Does the popularity of Cthulhu defeat the purpose of Cthulhu?

[Thelemic_Noun]

This applies to the Elder Mythos as a whole; I just use Cthulhu because it is so famous it starred in a three-parter South Park episode.

The main point of cosmic horror, insofar as I can gather, is taking the sense of awe and wonderment that Neil DeGrasse Tyson feels when looking up at the stars, and flipping it on its head. Humans are ants--less, even. We absolutely do not matter, our achievements turn to dust in an eyeblink, and the hard-and-fast truths we hold to, including things as simple as the limit on the number of mutually perpendicular lines that can intersect a point (3), can change at the whim of entities we cannot fathom, let alone stop. The protagonist in a Lovecraftian tale is akin to a termite that comes to comprehend what the giant tarp over the house and those mysterious metal cylinders portend.

But the other side of the coin is isolation. The Lovecraftian hero writes his experiences in a diary that (in-universe) will never be read, or if read, disbelieved. Cosmic horror relies on the feeling of smallness, and when humans feel small, they turn to others. What sustains the protagonist's horror is the certain knowledge that this solace is denied them, because what they have witnessed is so far beyond common understanding of the world that, unless one has witnessed it firsthand, the cost of believing it is simply too high, requiring as it does that one discard the model of the universe they have spent a lifetime building. People look at those trying to explain the Mythos the way they look at the Timecube guy.

But when Cthulhu has become not only a staple of weird tales and fantasy, but a pop-culture icon, that isolating feeling is gone, and so is half the horror.

Sure, there are tropes that say "this is a Mythos story." The GM uses the Sanity rules. Geometry misbehaves. The motivations of the cultists is not lust for power, but nihilism, and the standard line "we serve that we may be the first to die" will be on every minion's lips. The GM uses aboleths, bholes, the color out of space, deep ones, denizens of Leng, elder things, flying polyps, gugs, hounds of Tindalos, the mi-go, nightgaunts, and shoggoths. The campaign features sunken cities and ghoul-haunted necropolises, or even asteroids or moons inhabited by the undead.

But those things are all window dressing. The fact that two to four others believe you undermines a lot of the tension.

[ChaiGuy]

I would say that your interpretation of a Lovecraftian story (which I believe is correct) is at odds with the basic premise of Pathfinder (as I see it): that the player characters eventually prevail against the challenges presented to them. In my opinion it's not the popularity of Cthulhu that this is to blame for Pathfinder being a difficult method of telling a Lovecrafian tale.

Having said this a GM can create a game with the opposite expectation, that is that the player characters will eventually all be killed and thwarted by the cultist and or monsters. This would have to be agreed on in advance IMO, since if not it could lead to some hurt feelings among the players. With some buy in from the players it could work, kind of like those scary ghost houses at Halloween time, to properly enjoy them (although I'm nor really a fan) you need to suspend you disbelief and suppress your knowledge that you are in no danger to actually be scared during a haunted house tour.

[MMCJawa]

I think its the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge. Just because the players have seen Cthulhu on South Park doesn't mean the characters have. And just because, say you are using Cthulhu, doesn't mean you just have to blurt out his name at every opportunity. Slowing revealing what is going can keep the tension up for a long time.

I'd also say while I agree Lovecraft himself generally did not write stories that directly lend themselves to DnD style gaming, other authors have used the mythos in a way that has.

[Matthew Downie]

This is a problem with all good monsters / villains. When they become famous, they become familiar. There aren't many horror sequels that are as scary as the original, because the fear-of-the-unknown factor is gone. Successful horror sequels often mutate into action (Aliens, T2) or comedy (Evil Dead 2) to cope with this.

[PossibleCabbage]

The issue with Cthulhu is once he was in the public domain, the character became everybody's to do with what they want. Since a lot of people are going to want to use "the octopus monster with the funny name" for something other than "creeping dread" the notion of Cthulhu became diluted with comedy, plush dolls, "Cthulhu for President" bumper stickers, etc.

This is not to say that you can't still make Cthulhu scary, just like it's not that Count Chocula has rendered Vampires forever not-scary, it's just something you have to work for now and not something you get for free because of the identity of your antagonist.

[Isonaroc]

Personally, I think the biggest problem Pathfinder specifically has with Cthulhu is that they gave it a stat block.

[Thelemic_Noun]

Matthew Downie wrote:

This is a problem with all good monsters / villains. When they become famous, they become familiar. There aren't many horror sequels that are as scary as the original, because the fear-of-the-unknown factor is gone. Successful horror sequels often mutate into action (Aliens, T2) or comedy (Evil Dead 2) to cope with this.

Or try something neat like with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, only to demonstrate why we can't have nice things.

[PossibleCabbage]

I'm going to have the Silver Shamrocks jingle stuck in my head all day now.

[Mark Carlson 255]

I would suggest reading some of his stories as then you might get a better idea of what Lovcraft'ean style is all about. I would pick up one of his big anthology books and read some of the short stories first and then progress to the longer ones.

So yes Cthulhu is every where but Lovecrafts style and they way he uses story elements and what you think about them is also very important. You also have to keep in mind the actual time in which he is writing and how and what society was thinking about at that time to keep a good point of reference.

MDC

[Azten]

Chthulu is popular because we are the cultists, obviously.

[Doomed Hero]

The most lovecraftian of all horror concepts (to me) is the Mnemonic Hazard. An idea that is dangerous, and grows in power with every person that learns about it.

How do you fight something that harms you simply by knowing about it? If you learn what you need to in order to do anything, you have already lost, or worse, become part of the problem you are trying to solve.

Thinking about that concept in relation to Cthulhu is a good way to put the horror back in. The prophesy is that Cthulhu will wake "when the stars are right"

What if Carl Sagan's famous line "we are all stardust" was not so much poetry as it was a warning?

[Hark]

Isonaroc wrote:

Personally, I think the biggest problem Pathfinder specifically has with Cthulhu is that they gave it a stat block.

No, I've read everything Lovecraft wrote. The most appropriate thing you can do is Stat Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors. One of the things that made those monsters scary was they were real tangible creatures. They were utterly alien and frequently followed very different rules, but they were real enough that protagonists very often killed or maimed the horror that they were facing. Getting hit by a boat had a rather dramatic impact on Cthulhu himself, he just got better.

Now, while stating Cthulhu may be very appropriate, revealing those stats to your players is probably the least appropriate thing you can do. The unknown alien nature of these beings is just as important as they be real tangible things.

[Jader7777]

The same as the gods, they should of never stat'd him up.

[Entryhazard]

Isonaroc wrote:

Personally, I think the biggest problem Pathfinder specifically has with Cthulhu is that they gave it a stat block.

Jader7777 wrote:

The same as the gods, they should of never stat'd him up.

Not really, even in the source Mythos Cthulhu is lesser than Azatoth or Nyarlatoteph, and stuff like heavy weaponry can hurt him

[Milo v3]

I actually think the feeling of "you are less than an ant to this being, and worth nothing to universe" and "the world is so much grander you could never understand it" just isn't that scary to most modern audiences because of how people view science and the universe.

"Okay, we're worthless. We knew that already" "The world is so much more than our minds can comprehend, so what? Most people don't understand how electricity works let alone something like high energy physics, and that doesn't exactly generate dread. As long as the toaster works, it's fine. As long as the planet keeps turning and gravity keeps pulling, it's fine"

[MMCJawa]

Milo v3 wrote:

I actually think the feeling of "you are less than an ant to this being, and worth nothing to universe" and "the world is so much grander you could never understand it" just isn't that scary to most modern audiences because of how people view science and the universe.

"Okay, we're worthless. We knew that already" "The world is so much more than our minds can comprehend, so what? Most people don't understand how electricity works let alone something like high energy physics, and that doesn't exactly generate dread. As long as the toaster works, it's fine. As long as the planet keeps turning and gravity keeps pulling, it's fine"

I have read quite a few recently written books that play around with existential dread and similar themes which work really well. BUT...those are stories that are tailored to the protagonist and victim. It's a lot harder to pull off in a RPG, especially in a Pathfinder setting with a well understood cosmology and an assortment of unrelated big bads.

[Starfox]

I never really read Lovecraft & Co as horror. To me, it was always science-fiction. I see no trouble with humans turning to each other to work against the mythos, and considering how little the mythos have achieved over the aeons they have existed, I think that in the longer run humanity will prevail and take over the universe. First prize goes to the fast and nimble, not to the old and slow.

[thejeff]

Starfox wrote:

I never really read Lovecraft & Co as horror. To me, it was always science-fiction. I see no trouble with humans turning to each other to work against the mythos, and considering how little the mythos have achieved over the aeons they have existed, I think that in the longer run humanity will prevail and take over the universe. First prize goes to the fast and nimble, not to the old and slow.

In the process of course corrupting themselves with Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know and becoming monsters themselves - likely sowing the seeds of their own destruction like the Elder Things did with the Shoggoths.

[Isonaroc]

Starfox wrote:

I never really read Lovecraft & Co as horror. To me, it was always science-fiction. I see no trouble with humans turning to each other to work against the mythos, and considering how little the mythos have achieved over the aeons they have existed, I think that in the longer run humanity will prevail and take over the universe. First prize goes to the fast and nimble, not to the old and slow.

Eh...not really, I mean, kinda the whole point of Lovecraftian horror is that, ultimately, humanity is so small and insignificant that nothing we do even is noticed by most of the major players. It's arguable whether or not creatures of the mythos, beyond the basest of them, are even aware that humanity exists. It's like our relationship to dust mites. Academically we may know they exist around us, and we may kill them by the thousands, but we are rarely aware of when we do it and even if we are we simply do not care. Cthulhu and the like aren't evil, we simply matter so little that what they may or may not do to us is utterly beneath consideration.

[Planpanther]

Starfox wrote:

I never really read Lovecraft & Co as horror. To me, it was always science-fiction. I see no trouble with humans turning to each other to work against the mythos, and considering how little the mythos have achieved over the aeons they have existed, I think that in the longer run humanity will prevail and take over the universe. First prize goes to the fast and nimble, not to the old and slow.

so far behind in the race humans think they're leading....

[pH unbalanced]

So true story.
When I originally played Call of Cthulhu back in the 80s, the GM running the game was from France, so the only copy of the rules we had were in French. And, even more importantly, our character sheets were in French. Since none of the players spoke French, as the game went on, we realized that we only sort of knew what our characters were good at -- we'd describe what we wanted to do, roll the dice, and hand our sheet to the GM who would look it over to see if we succeeded or failed. Which would have been very frustrating in any other game, but was oddly appropriate for Call of Cthulhu.

So if I were wanting to run a Cthulhu-themed horror game in Pathfinder, I would do something like that. Get complete buyin ahead of time, and then forbid the players from having any reference books at the table during play. No Herolab, no internet. Once they create their characters, put them in some bizarre format that only you understand. When you adjudicate only give yes or no answers, don't explain anything. (But do be consistent.)

Horror is about either not knowing the rules, or being powerless to change the outcome, so the goal is to reinforce that experience. If they overcome it, despite the handicaps, it is epic. If they fall before it, well, it wasn't supposed to be fair.

[Jader7777]

Entryhazard wrote:

Isonaroc wrote:

Personally, I think the biggest problem Pathfinder specifically has with Cthulhu is that they gave it a stat block.

Jader7777 wrote:

The same as the gods, they should of never stat'd him up.

Not really, even in the source Mythos Cthulhu is lesser than Azatoth or Nyarlatoteph, and stuff like heavy weaponry can hurt him

I thought I was facing the endtimes cosmic horror of the far unknowable- but then I nuked it, job done! Lets go have chocolate frosty milkshakes!

[PossibleCabbage]

Jader7777 wrote:

I thought I was facing the endtimes cosmic horror of the far unknowable- but then I nuked it, job done! Lets go have chocolate frosty milkshakes!

I thought it was Golarion cannon that the Great Old Ones were akin to demi-gods or archdevils (things you can kill) whereas the Outer Gods are true deities.

If anything "At great expense and sacrifice we have killed/banished Cthulhu, but that doesn't really do anything to stop Yog-Sothoth from destroying the world."

[PossibleCabbage]

Jader7777 wrote:

I thought I was facing the endtimes cosmic horror of the far unknowable- but then I nuked it, job done! Lets go have chocolate frosty milkshakes!

I thought it was Golarion cannon that the Great Old Ones were akin to demi-gods or archdevils (things you can kill) whereas the Outer Gods are true deities.

If anything "At great expense and sacrifice we have killed/banished Cthulhu, but that doesn't really do anything to stop Yog-Sothoth from destroying the world" is even more horrifying.

['Sani]

In the Strange Aeons AP books, they have general information on all of the Elder Mythos Great Old Ones and Outer Gods etc. And they have detailed entries on different ones in each book. And one thing they seem to have in common, even on the ones that are all statted out with the implication you can fight and even kill them.

They come back. Maybe not soon. Maybe not in the same place. Maybe not even in the same point in time. But they always come back. Every single Great Old One and Outer God has in it's statblock the Immortality special ability, which details the ways, means, and timeline for it coming back. Cthulhu for example comes back in 2d6 rounds, fully healed, ready to go again. Ithaqua comes back in a year. Hastur comes back immediately if you fail DC 40 Will save (because now YOU are Hastur).

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

[Hubaris]

Killing a Great Old One or Outer God may very well be in the plans of another Great Old One or Outer God.

We're all just pawns even when victorious. How can a concept like 'defeat' be a thought to an Omnipresent and Omnipotent Yog-Sothoth?

Horror is more than just the victory, the greatest Horror is when your victory is corrupted and ultimately meaningless. Despair and futility are also important to Horror.

[Ventnor]

Milo v3 wrote:

I actually think the feeling of "you are less than an ant to this being, and worth nothing to universe" and "the world is so much grander you could never understand it" just isn't that scary to most modern audiences because of how people view science and the universe.

"Okay, we're worthless. We knew that already" "The world is so much more than our minds can comprehend, so what? Most people don't understand how electricity works let alone something like high energy physics, and that doesn't exactly generate dread. As long as the toaster works, it's fine. As long as the planet keeps turning and gravity keeps pulling, it's fine"

Additionally, the fear of not having a perfectly pure* family tree is not quite the crippling fear for most people that it was for Lovecraft.

* white

[CorvusMask]

Ventnor wrote:

Milo v3 wrote:

I actually think the feeling of "you are less than an ant to this being, and worth nothing to universe" and "the world is so much grander you could never understand it" just isn't that scary to most modern audiences because of how people view science and the universe.

"Okay, we're worthless. We knew that already" "The world is so much more than our minds can comprehend, so what? Most people don't understand how electricity works let alone something like high energy physics, and that doesn't exactly generate dread. As long as the toaster works, it's fine. As long as the planet keeps turning and gravity keeps pulling, it's fine"

Additionally, the fear of not having a perfectly pure* family tree is not quite the crippling fear for most people that it was for Lovecraft.

* white

Yeaaaaah, and it feels harder to believe nowadays in concept of information which is so hard to comprehend that it drives you insane. I mean, quantum physics makes no sense and it doesn't generally turn people into insane

[The Sideromancer]

CorvusMask wrote:

Ventnor wrote:

Milo v3 wrote:

I actually think the feeling of "you are less than an ant to this being, and worth nothing to universe" and "the world is so much grander you could never understand it" just isn't that scary to most modern audiences because of how people view science and the universe.

"Okay, we're worthless. We knew that already" "The world is so much more than our minds can comprehend, so what? Most people don't understand how electricity works let alone something like high energy physics, and that doesn't exactly generate dread. As long as the toaster works, it's fine. As long as the planet keeps turning and gravity keeps pulling, it's fine"

Additionally, the fear of not having a perfectly pure* family tree is not quite the crippling fear for most people that it was for Lovecraft.

* white

Yeaaaaah, and it feels harder to believe nowadays in concept of information which is so hard to comprehend that it drives you insane. I mean, quantum physics makes no sense and it doesn't generally turn people into insane

Because information is conserved (for some niche definitions of "information"), there's a distinct possibility of quantum mechanics making negative sense.

[ryric]

I always figured that the insanity of mythos knowledge was more that the character understands the world more than normal people, but because of their deeper understanding, they seem insane. In a lot of ways sanity is just our consensual agreement on what is real and rational, and what is not. For someone who understands the mythos even a little bit, their conception no longer lines up with the agreed upon norms, so they are insane.

[Dohnut King]

I've always thought the Lovecraftian mythos is a poor fit for a high powered fantasy setting like Pathfinder. What made Lovecraft's mythos "work" was the inability of a mundane, materialist world to do anything to stop these incredibly powerful, incredibly alien entities.

In a universe with quippoths, demons, daemons, devils, undead, and pantheons of evil deities, dealing incredibly powerful, malevolent, and alien threats is just another Tuesday.

Cthulhu and company can be a real threat in a Pathfinder campaign, but they will not work in the campaign like they do in the stories.

[Jader7777]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Jader7777 wrote:

I thought I was facing the endtimes cosmic horror of the far unknowable- but then I nuked it, job done! Lets go have chocolate frosty milkshakes!

I thought it was Golarion cannon that the Great Old Ones were akin to demi-gods or archdevils (things you can kill) whereas the Outer Gods are true deities.

If anything "At great expense and sacrifice we have killed/banished Cthulhu, but that doesn't really do anything to stop Yog-Sothoth from destroying the world."

And in the original source material they ram a boat into Cthulhu and it does 0 damage but does startle him for what it's worth.

If someone wants to calculate how much slamming a steamboat at full speed into something does in damage then take that damage average and make it the DR for him.

Quote:

But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where - God in heaven! - the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.

So like how a werewolf has DR silver that makes it's wounds close from mundane weapons, so to does Cthulhu's wounds close when rammed by boats. His body is some weird incorporeal-like thing.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Thelemic_Noun wrote:

This applies to the Elder Mythos as a whole; I just use Cthulhu because it is so famous it starred in a three-parter South Park episode.

The main point of cosmic horror, insofar as I can gather, is taking the sense of awe and wonderment that Neil DeGrasse Tyson feels when looking up at the stars, and flipping it on its head. Humans are ants--less, even. We absolutely do not matter, our achievements turn to dust in an eyeblink, and the hard-and-fast truths we hold to, including things as simple as the limit on the number of mutually perpendicular lines that can intersect a point (3), can change at the whim of entities we cannot fathom, let alone stop. The protagonist in a Lovecraftian tale is akin to a termite that comes to comprehend what the giant tarp over the house and those mysterious metal cylinders portend.

But the other side of the coin is isolation. The Lovecraftian hero writes his experiences in a diary that (in-universe) will never be read, or if read, disbelieved. Cosmic horror relies on the feeling of smallness, and when humans feel small, they turn to others. What sustains the protagonist's horror is the certain knowledge that this solace is denied them, because what they have witnessed is so far beyond common understanding of the world that, unless one has witnessed it firsthand, the cost of believing it is simply too high, requiring as it does that one discard the model of the universe they have spent a lifetime building. People look at those trying to explain the Mythos the way they look at the Timecube guy.

But when Cthulhu has become not only a staple of weird tales and fantasy, but a pop-culture icon, that isolating feeling is gone, and so is half the horror.

The horror of the Mythos stories is that they're set in a perfectly ordinary world. A world without sword and sorcery as it's main fare.

When you have a game where fighting monsters is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, Or what I did last Tuesday, the Mythos simply isn't going to be that "horrible" as it would be when reading a Lovecraft story.

In contrast, Investigators from a true Victorian Lovecraft World, i.e. player characters in a Call of Cthulu game, would lose SAN points simply from seeing an elf.

[claymade]

Jader7777 wrote:

So like how a werewolf has DR silver that makes it's wounds close from mundane weapons, so to does Cthulhu's wounds close when rammed by boats. His body is some weird incorporeal-like thing.

That description doesn't sound even remotely like DR to me. A hit that's fully absorbed by DR has no effect on the character's actions in combat; if you flavor it as some kind of limited recovery/healing, it's healing so fast the wound might as well not have happened in the first place.

In the very section you quoted, the boat hit Cthulhu so hard that the creature was actually physically "scattered". And when Johansen looked back, the "recombining" process was still going on, taking long enough that Cthulhu was unable to catch up to them.

That's not like hitting a werewolf not hard enough to punch through it's DR; that's like hitting a troll hard enough to chunky-salsa its body, only to have its Regeneration kick in because you didn't have the countering substance required to keep it down.

[Jader7777]

claymade wrote:

That description doesn't sound even remotely like DR to me.

Okay, I guess the CRB and me will just sit over here with our dumb explanation.

Quote:

Damage Reduction

Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.

[thejeff]

Jader7777 wrote:

claymade wrote:

That description doesn't sound even remotely like DR to me.

Okay, I guess the CRB and me will just sit over here with our dumb explanation.

Quote:

Damage Reduction

Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.

You see that "instantly" that you bolded? That doesn't mean "take time to reform while the ship steams away", it means "instantly.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

To answer the OP: No, in the same vein that the popularity of God defeats the purpose of God. (Merely an example, of course, not trying to start an off-topic flamewar here.)

Why? For starters, what about all the Cthulhu cultists and all the weird crap that's dreamt up or appears in the nightmares of the citizenry? The fact that such things exist or can be created through imagination is just a matter of popularizing that which cannot be understood or explained, and that if Cthulhu wasn't popular, there'd be no such thing as obedience or prayer to such dark creatures. Because nobody would be aware that they exist.

Cthulhu is merely an ideal of the impossible and the unexplainable in comparison to what we, as mere mortals can only hope to accomplish. The idea that there is something much greater and much more powerful than us, and that there is nothing we can do to change or stop whatever is happening, is precisely what Cthulhu is supposed to represent; the ideal that you're insignificant, and no matter what you do or try to change the outcome, it still turns out the same. (Ironically enough, it's akin to trying to achieving immortality in the real world.)

When you categorize Cthulhu as an entity (most accurately, a God), or even go so far as giving it a name, you begin quantifying and understanding what Cthulhu, as an entity, is. And when you do that, THAT is when you diminish the value of fear and foreboding that Cthulhu, as an entity, is supposed to impose on that which dare attempt to understand him.

In other words, when Cthulhu starts making sense, and can be explained, or even being stoppable or alterable, he starts being less cool and scary as he's supposed to be known for.

If you want a more in-depth (and probably more accurate) answer, I suggest you watch this video, as it more-than-properly conveys the answer I'm trying to deliver.

[thejeff]

A lot of authors made use of the Mythos, even before Lovecraft's death. Not all of them pure horror writers either. Most obviously and relevantly, R.E. Howard. The pulp sword and sorcery take on the Mythos is of course different than HPL's - Conan doesn't go mad and cower when faced with eldritch abominations, but it's still a valid use of the Mythos and one probably more workable in PF. One HPL approved of.
The general take I'd use, if I wanted a more horror approach to PF, would be to avoid direct confrontation with the actual Great Old Ones or Outer Gods, but focus on cultists and lesser servitors working to awaken or summon something. Thwarting them saves the day while leaving the terror of the thing itself - since it would destroy you if they succeeded.
Meanwhile playing up the horror effects on those around the PCs, even if they're somewhat blase about it.
Keeping the game at relatively low level helps too.

Most of this generally applies even to games like Call of Cthulhu itself, which suffers from the same problems, to a lesser extent. Even in a horror game, regularly dying and losing isn't much fun, so the challenges do have to be things you can overcome.

And really, we've gotten this far in the thread without even mention there's a Mythos adventure path running at the moment?

[GM Rednal]

I've always thought there was a certain... weakness... to Mythos creatures in Pathfinder. That is, while they may be horrible, malevolent alien entities that are happy to corrupt and murder you in creative ways, there's not a whole lot of difference between that and anything from the Abyss.

When I'm running things, I generally convert all Mythos entities (including its gods and demigods) into the solidly Chaotic Neutral camp. Very rarely are they actively malevolent on a wide scale - instead, they tend to have unknown (and often unknowable) goals, morality, and motivation. I mean, goodness knows the alignment needs some kind of representation outside of "Proteans being weird in, like, two or three adventures, and also some pirates when they're not outright awful".

The best horror tends to come from the unknown. When you don't really know what they're doing, it's hard to predict their actions or figure out how to stop them. They might even be friendly (at least from the players' view) - players will rarely blink twice at the horrible, ugly monster that wants to murder them, but they might be a little more nonplussed if it says it wants to trade for some random mundane thing they have, then does a happy jig and disappears after getting it. Chances are they won't be able to come up with an explanation that makes sense, and if they have a few more encounters like that over time, suggesting something bigger is happening that they may have unwittingly contributed to...

[Patrick C.]

Dohnut King wrote:

I've always thought the Lovecraftian mythos is a poor fit for a high powered fantasy setting like Pathfinder. What made Lovecraft's mythos "work" was the inability of a mundane, materialist world to do anything to stop these incredibly powerful, incredibly alien entities.

In a universe with quippoths, demons, daemons, devils, undead, and pantheons of evil deities, dealing incredibly powerful, malevolent, and alien threats is just another Tuesday.

Cthulhu and company can be a real threat in a Pathfinder campaign, but they will not work in the campaign like they do in the stories.

This.

These days, every fantasy setting and their aunt, whether for RPGs or Literature, absolutely HAS to include the "deep, dark mysteeerious tentacly things from beyond that nobody understands". It has grown so much that you can have a setting with no Elves or Dwarves, but a variant of comics horror aberration will be there.

Which... I sorta understand. I get the appeal. But it doesn't work. Not in a high fantasy setting.

Cthulhu lives in a city with non-euclidean geometry? B@~&~, please, i know at least three guys that have a spell that makes reality bend over backwards for them!"

Lovecraft protagonists were men of science who didn't really believe alien things with tentacles could exist. Pathfinder protagonists... Saw a demodand last month, an efreet the past monday, a guardinal the day before yesterday and a vortex dragon today. What should be so terribly scary and maddening about the next "outsider"?

It doesn't fit. Simple like that.

[Albatoonoe]

Sure, sure, you can't tell an Lovecradt mythos story in PF. So what? We're doing doing Howard Mythos story. We are all Conan, seeing the incomprehensible and not worrying about where it came from. We're going to punch it in the face. Lovecraft isn't the end all, be all to these kinds of monsters. Many authors wrote very different stories about these creatures. Howard himself was a friend and collaborator, working with tacit approval to punch these monsters in the face.

We have CoC for Lovecraft stories. Pathfinder is letting us have our Howard stories.

[Klorox]

thejeff wrote:

Jader7777 wrote:

claymade wrote:

That description doesn't sound even remotely like DR to me.

Okay, I guess the CRB and me will just sit over here with our dumb explanation.

Quote:

Damage Reduction

Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.

You see that "instantly" that you bolded? That doesn't mean "take time to reform while the ship steams away", it means "instantly.

the ship obvioussly did a lot more damage than the monster had DR, the reforming and whutnot is obviously regeneration or fast healing.

[CorvusMask]

I don't think there is much sense to argue about how Cthulhu from Pathfinder wouldn't be defeated by being impaled by a boat.

I mean, its clear that Cthulhu from Pathfinder isn't same one anyway, Lovecraft's Cthulhu is minor player in grand scheme of things so him being CR 30 is bit absurd considering that would make quite many of great old ones weaker than him <_< Part of what made Cthulhu scary is that he is just "high priest of great old ones" and still would end the world with his presence.

Like, isn't his job description essentially "1) Awaken 2) Awaken the other Great Old Ones 3) ??? 4) Profit & End of humanity"?

[The Sword]

I don't think Cthulhu was ever a magic word that worked to make things scary. we can't rely on a threat of a powerful entity to instill horror because of the GM-Player contract that says you will set achievable challenges and allow me to win. Sanity and corruption etc are just ways of measuring something that needs to exist deeper in the storytelling of the game. A points system can't instil fear by itself.

It's the writing that makes the mythos powerful. The themes and techniques HPL and others used to create a sense of dread.

- Not being believed by the authorities and having no one else to turn to. The ultimate responsibility being on you to prevent horrible events.

- the Unknown, whether that is the scale of the threat, or not having a solution.

- Pressure of time and knowing that there is a clock counting down to doom.

- Lack of sanctity of the body, lack of control over your body.

- a sense of scale, immense lurking or sleeping terrors

- Not knowing if what you are seeing is really there or not.

- Lack of sanctity of your mind, lack of control over your own actions.

- Knowledge = power = corruption or drawing attention to yourself.

- Isolation due to technology or location.

All these themes when compounded and added to the right atmosphere and mood can bring a sense of cosmic horror. Just calling a monster a Mi-go in a regular game of Pathfinder isn't going to cut the mustard.

Other things are needed to

[HWalsh]

Thelemic_Noun wrote:

This applies to the Elder Mythos as a whole; I just use Cthulhu because it is so famous it starred in a three-parter South Park episode.

The main point of cosmic horror, insofar as I can gather, is taking the sense of awe and wonderment that Neil DeGrasse Tyson feels when looking up at the stars, and flipping it on its head. Humans are ants--less, even. We absolutely do not matter, our achievements turn to dust in an eyeblink, and the hard-and-fast truths we hold to, including things as simple as the limit on the number of mutually perpendicular lines that can intersect a point (3), can change at the whim of entities we cannot fathom, let alone stop. The protagonist in a Lovecraftian tale is akin to a termite that comes to comprehend what the giant tarp over the house and those mysterious metal cylinders portend.

But the other side of the coin is isolation. The Lovecraftian hero writes his experiences in a diary that (in-universe) will never be read, or if read, disbelieved. Cosmic horror relies on the feeling of smallness, and when humans feel small, they turn to others. What sustains the protagonist's horror is the certain knowledge that this solace is denied them, because what they have witnessed is so far beyond common understanding of the world that, unless one has witnessed it firsthand, the cost of believing it is simply too high, requiring as it does that one discard the model of the universe they have spent a lifetime building. People look at those trying to explain the Mythos the way they look at the Timecube guy.

But when Cthulhu has become not only a staple of weird tales and fantasy, but a pop-culture icon, that isolating feeling is gone, and so is half the horror.

Sure, there are tropes that say "this is a Mythos story." The GM uses the Sanity rules. Geometry misbehaves. The motivations of the cultists is not lust for power, but nihilism, and the standard line "we serve that we may be the first to die" will be on every minion's lips. The GM uses aboleths, bholes, the color out of...

Interesting topic...

I think it is part of the setting, it's really hard to do horror properly in a Pathfinder setting. Horror book or not. At the end of the day it has heroes who can bring down literal holy wrath. These aren't the kinds of guys who are going to be scared of a giant tentacle-faced monster rising up from below.

This isn't the kind of setting that will have the PCs be seen as crackpots. This is the kind of setting where the PCs could potentially raise an army of do-gooders to take on Cthulhu.

To me Cthulhu, or the theme, works best when the players never EVER see it. They find cultists who are doing sick body mutilations or engaging in horrible practices. Aftermaths of horrible mass sacrifices.

The hinting that these things drive people, powerful people, PC level people, insane. Notes that the PCs find that 60 years ago a cult almost succeeded in summoning it to the world but a group of adventurers stopped it. When they find out that 3 of the 4 are dead and the remaining survivor if that group, a powerful elven Wizard, is now in the care of his children with an int of 4 and who is restrained at all times because he tries to claw at his own eyes.

You NEVER show Cthulhu. Ever. The second you show him you lose. The monster needs to be a threat that exists beyond understanding. The PCs can't fight him. If he's summoned it is game over. They can only stop his mortal instruments and even then that only works until someone else dreams of the thing from beyond and catches a fleeting glimpse of what lies beneath.

[Hark]

Albatoonoe wrote:

Sure, sure, you can't tell an Lovecradt mythos story in PF. So what? We're doing doing Howard Mythos story. We are all Conan, seeing the incomprehensible and not worrying about where it came from. We're going to punch it in the face. Lovecraft isn't the end all, be all to these kinds of monsters. Many authors wrote very different stories about these creatures. Howard himself was a friend and collaborator, working with tacit approval to punch these monsters in the face.

We have CoC for Lovecraft stories. Pathfinder is letting us have our Howard stories.

This is kinda important when examining the appropriateness of Cthulhu Mythos in Pathfinder. Conan is indirectly part of the greater Cthulhu Mythos. Howard wrote quite a bit set in the same universe as Lovecraft's Mythos. Of particular note is Kull the Conqueror, who was specifically in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Now everybody's favorite Conan the Barbarian was not ever formally part of the Cthulhu mythos, he does explicitly exist in same universe as Kull the Conqueror. Also worth noting is the Conan very much fought Mythos style monsters regularly.

In the 1920's the Mythos is really scary because people believe they live in a safe and secure world that people understand. Conan's world everything was dangerous and magic was an accepted part of people's world view and accept that they can't understand it. Setting affects how you're story is going to be told.

[Alzrius]

Thelemic_Noun wrote:

This applies to the Elder Mythos as a whole; I just use Cthulhu because it is so famous it starred in a three-parter South Park episode.

Aw, c'mon. Who doesn't like Cutethulhu?

[Zhangar]

Yeah, think Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock when dealing with the Mythos in Pathfinder.

The Mythos creatures are catastrophically dangerous, but so are high level heroes.

If you want a more Lovecraftian adventure in Pathfinder, you should probably deliberately use something way out of your party's ECL range, and then have it mess with the PCs (or have some objective completely unrelated to the PCs) instead of killing them outright.

Make the monster more like a deadly puzzle to solve rather than something to take in a straight fight.

And hell, even in Lovecraft's own stories, humanity can take on Mythos creatures and win.

The Dunwich Horror was a CR 15 monster being challenged by a group of low level experts, after all. =P

[TOZ]

This is all on the players. If they buy into it, you can have a Mythos horror game just fine.

My elven scout in 3.5 was alone, and opened a door. The GM described a vargouille and asked what I did. My answer was "scream and slam the door closed".

[Kullen]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

it's not that Count Chocula has rendered Vampires forever not-scary

Yeah. Twilight rendered vampires forever not-scary.