What's a good way to use monsters that have been memed to

>>52291511
Go back and research the origins of these monsters. Many classic monsters have much more creative and creepy origins then their modern forms. Like skin-walkers, ghouls, and the like.

For instance, the first vampire stories dealt with bloated, gluttonous corpses rising from their graves to feed on blood before reburying themselves to avoid detection. Would you want a rotting fat man sucking at your jugular?

>don't answer that, /d/

>>52291573
This. Also never discount the wendigo

>>52291642
Ah, right, sometimes I forget there's non-european monsters.

>>52291650
Wendigo's a great one because even though it's a Native American monster, it can fit in great in not!Scandinavia, Ireland, or Siberia.

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The real question is how do you make lovecraftian monsters actually scary?

"And then.... you realize that.... the evil monster that controls the whole universe is.... a giant squid! OOOH! Fear the space squid tentacles! Do you feel your madness slipping? Hey, check out this creepy city! It's got crazy geometry!"

just doesn't seem to do it

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>>52291728

>>52291728
Again, get back to the origins. Lovecraft was initially scary because of the existentialist themes. The squid aesthetic worked because it was "other".

Watch some more modern existentialist stuff. I recommend things like "World of Tomorrow" (the short film, not the Disney one), some Black Mirror episodes, and even stuff like Rick & Morty.

Lovecraft's descriptions were marred somewhat by people actually representing them pictorially. Creatures like Yog'Sothoth weren't JUST big floating gribblies, the very fabric of reality warped around them. Time and space ceased to have meaning, which for temporal mortal brains is essentially hellish.

>>52291728
Avoid making comparisons to real life things and be slightly vague on your descriptions.

>>52291728
>when you make something sound retarded and tryhard, it is less appealing

>>52291728
>The real question is how do you make lovecraftian monsters actually scary?

Forget the monster. Focus on the scary part.

The Colour Out of Space is about a colour from space that doesn't naturally exist on Earth, and kills. It's not a monster. It's a colour. A colour that you can see, but cannot describe. That's scary as shit man.

Alternatively, if you have problems bending your brain around the idea of focussing on existential fear first and then building a monster around it... smoke salvia. Nothing like becoming completely engrossed in hallucinations from k-opiod antagonists fucking up your brain receptors while your mind experiences cosmic terror for billions of years over the span of only one minute.

The existential fever dreams that Lovecraft experienced in his life cannot be easily emulated through traditional means, but they can be easily achieved through chemical means.

>>52291511
>"lol a werewolf? he just a little itty bitty puppy, Xd"
I'd be much more afraid of a seemingly cute doggo surrounded by a backdrop of blood splatters and gore than some tryhard, emaciated "Prisoner of Azkaban" reject like in that picture. Tone and context are just as important to making intimidating monsters than slapping on more teeth or making the thing move funny.

>>52292269
Are you saying I should drug my players?

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>>52291511
Simple. The werewolf doesn't actually turn into a wolf.

>>52293196
No you dumbass. Drug yourself. I've dug up some pretty fucked up Lovecraftian horrors from smoking salvia, let me tell you.

>>52294125
Bad acid trip also does wonders for the creativity. Psyche, not so much, but hey, give and take.

>>52294545
Acid ain't got shit on salvia.

You wanna know what it's like to truly wake up and realise that you're just the gap between dimensions given self-awareness by a song sung by a million tiny imps dancing on the edges of your "nothingness" as a cosmic face the size of several universes looks down on you with disdain and contempt because it took you so long to realise your life is fake? Smoke some salvia.

>disclaimer: i can only condone the use of psychoactive chemicals if you're willing to learn and investigate what you will use. don't be a retard and do drugs without a care. read read read, information is easy to get on the internet. make use of wikipedia and erowid. stay safe and enjoy the trip

>>52291511
I like to make my werewolves more demonic as in they have extremely outstretched snouts, with the skin being extremely tight barely covering the head, large eyes without pupils, no fur on head to make skull more spoopy, tusks but most importantly, cloven hooves because it always throws the characters off track when they see "horse tracks"

>>52294628
>only advocate if you're willing to learn
>promoting going on bad trips to get horror inspiration

Either way, I'm not really trying to start a contest here. Salvia and acid are two very different highs. Salvia's certainly more convenient because it's much stronger and shorter-lasting, but each drug opens up your mind in a different way.

Shrooms, for instance, would be great for studying abstract geometry, without getting really philosophical about it.

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>>52291690
>>52291642
In all fairness Wendigos have had a ridiculous surge in popularity since Until Dawn made people realize they exist. Well not exist, but you know what I mean. But yeah native and South American monsters don't get a lot of love in general, so that's always a fun place to look.

>>52292454
no, you wouldn't be

>>52294829
The horned wendigos and deer headed wendigos also seem to be a pretty modern one. In lore I have never seen them described as such, I mean it just adds more variants and flavour but I don't really know where it came from

>>52294860
I'm partial to the horned ones, since it makes them a bit more distinctive from the common ghoul, and invokes a "don't go into the woods" elpahine vibe a la Cernunnos.

>>52291511
>werewolves, since it makes them seem actually horrific, as opposed to the big hairy beasts that aren't any scarier than a bear that they usually are
Werewolves are all in how you describe them, specifically the change. There was plenty about Being Human I didn't like (production values being first) but they make turning werewolf sound colossally fucked up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3YbDexcwlQ

>>52294918
Or from the Planeswalkers Guide to Innistrad:

"The transformation process is harrowing for the lycanthrope and incredibly disturbing to any witnesses. The eyes change first, the whites darkening and the iris filling with color. The claws go next; the hands elongate, knifelike claws extend from the fingertips, and the thumb forms a claw back near the wrist. The muzzle thrusts forward out of the human's skull, and the teeth jut through the gums in sharp points. Bones crack as they rearrange. Marrow spills into the bloodstream as ribs and skull fracture and telescope. Thick, wiry fur pushes through the skin, often pushing out normal human hair. The tailbone elongates and becomes a shaggy wolf's tail. Metabolism speeds up, increasing blood flow, oxygen flow, and glandular production, creating cravings for protein and fat. Any clothing that was worn at the time of the change is generally torn to shreds and falls away."

Turning into a werewolf should be agonising and horrifying for the lycanthrope, it isn't something they should ever get used to.

The harry potter movies' depiction of a werewolf was one of the few things they did right

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>>52291511
It should seem to me that a werewolf would be scariest when presented in the Southern Gothic style, or something like it. You don't just throw a werewolf out. You suggest it long before it's revealed, and you connect it to social or psychological issues. The werewolf should be allegorical, I guess. The legend of the old widow who became a werewolf in order to get food for herself is a good example of what I'm getting at here. In any case, build up a werewolf story with the same care you would (or at least should) put into a vampire or ghost story.

A big doggo isn't that scary. Mental illness and the way that people can act when basic necessities are denied to them are. Many of us can sympathize with the feeling of progressively "losing our humanity" by giving into more base desires. I think you see what I'm getting at.

>>52291573
>ghouls
I'm confused how the shapeshifting Middle Eastern monster that takes the face of the last person it ate and can turn into a hyena became the feral (not) zombies that they are generally portrayed as outside of a few examples the Dresden Files and Supernatural.

>>52295798
To take your idea further. You can really fuck with your players to make them anticipate a werewolf... and then you just throw your weird unknown cannibal humanoid monster at them.

A monster that exists without real explanation or classification.

>>52291511
> memed

That this shit is a verb infuriates me beyond reason.

>>52296239

This. Fear of the unknown. Not giving your players any one thing they can classify the monster as is the best to generate fear and apprehension.

>>52294628
>>52294747

Absolute degenerates, both of you. Only a mentally stunted tween would be so forthcoming about taking drugs.

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>>52291511
>memed
By necking yourself you goddamn inbred

>>52291511
My favorite interpretation of vampires is from the book series Magic Bleeds.

Vampires are empty human husks controlled by necromancers. Necromancers meditate and put their minds in them and then run around in them like they are a meat suite.

Necromancers collect human corpses and use a spooky process to turn them into mindless vampires. They look like starving empty eyed corpses and crawl around on four legs and can even crawl on cealings.

Vampires start out looking like human corpses. As time goes on they look more and more monstrous. The really old ones can unhinge their jaws and grow fangs to better drink blood. Their body adapts to be better at walking on four legs and their limbs are long and skeletal with skin tight to their flesh.

I loved the disturbing mindless monster take because I can't stand pretty boy vampires.

>>52291511
I used to believe liches were boring and generic, until I realized both Sauron and Voldemort were liches.

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>>52296506
>I can't stand pretty boy vampires.
You must hate Dracula then.

>>52296159
A ghoul is a monster that eats human flesh. The modern ghoul is basically the same.

>>52291511
Use them straight. The reason why they get memed to death is because everyone and their dog was busy trying to add some originality to it. Fuck that shit. Pick the version you like, use it and just go for it, instead of trying to pull some yet another spin.

>>52295798

This man has the right idea.

If the best you can do is to attempt to scare your players with the description of the monster, then you've already planned for failure. It isn't the monsters physical appearance that makes it terrifying, it's the build up. Strange sounds, things seen out of the corner of the eye, people going missing, blood on the floor etc. Suspense is what does it. If you just throw a monster at them then it won't be anything more than a fight. But if you make them feel hunted, make them have to worry about where and when the monster will appear, and make the monster smart, then you can scare them. It's all about build up and presentation. You make it feel like a monster in the night, and it will be so much more than just a big hairy guy. it'll be that thing, that thing that's been haunting them and picking them off one at a time.

Just trying to make a creepy looking monster often ends up spoopy rather than spooky, like the pic in the op. Thing ain't scary, looks like it's about to keel over and die. Likewise if you just describe a mass of fur covered muscle then it won't do the job.

That being said I'm highly disappointed in all the anons who thing werewolves of the classic giant wolf man variety are not scary. You honestly gonna tell me that if you saw one you wouldn't shit yourself? I call bullshit.

>>52291728
By not describing them. Jesus, the entire fucking point of Lovecraftian horror is the fear of unknown and alien. It's not about tentacle rape, but something revolting and just mind-numbing by the sheer virtue of being so strange.

Recall Carpenter's The Thing. It's not about the monster being scary (it's a fucking rubber doll) or the fact it's dangerous (they easily subdue and blow it to pieces each time). The real fear comes from the fact that EVERYONE could be the monster and everyone can be plotting against each other. Just like that line thrown at certain point by certain character (there is a chance you somehow never saw the movie, so I won't spoil it for you, but for the love of god, GO WATCH IT):
I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation.

Best part - when the line is spoken, you have NO WAY of knowing if the guy saying it is saying the truth, or it's actually an imitation setting up a trap.
That's Lovecraftian horror.

>>52292118
This

Maybe different context, but still: I've once managed to pull on my players Displaced scenario. They've met with a group of what was basically WW2 era GIs, but they NEVER FIGURED THAT OUT, entirely based on the way how I've described the guys, their camp, how they look and how they act. My players knew that this is some weird shit and that those are most likely creatures from another dimension, but that was all. The fact how easily they've killed anything on their way and there was no language useful for communication made them downright scary to my players a.

And it was just a company of grunts trying to figure out what the fuck happend and where they are, while slowly getting really desperate about it.

>>52296570
Not him, but this is literally the only thing those two completely different versions of ghouls share in common - it's a flesh-eating monster.
That's all they have in common.

>>52292454
>>I'd be much more afraid of a seemingly cute doggo surrounded by a backdrop of blood splatters and gore
People'll just meme Monty Python and they do that too much anyway

>>52291511
Never refer to monsters by the archetype name. Never call it a werewolf, describe it and then use vague terms when referring to it.

As soon as you tell them "It's X," they'll think of all the versions of X that they've seen.

>>52296547
?
>His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

>>52296159
Lovecraft described his ghouls as intrinsically canine, which was copied in Johannes Cabal with addition that their cave systems were so deep and dreary they could travel through time

Would also recommend Throne of Bones by Brian Mcnaughton (fairly certain I spelled that wrong) where he makes them almost gargoyle-like

>>52292269
The Colour Out Of Space is my favorite Lovecraft story, but that thing is not a fucking color. It's an alien organism that has an indescribable color, but it's not literally just a color, c'mon.

>>52291728
Lovecraftian monsters as things with stat blocks and challenge ratings kind of miss the point.

Its not that there's a big squidmonster. Its that there are immeasurably different and powerful things doing stuff you'll never be able to understand and can't do anything about, that will be horrible for you, everything you care about and the species. Doesn't really work for most muderhobos because they too sociopathic. Doesn't really mesh with traditional monster fighting, leveling, etc. The sense of scale is all messed up.

This seems like a good thread for this, so I gotta ask, where do you all find the "source material" for monsters so to speak.

I always hear stuff like "originally they were x" or "in the original mythos they were x". Where do you find that shit? What are some good sources for learning the "source material" for lack of a better term?

>>52297212
Mythology books and fairy tales from outside the american children's book market ghetto

You can also just google stuff like 'monsters of <country/culture>' and get information, though it tends to be pretty dry

>>52296570
>they both eat human flesh
>they are the same

lots of monsters eat human flesh. That doesn't make them the same. Mythological ghouls are shapeshifters and tricksters that at least temporarily assumes the identity of the people that they eat where as the western ghoul especially the D&D version are nothing like that.

>>52297212
Wikipedia and especially the references and footnotes at the bottom of the article are a great place to start.

>>52297212
I think pretty much all of us just use wikipedia.

>>52291728
I know, I know, TV Tropes is evil and shit and whatever, but this captures pretty nicely how absolutely normal daylife things can be pure lovecraftian horror if you simply switch perspective:

It is rather creepy the things civilization has built. Cyclopean underground flying spires possessing the power of the Sun, unleashing The End Of The World As We Know It as soon as they awake. Wolves that become servants and find Happiness In Slavery, massive artificial metal monsters swimming at the bottom of the sea and searching for each other with mysterious powers. Hand-held thunder that can kill from a distance. Moving islands that aren't islands. Herds of dead metal that move about using absurd appendages that bring them to speeds no leg can achieve, the more absurd fact being that they are powered by explosions from million-year-old corpses of plankton. Plants that grow at our command. Artificial mountains made up of sinister and/or alien geometries. Light in darkness. [[Internet Non-euclidean two-dimensional prisons of entire multidimensional worlds]]. Herds and populations finding Happiness In Slavery in concentration camps, only to be slaughtered by High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Artificial servile lightning that is the lifeblood of an omnipresent, omniscient, all-powerful Hive Mind of eldritch superintelligence. And so on.

I especially like the plankton bit. Have you ever actually start thinking about this, while pumping gas to your car?

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>>52297212
The stuff already suggested is good. I like the online etymology dictionary too. It usually gives enough word origins to be an interesting angle to start looking into the monster from.

>>52296601
I'm that poster. Yeah, if I actually saw one, it would be terrifying, but hearing it described or seeing it in a movie isn't nearly that bad. The horror has to bypass the knowledge that it's fiction.

>>52297441

Fair enough.

what you use isn't as important as how you use it. monsters usually look pretty dumb when you get a good look at them. hell, that's partly why Alien was shot the way it was--the xenomorph suit looks kinda stupid if full view.

but it's getting a good look and surviving that's the trick.

>>52297441
That usually comes with a willingness to indulge and play pretend.

>>52297602
Yeah, but you can only go so far. You've gotta be pretending pretty hard before you become afraid of being eaten by a werewolf just because the GM tells you it's standing there.

>>52291728

I am a Lovecraft fan, but the 800lb Victorian in the room is that Lovecraft needs a sort of unquestioned, background racism to work as intended.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the stories as worldbuilding but most of them just don't work in the modern era. as horror, we just don't have the right kind of racism for it. If you showed me that there was a religion operating on 3 different continents 25,000 years ago I'd think that was badass, not existentially terrifying.

>>52298058
and more importantly, we don't have the same kind of anthrocentrism. we know we're a speck in an infinite abyss. showing us we are is redundant.

>>52298058
For me Lovecraft has three phases:
Debute (Cave, which still holds up)
Shit phase (everything up until At the Mountains of Madness)
Good stuff (AtMoM until the end of his writing career).

Let's face it. Most of the stories he wrote were utter garbage, even for their times. But starting with AtMoM you have what actually constitutes for his legend and the top-quality, even if not in writing itself, then at least the ideas. Not to mention almost all his memorable works were written after AtMoM.
And most of them work even if you ignore the simple fact we no longer find it scary that Earth is unimpotant rock in the middle of nothingness or humanity is just a bacteria within entire universe.

>>52298121
This.

I think there's a level of existential crisis/depression inherent to our current society that we pointedly ignore, but in Lovecraft's time they were so good at ignoring the fact that life is meaningless that it barely registered unless you were reminded of the fact.

>>52296601
This

I remember a massive build-up I've once created for my players. Normally, they would go to Area Of Quest, find the guy they were send to kill, slain him and then get back, all within 3 month limits.

First, all NPCs were telling (obviously) tall stories about the feats of the guy and his band, raiding traders going through the Blue Mountains. Sure, bullshit like always. But one important bit sank in - nobody actually SAW the guy or his band, just attributed everything to him.
Then they've found a freshly burned down village, far ahead the area they learned the guy is supposedly living.
Then they've found the road they were moving turning into badly maintained trail. Sure, nobody was moving through the mountains, so the road could be in disrepair and slightly overgrown...
They've met few extremely suspicious NPCs on their way, to this day not sure if it was just my ruse, or they were genuinely bad guys - few lumberjacks working without permit, a rambling hermit, a village that was completely deserted, but there was still fresh milk in the pot in one of the houses, but no farm animals to provide it (they've burned the village themselves, out of sheer panic) and a group of mercs that might be bandits or actually doing a bount hunt for the same guy.
Hell, the sole fact there were armed humans at this point put them on such high alert the players end up constantly on their toes, watching and tailing a handful of mercs that were little more than armed rabble.
... the road eventually disappeared. Completely. They weren't even sure if they didn't just end up lost in a thick forest in the mountains they never've been before. But they had to drop their cart and with it, sizable chunk of their things
Then I've played out the fact they are running low on food and there is no game around them. At all.
>TBC

>>52298377
>Continue
Then they've finally somehow reached the orientation point - a bridge over a gorge. Turns out there is no bridge and only after an in-depth inspection they've found traces of it down the gorge
The mercs were at this point spooped themselves, because it wasn't that the bridge was destroyed or damaged - it was as if someone removed it from existence, just leaving behind few rotten beams cut right at the bottom of the river. And the bridge was supposedly standing there only 8 months earlier, along with road leading to it (they were already going through a thick, primeval forest for a week)
They've found what looked like an abandoned, fortified military outpost (they've learned early on there was a military detatchment send to put end to Krom and his "merry" band). Turns out the outpost wasn't exactly abandoned, but the guy still living there was a paranoid wreck mumbling something about monsters, slaughter and being extremely unstable, while almost killing two of the PCs
They've visited the place where the madmen's group (supposedly an entire company) was slaughtered by someone or something. They didn't find a single trace of anything - the place was looted clean by someone, with no trace of bodies, human remains or even a single object that could be left. Not a sign there even was a battle there. Now even if the guy was lying to them (which one of players instantly pointed out), it already set up a proper mood.
The players get paranoid, since there was a fuckload of unusual shit going already and they've realised they are facing a small army, as there was force capable of tearing down a bridge, slaughter entire company of soldiers (it helps 2 of my players are military brats, so they know what a company is) and move around unnoticed and unopposed by anyone or anything.
And most importantly - apparenly SOMEHOW living in this God-forsaken wilderness despite their number, which at least explained why there is no game - someone hunted it down.
>TBC

>>52298428
>CNT
In such vast area it just hit them hard realising they could've been observed this whole time for past month in-game.
And then it was just a formality. The "mad" soldier eventually get over the presence of other humans and stopped trying to kill everyone whenever not tied down, so they've got more intel from him. About the map he made and hide of the nearby area when he wasn't still alone there. About how well armed and trained his detatchment was. And most importantly - how the Blue Mountains are famous for vast cave systems.
Then with bunch of traingulation and preparations the players set up to the area which could be the hideout for Krom and his band - the only place that would give them access to certain important landmarks every NPC described in their tall stories (and one of the players keeps tight notes all the time), and nearby other places they've figured out were also affected by raids
And this is when really weird shit started going on. Suddenly game started showing around. And they've found a completely unaffected, well-maintained piece of road, leading from nowhere to nowhere. This was the moment when one of the players openly decided it's about time they've just leg it and get the fuck out of there, because this is going just insane.
So they've finally found what appeared to be a cave entrance. And a FUCKLOAD of bones, rusted metal, animal and human body parts and all kind of grim shit scattered around the entrance.
Imagine player faces at this point.
Now most of the party was about to leg it, since there was grand total of 4 of them, plus 6 mercs and the mad soldier, still tied down and useless (initially it was 14, but over time they were simply disappearing during watch, without taking any piece of their gear or even rations, so they weren't even legging it)
But due to simple sunk-cost fallacy they've openly admitted it would be a shame to just leg it at this point, even if they were aware they are going to get their PCs killed
>TBC

>>52291728
I highly encourage imitating Harlan Ellison when describing the monster. Be more forceful and afraid of your own descriptions, even mention things that are genuinely uncomfortable you've encountered in your own life, magnified beyond their normal constraints.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgc5PDtIii8

>>52298476
>Continuing
So they are in the cave, the place is massive, dark, with echo of everything transmitted around. They can't hear shit, unless they stop moving and breathing, they can't see further than few meters ahead. And there is more and more and more of bones, eventually covering entire cave floor. And something moved somewhere, making a sound that nobody in their group could make.
Players were so paranoid they've DEMANDED a break at this point.
They've eventually reached a large chamber with a bunch of stuff they could see in the shadow. Normally that would be the giddiest moment ever (LOOT!), but they were so scared, they were basically moving at a pace of one step per minute, constantly looking around, making checks and acting as if there was at least a demon behind the corner.
The chamber was filled with what looked like a hastly abandoned encampment and judging by the shape of it, it was abandoned while fighting with something, at least two years ago judging by the fact there were already shrooms growing over the stuff. Thing is - someone or something was attacking people on the mountain trail long after the camp was abandoned. So this couldn't be the bandits, if something drove them out from here. It couldn't be the bandits fighting with the army detatchment, because that happend last spring. And most importantly - some of the animal remains scattered in front of the cave were quite fresh.
One break and one battle formation later, the players decided they can do at this point only one thing - go deeper, since there was only a passage. A thin passage, forcing them to go in Indian file.
And then suddenly something snapped the last of the mercs, all they heard was screams, while half of the group was already on the other side.
>TBC

>>52298490
>Continuing
Cue wolves. In darkness. Without formation. With panicked NPCs. They've barely scrapped through it, even if it was just 5 wolves, but they've acted as if fighting with a dragon.
And nothing more. Silence. Not a single sound anywhere in the cave system. One chamber later, they've found what they though was a decomposing body. It wasn't.
It wasn't even human and to this day my players didn't precisely figure out what the fuck they were fighting, aside vague idea it was some sort of cursed creature or other magical being playing the "protector" of the forest and mountains.
Three PCs scrapped through the fight. They went back and out of habit than need decided to try loot the bandit camp. So they've found bunch of crude animal figurines, equally crude ceremonial items and what was described as a priestly gown. They've figured out someone had to piss off some local cult. Or end up with curse. Or maybe they were just unlucky to unleash some horror from the cave by picking what was a seal.
They've barely made it back to civilisation. They've never learned what precisely happend, what was wrong and the fuck they were facing.

But it's 3 years and they still talk about that campaign. It took us 5 meetings to play through this slog, there was almost NOTHING happening most of the time and yet it worked perfectly. I've managed to scare the living shit out of 4 grown-up people by putting their imaginary characters (min-maxed to the end of it) in imaginary wilderness and then made them face imaginary monster. They've ended up so scared, they wanted to just pause the game to catch a breath, while NOTHING was happening at all

Now imagine this entire set-up if they were just send to hunt the bandits, arrive to place and find out that instead of bandits, there is a monster there
First question asked after rolling Lore (Monsters) would be "How much HP it has"
They were to scared out of their minds to even make that roll

... and they never find Krom or his band

>>52291728

> realize that evil monster is giant squid

Your missing the point. A Lovecraftian monster
is something that is just cant be described i.e a color different from any other color or combinations of colors. So in practice you cant make them "look" scary, putting them in an image defeats the purpose the reason they are scary is BECAUSE you cant comprehend them. the only way to make a true eldritch monster is to intentionally avoid describing it ,instead describe someones reaction and how horrified they are when confronted with something they cant imagine. there brain short circuiting trying and failing to describe it is where the horror is derived. For example: Dave barreled down the hall that Thing was behind him he could hear it. God the noise like steel gashing chalk, It chilled him to think what the fuck could make it on soft wood

>>52294829
I think wendigos are generally not super popular u til r3cently because u til relstiveky rexently they had no standardized, identifiable look to distinguish them. The antlers they have now is something weve finally gotten to do thst.

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>>52291728
>thinking the monsters alone are supposed to be the entire horror
>not the daemon revelations promoted by their very existence

Learn to cosmic horror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraftian_horror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism

>>52296547
>>implying dracula wasnt fugly
>>implying dracula was the origin of the vampire myth

>>52299338
>Ignoring the fuck-huge impact Stoker's version of Dracula had on culture
>Pretending it didn't basically reinvent vampirism from a ghost-like undead bullshit zombie curse into... well, modern vampires
Remind me since when breaking the legs of the dead stopped being efficient way of preventing vampires from coming to existence? Or since when cat jumping over a dead body won't mean it will turn?

The only thing coming even remotely close was Anna Rice with her Interview with the Vampire, and she was already borrowing by a buckload from Stoker.

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>>52291511
That version of a "werewolf" looks fragile and pathetic.

>>52291728
The point of Lovecraft's horror is that it challenged the fundamental assumptions of rationalism. We believed we could understand the universe, and thereby master it. So his world is one where we're ignorant and that's a good thing because the universe is fundamentally incomprehensible and enormous on a scale we can't handle, and that we are ultimately insignificant.

But we all already know that how. Which is why Lovecraft is just squid and crazy geometry - because his real horrific revelations don't even feel like horror. The squid and the angles and the weirdness are the only remotely scary things.

If you want cosmic horror, you need some new kind of underlying, horrible truth for your players to discover. Something that destroys a fundamental assumption they had about the game. If you can figure out a good way to do that, then good luck, because I sure haven't.

Regenerating monsters should take advantage of their regeneration.

If you're blocking a werewolf with spears, the sensible thing to do is to run himself through on the spears and shimmy up to you.

>>52296729
>>52297388
So what? About all modern dragons have in common with "drakons" is being a dangerous reptile.

>>52298943
Did you just have a stroke?

>>52291728
I had an idea for a lovecraftian horror whose body swallows light, so it's this big, black void, constantly swallowing in the surrounding imagery, and even it's limbs do it, so you see long, spindly, spider-like appendages reaching out of this misshapen pit moving around in front of you, and these long, thin limbs are also sucking in the light, making them look misshapen as well and unnatural.

>>52296570
Pretty sure the modern ghouls has its origins in a town that during a partically harsh winter got cut off, and so spent their time eating one another to survive. By the time the winter subsided and people came to check on them, they had gone mad from the taste of human flesh and ate those too. Eventually they were driven from their town and it razed to the ground. But they still wander the night and collect fresh bodies from mass graves and freshly buried graveyards.

>>52299837
Which would make it all the more startling when it suddenly races at you like a bolt of lightning and smashed your ribcage in with one hand like it's made of balsa wood

>>52297441
If you want the players to shit bricks, then don't let the knowledge work at all.
The werewolf eats wolf bane and shits silver, isn't linked to the moon phases, murder hobos will have to flee after nothing makes it even bleed on their first meeting.
Make up a ritual to stop it, or to bless the weapons that can bring it down, nothing else works. Railroady as fuck, if you're good you could make it better by giving it some extra rules it has to follow, different from its typical ones.

>>52296628
Best part about The Thing? Not even the people who are infected know they're infected. It just happens and then BOOM explodey tentacle teeth.

>>52300249
Channel the mindset of Dracula. When Dracula was first created, he had ALL THE POWERS, he could do everything and anything, because he could.

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>>52296547

>>52298523
Not sure if you're still around but 10/10 was a good read. Especially glad you didn't greentext it.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

>>52291728
Nothing you do can actually impact them in the slightest. They're on a level beyond yours completely, not on the same level as plankton to a human, but a game character to a human. That we interact with them at all is simply because they let us, and if they cared enough to destroy us, everything we were would be unmade.

>>52300176
>So what? About all modern dragons have in common with "drakons" is being a dangerous reptile.

Because the ancient Indo-European Dragon/giant serpent archetype has barely changed since its conception. They look largely the same, they serve the same narrative purpose, and they are identifiable across the centuries. The modern ghoul is a feral monster which hangs out in graveyards and is barely any different from a zombie. The ancient ghoul is a shapeshifting desert demon that steals the very identity of its last victim so that it can use it to trick unsuspecting travelers into becoming its next victim.

>>52300047
The thing that struck me when I read Lovecraft is how mundane a lot of his monsters were, and how their mundaneness was used to good effect. The fact that some of them, like the Mi-go and the Antarctic things, were flesh-and-blood creatures with mostly comprehensible biochemistry and that died when mauled by dogs made them sufficiently grounded to seem real. They can even be beaten in the short term. The Deep Ones were defeated and driven off by a WWI-era submarine. The Mi-go get caught up in a ridiculous scheme to entrap some hermit and steal his brain because they fucked up all their more straightforward plans to silence him. Their failures and vulnerabilities are then gradually shown in a broader context that makes them more menacing than if they had successfully disappeared the guy on the first try. Lovecraft didn't just go from zero to mind-warping tentacles in the span of a few paragraphs. He carefully built up a plausible-seeming scenario with surprisingly realistic monsters, which were not invincible or totally incomprehensible, that immersed you in the story so the final unnerving reveal could have its desired impact.

>>52296547

Lay off the Twilight.

>>52300176
>Being this dense
I rest my case

>>52300223
Pretty sure the modern ghouls has it's origin in D&D, which was picking funny or exotic sounding names in late 70s from myths all over the world to fill up the beast book, while spinning everything to make it fit the pre-existing setting and game. Have you ever read what kind of monsters were in ADD?

>>52300391
I'm here and I hate green-texted tirades, so go figure.
And sorry for shit-tier grammar, but as you might figure out, English is not my native language.

>>52297416
I feel like this has some sort of relevance, especially to the plankton bit:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page505.html

>>52300176
I wouldn't worry about it.

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>>52291511
>as opposed to the big hairy beasts that aren't any scarier than a bear that they usually are.
You just have to quit making your werewolves pussies.

>>52294829
The surge in wendigo popularity has been going on since long before Until Dawn came out, dude.

>>52291801
This. Many of Lovecraft's creatures and gods were intentionally designed to be impossible to depict visually.
Thus they were kind of ruined by people depicting them visually.

>>52297174
Murderhobos ruin everything.

>>52300208
That's how I picture Hunger of Hadar.

>>52296943
He sounds ruggedly attractive. Maybe not a pretty boy, but certainly not ugly.

>>52294691
Horse hooves aren't cloven... cloven is cattle and deer

>>52307946
Specifically noting that the Cthulhu idols were inherently approximations that everyone has latched onto.

You miss out on a lot of Lovecraft when the physicality is formalized. I personally prefer to describe things almost like they are experiences with synesthesia.

>the creatures skin glistened like the sound of a fiddled played too vigorously
>the howl bit into her ears like that red color, just slightly brown but with hints of purple
>a sense of dread welled up inside her as the headaches grew worse, dread like the color of a babies skin when it comes down with an uncurable sickness as the color is slowly sapped away

Or other descriptions that reach a hand into the surreal and appropriately pluck at the imagination.

>the saliva dripped from the creatures maw, a sickening putrid drip, as it sniffed about with a tangible desire, like a gentle caress of the thigh or curling someones hair behind their ear

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>>52298377
>>52298428
>>52298476
>>52298490
>>52298523
That's some excellent Game Mastering, mate.

>>52296466
What are you doing here, Miss Reagan? Did that nice wife of young Mister Gore talk about the evils of music and games, so you decided to see it for yourself?

>>52298058
/pol/fag detected
>>52298154
hipster moron who wasted daddy's money on an English degree detected.

>>52300047
>But we all already know that how. Which is why Lovecraft is just squid and crazy geometry - because his real horrific revelations don't even feel like horror.

Exactly. Lovecraft doesn't seem freakish to us because our society has basically become horrific by the standards of his time. The things which we see as wholesome, or at least normal, like racial tolerance, acceptance of homosexuality, sexual reassignment surgery and all that were as disgusting and weird to people 100 years ago as grafting retarded babies to your face would be to us. We don't find Lovecraft scary anymore because we have become the monsters and we don't even realise it.

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>>52309417
>Exactly. Lovecraft doesn't seem freakish to us because our society has basically become horrific by the standards of his time. The things which we see as wholesome, or at least normal, like racial tolerance, acceptance of homosexuality, sexual reassignment surgery and all that were as disgusting and weird to people 100 years ago as grafting retarded babies to your face would be to us. We don't find Lovecraft scary anymore because we have become the monsters and we don't even realise it.

Great job. You completely missed the point.

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>>52309417

>>52309417
>racial tolerance, acceptance of homosexuality, sexual reassignment surgery
>more horrific than genocide or world war

Whats the best way to scare high level murderhobos in a text-format game.

>>52310700
What this guy did.

>>52298377
>>52298428
>>52298476
>>52298490
>>52298523

You cannot fight tension. You cannot fight misdirection. You cannot fight confusion. You cannot fight the environment.

>>52310313

To someone raised in a society which loves peace and sees discrimination as the worst form of evil, that statement seems absurd.

To an average human, it's simply a straightforward statement of their world-view. Of course war is glorious. Of course it's a good thing to wipe out rival tribes. Of course men turning into women is an abomination. Of course it's fine to stone homosexuals.

We are the freaks, the crazy alien-worshipping cultists, the monsters. We don't see how fucked up we are compared with normal people because we are, by the standards of the typical human, insane. We have seen the existential horror of the universe and it has made us inhuman.

>>52291728
My rules I've used for lovecraftian entities for players are:
They cannot kill them, they might damage and subdue the bottom of the barrel ones but they come back
Big ones don't even allow combat, its a save of some sort or passive effects
If someone tries to fight it they take mental score damage
Magic just doesn't work, if they're particularly aggressive it will reflect back
There is a good chance when one is found everything in the last three and next three sessions isn't what it seems
They can run if they choose to
Killing is a mercy, encounters that they try too hard on bigger bads end up with permanent penalties they have to work hard to get rid of

So far its worked. My players shit themselves when anything lovecraftian shows up because they know shit got real and they can't kill it with stabbing and fireballs.

>>52291801
To piggyback on this, also read John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders. They come off a bit silly at first, but after reading them, the dark will be a bit more uneasy for a bit.

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I've always found that the worst kinds of monsters are born from men/humanoids that have nothing left yet their bodies refuse to die. The wendigo is an example of that, what was taken must be returned by a bottomless hunger that will never bring back any sense of joy or satisfaction. Consider looking into thriller/horror tropes that deal with real life or fictional conditions. Synethstesia (probably not spelling it right) has been used frequently because the person cannot interpret pain. Feral children can be excessively scary in D20 modern or when used in a setting that involves magic. The fae are damn terrifying if you look at the oldest references. Look up some of the authors that the director Guillermo Del Toro likes; most of the stories can be found free in the gutenberg collection because they're old enough without a renewed license. Blackwood and Machen have short stories that authors like Poe and Lovecraft are akin to. There is nothing wrong with seeing something and putting your own spin on it. Just do your research for consistencies sake.

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Zombies only really work in comparison to how everything else in your game works. If everything in your game is a videogame enemy that attacks on sight and fights to the death, then zombies bring nothing new to the table. If enemies in your game aren't the type that attack without reason, prone to surrender or fleeing when things start going south for them, or capable of being talked down, then zombies can have a place in your game.

You see, the thing about zombies is that they don't give a shit about anything besides ending your life. Broken bones, dismemberment, bullets to the brain, and anything else like that will, at absolute best, slow a zombie down. You tire, you eat, you sleep; they don't. They are literally unstoppable. They might constantly run at you at full speed because they suffer no ill effects from doing so, they might shamble slowly because on some primal level they know they will get to you eventually. They can bite, claw, and slam their bodies against you with greater strength than any living person because zombies don't care how much damage they do to themselves in the process. In the time it would take to actually decommission one, you'd be ripped apart several times over by the rest of the horde.

This might not make zombies "scary" in the sense that your players will actually be afraid of them, I don't know if that's even possible considering how ingrained they are into pop culture by this point, but your players will never want to be locked in a room with one.

Talking about making monsters out of people...

Check out these scenes from David Lynch films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdIlLn52Oak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozhOo0Dt4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5VU8GJcg24

>>52310313
This is what you get when your brother wasn't blown into pieces while you were watching, fighting in meaningless war for few pences of land and the last person remembering any war is your 80+ grandma - a generation of people who start romanticising war and actively yearning for one, because they are too complaced to realise what the fuck they want, meanwhile turning non-issues to something that supposedly puts society in danger.

>>52294829
I know Steven King is a meme, but pet cemetery introduced me to the monsters, and it's creeped the fuck out of me ever since.

>>52297128

It's also Lovecraft's own favorite.

But it's explicitly described as a parasitic color, and not some sort of organism. It's literally a thing from a much different kind of universe where this impossible color is parasitic. It's a color that appears to sap the life out of things and uses that energy to reproduce itself, then shoots off back into space as a beam of light. It's fucking weird, but that's the big deal about how weird it is: how do you fight off a spectra of unnatural light?

Some Lovecraftian works also get into how other universes work. In one, a cult uses a secreted, soundproofed temple to contact a different universe. In their universal laws, sound has form, so the human cultists use a number of very precise musical instruments, some of which appear to be eclectic or even unique to the cult, to create things for the beings in the other universe, who then grant the human cultists favors they can produce from their own translation of universal law. The cult itself is dimly lit because light is perceived as a kind of smell in the other universe, and they'd rather it not be overpowering to their mutual benefactors.

>>52311020
>he actually thinks these are new sentiments and aren't as old as humans and that this information hasn't been repeatedly stamped out by hateful xenophobic assholes for all of history

>>52312711
don't bother arguing with /pol/fags

>>52312622
>How do you fight a spectra of unnatural light?
Mirrors.

>>52313214
I would hardly consider it an argument. But sometimes one needs to present a counterpoint so other readers are aware.

Like how Lovecraft actually hated the xenophobia and racism in his earlier works and had grown so much as a person over the years that the hateful shut in image many people cling to is entirely wrong.

>>52311020
>Of course war is glorious.
This is the view of mongering generals and politicians, not of people who have to actually fight in and live through wars.

>>52313255
This highlights one of the best things for monsters. Rules. Old vampires are scary because they have many, many powers that you cannot in general battle against, but there are rules - esoteric and arbitrary - that they follow and allows you a method to combat them. Invitations. Garlic and Silver. Running water. Rice.

Werewolves have power when transformed by moon cycles, are marked when human, and are susceptible to silver (as are some classic vampires).

Demons with pacts and rules about deals and faerie circles or all manner of other things.

Sometimes I don't even create real monsters, but a set of rules they have to abide by, and everything else is by story need. Something as follows:

>hibernates outside of winter, but lives in long wintered snowy wastes
>cannot leave "natural ground" (cannot walk on roads, climb trees or structures, etc.)
>is only visible when movie, and holds perfectly still if the air around hem is too quiet

Now spend your time with your players reminding them how the cold silence of snow is deafening, and they can hear each step they take through their bones. When they pause for a moment, tell them that after they stopped moving they heard one more, quite footstep. About 20 paces behind the snow doesn't float quite the way it should and they feel watched.

And when they bolt in terror and make it to the edge of town, nothing is following them. Though they might swear that something was gaining on them all the way until they made it back to the road.

>>52311020
Sound awful, go ahead and kill yourself then.

>>52297212
Go to the library and read some books, idiot.

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>>52291573
>>52296159
>>52296570
>>52296729
>>52297388
>>52300223
>>52303553
The original Arabic ghoul is essentially a vampire, as vampires were traditionally seen. The basic traits - hanging out in graveyards, transforming into animals, preying on the living and drinking their blood - are all pretty much the same. True, the explanation of their origins are different - in Arabic folklore they are a species of jinn (i.e. demon), whereas in Europe they are risen corpses. But functionally they are remarkably similar (at least within the rather broad range of vampire folklore).

Then as popular culture progressed the secondary traits became more emphasised. The distinction between the flesh eating ghouls and the blood drinking vampires evolved, where before the line had been far more fuzzy. Possibly it happened because when they were introduced to Europe, Europe already had an indigenous species of blood-drinking monster (the vampire) and so the ghouls were forced to survive in cultural territory that vampires were less established in.

It's actually quite fascinating really. It's like one species of monster has memetically evolved into two subspecies to fill two different cultural niches.

Also, as far as I can work out, H.P. Lovecraft was the first one to introduce the idea of humans mutating into ghouls after being fed human flesh. From there, in comparatively recent literary history, they seemed to have gained a new source of narrative sustenance from stories about starving communities that might have been associated with the Wendigo but for the fact that knowledge of Native American culture was still rather limited among white Americans.

Although the Wendigo now seem to be making a comeback in their native habitat, at the same time that ghouls are fighting a losing battle with zombies for the general corpse-eater ground. So the ghouls might have to adapt once again if they want to survive - but then, adaptability is at the heart of the ghoul legend these days.

>>52311020
>We have seen the existential horror of the universe
More like the complete opposite. Humanity grew under the full, unadulterated horror of the uncaring nature of reality. Like vermin from a burning sun modern western people have crawled away from reality to skulk in the shade provided by the civilisation our forebears wrought. And in this condition all the things that kept us alive have atrophied - as eyes on a cave dweller, so our sense for the harsh realities of the universe has dimmed.

Our present habitat is as fragile as it is attractive to predators. One day it will collapse, and exposed to the unfiltered light of reality once more we shall all burn.

>>52316928
Vol?
Is that you?

>>52291642
>>52291650
>>52291690
>>52294829
>wendigo

I wouldn't worry about it anons

>>52317347
no. Who's vol?

>>52291511
I always liked the darker, more traditional take on Elves, like in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies

Also, Raymond E. Feist did a pretty good story about Faearies (called 'Faerie Tale')
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Tale

>>52291801
>Party is dealing with a lovecraftian entity haunting a mansion
>Player asks if I have a token to represent the creature
>The token's in the map dude.
>No it isn't?
>Can't you see it? It's right there.
They had never dealt with a DM that doesn't describe every boil and freckle in every NPC they meet and told me they were anxious in a horror campaign for the first time ever.

>>52294691
My werewolves are more human. My players absolutely hate going up against one.

>>52316928
it is kinda weird how ghouls occupy the same position in modern culture that they do in their lore - existing on the fringes surviving off the scraps that other monsters don't want.

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>>52308666

>>52291728

A) hammer the theme hard and B) change appearance to fit players. Spider-y inspirations for arachnophobes, something strange, something other, something unknown for general purpose.

Or if your players are your average /pol/ posters you can just make the horrors black dudes and wait for the screaming to stop.

>>52308666
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but although I have a degree. A technician degree of Electrician. And if not >>52319950, I wouldn't even notice your existence.

>>52322255
*a degree, it's a different one

>>52312622
>In one, a cult uses a secreted, soundproofed temple to contact a different universe.
what is this from?

>>52291728
Wow such Cthulu
Very Eldritch