Last evening we were idly debating about a theme for our next adventure. We want to do a one-shot with a strong cinematic flavour, and I'm the designated DM.

A new guy in my gaming group loves Lovecraft but he also wants to try D&D (and specifically D&D). Basically, he asked for a "lovecraftian" experience in a D&D milieu.

True, we have a lot of literature about that: from the "forbidden" First Edition of Deities and Demigods, to 3.5E Lords of Madness (which openly mentions Lovecraft), to the straighter path - Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E (https://petersengames.com/the-games-shop/cthulhu-mythos-for-5e-pdf/) or even Call of Cthulhu D20 ported to D&D 3/3.5E.

However, how can something be truly "lovecraftian" in an high fantasy setting? I think it was R.E. Howard who noticed how (once the Mythos are in play) "Madness is the curse of the civilised man". To Conan, a tiger is a peril, a giant spider is a big peril and Cthulhu is an humongous peril - nothing else. Even Solomon Kane just smashed and ripped any aberration he happened to met. And I can already see the party's cleric looking at Azathoth and immediately contacting his God about "What the heck is this s**t?!" In CoC using magic always brings more pain on the PCs than it is worth - in D&D you have sorcerers with dragon blood.

I offered the new "Alien" RPG as an alternative, or even an adventure I cooked set in 2003 Iraq, on the first night of the Second Gulf War - the point being that you need science and rationality for the truly aberrant to shine. But, no, the request is "Cthulhu in D&D".

I have no interesting feelings about this setting. I simply don't know why you should "roll for SAN" when you see a Mi-go when you don't roll for it when you see (insert a random thing from Planescape here). However, I always love a narrative challenge. I'm open to ideas.

Suggestions?

Does he want Cthulhu with a great deal of mystery, dread and unseen/unknowable forces who will easily snap the PCs brains and/or bodies like a twig if they're ever truly encountered or does he mean 'Pulp Cthulhu' where there's a lot of Mindflyers and "IS THAT A SQUID? AHHHHHHH IT'S SO INCONCEIVABLE I'M GOING IIINNNSSSSAAAAAANNNNEEEEEEE" from the NPCs before they punch it in the face?

Now it's a somewhat obvious answer, but I think a very strong example of 'Fantasy with Lovecraft' would probably be Bloodborne, but a big part of that was that it didn't really overtly advertise itself as cosmic horror, instead revealing itself over half way through the game whilst prior to that you were fighting what amounted to werewolves, giant snakes and monsters that, whilst horrific, were not out of the norm for what you'd expect in a fantasy universe. Eventually, the veil is torn away and even the stock gothic horror prior to that seems almost mundane as the bloodmoon grows closer, the sky is filled with unnatural shades of colour and you encounter what kind of experiments the Church was running and worshipping.

I feel Lovecraft is massively missed in tone. I don't think its real horror (from the author's perspective) was the existence of the threats, or even as much their inevitability, but more so the fact that only a select few know and are willing/ can fight against the evil.
I mean many of his stories did effectively have adventuring groups just shoot down a bad guy (even though grave sacrifice). The central element I guess is people's willingness to betray themselves to evil for a profit of sorts, or to some newfangled ghoulish idea.

That's why I don't think much work has really captured that worldview. It's not the tentacles or gods, or even hopelessness that makes horror Lovecraftian. Its a sense of isolation.
'Things not meant for man!' isn't demanding 'take 1d4 sanity damage' but represents more stuff like 'We made a machine that can make people immortal if you feed babies into it, and nobody wants to shut it off'.
Him being a racist is an important part of it, and just because he was a racist doesn't make the work he made bad. It tied into universal elements that many people can relate too, even if normally you would be the subject of his ire.

Edit:

You can do Lovecraft with just werewolves or demons without needing tentacles or deep ones.

A story might be your just some adventurers in the backwoods, and the king and the aristocracy decided to embrace werewolfism to become nigh immortal. So the mystery unravels as the nobles become sketchier and sketchier. Maintaining the cities and past glories less and less as they promote barbarism and brutality. And as this happens they just say YOUR the crazy ones. Until by the end they go on a rampage pillaging the countryside.

The original Freeport trilogy was a decent take on D&D with a Lovecraftian twist.

What @Shrieking Banshee says is spot on.  But I doubt your group means that when they say "Cthulhu".

I'm with you. I find it impossible to do Lovecraft in fantasy except on a superficial, pulpy level.

I don't think Lovecraft works in any RPG. Even CoC is basically a die roll to see if the player pretends that his character is scared. It doesn't even attempt to try and scare the player. The entire idea that some sort of creature is so weird that people will go insane just by looking at it is rather silly. Right now you can Google pictures of a dozen different real world creatures that are every bit as scary as anything Lovecraft imagined. Yet no one is going insane.

In D&D, Cthulhu is just a giant monster to be defeated.

First of all, thanks for your suggestions.

Right now I have some ideas spinning in my head. They still have to coalesce in a meaningful central plot. However...

3.5E's Lords of Madness gives us a new thing for D&D: body horror. D&D (if the DM is not a lover of baroque descriptions) is about "Taking a crit - 28HP!", not about "The axe cleaves your tight and arterial blood sprays everywhere." In LoM, however, you can find very bad and putrid "things" grafted on NPCs and PCs alike. Mutations are another option. "Why I'm mutating? I have 88 HPs!!" could be worth a SAN test.

Isolation... Let's take a leaf from the original "Alien" and put the PCs somewhere in space. An asteroid is slowly aiming for the PCs' homeworld - still years away from impact, but... Scrying spells show that inside there are halls, tortuous corridors and... "things". Three scryers out of four just went mad. The deluded "heroes" are teleported inside the rock to "see and report", only to discover that the asteroid is R'lyeh. Even worse, their spells now have, uhm... "distorted" effects, including the teleport back one. Good luck.

Another idea is being sent by the local potentate to investigate an epidemic of madness in the "Desolate Northern Wastes". I can use Ithaqua here. The very sound of the wind can cause a loss of SAN (in my CoC Keeper experience there is nothing like losing SAN "because" to ennerve the players). I could even take inspiration from an adventure for WW Cthulhu, which starts with the PCs (English Commandos) awakening from a truck crash in the middle of occupied Norway, after a sabotage mission, with what happened before actually narrated in flashbacks after this beginning in media res - and, on the top of that, half of the mission still to be completed. I won't spoil the truly horrific truth that awaits the PCs (because maybe you will play it) - but it truly goes beyond HPs and traditional spellcasting.

Hmmm... I guess that the key could be putting the PCs in a situation where the traditional D&D tropes all of sudden have no meaning anymore - and that's when things go scary.

Quote from: Reckall;1138076Hmmm... I guess that the key could be putting the PCs in a situation where the traditional D&D tropes all of sudden have no meaning anymore - and that's when things go scary.

That's not really the case. Its not about new monsters or new ooga boogas. If your fundementally expecting a monster to jump from under the bed your just not scared of it.

What I recommend is establishing a sense of normalcy and make PCs attached too it. Make PCs cherish and value the status quo. Then start slowly but surely subverting it.

I don't know that it can't be done, but I do know I've never seen it done successfully. The two of the three games where I saw someone try lost players d/t disconnection and boredom within the first few sessions. The third lasted a bit longer but that's because the Mythos-like elements only came out later--and then the game collapsed because the players (including myself) just were not into it at all and viewed it as a bait & switch.

Oddly enough, I think it can be done better in a game with more narrative elements and a lower fantasy base, like the Modipheus Conan line.

I think that to get a good start on a Lovecraftian tone for the game, the game setting has to be absent of all of the markers/tropes of a Lovecraft story. Like when you watch a good horror movie, there is a quick scene of foreshadowing (which was your Players asking for a D&D Lovecraft game) followed by some scenes that are mundane and normal to make the Players think that this will not be Lovecraftian at all (maybe some bog standard dungeon crawling). The thing is, this slow build-up cannot last more than a single session or your Players will dump the game because they will think that it isn't what they asked for.

I just read the D&D 5e rules on Madness and including a Sanity score. It does not include San loss scores for specific creatures. But leaves that up to the DM to determine what sort of save is necessary when a character encounters something truly alien.

The rules are pretty much at the DM's will. As to how harsh they will be.

But that makes sense. Because an individual DM's campaign can have wildly different levels in tone.

Also, if you look up the Warlock class. There is a section under Patrons listing Great Old One as an option. So yes, the Cthulhu mythos is definitely a consideration in 5e.

For my own games? I'd be using the SAN score pretty heavily. Because of how mind-shattering encountering really alien magic, lore, and monsters could be.

Also, I think encountering a Gelatinous Cube would be pretty terrifying and mind-shattering.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1138073The entire idea that some sort of creature is so weird that people will go insane just by looking at it is rather silly. Right now you can Google pictures of a dozen different real world creatures that are every bit as scary as anything Lovecraft imagined. Yet no one is going insane.

Seeing a picture is never going to be the same thing.
The couple across the street from us were paramedics/firemen and both of them were in counseling and took early retirement because they couldn't take seeing that stuff anymore.
Watching a scary movie is not the same thing as taking out the garbage and finding a bear tearing through your trash can.
The confrontation of the reality of the thing, implications and consequences, can push people into states of shock.
Not to mention that some of the things from the Mythos are not entirely from our reality, they warp the spaces around them by their mere presence... which includes the minds/bodies of folks stumbling across them.

I've been scared in plenty of RPG sessions... usually when the rules are not on table (not in combat, no dice or numbers)... the GM did a good presentation but the primary reason was that I WANTED it to be scary... I was willing to be scared. GMs and other Players can undercut that in spite of me, with jokes and too much meta... but if it's going to happen at all it has to start with me, my view of the situation.
But I think I'm unusual in choosing to see the average D&D dungeon as a frightening situation, vs. a violent shopping mall.

Quote from: Simlasa;1138085)... the GM did a good presentation but the primary reason was that I WANTED it to be scary... I was willing to be scared..

Bingo. Horror in RPGs is more reliant on each player willing to be unsettled than anything the GM throws at them. The new Kult edition calls this the "horror contract".

Not really relevant to the original post, but am I the only one sick of 'Cthulhu Ubiquitous'?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1138095Not really relevant to the original post, but am I the only one sick of 'Cthulhu Ubiquitous'?

You mean cthulu everywhere? Or everything claiming to have Lovecraft influences?

If thats the case then yes. Il take a demon with horns over an old one with tentacles anyday.

The Lovecraft mythology (which he never intended as mythology and found the entire idea farcical) pales in comparison to all real-world mythologies. And that's not his fault. He wasn't competing as a mythology.