way the adventure concludes with their story): and trying to imagine running the adventure for players made me think that it would end up being like taking them through a tour of a museum (where most of the exhibits could kill you). Perhaps uncharitably, it got me thinking of the way for some filmmakers the “mumblecore” idiom works as a set of constraints that productively leads to something expressive/evocative, whereas, for others, it appears to be a way to dodge doing something that’s hard to do. Here, with OBSERVATORY, there’s an implied, almost defensive sense that the scenario doesn’t need to be oriented to play because it’s “Old School” and that doing that work is the responsibility of the DM and not the scenario’s author. But I’d argue that that argument is also a dodge: the McKinney adventure also requires work, but it is designed to more thoughtfully support and reward that work.
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May 17, 2023An incredible bit of RPG writing, accompanied with grimy scratchy art that makes you feel like you're seeing the whole thing through a dirty pane of glass. Which I mean as a compliment!
Look I've read enough adventures/modules/whatever now that it's rare my eyebrows even go up in mild surprise. This, though... I was muttering 'holy shit' under my breath at basically every other entry. The dead witch, drowned in a well, now released in the flood, floating below the water and slamming her hands on the underside of the water like it's glass, is the best bit of imagery I've read in a very long time. And that's just one entry of many; indeed it's a deceptively thin book, I think there's content enough here to give your players a good bad time for quite a while.
So good that I might buy the physical copy of the remastered edition, and the 300 pages of Veins of the Earth is no longer viewed with trepidation but delight.
Look I've read enough adventures/modules/whatever now that it's rare my eyebrows even go up in mild surprise. This, though... I was muttering 'holy shit' under my breath at basically every other entry. The dead witch, drowned in a well, now released in the flood, floating below the water and slamming her hands on the underside of the water like it's glass, is the best bit of imagery I've read in a very long time. And that's just one entry of many; indeed it's a deceptively thin book, I think there's content enough here to give your players a good bad time for quite a while.
So good that I might buy the physical copy of the remastered edition, and the 300 pages of Veins of the Earth is no longer viewed with trepidation but delight.
Read
September 15, 2024I like reading these books because they feel like reading plays, or a musical score. The bones to a thing that is unfinished unless performed or played. This one is so good and well fleshed out, with holes for improvisation and experience.
December 28, 2019
This adventure is filled with weird and interesting ideas.
June 25, 2024
Exceptional. The rare mod that works as literature--I couldn't put it down. Full of gameable material. Need to get this to the table.
February 25, 2025
I want to run this sooo badly. I am so curious how it would all work or if one could just skip around or add bits. but I am sooooo excited to try.
January 31, 2017
A really interesting read full of beautiful weird ideas, but I think it would be really hard, almost impossible to run as an actual adventure. Even if one were to run it, there is so much that is beyond the ability for characters/players to learn about that I think it would be sort of frustrating, though it could also be an argument for learning and using powerful divination spells in game. There is also a lot of danger and uncertainty to the treasure/rewards, such that I think you would really need the right sort of group to play it with, or there might be a player mutiny.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews