The whole idea of cosmic horrors is retarded.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

So anyway. You've got this all-encompassing mass of destruction and insanity that can never be reckoned, resides at the center of the universe, and can destroy universes at a thought.

Gee, this sounds a lot like giving the DBZ logic to your villains/horror story. After all, MORE SIZE AND POWER EQUALS MORE ENGAGING PLOT! Why is this still a relatively respected trope in fiction?

[Ravengm]

Mostly because it works. The mystery and horror surrounding a formless entity that can snuff out your life at any given instant is, well, creepy. It's the Lovecraftian brand of super entity.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

Mostly because it works. The mystery and horror surrounding a formless entity that can snuff out your life at any given instant is, well, creepy. It's the Lovecraftian brand of super entity.

No it isn't, or Dragonball Z would be winning Emmies.

[Ravengm]

I didn't say it was great... just that it works.

DBZ has a loyal fanbase that eats that kinda crap up for breakfast.

[Prak]

There's also the fact that the best use of this trope hardly mentions or uses the immense formless entity, ie, lovecraft harldy ever actually uses cthulhu as anything more than a motivation for more reasonable antagonists, such as the cultists.

[traverse]

Right. It's not like Cthulhu actually cares about who or what he's snacking on, which is why it's better than DBZ.

There's a difference between a super boss and a world muncher. Any DM who puts a party against a world muncher needs to be one of the last to be eaten.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So anyway. You've got this all-encompassing mass of destruction and insanity that can never be reckoned, resides at the center of the universe, and can destroy universes at a thought.

You've got your mythology mixed up. See, the destructive potential of a power has to inversely proportional to its degree of interaction with the world. You can have a mass of destruction and insanity at the center of the universe, but it can't be all-encompassing. In that case it would be the universe, which doesn't work. It also can't destroy universes at a thought, because it would have destroyed itself by now.

So you can have continent-destroying horrors that sleep deep underground, slow planet-destroying horrors on solar planets, fast planet- and slow star-destroying horrors outside the solar system, galaxy-destroying horrors near 'the center of the universe', and universe-destroying horrors outside our universe and/or dimensionality.

Farther away horrors with less influence we don't care about, and closer horrors with more influence lead to very short stories.

[Psychic Robot]

Gee, this sounds a lot like giving the DBZ logic to your villains/horror story. After all, MORE SIZE AND POWER EQUALS MORE ENGAGING PLOT! Why is this still a relatively respected trope in fiction?

How often does Lovecraft have his protagonists actually encounter said entities?

[traverse]

Oh noes, I can see it now.

The crew of the Emma have to face off against the green, sticky spawn of the stars, but it will still be ten turns until they've charged up enough to blast it! Will Gustav be able to fend off the attacks of the Alert?

Find out in R'lyeh, whatever will become of us? on CoC!

[Voss]

Gee, this sounds a lot like giving the DBZ logic to your villains/horror story. After all, MORE SIZE AND POWER EQUALS MORE ENGAGING PLOT! Why is this still a relatively respected trope in fiction?

How often does Lovecraft have his protagonists actually encounter said entities?

Almost never. On the rare occasions it actually happens, well, the merest glimpse of them out of the corner of the eye pretty much sends the protagonist around the bend. Actually seeing the entity in full is entirely in 'Too Late, You Lost Already' territory.

The concept isn't retarded, but the DBZ or old Deities and Demigods assumption that your going to somehow go and kick its formless, yet somehow multiple, asses is. It can be interesting to have it be out there, but more in a 'stop the minions from waking it up', sacrificing people, etc. Actually fighting it is much like having the party fight ants. Individually.

[Talisman]

Ah, another 13 Buttlords special...as inflammatory as possible.

The Cosmic Horror is a literary device, and is as good or as bad as the writer. Lovecraft was an expert, and his Cosmic Horrors were very good. Others have been less so. Nevertheless, the concept that what we think we know about the universe is a minsicule fraction of the truth, and the idea that our feeble brains cannot comprehend the true nature of existance, is one of the tropes that works well for me.

Now, the idea that your D&D party is going to sail off into the Far Realm and kick Azathoth's...well...whatever part of Azathoth he's currently using as his ass...that is stupid. It reduces the very idea of the Cosmic Horror to the Big Mean Boss Monster...which it should never be, in order to work properly.

I agree with Voss...the Cosmic Horror works best whe, rather than trying to kill it, you're trying to kill its mortal servants and stop them from getting its attention. Because you can't hope to harm it; but fortunately, it probably won't bother your little corner of the multiverse unless poked with a large metaphorical stick.

[JonSetanta]

Look, some critters are just plot devices.

Don't use Cosmic Horror if you don't want the Horror with your Cosmic.

[Surgo]

On the other hand, roleplaying games do have a great tradition of stabbing gods / cosmic whatevers in the face. I find it quite unsatisfying if that can't be accomplished.

[Psychic Robot]

Almost never.

My point exactly. Lovecraft doesn't have monsters that are ungodly powerful and want to destroy the world; Lovecraft has monsters that are ungodly powerful and don't care about the world. So there's pretty much no DBZ ever.

[Talisman]

Lovecraft's beasties (with few exceptions) don't give a flying fig about humanity...because in the Lovecraftverse, humanity is the speck of dusk on the gnat's eyebrow.

The ultimate horror of Lovecraftian horrors isn't something that wants to eat you...it's something that cannot exist if the world works in the way we think it does. For it to exist, the world must be very, very alien to the human mode of thought...and therein lies the horror.

It's not the monsters that are alien. It's the universe which is alien.

Which, of course, means that it's really we humans who are alien to the universe.

[Psychic Robot]

Also, illithid.

[Bigode]

On the other hand, roleplaying games do have a great tradition of stabbing gods / cosmic whatevers in the face. I find it quite unsatisfying if that can't be accomplished.

Yeah, but that's a case of people seriously confusing their tropes. See, people kick godly backsides in settings where they're supposed to be able to take their places - in Lovecraft, Azathoth's seat isn't at sale, and I don't think a non-cultist human might wanna buy it anyway.

[Porrage]

I love the ideas of cosmic horrors.. just last night I ran a group of adventures on a quest that was heavily inspired by Lovecraft's work. Cosmic horrors aren't there to provide spectacular "boss" fights, I think they're there to give the players an idea that there are always more things going on than what they see. You don't have to fight Cthulhu, but if the one of the players finds out some dark and terrible secret, Cthulhu's cult is gonna show up to ruin the day.

Ehh, I guess I just like very strange campaign settings/adventures.

[virgil]

In response to Buttlords, I think part of the allure of the Elder Gods from Lovecraft's work is because they're made sufficiently powerful that debate about combat with them is never called into question, they're setting dressing, not characters. Also, their alien nature prevents any kind of psychological debate.

The DBZ analogy only works when the reader/player is partaking with that level of power in some meaningful fashion. DBZ would be a wholly different animal if it was shown from the point-of-view of the DB-level people that don't directly interact with Goku and friends.

[RandomCasualty2]

In response to Buttlords, I think part of the allure of the Elder Gods from Lovecraft's work is because they're made sufficiently powerful that debate about combat with them is never called into question, they're setting dressing, not characters. Also, their alien nature prevents any kind of psychological debate.

Yeah, really they're just some uber entity that exists that some people worship. Pretty similar to D&D gods, only they don't have any specific agenda. Azathoth really doesn't care about his worshippers.

[Username17]

Cosmic Monsters are just like tidal waves or volcanoes. You aren't expected to be able to stop them or fight them, they are just there. So knowing that Azathoth is coming is just like knowing that a volcanic eruption or earthquake is going to destroy the town, you no longer try to collect the coolest weapons and sweetest armor for a final fight, you are just trying to figure out how to save as many people as possible.

You know, like real heroes do.

-Username17

[Prak]

In response to Buttlords, I think part of the allure of the Elder Gods from Lovecraft's work is because they're made sufficiently powerful that debate about combat with them is never called into question, they're setting dressing, not characters. Also, their alien nature prevents any kind of psychological debate.

Yeah, really they're just some uber entity that exists that some people worship. Pretty similar to D&D gods, only they don't have any specific agenda. Azathoth really doesn't care about his worshippers.

now that brings up an interesting question, if the elder gods don't care about their worshippers, do they get spells? If they do get spells, do those spells even actually come from cthulhu and company? or is there someone else that's granting those spells?

[Talisman]

Some Cosmic Horrors clearly do care about humanity. Cthulhu, for instance, is said to be "the high priest of Azathoth," implying that he reveres Azathoth. The Cthulhu cultists claim that, when the stars are right, the Old Ones will awake and teach their faithful followers to be has they, free of restraint and able to indulge in any passion that takes their fancy, leading to a world engulfed in murder and chaos and anarchy.

Of course, all this info comes from deranged cultists, so it's an open question whether it's even vaguely true.

Now, some Horrors (the Mi-Go and the Deep Ones come to mind) have a very specific interest in humans...but they aren't Cosmic Horrors on the scale of even Cthulhu, who is an order of magnitude below Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth. They're Horrors, but they're near-human in scale...monsters, not Things From Beyond.

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I suggest we take off our D&D glasses when thinking of Lovecraft's creatures. Cthulhu is said to be a mighty spellcaster as well as a priest of Azathoth, but there's no real reason why the two must be connected. We're used to thinking in terms of "priest = granted spells by a deity," but that's not necessarily the case. See Arcana Unearthed for a D&D example.

Personally, I always got the impression that the "spells" of the Mythos were less "magic" (i.e., breaking the laws of physics) than they were the employment of unknown natural laws. This fits perfectly with Lovecraft's general vision - that we humans know almost nothing about the universe, and most of that is wrong. Lovecraft's writings were less fantasy/horror and more science fiction takes to the extreme.

[Prak]

I know, but I'm actually teaching my girlfriend's sister to play and she's playing a cthulhu cultist, so I actually need an answer for this question if nothing else than for my own game.

[Voss]

On the other hand, roleplaying games do have a great tradition of stabbing gods / cosmic whatevers in the face. I find it quite unsatisfying if that can't be accomplished.

Different tradition. Its one thing to stab Ares in the face, but cosmic horrors are a different ball of pseudopodia. Classical gods are within a couple steps of humanity, and are pretty well understood. Even to the point that the Illiad actually has someone cutting Ares up a little bit in a fight, and he runs home crying.

With the cosmic horror, you've got no idea what stabbing them will actually do, because you don't have the faintest idea of how they interact with the universe. Maybe nothing, maybe it dies, maybe thermonuclear explosions rip your world apart, maybe you degenerate into a flailing mass of protoplasm on contact with its ichor. Odds are your mind is already gone, though.