Dissecting Carcosa, and Levels of Gameability

01 Jul, 2026

I've always been fascinated by Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, in part because despite the tremendous amount of imagination on display, a lot of the entries in the hexcrawl are very formulaic. I began this project in an attempt to figure out how to make my own Carcosa-esque hexcrawls by looking at the underlying statistics of the map, but got to thinking about the ways that hexcrawls encode gameable content, which I want to talk about at some length.¹

Dissecting Carcosa

I used the 2nd edition of Carcosa, which has a 25x16 hex map, each hex having 2 features. I believe half of these were written by Chris Roberts as a supplement to the 1st edition, which then got included in the 2nd edition.

800 hex descriptions sounds like a lot, but here's the description of hex 0310, for instance:

Castle of 85 Orange Men led by a lawful 4th-level Fighter.

2 Shoggoths locked in mortal combat with 7 Primordial Ones.

This hex is on the more minimal side, but many features are either settlements of Men with no information beyond the type of settlement, type of men, and who they're led by; or a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, a specific kind of terrible chimeric abomination. The fact that the book has tables for generating your own Spawn of Shub-Niggurath makes their omnipresence in the hex descriptions feel a bit redundant.

Anyway, I put every feature in Carcosa into a spreadsheet so I could analyze the hexcrawl statistically.

Methodology

Each feature (remember, there are 2 per hex) was given a Type:

• A settlement of Men
• An inhuman monster
• An encounter with Men or Men-like entities
• The idea for a dungeon, left to be designed by the GM
• Other miscellaneous oddities

Independently, I also tracked:

• Whether there was a connection to another hex feature, either in the same hex or a different one
• Whether there was a valuable item
• Whether there was a trap-like hazard
• Whether there were instructions on how to perform a ritual
• Whether there were explicitly recruitable NPCs
• Whether the hex contained ingredients required to perform a ritual
• The demographic makeup and leadership of settlements
• Whether monster encounters were with Spawn, Great Ones, or other kinds of monsters

For more complex features, I summed up the theme of the feature into one or two words, mostly so I could see which features were bare and which were more vividly described.

Carcosa Wrapped

Here's what I learned.² Of the 800 hex features in Carcosa, there are:

• 251 settlements of Men, including 1 army, 2 campsites, 42 castles, 51 citadels, 1 ragged column, 1 gang, 2 hideouts, 1 lair, 6 monasteries, 1 shrine, 1 stronghold, 3 tribes, and 139 villages. Of these 251 settlements, 179 only described the makeup of the settlement, including most of the villages (31%/22% of the total hexcrawl)
• 107 Spawn lairs, 78 of which just described the Spawn (13%/10%)
• 3 Great One or Elder God lairs (<1%)
• 137 other monster lairs, 105 of which just described the monster (17%/13%)
• 57 encounters with Men-like entities (7%)
• 17 "dungeon seeds" (2%)
• 228 oddities, 98 of which are just something weird without specific treasure, hazards, or ritual significance (29%/12%)

Additionally:

• 86 features contained treasure (11%)
• 95 features contained hazards (12%)
• 23 features contained ritual instructions (3%)
• 11 features contained recruitable NPCs (1%)
• 47 features had connections to other hexes (connections were only counted once, so technically 94 features had some connection to another feature) (6%/12%)
• 6 features had connections to the other feature in their hex (or 12 counting both ways) (1%/2%)
• And 47 of 400 hexes contained a ritual ingredient (12%)

Skip to the end if you want my tables for making your own Carcosa-esque setting.

Levels of Gameability

Reading through 800 hex features, I started to think about how much of a variation there was in the complexity of the implied narratives for each hex feature. I began to identify three loose patterns of hex features, in ascending level of complexity.

Point of Interest: A point of interest is just something the PCs can interact with. Simply saying "there's a tree here" or "there's a village here" describes a point of interest, and Carcosa simply says "there's a village here" A LOT.

Two sample points of interest can be found in the description of hex 0109:

Village of 320 Orange Men ruled by “His Beneficent Dominance,” a neutral 8th-level Fighter.

A dense network of odd trenches and carved fissures mark the earth for several miles. If diligently mapped, or viewed from a height greater than 1,000′, they appear to form the script of a long-forgotten language.

These features describe something that is in the hex, but the narrative implied by the description is simple and relatively uninteresting. The choice presented to the PCs is whether to engage with something or ignore it, and they have no reason to favor either option. Moreover, even if they do engage with the feature, it doesn't have any lasting impact.

This isn't necessarily a judgment, and I'm quite fond of some of these simple features, like the first feature in hex 1703:

Here is a pit approximately 400′ in diameter which is filled with huge single-celled organisms between 1′ and 2′ in diameter.

I shuddered when I read that, but that doesn't change the fact that this amoeba pit is more along the lines of a vignette than an ingredient for an actual story.

Hook: A hook is a point of interest plus a Desire. This desire can be on the part of the PCs or on the part of someone else. The existence of an (unsatisfied) desire implies a conflict, which is the basis of narrative.

From hex 0507:

Village of 102 Yellow Men ruled by “the Unruled Ruler,” a neutral 2nd-level Fighter. Simple fishermen, they have suffered greatly at the hands of slavers and would regard as heroes any who battle them.

When the PCs come to this village, presumably they will learn about the problems with slavers and be asked to help the village. They can always say no, but we're one step more complex than a simple point of interest. Now, the PCs don't just choose whether or not to engage with the village, they choose whether or not to get involved in this simple conflict.

As I said before, the desire can also be an assumed desire on the part of the PCs. For example, from hex 0406:

Village of 101 Jale Men ruled by “the Perfection of Celestial Brightness,” a neutral 4th-level Fighter. They guard a spring of exceptionally pure water, a single drop of which can instantly slay any Diseased Guardian. The water is not for sale.

If the PCs discover the supernatural properties of the spring, they may want it for themselves, drawing them into conflict with the villagers.

There can also be an exchange, where the NPCs have something they want and they have something to offer PCs. From hex 0910:

Village of 60 Bone Men ruled by “the Ideal of Decline,” a neutral 2nd-level Fighter. The need of these wretches for able-bodied adventurers is dire. In recent weeks, they have lost over a quarter of their number to the cyborg in hex 0810, the slavers in hex 1111, and the contagion in hex 0909. They are destitute, but for each evil that is vanquished they have a reward to bestow: an accurate map of the citadel of the Brown Men in hex 0914, including a secret entrance to the caverns; or a small piccolo of singular design, and knowledge of an eldritch tune that has a 20% chance of stunning for 1 die rounds any Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (or any of the six main spawn as well) within listening range; or four mouldering black robes of unique aspect that will gain admittance for the wearers into the lower levels of the Black Abomination of Nyarlathotep (hex 0211).

If I were to run a Carcosa campaign (unlikely), I would probably start the PCs near this hex, because this is a bunch of hooks with the bonus virtue of leading PCs to other hexes.

Honestly, a hook is all you need in many cases, as the beauty of TTRPGs as a medium is even with very simple narrative elements, the system's mechanics will create emergent narratives. However, there is a step above hooks:

Situation: A situation is a hook plus a Twist which casts the PCs' original choice in a new light and forces a new choice under new circumstances. Traditional narratives often have a third-act twist, and seeding your hooks with dramatic irony, things that the PCs don't know, allows you to create relatively complex narrative set-ups which can unfold in any number of ways at the table.

An example in 0815:

A lawful 5th-level Green Fighter travels to the east. He seeks after his twin brother in hex 2411. He knows his brother’s general location, but he does not know that he has embraced Chaos. This Green Man plans to travel northeast, through the Poisonous Swamps and on to the Icy Wastes, and he is not averse to sharing the long journey with like-minded adventurers.

The PCs may choose to accompany the fighter or not. If they do, they will eventually be thrown into a difficult situation with regard to the chaotic brother. Furthermore, the format of the hexcrawl means the PCs could encounter the fighter after already having slain his brother and be forced to explain their actions, or any number of other possibilities. By adding a twist to the hook, the dramatic potential and narrative interest is increased exponentially without forcing a particular resolution or course of action from the PCs.

Another example from 1706:

An adventuring party of 3 lawful Red Sorcerers and their 6 Yellow Men guides is journeying southwest to hex 1408, where they intend to eliminate the local Sorcerer and destroy the Crown of Unspent Days. They welcome help from others, and they will share in any spoils. The Sorcerers are headed into a trap. Their guides will betray the group’s location and lead them into an ambush.

Other Hooks & Situations

Most of these examples have focused on intelligent NPCs, since I personally think people are the most interesting parts of a story. However, you can have hooks and situations without NPCs.

For instance, from hex 2513:

A microwave pulse bazooka is concealed beneath a fallen tree. It requires expert repair and a charged power cell to function.

This is a hook. If the PCs happen upon the bazooka, they will likely have a strong desire to take it for themselves, and the fact the weapon requires repair and charge gives the PCs a direction and intuitive goal for future adventuring. In a broader context, any treasure kept from the PCs by an obvious obstacle is a hook, like a magic sword at the bottom of a pool of acid.

Trapped treasure, on the other hand, is a situation, because the existence of the trap changes the PC's relationship to the treasure, in most cases once it's too late for them to abandon their desire.

Carcosa's lousy with these kinds of features. In hex 0910:

Lying unconcealed upon the ground is a bag with its contents half spilled-out: a set of eight onyx figurines (each about 3″ long) of the Great Old Ones worth 100 g.p. each. Simply possessing them makes one feel uneasy, and one’s dreams at night will be disturbing. Such dreamers will awake exhausted, and all their to hit rolls and saving throws will be made at −1.

This is a fun one since, if the PCs grab these quite valuable figurines, they will later realize the curse on them and have to either discard them or rush to sell them at a settlement.

Some of the monsters get in on the action as well. In 0813:

A mostly-skeletal arm protrudes from a castle-sized mass of hardened foam. On its wrist is a lavish gold and emerald bracelet worth 250 g.p. If the foam is excavated for more than 6 man/turns, the enormous dolm worm that clutches the skeleton in its maw will burst out and attack with famine-induced fury.

Lots of monsters can double as either treasures or hazards, and one thing Carcosa does that I like is that many monster entries presume that the monster is docile unless disturbed by the PCs, then creates the conditions by which the PCs are likely to disturb them.

Conclusion

My point in this section is not to say that situations are inherently better than hooks are inherently better than points of interest, but I think a balanced mix of these elements makes for the most interesting material. A lot of Carcosa's hex features (around 58% by my count) are just points of interest without much in the way of narrative potential. In fairness, Carcosa has a lot more things per hex than your average hexcrawl, but I think my own preferences tend towards quality over quantity. Something like Wolves Upon the Coast has about half to a fourth of the number of features as Carcosa, but those features are much more complex and higher on that scale of gameability.

On the other hand, thinking of things in terms of points of interest, hooks, and situations allows you to quickly think of how to add more complexity to simple descriptions, whether in Carcosa or other RPG products. If you see a village with no description, all you have to ask is "what do they want?" and then, optionally, "what don't the PCs know about this desire?"

Make Your Own Carcosa

If I were to make my own setting using Carcosa's math, here's how I would do it.³ I'll try to give guidance for both explicitly Carcosa-like settings and other kinds. I'm actually planning on using these tables to create a setting for Mausritter, so my setting will be quite different from what's presumed for Carcosa.

1. For each hex, roll a d8 for how many features there are.

2. For each feature, roll a d6:

3. For settlements, roll a d20:

• Castles and Citadels have d10 x 10 people, exploding on a 10. Monasteries have d6 x 10 people, exploding on a 6. Villages have d10 x 50 people, and other settlements have d12 x d20 people.
• For Carcosa-like settings, leaders are level d100, exploding on a 100, divided by 10 (rounded up). Roll below for class and alignment:

4. Each hex has a 1-in-8 chance each of a Treasure, a Hazard, and a Ritual (in Carcosa-like settings, there is a 50% chance of a formula, 50% chance that hex has an ingredient required for a ritual).
5. 1-in-20 hexes have a connection to a hex d20-1 hexes away in a random direction (roll d6).
6. Roll reaction for monster encounters ahead of time: on a 12, the monsters can be recruited as followers by a character of higher level than the monsters' HD.
7. To generate oddities or add interest to other hexes, roll on your preferred spark tables; Mythic Bastionland's are my current gold standard.

• For villages, roll on the Dwelling or Sanctum tables.
• For castles and citadels, roll on the Holding or Bailey tables.
• For all settlements, roll a Drama, Woe, or News affecting the settlement and a Desire animating its leader.
• For monster encounters, roll a State.
• For oddities, roll a (1) Feature, (2) Wonder, (3) Otherworld, (4) Monument, (5) Ruin, (6) Hazard, (7) Curse, or (8) Object.

This process is untested but I hope to make some cool stuff with it soon. I hope others find it useful or inspirational, and happy crawling.

Footnotes

#hexcrawls #osr #ttrpg philosophy #ttrpgs