So I'm looking to maybe run a Cthulhu-esque game, albeit

Dosen't 7e like, already do all this?

>>52664651
7e of what? If you mean CoC, last I checked (and this WAS ages ago), the 'action' side wasn't very satisfying.

>>52664651
Lovecraft already did it too, in a lot of his stories.

People in Lovecraft's work can and do beat up both sorcerers and otherworldly monsters, up to and including great old ones. Afterward they usually just try to go back to their lives because, like reasonable people, they don't want to deal with spookies anymore. Also they usually don't want to be the guy trying to convince a police officer that spooky space tentacles are what created the murder scene, rather than the protag being a crazy person.

The only real world-change OP is suggesting (setting aside from the tone change) seems to be the disposition of the protagonists.

>>52664853
Tight. I never went in for the whole 'you see it and go crazy' shit for like...an animal.

>>52664634
Achtung! with Savage Worlds. Do you even research?

>>52664882
I would like the opinion of people with experience, like we have here on /tg/, to help narrow things down and avoid time wasted on total garbage systems.

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GURPS

Oh, and for those who've never read it, go check out 'A Colder War.' Not quite in the same time period, but up the alley of folks interested in this sort of thing.

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Cthulhu climbing the Empire State Building

>>52665171
Either GURPS or Savage Worlds would be a good fit. Both are great for these types of settings, though GURPS leans more to the gritty side of things while Savage Worlds is more action packed. GURPS in particular has a very detailed pulp weapons supplement. Savage Worlds, meanwhile, has a whole pulp Cthulhu setting already built. Really, you can't go wrong with either.

>>52666928
Savage Worlds seems to be a very popular choice for this, yeah. The last edition was Savage Worlds Deluxe?

>>52664634

Isn't that the main theme of Ghostbusters?

Go dig up the good old WEG Ghostbusters game. It's piece of RPG history anyway given that the ruleset would later go on to be used for the celebrated Star Wars D6 game that helped shape a lot of the EU.

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>>52664634
>I want to run a Lovecraftian setting, but with players able to fuck Cthulhu's shit up.

You do realize that this is the complete fucking opposite of Cthulhu-esque, right? If you wanna play Indiana Jones but with fishmen and tentacles instead of nazis, go ahead, but you have to realize that your twist completely changes the genre.

>>52664634
>Alan Moore's weird fish sex comic unrelated, but Google seemed to think it was

Do you even Innsmouth, bro?

>>52664634

I'm fairly sure most of Lovecraft's original creatures could be fought and killed, or at least defeated in some manner. The Great Old Ones, not so much, and don't even think about the Outer Gods.

Also, go GURPS.

>>52667547
You read any Lovecraft, or even the OP? Nothing there about killing Cthulhu, only "some of" the critters. And Lovecraft himself didn't shy away from letting humans get one over on Yoggy beings. Hell, some random professor kills Yog-Sothoth's son, and a fucking dog kills the other one.

Don't tell me you're a Derlethfag...

Sourcebook for 7e CoC, Pulp Cthulhu, is built with exactly this type of thing in mind.

>>52667985
The big thing is reminding the players that all their victories are temporary and humanity is ultimately transient and unimportant. They can kill any number of nasties, but in doing so all they really prove is that those nasties are just as unimportant as we are.

>>52668205
So we're unimportant. So we're temporary. So what? Everything is. All I'm doing is taking things that loom over us and dragging them down to the point where we can spit in their face.

THEY SAY THAT IF YOU STARE LONG ENOUGH INTO THE VOID, THE VOID STARES ALSO INTO YOU. I SAY "FUCK THAT SHIT". CHOKESLAM THE VOID.

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Really?
Really?
http://www.chaosium.com/pulp-cthulhu-pdf/

>>52668240
I mean, trying to bring down Azathoth to your level would be a colossally bad idea. The worst idea even.

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>>52668240
Some people (like you) are too stupid to understand cosmic horror.
Chokeslam the void all you like, you'd have better luck trying to chokeslam gravity or time itself.
And once you attempt to chokeslam the Void you've attracted it's attention which will annihilate all mankind in an instant. It might even unmake it's history killing the first human in it's crib.
Or maybe it creates an afterlife just for us, so that every human that dies is teleported to it's hell dimension to be tortured for all eternity. Because you wanted to feel like a "big man" when really your just an insect with a big ego.

>>52668240
That's the spirit. I GRAPPLE THE DARKNESS!

>>52668240
The difference in power levels is ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL PARTS OF THE MYTHOS.

Anything can be made Lovecraftian if you crank their power levels up to max and apply the nessicary changes. A Tolkien dragon the size of a galaxy that's grown synonymous with galactic heat cycles.

If you take away the power levels then it's not Lovecraftian it's just a game about really large and ugly squids.

>>52668337
>>52668308
>>52668298
>>52668286
Are you all seriously telling me... you've never heard the tale of Old Man Henderson, He Who Murdered The Fuck Outta Hastur?

>>52668399
Oh. I have. I most certainly have.

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>>52668399
Its fake.
Half the rules in it are made up and bogus.
It's also a completely unrealistic story staring a GM with a brain the size of a peanut.

My 1st level bard could kill a Red Dragon if my GM was as stupid and unversed in the source material as that GM was reported to be.

Don't point to a TRAIL OF CTHULHU meme on 1D4chan and tell me that makes fighting Shoggoths Lovecraftian.

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>>52668399
Hastur ain't lovecraft famygdala.

>>52668399
Lovecraft spergs who shout down anyone who doesn't understand Cthulu the /right/ way are obnoxious but let's not pretend Old Man Henderson was anything other than an apocryphal joke story.

>>52668448
Well, there is the implication that fighting shoggoths is within human capability. The police/army that raided Innsmouth probably did it.

That said, Shoggoths and Gods are on entirely different planes. Shoggoths are down at our corporeal level and are made entirely of matter.

>>52668399
Yes but /tg/ hate Old Man Henderson now, because it used to like him.

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>>52668468
An atomic bomb is made out of matter. I wouldn't want to wrestle it.

Your right that Shoggoths aren't as top tier as some creatures but they are still absolutely beyond human capabilities. They are a creature that can grow ANY kind of organ it wants.
>Ebola breathing lungs
>Eyes that focus x-rays
>Vocal cords that vibrate hard enough to shatter bone

Thats just off the top of my head. Shoggoths are walking Grey Goo mixed with a CRISPR. They would mess up everything we have on earth unless we nuked it.

>>52668524
I'm old /tg/, mate. GET SHIT DONE /tg/. "We're fucking churning out a new campaign setting idea every four weeks" /tg/.

So I still love his fucking guts.

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>>52668526
Not really. Shoggoths are pretty dumb, and mostly they just try to tear your head off. The main problem is how tough they are. Fire apparently works at least well enough to get to a point where a layman would think they're dead, so do particle beams and lighting guns like the Elder Things used. Guns, blades, blunt weapons, and other conventional arms would suck ass though. Biological weapons are probably out too.

I do understand what you mean, but there are far more dangerous mundane" threats in the Mythos than Shoggoths. Hounds of Tindalos would be a big one, given they are literally impossible to defeat.

99% of people who claim to love Lovecraft have never read Call of Cthulhu.

This thread is proof of it.

>>52668670
The stars weren't right anon. If the stars were right, we'd all be dead. And we all do end up dead, the Yithians take control of a race that is seperated from us by at least one other sentient race going extinct.

>>52668594
There is never any "canon" that says Fire is good against Shoggoth.
So I assume your going off the game rather than the story. No problem in that but if you go by the story details and blow them up then Shoggotha could be hyper-intelligent, low tier reality warpers.

>>52668670
I read it all when I was a kid. I was already overloaded on horror books at the time so I didn't find it scary. It did however introduce me to the concept of Humanity Fuck No! Especially the one story about the time traveling body hoppers. Hmm, thinking back though, perhaps the one story that did come close to scaring me was the one with the guy who got lost in a cave.

>>52664634
That's the only proper way to run a Cthulhu campaign. Fuck the memers.

>>52668714
There's Innsmouth, where the police firebomb the houses with shoggoths in them and it kills them at least enough that they leave the place alone after.

>>52668720
Lovecraft is more about hopelessness than fear

>>52668737
It's never specified it's a shoggoth.
It's never specified where or what the shoggoth in Innsmouth is. It could have been anything or anywhere.

>>52668670
Call of Cthulhu is pleb tier. Dagon, Pickmans Model, Dreamquest of Unknown Kadeth... So many great stories and you pick the most common, and quite frankly overhyped of his tales. Go back to your basement.

>>52668737
That never happened. There were no shoggoths in Innsmouth.

What's that one round-robin story Lovecraft did with some of his friends that ended up being about a guy being turned into a shoggoth and going an fun sword and planet adventures killing space nasties?

>>52668526
No, Shoggoths are actually usually very limited in a lot of regards. Fire, Electricity, Plasma, any kind of high energy concentration fucks it up, so X-ray Beholder Laser eyes are so far out it's capability it's not even funny.
You're specifically thinking of the Great Old One that in it's slumber is the unwitting progenitor of all terrestral life, and it's literally Grey Goo.

Don't remember the name.
Something about a stone tablet imbedded in it's core.

>>52668754
>>52668747
When was the last time you read Innsmouth? Because even if Zadok is mistaken about seeing the Deep Ones bring a Shoggoth into the town, the main character definitely sees one in his dreams.

>>52668308
Your hand reaches out to grasp the edge of the inky black void that seems to light seems to bend around despite the overhead bulbs, which begin to flicker sporadically as your hand brushes the boundary of the surface. You see after images of your hand and arm, like it was moving in slow motion but your eyes can't keep up with its fluids motion. Youattempt to press forward but are unable to despite your best efforts, ayour arm frozen in space. Unable to withdraw your hand you instead feel abscense of light grasping your own hand and begin to expand. The light flickers more violently as the darkness claws its way across your frozen arm, but it feels like you are surrendering yourself to its sharp cold grasp. You are engulfed in the not-light in the end. The lights flicker one last time before going out permanently. There is only darkness

>>52668526
>>52668594
>>52668780

All it takes to kill a Shoggoth in a few seconds is a 55-gal Drum of homemade napalm, and that's not really hard to get if you live at any point in time past the 1920s.

Can't wait to see The Void movie that just came out.

>>52668813
Seriously, shit looks tight as fuck. When did it come out? I thought it was still a little while away?

>>52668399
Most folks have heard it so many times that it's stopped being funny.

>>52668808
>cover shoggoth in napalm
>shoggoth slides out of the layer of flesh that is on fire
>slightly smaller, much angrier shoggoth
>out of napalm
I don't think you really thought that through.

>>52668830
April 7th.

>>52666419
Wouldn't it just collapse under his weight? It's like saying that Godzilla climbs the Empire State Building

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>>52668526
If they were impossible to kill, then there never would have needed be more than one rebellion. Lovecraft himself states that, morphology aside, they were "men."

>>52668863
Shouldn't just tossing enough explosives kill it? As far as I understand, a shoggoth isn't The Thing, it won't come back from a single cell or by infecting people. Damage it and rip it apart enough, and it'll eventually just stop moving.

>>52668670
Call of Scootaloo is hugely inferior to the Dunwich Horror.

>>52668931
He's talking about the Elder Things. Shoggoths are distinctly in-men by contrast.

You're right though.

>>52668863
Burns don't work that way anon.
And Shoggoths don't "Molt" nor have the intelligence to do something like that.

There's a reason there's no Shoggoths in Vietnam anymore. Just those Earthquake causing Cthonians

>>52669010
Yeah, my post got mangled and I didn't check to make sure I'd typed what I mean. I mean the Elder Things were 'men.'

>>52664881
I like games how like Mansions of Madness do it. You can fight back but your sanity will suffer the more eldritch shit you encounter. A cultist? Not pleasant but fine. Starspawn? you better kill it quickly or run

>>52670387
Eh. I also believe in 'hardening' in systems with insanity. Like, you see a room full of corpses once, that's horrifying. After that? Less so. Same basic idea with space gribblies of doom, unless they have some sort of radiation of fear and insanity (like, say, a Greater Daemon in Warhammer Fantasy).

I also feel that a lot of systems just assume everyone is some sort of softie, when some people are going to be hardened by virtue of career or even class. Like, a bone-picker in a 16th century city is going to give precisely zero fucks about seeing a maggot riddled corpse if they've lived to adulthood.

>>52668298
I used to be like you, getting annoyed with the "I shoot the cosmic horror with my shotgun lol" crowd. Then I realized that everything is meaningless.

>>52668524
I've been here since 2007 and I've always hated the story.

>>52671129
Most insanity systems, even with a hardening mechanic, put way too much emphasis on immediate and short-term reactions on top of everything causing a complete mental breakdown.

Is this bro thing? Like, trying to reclaim man shit by violently overcoming nerd horror? You could maybe have some fun with the conflict between individualism and fatalism but I'm not sure I get choke slamming the void. It seems like totally missing the point. Explain please.

>>52664881
Nah, when you see things you're not used to you can take a minor sanity hit. But there are rules that seeing something too much dulls your senses to it and becomes business as usual.

You're not losing sanity to more than 6 zombies, after that you're fine. Well, if you saw all 6 at once you're probably a little shook. But there is a table to roll on for the sanity effects and emptying an entire magazine into a creature that works against might be what you roll, if you roll ANY effect.

The rules as written are way more forgiving than most people that never read them make them out to be. But the game also includes other wordly beastlies That are panic attack style sanity blasting. Like finding out what is basically a Xenomorph with wings is the 'friendly; butler of the creature half the greek pantheon is based on, and oh by the way half the greek pantheon is one guy that rides a space chariot. The layer of 'it's just fiction' may lead you to believe this wouldn't blast your sanity in real life, but you presently believe these things are not real and some people go crazy nuts over something as strange as things they already knew from a slightly different perspective.

Anyway, go with Call of Cthulhu 7e.

>>52664634
Lovecraft, and to be honest Cosmic Horror in general, is over-rated as fuck. On the Metaphorical level, it's just a bunch of "Oh no, we're all insignificant and our lives are meaningless. We're all too unimportant to make meaningful impacts on the universe!" Which, really, is quite tame as far as existential crises go. I mean seriously, a visit to /r9k/ is better at delivering the existential horror and futility of life.

And on the Surface level, it's just a bunch of Powerlevel wanking of his forces and "but it was just a temporary victory" rationalizations reminiscent of those used for the Non-Chaos victories during the Warhammer Fantasy's Storm of Chaos event.

If you want a campaign where you fight against evil, weird ass monsters and make progress rather than break down every time you see them, just run something in 40k, or take something like Fablehaven and throw in various amounts of Grim and Dark until you're satisfied.

>>52671973
>scoffs at 'muh temporary victory'
>suggests fucking 40k

puke

>>52671973
>make progress rather than break down every time you see them, just run something in 40k

>make progress
>40k

>>52671828
That's a pretty bad example as the Greek pantheon is legend and myth at this point and not an active religion. Even if you replaced with something like Christianity or Hinduism it's not exactly sanity blasting in the way the game wants it. It'd cause a deep religious and existential crisis.

>>52668785
I now Innsmouth had Shoggoths but it's never stated the feds killed them.

>>52668780
Your thinking of Ubbo-Sathla
And while it's much worse than a Shoggoth, Lovecraft never explains just how bad Shoggoths are. No except the GOO tier Elder Things had a chance at stopping them and even they eventually got mess up.

Lovecraft never shows us a Shoggoth get hurt by fire, electricity or plasma. That all stuff Sandy added in the game. If we go by Lovecrafts unreliable narrorators they can for sure spawn all sorts of crazy organs and are quiet powerful.

>>52668808
If your only looking at the RPG then sure. But i'm not talking about that i'm talking about story Shoggoths which are described as much more destructive than in the game.

>>52668931
>A race of cosmic super scientist who are more advanced than humans will ever be beat these monsters once and then got absolutely decimated by them.
>We can take them no problem.

>>52669014
"Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes - viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells - rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile - slaves of suggestion, builders of cities - more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative! Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and carve such things?"
-H.P. Lovecraft, "At the Mountains of Madness"

Shoggoths are actually pretty smart. Lovecraft says how they got smarter and that was one of the key things that led to the Shoggoth rebellions in the first place.

>>52668468
The USMC does fight the shoggoth in the smugglers tunnels during Escape From Innsmouth. It doesn't go well.

Look if you want to Gurren Lagann giant space gods, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, but at the end of the day that's not Lovecraft, all you're doing is keeping the name and general appearances. Lovecraft wrote horror, and if you remove horror you completely change the fundamentals of his works.
It's like calling Zone of the Enders Egyptian mythology because one of the mech was named Anubis.

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>>52671973
>"Oh no, we're all insignificant and our lives are meaningless. We're all too unimportant to make meaningful impacts on the universe!"

This is so surface level and inaccurate it makes me cringe. Universal impact has little to nothing to do with Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror.

>>52673181
We won't need eyes to see where we're going anon.

>>52672771
The shoggoths only beat the declining Elder Things after they'd basically been reduced to cultural and technological chimps and left everything in the hands of the shoggoths, anyway.

>>52672150
>It's not sanity blasting the way the game wants it
Read the fucking rules.

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>>52673360
See thats good Cosmic Horror.
The idea that our senses are inherently flawed and improvised. That we as creatures are so flawed that something as critical as our eyes is actually detrimental to our understanding of the universe. Thats good. Knowing our entire race was fucked the second a single celled organism grew eye balls instead of more usful appendages.

>>52673383
Yes the Elder Things declined but theirs nothing to suggest that they weren't still very advanced by our standards. We don't see their tech but the expedition sees evidence that they were still advanced.

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>>52669003

I highly recommend listening it as an audio book. Didn't know how to pronounce 'Dunitch' untill I listened it.

>>52668670
Sadly, there's a copyright kerfuffle where the works should be in the public domain by now but some people have a tenuous and probably false claim to it.

>>52674107
It's one of his more mediocre Yog-Sothery pieces, honestly, except the 'psychic suicide dreams' and some sailor falling screaming into alien geometry.

>>52673486
I listened to a lot of Lovecraft as audio books while at work, just because I was working long shifts of drudge work on the overnight. I'd read it all, but it was nice to hear someone else give voice to it, and sometimes more effective, at least for me.

I enjoyed Solaris this way, too, and it's even kinda related to Cthulhu-y aliens.

>>52668450
carcosa was a nice place with thoughtful people and a wise king, it was just all very spooky. Old man Henderson was the one in the wrong, though the cultists were too.

>>52664853

That's the thing, in most Lovecraft stories the protagonist tries to go back to living his normal life but can't because he can't shake his memories of dealing with the Eldritch. It's not that seeing them drives you mad, it's that seeing them makes it impossible to close the door and go back to living your life like a normal person so you go mad. Lovecraft was essentially personifying an existential crisis as a tentacle monster from a different dimension.

Source: I've read a decent amount of Lovecraft.

>>52675324
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think Colour and Dunwich pull this off best, especially Colour.

>>52668808
>attempt to douse shoggoth in napalm.

Shoggoth reaches out, grabs napalm, and douses you with it while pretending to be grass or dirt.

>>52671697
>I'm not sure I get choke slamming the void. It seems like totally missing the point

It is totally missing the point of this particular genre of fiction, but one of the most powerful (if not the) human instincts is self preservation, the FUCK YOU I'M GONNA LIVE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA mentality. People like to indulge that.

>>52676668
*teleports behind u*

>>52675897
The Colour out of Space is my favorite major story in the Lovecraftian mythos (though to be fair I haven't read At the Mountains of Madness yet). It genuinely scared me far more than Dunwich or the Call of Cthulhu.

>>52664634
ITT cthulhufags prove that they're the edgiest "fanbase"

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>All this Dunwitch horror and Call of Cuthulu
>No shunned house

>>52664687
It uses the same basic rules as the other BRP system. Pick up Runequest 6e (Also known as Mythras). It has a better combat system that is also deeply satisfying. Also, it's largely compatible with basically every version of Call of Cthulhu, BRP and Runequest. Tweaking to fit it in should be minimal.

>>52664634
Hi CC.

>>52667547
A bunch of college professors with a Necronomicon and a few airforce bombers fuck up the Son of Yog Sothoth in Dunwich horror.

The FBI and coastguard fuck up an entire colony of Deep Ones in Shadow over Innsmouth.

The terror in Reanimator is the human's own creation.

And Dreamquest stories aren't all that horrific at all.

>>52668448
>>52668468
>>52672866
That was the vidya, they Deep Ones never tamed them in the Books.
>>52668785
Wait really am I deleting a Shoggoth completely from my memory? I need to find that.

>>52669014
What book has vietnam?
>>52668526
They're nowhere near that powerful, and with no masters to emulate anymore they may have lost some of their intelligence from the rebellions. After all, they didn't spread out across the world and try to conquer things.

>>52668298
Oh, please. I have neither the time nor the inclination to waste on existential dread or crisis of mortality. Anything will die if it's pounded with enough ordnance. It's just a matter of finding the proper amount of megatons.

>>52679229
>That was the vidya, they Deep Ones never tamed them in the Books.

See Shoogoth T'wsha under the Deep One entry in Malleus Malificarum. Also, see Shoggoth T'wsha in Escape From Innsmouth, which absolutely features a Shoggoth controlled by a Deep One shaman vs the United States Marine Corps.

>>52679288
What exactly are those things?

Never heard of an Escape from Innsmouth, adventure book for one of the RPGs?

>>52676867
What sort of retard are you that it scared you?

>>52677289
That's the one why they tried to make a laser and it didn't work on the ghost thing?

I forgot how that ended.

>>52679388
Because it truly was an unstoppable force that could be very stealthy to boot.

>>52679288
"no"

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>>52679111

>>52679392
One of them died but they poured acid on the horror beyond sanity and it died screaming like a bitch.
Lovecraft did have heroes that could take shit on. Look at Pickmans Model for more proof of that.

>>52664634
GURPS

>>52681184
I mean, shooting ghouls is basically just shooting people. Plus, Pickman was a ghoul to begin with.

>>52664634
So no one mentioned Delta Green at all yet or is my ctrl+f broken?

>>52682162
It has definitely gone unmentioned.

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>>52664634
>Cthulhu-esque but you can fight back (a bit)
>pulpy dangerous adventures

That's Conan, OP. If you've read a bunch of the original stories, that's Conan.

You just want to set it in a different time period.

>>52682266
True, but it's a bit more intuitive to say 'Indiana Jones with Cthulhu' than 'Conan with Nazis.'

>>52682162
Too modern

>>52676867
Lovecraft stories seem to be entirely random in whether they disturb me or not. The Colour Out of Space didn't really bother me, but The Haunter In the Dark, for whatever reason, left me feeling deeply uncomfortable afterwards.

And then there was The Nameless City. That one freaked me out, and again I can't peg precisely why. Shadow Over Innsmouth, on the other hand, was just a fun read with a good setting.

>>52688033
I always liked the Colour simply because - is it even ALIVE? Is this a life cycle, deliberate cruelty, feeding, what? And what's under the lake?

>>52688033
The Haunter of the Dark is a story I found extremely comfy actually.

>>52688949
Possibly another Colour "Egg" about to start the cycle again this time washed down into Arkham itself.

>>52688033
Nameless city was claustrophobic as fuck for me.

Regarding system and mechanics, is there any particular flavor you like or would expect, OP? Do you want to use lots of fear and sanity rules, or should the monsters just be extra tough and spooky? Do you want monster action to be the focus, or dealing with cultists and investigating ruins?

Another consideration is using a system the players are familiar with and bolting on sanity. Adding Sanity saves to Mutants & Masterminds focuses the tone without abandoning superherorics.

>>52689460
My idea as it stands now is investigation with a good amount of combat with mundane assholes (Nazis, cultists, mercenaries, what have you), with any spookier gribblies reserved for rarer, tougher encounters.

As for fear/sanity, I intend to use them, but not *too* heavily. I find that they're often a bit overblown, but I don't think they should be totally absent.

>>52689721
It sounds to me that you don't really need the system to codify fear/sanity for you. As long as the PC's and NPC's are going for the right mood, I think things ought to shake out how you want them. Just talk to the players about where your setting is on the bleak-hopeful scale. I'd probably tell them something like "You're brave, two-fisted heroes, but nobody wants to go home in a box. Also, that Hitler guy sure is a crumbum."

>>52689140
Claustrophobic is a good way to describe it, but I think a big part of it was the helplessness of the protagonist BECAUSE of the tight spaces.

>>52668896
>Wouldn't it just collapse under his weight?

He's not made of normal matter. I'm pretty sure he can weigh whatever he wants.

>>52668399

Old Man Henderson was clearly a manifestation of Nyarlathotep.

>>52668456
>let's not pretend Old Man Henderson was anything other than an apocryphal joke story.

Actually it's a parable about how the best response to the seeming meaninglessness of life is to embrace the struggle against the darkness; using all your passion, rage, and madness to hold back the night.

>>52689901
Exactly, he was trapped in there, tight spaces deeeeeeep under ground.

baaammp

>>52679284
Congratulations, Lovecraft isn't for you.

Its like saying you're not afraid of clowns, but want a clown horror story.

Its not horror if you can't be scared by it.

That's the point everyone is trying to sell you on.

You can use Eldritch abominations outside of Lovecraftian stories, but saying Lovecraftian is specifically indicating that you are wanting a horror story.

>>52681184

It took a flamethrower and eleven 55-gallon drums of sulfuric acid to destroy that horror, and it wasn't even the alien titan in its own right, it was the fungus growing on the corpse of the dead alien titan.

They weren't so much as fighting a space monster so much as fighting its athlete's foot, and it took one death, flamethrowers, and 605 gallons of sulfuric acid to purge it.

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>>52679284
>Imma kill entropy with transformations of energy!

>>52690657
>he can weigh whatever he wants
The perfect excuse for him to deny how much of a fatass he is

>>52693915
>Learn the 8 Antediluvian Secrets 1 Priest Discovered for Instant Weight Loss!
>Elder Things Hate Him!

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>>52693113
>They weren't so much as fighting a space monster so much as fighting its athlete's foot, and it took one death, flamethrowers, and 605 gallons of sulfuric acid to purge it.

>>52693392
Don't knock it, it works.

>>52671973
>a setting or ethos can be "overrated"

Bumping for steamboats.

>>52668526
>>Ebola breathing lungs
What did he mean by this?

>>52701201
Lungs that expel ebola virii as a biproduct of respiration.

>>52677092
Nah, that's the 40kids that think their setting is deep and well thought out.

>>52701201
Lungs that exhale bloody mist filled with the Ebola virus.

>>52665780
>A Colder War

A Colder War was Elder God-tier. I love stories that combine Yog-Sothothery and conspiracies.

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>>52673485
All we need are more eyes. Yes. Line our brains with eyes.

>>52703422
That sounds pretty damn undignified for a Lovecraftian horror.

>>52703962
Shoggoths aren't dignified, that's the whole point. They're utter morons, perfect idiot savants, whose only private impulse is tremendous violence. Everything else they do, from their screeching to the way they expand the cities of their creators, is a vapid, goalless, pointless imitation of their former masters.

>>52664634

Craft the encounters and plot around it. If you want the vibe of 'we're outclassed but score some good hits and have a potentially happy ending for surviving characters' pulp, then you're going to have to do a few things.

>Ditch overly edgy grimdark shit. Rape, dead children, depression etc. should never be in the foreground or a plot point. Bottom line is, if players become alcoholics/bad things happen to them, have it be tongue-in-cheek. Don't shirk away from bad shit though, just don't play it completely straight. Players need to know that it's still cosmic horror.

>Think through what your players are going to fight/be up against and how it can potentially be defeated. For example, start them off against a human cult that has character and would be slightly cartoonish if it wasn't otherwise efficient and trying to do something very bad. Escalate from there. Point is, the party should grow to be able to reliably gun down zombies and cultists if they're not stupid, but anything more should be something to be avoided unless there's a really good plan.

>If your players fuck up, occasionally give them an out to situations that would otherwise lead to them dying if they know how to look. Bonus if you make the outs slightly ridiculous. This lets them know the tone is slightly less serious.

Your players are what's going to make this work. They need to feel slightly relaxed so they feel comfortable with doing (not too ridiculous) shit that normally would lead to a gruesome death.

Watch the first Lethal Weapon and some early Angel, as well as both Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade. The Last Crusade is what your campaign SHOULDN'T be. RotLA is a very good mix of pulp and grimdark.

>>52706020
I tend to look at shoggoths as TERMINALLY LAZY. Perhaps this was an a failsafe enplaced to prevent them from getting up to mischief (like grey goo shennanigans) while their masters didn't need them actively working.

At some point enough must have figured out they could do even LESS WORK in the future if the people who make them do work at all were dead.

This explains their incredible destructive potential, yet absolutely lackluster approach to dealing with irritations like 'just crush it' or 'dissolve it all' as any higher level functions would require them actually do something resembling constructive labor.

>>52706020
I dunno, I always took away that they were at least smart enough to understand vandalism for revenges sake.

>>52664634
>How to trigger Lovecraft fans

>>52706020
I don't see Lovecraft writing a story with a monster that basically farts an eldritch killer miasma at people.

>>52707473
>how to shitpost like a child

>>52707770
Me either, but Lovecraft was a very open-handed man, and I could see him approving of the concept of something that custom-made diseases as a defense mechanism.

>>52708248
open handed is the best way to do things. Gotta avoid leaving evidence of abuse

>>52707060
I like this idea.

Am I losing my mind or do we have a Bloodborne thread every day here?

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>>52710612

The OP pi isn't BloodBorne, if that's what you're thinking.

>>52710974
I realize that, but it seems we have a "action-oriented Cthulhu" or similar thread all the time.

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>>52693095
>saying you're not afraid of clowns, but want a clown horror story

Savage Worlda game, Realms of Cthulhu is my recommendation due its flexibility. You can have either Pulp (Core Savage Worlds) or Gritty versions of physical or mental health in your game. You can go full Indiana Jones Heroic (Pulp/Pulp) where you can how down bunch of Deep Ones with no problems, or maybe take Gritty physical option for dangerous action.

>>52664634
>Lovecraft
>but you can fight back

THAT'S NOT LOVECRAFT YOU SHIT

>>52710061
To be fair that was more the protagonists of Hodgson more than Lovecraft.

maybe track down a copy of Super World, treat the sanity loss mechanic as a mental attack?

that definitely is one of those things I'm not fond of Chaosium perpetuating, in Lovecraft's actual writings outside of people psychically sensitive enough to be touched by Cthulhu while he's getting closer to awakening, and a handful of people who directly perceive him, as well as a mere handful of other cases(most of which tend to involve either a partial physical cause, and/or the subject already having obvious mental weakness), people don't go mad all that often(indeed Sanity damage on sight seems to be more of a semi-unique trait to Cthulhu then one that applies to all Mythos creatures)

also most of the time if a Mythos creature or entity can assume a physical form, then said body can be damaged or destroyed, often by relatively mundane means at that(even Cthulhu himself managed to be momentarily disrupted by getting rammed by a boat)

>>52710612
>>52710974
>>52711548
honestly Bloodborne is the best way to handle Lovecraftian themes in a Tabletop RPG context, as almost anything is killable in the right context, but at the same time most things remain deadly no matter how strong you get

>>52713491
t. Derlethfag

>>52715123
Why was Dereleth so shit at writing Lovecraft inspired stories?

>>52664957
Savage worlds was literally made for this kind of thing and i personally like the system

>>52715316
Because Derleth wrote Derleth inspired stories

>>52715727
Dereleth had shit taste.

>>52668240
I hate how much society today prioritizes this idea that humanity can do anything and that individuality is the ultimate freedom. It leads to dumb shit like this.

>>52718989
It's also not healthy to be sceptical about everything. A lot of our results comes from people pushing the envelope and giving it their best shot.

>>52715123
Derleth did it better then. Better concept, poor execution.

>>52719003
It's fine to push the envelope, but the idea that mankind can accomplish anything and everything is not a wise one. Thinking you "chokeslam the void" is not going to work if the human race as a whole does not (yet) possess the means to do it. It could very well end with the attempt either being completely ignored, with the one who attempted it being purged, or all of humanity as a race being purged or worse. Stepping beyond your means isn't a good idea and that's why you have to develop the means to do something first.

>>52719167
Been playing Stellaris recently, and that's a good way to be reminded of that. You spot a Leviathan, you're going to be spending a couple of centuries reaching the point that you can even begin to consider taking it down, and you START THE GAME with FTL-capable spacecraft armed with (by our standards) outrageously advanced weapons. Thinking you can go in gung-ho and CHOKESLAM THE VOID is a great way to get killed.

Alternately, make a covenant with a Shroud entity. When the bill comes due, you WILL pay it.

Stellaris basically lets you experience the full spectrum of cosmic horror with a spacefaring civilization at your disposal. The "little" ones are star-eating gods that can eventually be killed by ludicrously powerful weapons, and the big ones are untouchable.

>>52713491

Eh. Not really, check out the Dunwhich Horror (professor turned wizard using the fucking necronomicon itself) and actually the ending of The Shadow over Innsmouth (which is positively XCom-like, the feds bomb the town). And the friggin' Call of Cthulhu itself.

The point is that Lovecraft didn't do pulp action but his characters can fight back in many cases: it's not the same thing.
(you guys should check out Stealing Cthulhu, it's a pretty brilliant piece of actual literary analysis, not only an rpg tool. It's interesting to realize how much some tropes are totally not-HPL)

Not that OP should feel obliged to do it like HPL did, of course. Personally I think pulp Cthulhu would be pretty boring, done a million times and back, but what do I know.

>>52719167
Its mostly for people to take credit for being part of a species identity without having to do anything special themselves.

>>52715316
Derleth didn't have enough of the writer's usual sense of self-loathing.

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>>52682266
>...the image had the body of a man, naked, and green in color; but the head was one of nightmare and madness. Too large for the human body, it had no attributes of humanity. Conan stared at the wide flaring ears, the curling proboscis, on either side of which stood white tusks tipped with round golden balls. The eyes were closed, as if in sleep.

>This then, was the reason for the name, the Tower of the Elephant, for the head of the thing was much like that of the beasts described by the Shemitish wanderer. This was Yara's god; where then should the gem be, but concealed in the idol, since the stone was called the Elephant's Heart?

>As Conan came forward, his eyes fixed on the motionless idol, the eyes of the thing opened suddenly! The Cimmerian froze in his tracks. It was no image--it was a living thing, and he was trapped in its chamber!"

>>52720494
That's a really good sketch.

>>52719167
In most cases it's more of a hazard for the individual than humanity. People has for the most part in human civilisation been disposable and it's only recently that we have started the meme of valuing general individual human life.

>>52668240
Theres courageous bravery in spite of the odds, and then there's this guy.

>>52719385
What has been will be.

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>Friend likes Cthulhu stuff
>He recently picked up DMing D&D 5e, is earnest but inexperienced
>Wants to run a Cthulhu game as a one-shot while one of our regulars is out of town
>"Sounds neat, what system are you gonna use?"
>"D&D 5e"
>"Oh, so it's a fantasy setting?"
>"No, it's set in the 20s."
>"O-Oh... so you found a third-party supplement?"
>"No, I'll just homebrew it all myself."
>mfw
Please somebody recommend a Cthulhu system that's easy to get into DMing. I don't want to have this guy spend countless hours reinventing the wheel when dozens of Cthulhu systems already exist.

>he actually reuses Lovecraft's monsters

Why not just make your own? It's ridiculously easy, and it makes for a more interesting game.

Why not have a monster that's essentially a flayed giant with hundreds of holes in its featureless head? Or a living creature that can only be comprehended as red light? Or a being that manifests between walls and stretches through them to reach its sleeping prey?

There are so many things you can come up with if you try.

>>52725837
...Call of Cthulhu is absurdly simple.

>>52726740
Probably will mostly be using my own critters, honestly.

>>52725837
honestly this is one of those times you have to take the kid gloves off and tell him he's being an idiot

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>>52664687
>>52664634
pulp call of cthulhu is literally the game you just described, it's good

>>52728977
Oh I completely agree that it's a stupid undertaking, and I've told him so. He's just reluctant to have to learn a new system, but I can't show him how easy it is to learn a system unless I have a system to point him to.

>>52727061
Any other advice? Edition?

>>52729729
>Any other advice? Edition?

Keep in mind combat is very dangerous when guns come out. The most popular editions are, I wanna say 6th and 7th?

>>52729729
well if you want a system that's still has some common ground with D&D, maybe take a look at Silent Legions

>>52721210
>People has for the most part in human civilisation been disposable
If by "people" you mean the average peasant, serf, slave, etc, sure. Kings, nobility, the 1%, your average tin-pot dictator (for as long as he's in power) may have other ideas.

>>52731264
Hence why I said for the most part. Nobility and the ruling class has always been made up of minority.

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>>52664634

>>52733083
He didn't want to write it, but the publisher bent backwards just to publish and Alan Moore title and told him that he could do whatever he wanted. So Alan decided to use it as an opportunity to do an experimental story.

Your idea is shit and cancerous. This thread is shit and cancerous.

>>52733185
Your manners is shit and cancerous.

>>52733151
>So Alan decided to use it as an opportunity to fap

Indeed.

>>52733263
Alan will do that anyway because he is a party guy.

>>52715117
Can't kill Oedon

>>52733151
Uh-huh, a chick being fucked silly by a fishman. Experimental.

>>52734141
I think the idea was doing Lovecraft in a sexual context because Lovecraft as a person had an incredibly repressed sexuality. So hence there is a Deep One that goes balls deep.

>>52664634
Lovecraft was a tweedy little faggot who was hilariously afraid of non-whites and, get this, fish. Who'da thunk it? He wrote well--VERY well--but the fact is his protagonists are mentally fragile compared to the average person because that's how Lovecraft was. Most people wouldn't go nuts over this kind of shit. That's not how people as a whole work, just neurotic spergs like Lovecraft

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>>52734330

>>52734341
>Ryder is presented as a character

Bleh

>Ryder is presented as an autistic qt

wtf why boner?

>>52729666
this guy is technically correct, the best kind of correct

>>52733526
Yeah, because he's just just concept of date rape.

>>52734341
This game is a true goldmine.

>>52734200
Fair point, really.

>>52739034
You're right that vagoo is doing nothing for me

>>52744873
A lot of people don't think so because they are in love with Lovecraft.

>>52738895
K

>>52748942
In Providence Alan Moore takes that theme and actually tries. Neonomicon had "pot boiler" written all over it

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>>52664634
There is an italian RPG called "L'alba di Cthulhu" (the dawn of Cthulhu) made by the guys that made Sine Requie which may be the sort of thing you are looking for.

It is against everything Lovecraft has ever written, but it has a fun pulp vibe to it. The premise: the old gods manifested, half of the world got mad, the other half has surrendered to Cthulhu and elected it President. The main setting is the city of R'Lyeh, inhabited by humans, dagonians, migos ecc. and is '30s new york on steroids. Every player is employed by a private investigators agency.

The tone is almost parodic of the mythos. There are migo mafiosi, burocracy led by cultists and a medical academy led by Herbert West. The system itself is also really simple and based on poker cards instead of dice.

I don't really like it and I guess that nobody translated it in english, but there's that.

>>52664634
Can I get impregnated?
I really want to get impregnated.

>>52749980
The whole plotline of that comic has her get impregnated with Cthulhu. And in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the Innsmouthians have been interrbreeding with the fish for decades. So yes, a deep one can impregnate you.

>>52668337
Squidbillies the game could be fun.