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Author Topic: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?  (Read 3114 times)

I

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #15 on: February 05, 2023, 12:48:26 AM »
For me, the ultimate Lovecraft backdrop for a campaign was the short-lived "Friday the 13th" the series TV show.  See here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092357/?ref_=ttep_ep_tt

Nothing to do with the films.  The basic premise is that a pair of cousins inherit a cursed antique shop from an evil uncle who made a deal with the devil.  With the help of their uncle's friend, who is the quintessential Lovecraftian hero, they track down the cursed antiques, facing all manner of horrors and nasty people in the process.  When I ran a Cthulhu campaign way back in the 1990s we used this as the premise for our campaign, just changing the temporal setting from the 1980s to the 1920s.  So I think you can make the campaign thing work.  And of course CoC features some of the coolest campaigns ever created for any RPG.

Dude!  That was a fantastic TV show.  As the show went on, the characters even suffered a sort of PTSD.  It's a great premise for a game.  Back in the day, I even attempted to draw the floorplan of Curious Goods based on paying careful attention to the show, with an eye towards working it into a game.  You could use it for CoC, but Chill  or any other horror game would work well.

Lynn

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #16 on: February 05, 2023, 01:31:23 AM »
Especially, there are a lot of published Call of Cthulhu adventures which effectively encourage the characters operating like a tactical military squad - and I find that breaks from Lovecraftian feel. In other words, when dilettantes come in and ask questions and read up at the library, they mostly just turn up useless background information and expose themselves to enemy view. By contrast, camping out and making midnight raids with shotguns and dynamite is still dangerous but more effective.
Call of Cthulhu is more 'Cthulhu Mythos' as derived from the full gamut of the Lovecraft Circle and others, including August Derleth, and just too many scenarios that start with someone inheriting a house or a letter from an old friend inviting the party for a visit. I really enjoyed playing CoC but its kind of its own riff on Lovecraft.

You might want to re-read all of the Randolph Carter stories (including  the revision Through the Gates of the Silver Key) for a more cosmic and not entirely pessimistic campaign.
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Spinachcat

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #17 on: February 05, 2023, 03:07:15 AM »
"Lovecraftian" (the grimdark version) works best for one-shots.

Maybe there could be a sequel where Party 2 tries to find out what happened to Party 1, even gets to meet the sole surviving PC in the mental world...or worse.

If you're actually using the CoC Sanity rules-as-written, PCs are in bad shape after losing chunks of sanity and long term survival doesn't help long term sanity, so your PC is not long for this world either way.

It wasn't unusual for our CoC campaigns to run through several heroes per player before we reached the end of the storyline. A bunch died, the rest too messed up in the brain.

Ruprecht

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #18 on: February 05, 2023, 10:08:05 AM »
For a Lovecraftian feel you must create your own horror. If there is any chance the players recognize the thing it doesn't work as well. That's not the only thing that makes something Lovecraftian but I feel it's an essential element.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~Robert E. Howard

Grognard GM

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #19 on: February 05, 2023, 11:30:37 AM »
For a Lovecraftian feel you must create your own horror.

That means James Hausler and Byron Hall are the greatest CoC GMs in the history of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.A.T.A.L.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2023, 11:35:16 AM by Grognard GM »
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Garry G

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #20 on: February 05, 2023, 12:21:59 PM »
Lovecraftian has become a really broad term over the last 40 years. My pick is that the universe not only doesn't have a God that cares for us but is actually malignant to humanity. Not in a way that cares about us just that any contact is likely to destroy us individually and eventually as a species. It's atheism on steroids, it's not just that we're not special and loved it's that we are entirely unsuited to surviving in the universe without becoming something that's not human. Any gains are meaningless and any win is temporary and will ruin you.

Charles Stross A Colder War is a great modern example and a good read.

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

I'd probably put Graham Walmsley's Cthulhu Dark as the exemplifier of this style of Lovecraftian.

Bruwulf

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #21 on: February 05, 2023, 01:06:22 PM »
Charles Stross A Colder War is a great modern example and a good read.

Although the last couple Laundry Files books have gone a little off the deep end, I still consider Stross one of the best inheritors of the Lovecraft genre.

I do tend to tone down the sanity rules a lot when I run CoC. I've always felt the Chaosium take on sanity was too forced and artificially punishing, beyond what Lovecraft's actual stories justified.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2023, 01:09:47 PM by Bruwulf »

Grognard GM

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #22 on: February 05, 2023, 01:20:04 PM »
I do tend to tone down the sanity rules a lot when I run CoC. I've always felt the Chaosium take on sanity was too forced and artificially punishing, beyond what Lovecraft's actual stories justified.

I reduce both the sanity losses and the "on a roll of 85% or less 1d3 Investigators are devoured" aspect. I prefer a slow slide in to madness and corruption.

Of course if you stick your head in the attic, or go to investigate the noise on the foggy moor without waking your friends, then you're going to get eaten, long term plans be damned.

I had a player, in his second adventure, torn to shreds by a pack of gibbering creatures, because he thought re-reading the summoning spell he found might unsummon them...

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Garry G

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #23 on: February 05, 2023, 01:22:09 PM »
Charles Stross A Colder War is a great modern example and a good read.

Although the last couple Laundry Files books have gone a little off the deep end, I still consider Stross one of the best inheritors of the Lovecraft genre.

I do tend to tone down the sanity rules a lot when I run CoC. I've always felt the Chaosium take on sanity was too forced and artificially punishing, beyond what Lovecraft's actual stories justified.

I prefer Trail of Cthulhu's sanity and stability rules myself. CoC's sanity rules never worked all that well for me and had a tendency to encourage annoying behaviour from players.

I

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #24 on: February 05, 2023, 01:24:47 PM »
Has anyone ever played CoC just in the Dreamlands?  That's how the game was originally conceived -- Sandy Peterson approached Chaosium with a proposal to do an RPG set wholly within the Dreamlands.  It was Chaosium that wanted him to make it into the 1920s setting of HPL's most popular stories.   

Grognard GM

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2023, 01:35:06 PM »
Has anyone ever played CoC just in the Dreamlands?  That's how the game was originally conceived -- Sandy Peterson approached Chaosium with a proposal to do an RPG set wholly within the Dreamlands.  It was Chaosium that wanted him to make it into the 1920s setting of HPL's most popular stories.

Nope, I actually had the boxed set and didn't even crack it. The setting just didn't appeal to me.

Judging by 40 years of sales, I'd say Chaosium did 'ol Sandy a good turn.
I'm a middle aged guy with a lot of free time, looking for similar, to form a group for regular gaming. You should be chill, non-woke, and have time on your hands.

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Bruwulf

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2023, 01:38:00 PM »
Has anyone ever played CoC just in the Dreamlands?  That's how the game was originally conceived -- Sandy Peterson approached Chaosium with a proposal to do an RPG set wholly within the Dreamlands.  It was Chaosium that wanted him to make it into the 1920s setting of HPL's most popular stories.

I did a short lived campaign (I think about 6 sessions, IIRC) of a setting that was a hybrid of Warhammer's Old World and the Dreamlands, if that counts.

I

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2023, 02:10:30 PM »
Has anyone ever played CoC just in the Dreamlands?  That's how the game was originally conceived -- Sandy Peterson approached Chaosium with a proposal to do an RPG set wholly within the Dreamlands.  It was Chaosium that wanted him to make it into the 1920s setting of HPL's most popular stories.

Nope, I actually had the boxed set and didn't even crack it. The setting just didn't appeal to me.

Judging by 40 years of sales, I'd say Chaosium did 'ol Sandy a good turn.

I think you are in the majority.  Most of my players didn't care for them either and requested that I not use them.  I love the Dreamlands so that was pretty disappointing to me.

markmohrfield

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2023, 02:12:01 PM »
A pure Lovecraft game would be pretty boring... characters investigate, then they run screaming or go insane.  The end.

The Dunwich Horror
The Lurking Fear
The Shunned House
The Alchemist

Four Lovecraft stories off the top of my head where the heroes win. In 2 of them, dangerous entities are actually permanently destroyed by human endeavour.

I’d add “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” to that list.

Grognard GM

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Re: What makes an adventure or campaign "Lovecraftian"?
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2023, 02:26:40 PM »
A pure Lovecraft game would be pretty boring... characters investigate, then they run screaming or go insane.  The end.

The Dunwich Horror
The Lurking Fear
The Shunned House
The Alchemist

Four Lovecraft stories off the top of my head where the heroes win. In 2 of them, dangerous entities are actually permanently destroyed by human endeavour.

I’d add “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” to that list.

Absolutely!

For some reason I had a brain-fart about that one, and remembered it ending with the protagonist on his way to the Asylum to do the deed, but fearing being mind-switched. Which is weird, because I just re-watched the 80's movie adaption a few months ago.

I shall amend my list, good sir.
I'm a middle aged guy with a lot of free time, looking for similar, to form a group for regular gaming. You should be chill, non-woke, and have time on your hands.

See below:

https://www.therpgsite.com/news-and-adverts/looking-to-form-a-group-of-people-with-lots-of-spare-time-for-regular-games/