Quote from: Simlasa;952138I mean, big deal, Lovecraft was a racist in the 20s. Here's a gold star for calling that out. Now go do something relevant to racism in our present moment.

 You're preaching to the choir here.

Quote from: Simlasa;952138Why do you assume it was all consensual? Why do you assume modern audiences are just fine with men fucking gorillas or women fucking alien fish-people?

Honestly, I figure there was a -lot- of rape going on, just "off screen".  But that's not a universally agreed upon view (seriously, go look into it if you want).  I'm not sure if it's because people can't imagine the "Old Gentleman" thinking in those terms, or if he really didn't.      

Quote from: Simlasa;952138I suspect you just don't like the guy's writing

You're probably right.  When I was younger I thought he was really talented and read pretty much everything he did.  I still like some of his works (The Old Man in the House), but generally I think he's more noteworthy for his impact on others than in terms of his own writing.  That and helping to create an IP that isn't locked down by Disney.

Lovecraft was notably racist even for the 20s but I agree that the obsessing on his racism is played out. I find many of his early stories are too derivative of Poe or they suffer from drawing out a 'twist' that the reader sees coming from miles away (The Whisperer in Darkness is the best/worst example of this).

He was his own best critic, in his letters he identifies his weakness both in structure and in a slightly antispetic tone at odds with much of his material. He really improved once he started to integrate more overtly sci-fi elements into his writing and you get his best work like The Colour Out of Space, Shadow Across Time and Mountains of Madness. Notably the last two are among the last things he wrote, it's a shame that he died just as he was finding his voice imo.

For Lovecraft but not try reading some stuff that inspired him like The White People by Machen or The Repairer of Reputations by Chambers. Two great stories from the turn of the last century but nothing either of them wrote is anywhere close to as good.

The White People is a truly visionary piece of writing. Even after reading all the praise for it from Lovecraft, Alan Moore and T.E.D. Klein building an entire very fine horror novel around it, it exceeded my expectations.

Might be worth checking out Monte Cook's Galchutt (which can be found in his Chaositech and Ptolus books). Clearly Lovecraft-inspired, but not in the "I called my face-tentacle giant by a different name" way.

My favorite is probably Dhar Rhys, which is a hole in space that opens on a dimension of writhing, worm-like creatures. The worms are not Dhar Rhys -- Dhar Rhys is the hole; the fundamental tearing of reality.

Deathbird by Harlan Ellison.

You can do weird shit with "real" human mythologies.

Humans have believed a lot of kookie stuff.

What if...there was a Catholic cult were the bread and wine DID turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus during their rituals...and the cultist were empowered by eating the flesh of God?

...and what if eating pieces of God isn't a good idea, not just for the cultists, but for the entire universe? AKA, they are literally devouring God and there isn't much left of Him!!

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;952080Petty Gods is good, and cheap considering how chunky it is.

Agreed. There's lots to mine there.

Quote from: Simlasa;952138I know there are porn sites for that stuff, but even they generally make the fishmen a lot cuter than the average Deep One.

Finally! I knew I wasn't the only connoisseur of Dagon porn on this site!

Quote from: Spinachcat;952751What if...there was a Catholic cult were the bread and wine DID turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus during their rituals...and the cultist were empowered by eating the flesh of God?

...and what if eating pieces of God isn't a good idea, not just for the cultists, but for the entire universe? AKA, they are literally devouring God and there isn't much left of Him!!

Nyarlathotep approves of this post.

Or if you did want to mix up Catholicism and Lovecraft, have Azathoth with his servants and idiot pipers actually be God in Heaven, it's just as humans in our post-lapserian state, without Grace we are so corrupted and desecrated that it looks horrific to us.  All the Cthulhu Mythos nonsense is really just Satan putting a new spin on things in order to pull us further away from God.

Again, I want to thank everybody for responding.  I appreciate the time everyone took.  I've been busy the last few days and it could take me a while to work through all of the responses and I'm going to cut some of them up so I can respond more or less efficiently, so please bear with me.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;951837The presence of unique mysterious alien mythologies are not exclusively a Lovecraftian concept. Lovecraft simply started the most popular modern widespread expression of such a mythology. You don't have to use anything like the Cthulhu Mythos. If you don't want to.

It's okay to make up your own. And honestly? I think it would give your setting more character if you did just that.

Quote from: Omega;951877Then just make up weird alien god thingies. The idea isnt tied to Lovecraft. What happened was him and a bunch of writer friends were having fun sharing their ideas or drawing inspiration from nightmares, older works, legends and so on.

I'm pretty comfortable with the history of weird literature, especially horror literature, and I have a pretty good sense of how the Cthulhu Mythos developed.  This is less about what Lovecraft invented or didn't invent and more about wanting to stay away from gods that feel Lovecraftian, largely because overuse has changed the impact they have and I don't think they will evoke "a profound sense ... of contact with unknown spheres and powers" in my players.

As far as making things up goes, I don't intend to drop the temple-tomb of the Gods of Lankhmar in the hills outside town.  I'm looking for ideas that excite my imagination so I can either play magpie and borrow aspects of them, or pick them apart to figure out why they work for me.  As Lovecraft points out in Supernatural Horror in Literature, the weird is about atmosphere and the feelings it evokes more than anything else.  I know the weird when I feel it, but to a significant extent I don't know it until I feel it.

As far as real life gods (and cult practices) go, of course I hit them up for inspiration!

Quote from: Dave R;951862The OP may wish to check out Petty Gods.  It's garnered some praise, to the point I found it overrated.  There's a lot of joke entries, and a lot of overlap given the multiple submissions.  But at free you can't beat the price, and I'd be surprised if there's not something you can use.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;952080Petty Gods is good, and cheap considering how chunky it is.

Thanks for pointing this out!  I downloaded it and paged through it.  It's uneven, but there's also some good stuff.

Quote from: nDervish;951871If you're in a DIY mood, Silent Legions includes a couple chapters on creating your own Lovecraftian-style-but-not-Lovecraft mythos to use in your game, complete with gods, aliens, alternate dimensions, cults, and artifacts.

It looks interesting, but it's just a little more expensive than I'd like to pay for something sight unseen.  It looks interesting, and if I feel like gambling, I'll pick it up.  Thanks!

Quote from: Dave R;951862From Qelong, which I'm currently running...

I like both of those ideas, especially the river that is also a goddess/demon/whatever and Qelong seems like it's worth picking up more generally.  (LotFP stuff has been a little hit or miss for me so far, but that one seems particularly interesting and it's by Kenneth Hite, so there's that.)  Thanks!

That's all I have time for right now.  I will try to get to more responses in my next post.

Quote from: Voros;952518The White People is a truly visionary piece of writing. Even after reading all the praise for it from Lovecraft, Alan Moore and T.E.D. Klein building an entire very fine horror novel around it, it exceeded my expectations.

It's such a great story. Then I read story after story after story by the same author and none of them came anywhere close. Just some critters in tunnels and "it was so horrifying that I can't describe it at all" bullshit. Just read like Lovecraft with the funky prose and the interesting details stripped out. That's interesting because it predates Lovecraft but makes for such boring reading.

But The White People is probably the best weird fiction I've  ever read.

I liked The Great God Pan but it lacks the intensity for sure. I'd say he is a stronger prose writer than Lovecraft though.

China Mieville's work often has weird outsiders and extraplanar entities.
Weavers, the Avanc, and the Grindylows are all pretty bizarre.

This is somewhat relevant here.

Quote from: The Scythian;953193As far as making things up goes, I don't intend to drop the temple-tomb of the Gods of Lankhmar in the hills outside town. I'm looking for ideas that excite my imagination so I can either play magpie and borrow aspects of them, or pick them apart to figure out why they work for me. As Lovecraft points out in Supernatural Horror in Literature, the weird is about atmosphere and the feelings it evokes more than anything else. I know the weird when I feel it, but to a significant extent I don't know it until I feel it.

If you don't already read D&D with pornstars you should check out this one post.  It's nominally about horror scenarios but I think it would apply to introducing weird gods in play.