So, you're approached by a secret cabal of angel investors. They have $1,000,000 to invest and they want a shiny new IP that can successfully compete with H.P. Lovecraft. They have plans for a multi-author, multi-creative freelance supported body of work for books, TV, movies, comics, and tabletop games (including an RPG). After scouring the internet, they have chosen YOU as one of the finalists to be the director and lead editor for the project.

What's your pitch?

Quote from: trechriron;1120116So, you're approached by a secret cabal of angel investors. They have $1,000,000 to invest and they want a shiny new IP that can successfully compete with H.P. Lovecraft. They have plans for a multi-author, multi-creative freelance supported body of work for books, TV, movies, comics, and tabletop games (including an RPG). After scouring the internet, they have chosen YOU as one of the finalists to be the director and lead editor for the project.

What's your pitch?

I'd point out that HP Lovecraft is Public Domain!

Failing that, I'd draw from the well and go with a William Hope Hodgson based IP - The House on the Borderland, Boats of the Glen Carrig, The Night Land. Lots of splatterpunk monster-battling across the vast reaches of time and space. The Night Land especially looks extremely gameable.

Quote from: trechriron;1120116What's your pitch?

"Hire Ken Hite; I'm happy with a 5% finder's fee."

Okay, more seriously, I do have a couple of ideas that have been hanging fire for years, although as I'm a practicing Catholic I start from certain basic philosophical premises that don't jive with cosmic horror all that well. However, I'd had a MAGE expy/ripoff setting in the works (working title, for lack of a better one, The Paradox Factor) whose ultimate conflict was always planned to be an idea I shamelessly ripped off from Hite's "The Madness Dossier": the fundamental clash was one of warring histories for primary place in the timeline.  (I took the destruction of Thera/Santorini in 1645 BC as my primary "reset point", however, rather than the postulated Krakatoa eruption of 535 AD; I disliked the original setting's notion that Christianity was a "pre-reset" invention of the Annunnakku and therefore to be less trusted than Islam.)  The notion that reality and history itself are subject to change without notice has always given me the same frisson as Lovecraft's work.

Also, there would be vampires. I love vampires.

To a certain extent, it's already been done, but I would go with the Strugatsky brother's Roadside Picnic/Stalker.

To me it's more cosmic horror than Lovecraft, because it's completely apathetic to humanity.  The aliens came, they did whatever they did, and left, completely ignoring humanity, yet fundamentally changing the places they touched in completely alien ways that we struggle to understand only through trial and error.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120125"Hire Ken Hite; I'm happy with a 5% finder's fee."

Okay, more seriously, I do have a couple of ideas that have been hanging fire for years, although as I'm a practicing Catholic I start from certain basic philosophical premises that don't jive with cosmic horror all that well. However, I'd had a MAGE expy/ripoff setting in the works (working title, for lack of a better one, The Paradox Factor) whose ultimate conflict was always planned to be an idea I shamelessly ripped off from Hite's "The Madness Dossier": the fundamental clash was one of warring histories for primary place in the timeline.  (I took the destruction of Thera/Santorini in 1645 BC as my primary "reset point", however, rather than the postulated Krakatoa eruption of 535 AD; I disliked the original setting's notion that Christianity was a "pre-reset" invention of the Annunnakku and therefore to be less trusted than Islam.)  The notion that reality and history itself are subject to change without notice has always given me the same frisson as Lovecraft's work.

Also, there would be vampires. I love vampires.

That's a better Madness Dossier than the original...

Quote from: JeremyR;1120131To a certain extent, it's already been done, but I would go with the Strugatsky brother's Roadside Picnic/Stalker.

To me it's more cosmic horror than Lovecraft, because it's completely apathetic to humanity.  The aliens came, they did whatever they did, and left, completely ignoring humanity, yet fundamentally changing the places they touched in completely alien ways that we struggle to understand only through trial and error.

Or another Soviet-era Eastern bloc writer, Stanislaw Lem. He also focuses on the incomprehensibility of the alien in many of his stories, like Fiasco or Solaris. But his writing also includes dark satires, like The Futurological Congress, which could be used to expand the range of tones and possible modes of play. Not to mention all the zany ideas from his other writings, the Pirx the Pilot stories or The Cyberiad could easily be incorporated into a satiric or nihilistic background.

I'd go with the setting from the recent video game "Control."    I'm currently playing it and it's absolutely amazing.  It's like Lovecraft except that the horrors are pushing in from the astral plane rather than outer space and "magic" effects conform to the traditional esp/telekinesis/superstition model.  There's too much for me to detail, but you should check it out if this is your kind of thing.

Film the Laundry Files, like the IT crowd and yes minister with some tentacles and deeply scary sorcerers.

I'm working on that right now. But no angel investor gave me a million bucks.

FUCK... I'm doing it wrong.

Quote from: tenbones;1120406I'm working on that right now. But no angel investor gave me a million bucks.

FUCK... I'm doing it wrong.

Just kickstart it. You can get like.. $10 or 12...  :-D

Quote from: trechriron;1120426Just kickstart it. You can get like.. $10 or 12...  :-D

I can dream of such riches! One day, I'll taste the nectar of box-wine... instead of my beloved purple-drank!

In seriousness tho - it's hard to compete with Cthulhu conceptually without being easily written off as "Oh that's Cthulhu reskinned".

Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft is alien *and* extra-dimensional. It squats mightily on two pillars that subjectively stretch the limits of most people's conceptualization. The only way to tackle it is to go hard the presentation, and be ready to fend off criticisms that you're just riffing on Lovecraft. Which, let's face it... on some level you are.

A great example, one that is a big influence on my current project (without being a direct ripoff) are the novels of R. Scott Bakker - which I've talked about in other threads.