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Amiel
2011-06-18, 12:51 AM
How much do Lovecraftian elements play a role in your campaigns and/or campaign settings? The slitherer in between the realities, the shuddering piping cacophony of maddening gibberish, the rats between the walls.

For instance, your campaign setting could display the cardinal features of a great fantasy epic, but also involve darker and abhorrent inhabitants, ones who travelled through the cold and desolate reaches of space to impact upon the material plane. Or maybe not.

I'll be including Elder Things and other such monstrosities in a new setting I've been meaning to design,

TheCountAlucard
2011-06-18, 01:48 AM
How much do Lovecraftian elements play a role in your campaigns and/or campaign settings?Truth be told, it's somewhat-hard to say. I, personally, have never read a bit of Lovecraft's work, other than The Shadow Over Innsmouth, which has only ever directly-influenced one adventure I've run.

At the same time, though, much of his work influenced much of the work of things I've felt free in the past to pillage from when coming up with campaign ideas. As such, I imagine there's a fair bit of it here and there.

Undercroft
2011-06-18, 01:57 AM
I based a villain on his reanimator character (forgot the story, but it was one of his better ones i thought). Even had the characters thinking he was a pretty swell npc who had these weird undead things after him :P

claricorp
2011-06-18, 02:46 AM
It's influenced a lot of my stuff, particularly the subtle mind altering stuff going on, with some greater than you mystery and some funky alien creatures who could seriously screw up stuff.

Most notably I had a campaign that started out as a bit of an apocalyptic wasteland with lots of accepted "that's just how things are" by the general populace of the setting, while having discover-able truths/half truths/incomprehensible ideas about all of the generally odd stuff going on.

EccentricCircle
2011-06-18, 05:07 AM
I think he's one of those authors who has influenced so much, both within D&D and in Fantasy/ Sci fi/ horror in general that its hard not to be influenced in some way. I have run several games involving the Illithids, and multiple times people have asked whether Lovecraft was an influence.
at the time i'd not read any of his stuff, I was just riffing around some of the more cosmic horrory ideas from lords of madness and some of the psionic books.
now that I have read a bit of the Cthulhu mythos it will be interesting to see if my games get more lovecraftian as I start deliberately borrowing, or less as I recognise that as the source of some of the ideas in Lords of madness et al and work on different ideas.

dsmiles
2011-06-18, 07:50 AM
I'm currently (with some excellent homebrewers, over here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=200953)) working on a Steampunk/Lovecraftian Horror campaign setting. You tell me. :smallwink:

Yora
2011-06-18, 08:45 AM
In my campaign there's a very lovecraftian underworld inhabited by aberrations. Most people only know anecdotes of a world deep below the earth and nobody really knows what's going on there or what those creatures actually are. Communicating with them in any meaningful way is almost impossible.
There's only some evidence that the aberations are really really old and have been there long before any other creatures alive in the present. There are however some hints, that at least some aberrations existed on the surface world as well many ages ago.

The usual response to any discovered passages to the underworld is close the holes and make sure nothing is ever to open them again.

byaku rai
2011-06-18, 08:55 AM
I've inserted a bit of Lovecraftian goodness by putting Tyranids (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tyranid) (from Warhammer 40k) into the underground, sealed away for thousands of years by a pre-civilization race from outer space. It helps that I'm using the name "The Great Devourer" to describe the Nids.

some guy
2011-06-18, 09:43 AM
I'm thinking to center my next DnD campaign around an aboleth, using Lords of Madness to great extent. Maybe throw in some skum=deep ones. Letting the adventurerers descend into a deep and watery dungeon.

And I like to think my Call of Cthulhu campaign has all the Lovecraftian elements. All of them.

Lord Loss
2011-06-19, 07:30 AM
When I run D&D, there's often some far realm stuff involved, but it's not very lovecraftian - the fluff is, but not the mood I set. When I play stuff like CoC or Fear Itself, I'll mix in Lovecraft, generic horror and other stuff like Fear Itself's Outer Black, the Word of Darkness setting, etc.

SleepyShadow
2011-06-20, 12:32 AM
The Lovecraftian Pantheon is a staple set of deities in my campaigns.

Pickman was a featured NPC for an adventure.

The Necronomicon was the Golden MacGuffin a long while ago.

I use the Call of Cthulhu d20 monsters in my Ravenloft campaign.

One of my players tried to (and almost succeeded in) summon Cthulhu.

I don't think I have enough Lovecraftian influence in my game :smallbiggrin:

Xanmyral
2011-06-20, 12:43 AM
Lovecraft actually made me revise death, how it works, what happens and so such in my setting. Also made me rethink angels and demons, and how they work. Made them more like aberrations honestly. Strange mindsets, different thought patterns and so such. About it though. So really, it just made angels, demons, and death a lot more interesting.

rayne_dragon
2011-06-20, 01:01 AM
I tend to use lovecraftian things when the players are dealing with far realm influence or when I want to inspire horror rather than bravery. When you start seeing elder signs scribbled on the walls, you know you should be thinking about just running away rather than fighting.

Silus
2011-06-20, 01:52 AM
I'm a pretty big fan of Lovecraftian things, but I'm only in favor of using them if the players are genre savvy enough to realize that "Hey, maybe this book with the words 'Necronomicon' on the front is something I should avoid reading". But nooooooooooo, first thing they do is crack that sucker open to try and get unimaginable power.

I swear, next time I run a game and someone does something this stupid, I'm dropping a Shoggoth on them.

panaikhan
2011-06-21, 07:58 AM
Shoggoths are fun. Every game should have one.

Callos_DeTerran
2011-06-21, 01:27 PM
My games tend to....well...vary in how much Lovecraft influence they have. I love abberrations to death and use them whenever I can, but they don't really have THAT much of a Lovecraft flair to them when I use them. Mostly because I've never read so much as a single Lovecraft story When I involve the Far Realm though, things tend to get a bit more Lovecraftian, or so I'm told from my players, but whenever I do an actual HORROR game I prefer to leave Lovecraft out of it.

I don't know why, but I've never gotten why Lovecraft was scary (besides normal spooky reasons) and I don't think I'm that good at playing it because of that. I prefer horror that's personal, immediate, and lethal. It's harder to draw a connection with your character if they're trying to stop the summoning of an Elder God that'll rewrite the world to it's deranged whims.

...It's much easier when your character is racing against time to save your character's children (or the children of friends/family) from kooks before summer ends. (Oh Book of Unremitting Horror, how I love thee!)

Yukitsu
2011-06-21, 01:49 PM
As a rule, I run the horror campaigns, so my games have a lot of elements of Lovecraft. On the other hand, I have a very heavy Japanese horror influence, in particular things that don't kill you in particular.

Irritatingly, my players run from almost all of the encounters I run, even when they're like, level 9 D&D ones.

Lord Loss
2011-06-21, 01:50 PM
My games tend to....well...vary in how much Lovecraft influence they have. I love abberrations to death and use them whenever I can, but they don't really have THAT much of a Lovecraft flair to them when I use them. Mostly because I've never read so much as a single Lovecraft story When I involve the Far Realm though, things tend to get a bit more Lovecraftian, or so I'm told from my players, but whenever I do an actual HORROR game I prefer to leave Lovecraft out of it.

I don't know why, but I've never gotten why Lovecraft was scary (besides normal spooky reasons) and I don't think I'm that good at playing it because of that. I prefer horror that's personal, immediate, and lethal. It's harder to draw a connection with your character if they're trying to stop the summoning of an Elder God that'll rewrite the world to it's deranged whims.

...It's much easier when your character is racing against time to save your character's children (or the children of friends/family) from kooks before summer ends. (Oh Book of Unremitting Horror, how I love thee!)

Completely agree with this post. I've played Invasive Procedures (a Fear itself adventure that uses The Practice from the Book of Unremitting Horror as main villains and is insanely disturbing) and I'm going to download the book of Unremitting Horror. In terms of fluff, I've been wondering: is the GUMSHOE or D20 Modern version better, or do they have the same monsters?

EDIT: I too am fascinated by Japanese folklore and horror and i'm trying to include more of it in my games.

NichG
2011-06-21, 02:38 PM
In my current campaign and the campaign before the last, I've had at least one player _be_ a Lovecraftian horror, or something similar in concept at least. In the current one, the guy even has an Elder Evils-style sign that makes travellers get to their destination faster or slower than the journey should normally take, and occasionally takes them through an impossible place.

Callos_DeTerran
2011-06-21, 10:15 PM
Completely agree with this post. I've played Invasive Procedures (a Fear itself adventure that uses The Practice from the Book of Unremitting Horror as main villains and is insanely disturbing) and I'm going to download the book of Unremitting Horror. In terms of fluff, I've been wondering: is the GUMSHOE or D20 Modern version better, or do they have the same monsters?

EDIT: I too am fascinated by Japanese folklore and horror and i'm trying to include more of it in my games.

I guess this answers my question in the other thread. xD To be honest, I only have the d20 Modern version (it's my favorite system) myself (real and pdf) so I can't say if GUMSHOE has the same monsters or not.

I can say that the d20 modern version is very well detailed. Each monster (I think there's 26 of them) comes with all the important background information on the creature without becoming excessive. Bodies of their victims are described from the perspective of an autopsy and each is preceded by a short story/'magazine article'/folk legend/bit of lore about the creature in question which is great fodder for plot hooks. It also has a collection of artifacts, each of them (except one) tied to a specific creature that come with plot-hooks of their own. There's even an artifact (a scalpel) for the Practice, which is definitely one of my favorite monsters from that book. I'm guessing, and hoping, the GUMSHOE version would have a similar level of detail.

Talakeal
2011-06-21, 10:49 PM
I tried to run a campaign with strong Lovecraftian influences recently. It didn't work out. I was trying for a Shadow over Insmouth thing where the Sahuagin are trying to interbreed with coastal villagers to create a hybrid species who can travel on land and pass of as humans to spread the word of their cthulhuesque master.

Local cultists had been arranging such coupling, and the player's overheard some children talking about how one of their friends (a junior initiate in the cult) had gotten lucky with a mermaid who came about a certain cove at the lowest tide, a hook to show them that something funny was going on.

The players decided to investigate by going and sleeping with said mermaid, because "it was what my character would do". The "mermaid" turns out to be a female sahuagin, but one of the players decided to sleep with it anyway, and then said I was being an immature weirdo by trying to get them to play an erotic furry porn RPG.

I dropped the plotline pretty quick after that.

Lord Loss
2011-06-22, 11:59 AM
I guess this answers my question in the other thread. xD To be honest, I only have the d20 Modern version (it's my favorite system) myself (real and pdf) so I can't say if GUMSHOE has the same monsters or not.

I can say that the d20 modern version is very well detailed. Each monster (I think there's 26 of them) comes with all the important background information on the creature without becoming excessive. Bodies of their victims are described from the perspective of an autopsy and each is preceded by a short story/'magazine article'/folk legend/bit of lore about the creature in question which is great fodder for plot hooks. It also has a collection of artifacts, each of them (except one) tied to a specific creature that come with plot-hooks of their own. There's even an artifact (a scalpel) for the Practice, which is definitely one of my favorite monsters from that book. I'm guessing, and hoping, the GUMSHOE version would have a similar level of detail.

If you like the Practice, I strongly suggest Invasive Procedures (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=4692). It's a horribly gruesome scenario in which Doctor Drake, a mad doctor, attempts to join the Practice (I modified it slightly, removing the few bits of sexual content and we had a blast) by grafting The Hand, The Eye and The Key onto the characters in order to solve The RIddle of Flesh (a test posed by the practice) and join them. Most of the scenario is quite good, but it really shines in the night-time scenes. If the characters choose to explore the hospital at night, there's an abundance of horrid products of the Practice's experiments and a slew of disgusting creatures that haunt the halls. It's an amazing scenario, but it is disturbing at times and I found myself toning stuff down a tad here and there. My most squeamish player found I went too far at times and one of my more resilient players admitted it was pretty disturbing. They all had fun and loved the plot, though, and we had an amazing time.