I will probably be starting a Call of Cthulu adventure soon and it got me wondering, I know there are Evil and some Neutral elder gods but could there be some Good or Lawful aligned ones designed in the pipeline?
I saw somewhere there is scheduled a publication regarding the Elder Gods?
Outer Gods are eldritch abominations of madness and entropy and are strictly related with Aberrations, so it's almost impossible there will be a Lawful one, but maybe a CG Outer God is feasible
The better question is why do you need some?
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Lovecraft is rolling in his grave.
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Desna?
From an old thread somewhere, this tid bit of conjecture:
Desna is an alien.Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand suddenly, I have that actually good "great old one" that I've always wanted. Nice.
Also, it suddenly makes way, way more sense why Curchanus would be a "mentor" to something like Desna - he was a god, she was not, but he was teaching her how to interact with mortal races without breaking them. Wow. I love where this line of thought has led.
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Othkkartho, the "Sire of the Four Titans of Balance and Order", sounds pretty Lawful to me. XD
Some of the Elder Gods might also fall into the Good/Lawful range. Oztalun and Ulthar might work well there, and Lovecraft himself would probably say something like "the fact that it's about order doesn't mean it's nice or safe - indeed, who knows what madness might be caused by seeing a truth of perfect math and law? Perhaps I shall write a story about that."
I didnt say they had to be Lawful AND Good.....
Lawful neutral and True neutral seems do-able
Chaotic good likewise.....
They're part of the Mythos. It was always something of a shared universe to begin with, with multiple authors corresponding and contributing, so I see no particular reason to limit ourselves to what Lovecraft came up with himself as long as copyrights and such permit the usage. ^^
Besides, Pathfinder DOES generally look for some sort of balance, and it might not be such a bad thing for Law to have its own frightening otherworldly beasts looking to impose their alien order on things.
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Besides, Pathfinder DOES generally look for some sort of balance...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
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Putting alignment on PCs leads to a daunting task.
Putting alignment on Outer Gods and Great Old Ones leads to madness.
OT: If you use the expanded mythos (Derleth and Co's additions), you have Bast (Baset), Hypnos and Nodens as well, who are all benevolent toward most mortals (though they don't ever explain why). With the exception of a few of the Old Ones, most are extremely difficult to pin down simply due to the fact that they exist beyond morality and have very little humanity in them (and some of them just aren't really conscious). They just don't click at our level.
Some on the other hand are most decidedly Evil (I'm looking at you Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep!), some just don't care at all (Yog-Sothoth), some don't even have a being (Azathoth).
I feel even limiting them by alignment is sort of detracting the point in a way. Alignment is what the gods decide, and they are far beyond the pantheon's grasp.
Putting alignment on PCs leads to a daunting task.
Putting alignment on Outer Gods and Great Old Ones leads to madness.OT: If you use the expanded mythos (Derleth and Co's additions), you have Bast (Baset), Hypnos and Nodens as well, who are all benevolent toward most mortals (though they don't ever explain why). With the exception of a few of the Old Ones, most are extremely difficult to pin down simply due to the fact that they exist beyond morality and have very little humanity in them (and some of them just aren't really conscious). They just don't click at our level.
Some on the other hand are most decidedly Evil (I'm looking at you Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep!), some just don't care at all (Yog-Sothoth), some don't even have a being (Azathoth).
I feel even limiting them by alignment is sort of detracting the point in a way. Alignment is what the gods decide, and they are far beyond the pantheon's grasp.
The gods don't decide alignment. Zon-Kuthon thinks what he does is Good. He is Evil regardless.
Not quite.
This game assumes good and evil are definitive things.
There are creatures that are fundamentally Evil as well as fundamentally Good.
Creatures with an evil subtype (generally outsiders) are creatures that are fundamentally evil: devils, daemons, and demons, for instance.
There are even rules for what defines Good, Evil, Lawful and Chaotic.
While Zon-Kuthon thinks he is doing Good, he is still Evil as you said.
There are rules set out. If the gods don't determine Good and Evil, what does? Natural law? Possibly.
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Good doesn't really seem to fit the Great Old Ones / Elder Gods, flavor wise. Even a Great Old One who seems genuinely concerned about fleeting mortal lives, would likely be so only in the same way that the crazy cat lady loves her kitties, to the point of treating them abominably so as to maximize the number of them she can have. The entity might think of itself as benevolent, but the people that it considers it's collection or pets or ant farm aren't likely to believe that once any of them go off script and earn the entity's displeasure...
A Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral Great Old One, on the other hand, could be funky, in a Vorlon sort of 'we know what's best for you, don't worry your pretty little heads about this free will nonsense' sort of way.
Alignments are intrinsic to the structure of the multiverse
@Hubaris: Probably Pharasma.
I agree with Set, though, in that few - if any - eldritch beings are likely to be good in any sense.
ia, ia, Dread Perfection this path lies, ia!
No matter how much people want to deny it Nodens was a part of the original mythos. He's probably about as good as you're going to get though out of an official source as far as Paizo is concerned. A being that has goals that are fundamentally beneficial to mortals, but for his own reasons rather than out of any sort of compassion.
Speaking of Desna, the Black Butterfly might qualify.
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As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.
I have a slight tear in my eye.
Though that might be because now no one can oppose the great pharaoh.
As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.
Yay, apocalypse cults~
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As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.
How about some of the more human-friendly Elder Gods of the Mythos, such as Nodens?
Creative Director
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As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.How about some of the more human-friendly Elder Gods of the Mythos, such as Nodens?
We've deliberately avoided incorporating the phrase "Elder Gods" into the game as part of the Lovecraft mythos, because technically.... ALL of the deities of our setting that aren't Outer Gods or Great Old Ones are the Elder Gods.
Nodens is from real-world Celtic myth, so if we did pull him into the game (as we've done with others like Lamashtu and Asmodeus and a few others), we'd go to real-world myth first to establish his role. I suspect we'd also incorporate some of his stuff from Lovecraft as well, making him an opponent of the Great Old Ones/Outer Gods, but I doubt very much we'd use the phrase "Elder Gods" even then.
I think a ranger follower of Nodens getting a special nightgaunt companion would be pretty cool.
I'm not exactly for nor against a Good Lovecraft deity, since I am quite sure that at least one is canon in the greater scope of the Cthulhu Mythos. You can deny their existence all you want, but they are still there.
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Creative Director
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I'm not exactly for nor against a Good Lovecraft deity, since I am quite sure that at least one is canon in the greater scope of the Cthulhu Mythos. You can deny their existence all you want, but they are still there.
Not everything everyone ever wrote for the mythos is equally good. A fair amount of it is pretty awful. Part of my job as Creative Director is to curate what does get into Pathifnder/Golarion, to ensure that things that aren't worth running with aren't made part of the game/world.
That includes elements of the mythos that aren't appropriate for the game.
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I'm not exactly for nor against a Good Lovecraft deity, since I am quite sure that at least one is canon in the greater scope of the Cthulhu Mythos. You can deny their existence all you want, but they are still there.Not everything everyone ever wrote for the mythos is equally good. A fair amount of it is pretty awful. Part of my job as Creative Director is to curate what does get into Pathfinder/Golarion, to ensure that things that aren't worth running with aren't made part of the game/world.
That includes elements of the mythos that aren't appropriate for the game.
I did not mention nor give focus to the quality of said works, so I'm not sure why you'd bring that up. And I doubt everyone that read them hated them.
And like I said in my first post, I'm honestly neutral about the whole thing. I am fine with the line-up as it is currently in-game, but I probably wouldn't mind other additions either.
Pretty much all I was saying was that the material is there for those who want to make something of it. There are quite a few series and franchises that have something unpopular but canon in them.
depends if you want to include Derleth`s stuff. He started working in the Elder Gods = Good, Outer Gods and Great Olds Ones = Evil stuff. Other authors have run with it since then
Lumley came up with an entire pantheon of Good versions of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods.
It was terrible.
About the closest an Outer God should come to being good is Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth - neither of whom is actually hostile to mortal life, but both of whom are quite incompatible with it.
Azathoth doesn't necessarily want to hurt you, but it can't help itself.
But a lot of the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones... they not only will hurt you, they will gladly hurt you.
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I'm sure Nyarlathotep can be a pretty cool dude sometimes. :P
Nyarlathotep is the last thing I'd imagine when it comes to cool dudes. He's the most actively malevolent one of the Outer Gods.
As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.I have a slight tear in my eye.
Though that might be because now no one can oppose the great pharaoh.
So Desna's not one? Oh oh, now I think your only hope is Ramenvolare . . . .
Nyarlathotep is the last thing I'd imagine when it comes to cool dudes. He's the most actively malevolent one of the Outer Gods.
That was the joke.
I wonder if his ability to comprehend human thought and communicate sensibly makes it that much worse. Most horrifying things out there are evil just because of their destructive, abhorrent nature. Nyarlathotep chooses to be evil.
Honestly, I think an interesting way to distinguish Lovecraftian Elder Gods in Pathfinder would be to say that they have no alignment. They're not Good, not Evil, not Lawful, not Chaotic, not even Neutral. The laws of the planes don't apply to them, and attempting to divine their alignment simply drives the person who does so irrevocably mad.
Nyarlathotep is the last thing I'd imagine when it comes to cool dudes. He's the most actively malevolent one of the Outer Gods.That was the joke.
I wonder if his ability to comprehend human thought and communicate sensibly makes it that much worse. Most horrifying things out there are evil just because of their destructive, abhorrent nature. Nyarlathotep chooses to be evil.
Thats what makes it so interesting, what makes it so horrible. Even though he has a sense of self, can communicate and even take on mortal forms, he is not and will never be mortal or human.
Its just a mask he puts on to give him something to do, some way to pas the time while he schemes come slowly to fruition. He doesn't ask for servitude through threats or power, he almost makes you want to serve as he gets close and speaks right to your heart.
Whereas most of the Old Ones look on you as a tiny microbe in a much larger picture, barely registering; he gets right down to your level, sees your struggles and lifestyle and still sees you as a microbe. Nothing but emptiness and self-satisfaction.
depends if you want to include Derleth`s stuff. He started working in the Elder Gods = Good, Outer Gods and Great Olds Ones = Evil stuff. Other authors have run with it since then
The issue this gets at is that Derleth's conceptions of Mythos beings have been controversial in the fanbase for decades, long preceding Pathfinder. A lot of people think Derleth's canon is inconsistent and nonsensical at best and at worse actually completely gets wrong the mythos.
So obviously good Old Ones is a incredibly controversial idea with a lot of baggage, and its pretty clear where Paizo falls in that debate.
Derleth did have some good to him though. While I don't agree with his pseudo-Christian themed mythos (named evil versus named good), I do like the fact it sparked a great pot for many other flavourful Old Ones to be made and added, not to mention creating a good collaborative environment.
That being said, having them being beyond morality would be a good start.
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Creative Director
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Indeed. Without Derleth, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place, since it's likely that Lovecraft would have fallen into much greater obscurity and the Call of Cthulhu game would likely never have been made and so on. In addition, some of Derleth's writings are pretty good. Not all of them, but he's unfairly demonized by Lovecraft fans/scholars.
Still... no good guy Great Old Ones or Outer Gods in Golarion.
And while we don't use the "Elder Gods" phrase in the game... Desna is a PERFECT FIT for the role of an Elder God if you want to use that category in your games.
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As long as I'm around, I feel safe in saying we won't be publishing any lawful or good Great Old Ones or Outer Gods.How about some of the more human-friendly Elder Gods of the Mythos, such as Nodens?
It's been a little while since I reread "The Strange High House in the Mist," but IIRC the main human character does not exactly emerge from his encounter with the named deity unscathed, and the story ends with the townsfolk becoming concerned by the way that the House seems to be trying to make itself more attractive to the teenagers of Kingsport. The way it looks to me (and this is something I missed when I first read the story, *mumble* years ago), Nodens and the other beings who visit the House are taking something of joy and creativity from the people who visit there--not as bad as eating your brain or driving you completely insane, but still not what one would call benevolent.
Similarly, in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," the creatures of the Great Abyss--night-gaunts and the like--do not have a good reputation. Nodens may not think much of Nyarlathotep (and cheer when the Crawling Chaos is foiled at the end), but the normal inhabitants of Dreamland are terrified of his creatures.