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

Or, I hate Lovecraft so much that racist bastard and please buy my Cthulhu book.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1138073I 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.

Look for "Louis Wain Cats". He was a postcard illustrator in the Victorian Era who was absolutely obsessed with cats. Nothing wrong in this. Then he got schizophrenia and his art began to change. Wain's last drawings are still used today in the study of schizophrenia, because they are an unparalleled chronicle of a mind's descent into madness. They are absolutely alien (when you see them always remember: Wain was seeing cats). You just feel that no normal mind could produce something like that. I remember a comment by a female student: "For no reason in the World I would sleep in a room with one of those things on the wall.

https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/0/4579/12141236/Progression_Louis_Wain_IllustrationChronicles_1500.jpg

So, yes, psychopathologies expressed through art can produce disturbing visions. I just imagine that something totally alien can be a channel for your mind to touch the fearfully incomprehensible.

Creepy cats.  Reminds me of one of those cat clocks with the eyes that move with the ticking.

I think Shadow of the Demon Lord might please your player.  Some might say its 'edgelord' but it does not have to be if handled by a mature group.  As others referenced, it sounds like your player wants that bleak, fatalistic feeling in their games.  SOTD is all about the players being constantly aware of their imminent demise.

Schwalb is an awesome designer that doesn't seem to give a toss about being socially acceptable to the mainstream groupthink.  I would argue that if your players like 5e style game mechanics, then SOTDL gives them a better version of it.

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

i am too. Though i like the designs, i tend to just put such beasties as sea creatures from the deepest depths. Theyre not quite mind shatteringly bizzare, they're just creepy and use psionics.

I haven't really delved into Lovecraft, but I've considered the idea of adding horror, sanity twisting elements into the game. One thing I'd consider doing is giving every monster a "Horror" score, which would be a save DC every character has to beat when first encountering them, or be driven by the Frightened condition for 1 minute. The Horror score could be equal to 8 +Proficiency (+Cha) modifier in 5e, or 10 +1/2 HD (+Cha) in 3e (this could be increased at DM's discretion depending on the type of creature). Every time the monster does something horrific or accomplishes some significant feat (like killing someone or scoring a critical) observers have to make another save.

Arcane magic could have a similar effect as well, but for the caster. Arcane spell casters may have to engage in the use of Forbidden Lore to use magic and expose their minds to ancient horrors. This Forbidden Lore could grant them a bonus spell slot per spell level, but every time that they cast a spell they most make a Wisdom/Will save vs DC 10 + Spell Level (8+ 2/Spell Level in 3e) or be stricken by the Frightened condition for 1 minute. Additionally, if they fail 3+ of these saves in the same day they'll be plagued by nightmares that night and unable to find full rest.

Quote from: Reckall;1138068A 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.

"lovecraftian" is a lot of wiggle room. D&D has cultists and fish men and aboleths and, of course, Cthulhu.
I think you can cater to this by including Lovecraftian tropes without driving straight into Call of Cthulhu (in which case, you're better off playing that game, IMO)
If D&D can do Alice in Wonderland and crashed spaceship, why not a small fishing town that's been taken over by a cult worshipping a dark one and slowly turning into fish mans?

My own thought is that you need to keep the players on their toes.  Cthulhu is just too well known these days.  I'd take the world is a lie approach.  Give them their generic happy fantasy world where elves frolic in the woods and dragons brood on treasure and dwarves delve too deeply and orcs are evil monsters.  But let them find reasons to believe that there is another truth.  Good priests who destroy certain books when they're found without any warning.  A cryptic dragon who's looking to unload a treasure because it's "too hot" even though it's just a clay jar full of gold coins with an odd emblem on them.  And the more they learn the less the good guys seem to like them.  Mutant children are being abandoned and picked up by a black coach and nobody knows where it takes them but most seem to think it best if they were burned.  Village wise women and witches whisper about secrets they don't know and don't want to know.  An undead invasion turns back and goes quietly home after meeting with a strange wanderer on a bridge.  They lock the doors and won't come back out and won't say why.  But everyone seems to be anxious to ignore whatever's going on and the elves are leaving, sailing over the seas on filtered starlight.  And one dark night a stranger walks into the tavern and tells the players to go back to being farmers and knights and leave off with the trouble they're making or they'll bring down wrath and ruin.  One night while camping the players find themselves in a blighted ghoul haunted wasteland but in the morning the forest is back and the pixies are dancing in the rain.  Sometimes the stars look live tentacles or seaweed waving in the ocean.  A monster ravages a village but when the heroes arrive it begs them pleadingly, "I am nothing, can't you see?  I am nothing and then vanishes leaving only the ruins and corpses.  A week later nobody remembers the village and there's nothing but a wheat field where it stood.  Frogs chant alien incantations in the dim evening.  Another village is full of strangely dismembered people wandering around as if they were whole and nothing is wrong.  Sections of houses are missing and a whole girl, plain and dull sings a piping alien song for half an hour before vanishing and the village is restored but nobody remembers anything strange.  One day it rains strange flowers which slowly begin spreading across the land, people start wearing them and seem very happy but soon they only sit and smile and then one by one they are absorbed into the ground in the ripest flowering fields.  And as it goes on, one by one the player characters start to see the wasteland more and and the fantasy world less and less.  People vanish in mid conversation.  They sleep in an inn and wake up in a pumpkin patch.  A merchant comes to town selling dreams captured in bottles but the dreams are strange vistas of colors and motion that leave the dreamer forever longing for something that was lost.  And little by little the facade changes from a picturesque medieval realm to a barbaric and colorful ancient world full of strange cults and gods.  The cleric and paladin's holy symbols remain but their churches have vanished and their spell lists are becoming more violent and bizarre.  In the end they are faced with the knowledge that the world is an illusion overlying the ruin of something that was lost and while scattered remnants of that other reality still lurk here and there, they prefer the fantasy and don't want it broken.

Anyhow, that's how I'd do it.

Put the PCs into a unique setting, where certain things they'd ordinarily expect, don't work.

I don't think even the average HPL story much resembles the stereotype of "Cthulu" RPG play, with helpless PCs immediately going mad at the mere sight of a Mythos monster. Ram the Great Old One! Machinegun the swamp cultists!

I use a bunch of Mythos material in my 5e D&D Runelords & Primeval Thule games, but I don't use any Sanity mechanics - Psychic hit point damage works great.

Perhaps what the person who wants "Lovecraft in D&D" is an enemy/threat that can't just be meleed/spelled out of existence. The threat is not only to the PCs bodies but their very souls. The thing won't take people's HPs, it will make them unable to sleep, or give them a disease that can't be cured by magic, or steal their memories (XP?). Or perhaps turn the entire world into zombies!

In CoC, the PCs rarely have to actually fight the cosmic threat - they need to discover a way of ending the threat without fighting the entity directly. So they fight the cult that is going to summon it, they research a spell that might weaken the entity, they steal the MacGuffin of Azathoth Summoning and drop it into the deepest ocean. Maybe that's what he has in mind? That's pretty easy to do in D&D.

Quote from: Razor 007;1138132Put the PCs into a unique setting, where certain things they'd ordinarily expect, don't work.

I agree with this. Lovecraftian horror is a realisation that the physics and metaphysics that you believe in are wrong. The physics of D&D is the rules.  I'd run it that if you cast divine magic against a Great Old One then it reaches out psionically and snaps your link to your deity: no more magic for your character [Or if you want - summons ands eats your god]. If you attack a mythos monster - you roll d10 rather than d20.

Well good horror is hard, straight out. Second buy-in is essential. Third sanity & fear mechanics are sort of a failsafe to remind "belligerently stoic" players to cut the crap and play ball with what they signed up. It asks a lot from all parties.

The good news is D&D actually is in a fantastic position to emulate Mythos because it resides smack dab in the middle of the fantastic surrounded by peril, the alien, & terror (to borrow keyword terms now familiar to many a CoC FF boardgame).

With an emphasis on pluck and meager material reserves exploring the vast mythic underworld, going against a nigh endless flow of foul patroling denizens serving even greater horrors beneath, the dungeon crawl is literally emblematic of a good Mythos story. The only major thing to add is some "good" (purple, always purple prose) exposition hinting at a pressure cooker of trouble ready to blow -- suggesting overland peace was always an illusion dependent on unappreciated sacrifice below. As for mechanics... you already have five different saves, six stats, move rate, encumbrance, & HP to work off of, if you really need to throw mods & tick down meters.

In some way letting players respond organically, rather than any SAN system, is better because there is expectation to respond without prompting on how to do so. Most people grok horror responses and can act up as the situation needs. That might be more liberating, and unsettling, if your players can go with that flow.

Quote from: Anselyn;1138153I agree with this. Lovecraftian horror is a realisation that the physics and metaphysics that you believe in are wrong. The physics of D&D is the rules.  I'd run it that if you cast divine magic against a Great Old One then it reaches out psionically and snaps your link to your deity: no more magic for your character [Or if you want - summons ands eats your god]. If you attack a mythos monster - you roll d10 rather than d20.

Or Arcane magic is no longer safe to use. Any Arcane magic use carries a risk of corruption. The rules from Ravenloft, especially Masque of the Red Death, are already set up to do this in D&D.

Quote from: Reckall;1138103Look for "Louis Wain Cats". He was a postcard illustrator in the Victorian Era who was absolutely obsessed with cats. Nothing wrong in this. Then he got schizophrenia and his art began to change. Wain's last drawings are still used today in the study of schizophrenia, because they are an unparalleled chronicle of a mind's descent into madness. They are absolutely alien (when you see them always remember: Wain was seeing cats). You just feel that no normal mind could produce something like that.

Interesting how Louis Wain's work is seen as the result of schizophrenia yet the significantly more disturbing works of Pablo Picasso are not. (also, Wikipedia suggests that his painting were displayed out of chronological order in the attempt to make it seem like his condition was progressing yet he is known to have produced conventional cat paintings late in life along side his more abstract pieces).

In any event, the paintings were the result of his mental illness (and drug use) not the cause of it. I still content that merely looking at a monster, no matter how gross, will not cause a sane person to instantly go insane. Long term exposure to such situations, maybe, but even your low level D&D character has seen more death and dismemberment in one adventure than almost all modern humans do in a lifetime. Cthulhu is nothing more than a magical kaiju.

Quote from: S'mon;1138145I don't think even the average HPL story much resembles the stereotype of "Cthulu" RPG play, with helpless PCs immediately going mad at the mere sight of a Mythos monster. Ram the Great Old One! Machinegun the swamp cultists!

I was introduced to Lovecraft via D&D's original Deities & Demigods. When I finally read Lovecraft's actual stories, I was surprised how different they were. One specific example is the Old Ones in Mountains of Madness (the barrel shaped creatures with wings and starfish legs).

Here's how they are described in At the Mountains of Madness: "They had not been even savages--for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch--perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia . . . poor Lake, poor Gedney . . . and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last--what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn--whatever they had been, they were men!"

Yet in D&D they were Lawful Evil and in CoC they cause a Sanity check.