FrankTrollman wrote:The Mythos is inherently science fiction.
That's obviously untrue. I mean you literally just talked about Rats in the Walls. There's tons of Lovecraft stories that have no science fiction element whatsoever. That doesn't mean that Lovecraft and sci-fi can't go together well, I think they can. But the claim that Cthulhu+Mechs should be the standard Lovecraftian model or that sci-fi stories are the only way to use the Lovecraft mythos pretty much falls flat immediately.
If your 18th century explorer discovers some "The Hills have Eyes" people or your 22nd century warp drive accidentally awakens Shudde M'ell those are both totally stories you could get your Lovecraft vibes in. The first is certainly closer to a story he might have written but they're both stories about people exploring the liminal places of their worlds and being confronted with horror hidden in it.
Like, if the Mythos were set in a historically relevant period like the Golden Age of Sail or the 1st Industrial Revolution or the French Revolution or the Age of Imperialism, I could totally understand.
Yeah there should definitely be more experimentation with that in an RPG. If you're making a board game I totally understand why you'd want to go classic Lovecraft right down the line. Namecheck things people know, all that stuff. An RPG where everyone has already signed up because they're into Lovecraft stuff can let you have more freedom to expand things. Because while a board game about Roman legionaires fighting Lovecraftian horrors would have no sales your RPG group isn't gonna not show because this week you're doing your adventure in 300 A.D.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
Dean wrote:That's obviously untrue. I mean you literally just talked about Rats in the Walls. There's tons of Lovecraft stories that have no science fiction element whatsoever. That doesn't mean that Lovecraft and sci-fi can't go together well, I think they can. But the claim that Cthulhu+Mechs should be the standard Lovecraftian model or that sci-fi stories are the only way to use the Lovecraft mythos pretty much falls flat immediately.
Well, yes, but "Lovecraft" and "Mythos" (specifically Cthullu Mythos) aren't quite the same. Lovecraft wrote all sorts of stuff, but Cthully Mythos stuff is consistently science fiction (you might argue science fantasy or somesuch).
Personally, I'd think divorcing the Mythos from Lovecraft is the only way to make it work for a game. If every game sessions starts with the PCs talking about how they don't believe anything strange is going on, has the middle bit about them being racist, and the ending either going away without doing anything or saying "and it's coming for me with it's argh argh argh", you are probably not getting much of a game.
But you can include tentacled monsters and weird colours and non-Euclidean angles (especially if you don't know what that means), and you get to say you're totally Mythos. And you can do something with that.
Lovecraft came up in a time when genetics, evolution and all that were cutting edge theories being worked on.
An author I think a generation before Lovecraft, TH Lawrence, wrote about 'blood consciousness': https://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/95
So a lot of blending of mystic ideas with cutting edge science of the time
Foxwarrior wrote:My favorite Lovecraft story is the one about the ghosts of crocodiles with hands who are still grumpy about Pangaea splitting up.
Plate tectonics was cutting edge and extremely controversial science while Lovecraft was writing. Lovecraft died in 1937 and the papers that used marine bathymetry to demonstrate that the seafloors were factually spreading and thus continental drift was definitely true came out in 1965.
Surprisingly, even that story has a heavy science fiction element.
FrankTrollman wrote:The Mythos is inherently science fiction.
That's obviously untrue. I mean you literally just talked about Rats in the Walls. There's tons of Lovecraft stories that have no science fiction element whatsoever. That doesn't mean that Lovecraft and sci-fi can't go together well, I think they can. But the claim that Cthulhu+Mechs should be the standard Lovecraftian model or that sci-fi stories are the only way to use the Lovecraft mythos pretty much falls flat immediately.
Sci-fi stories aren't the only way to use elements inspired by Lovecraft but if your setting is going to be "about" the Mythos in any exhaustive way then I'd argue that you either include things that are inherently sci-fi or you leave out so many of the best parts that I'd frankly wonder why you bothered.
Lovecraft's fiction began predominantly as fantasy, and became progressively more science fiction as he progressed as a writer - but from the beginning, he mainained a grounding in realism to add verisimilitude to her fiction. Even in "The Rats in the Walls," there is no overt supernatural influence, the horror that overtakes the protagonist is psychological. The Dreamlands stories, which are the most fantastical, are still grounded in a kind of materialism - at least as much as Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars stories.
What tends to screw with people is that the supernatural and pseudoscientific blend together into a real grey area - and that's where Lovecraft lived, for the most part, chasing a mood more than a specific genre convention.
Ancient History wrote:
The real advantage to this cult is that it is both integrated into the setting and the NPCs have fairly clearly defined motivations, if not always goals. These are NPCs where if something goes pear-shaped, you have an idea of what they can do and how they'll respond.
That's great information. Things will go unexpectedly, and having the information to "wing it" while remaining internally consistent makes the game more enjoyable for both the players and the MC.
And the alternative is usually explaining why players can't use their abilities to solve problems, because the module/MC plan requires a railroad.
Last edited by Iduno on Wed Aug 28, 2019 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
