Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;621537I've always wanted to see an RPG exploration of later horror genres, such as Clive Barkers early work (Tale of the Hellbound Heart, Cabal).  Old World of Darkness tried to touch some of this but become more about supernatural adventure as opposed to stark horror.  I'd also like to see expansion of some of the work in the hobby which emulates newer horror genres (J-Horror like The Ring, etc).

Yes, these would be excellent, I'm a huge Barker fan. I think they did a Necroscope RPG but it never went anywhere - there is huge potential in that setting, or at least in those powers. They could be slotted in anywhere, from medieval fantasy to high tech space opera.

Quote from: Opaopajr;621559Since speculative romance is the hottest thing currently, I just realized you could do an embedded Cold War version, with varying degrees of horror/comedy.

Have a read of A Colder War, one of my favourite Mythos stories.

There's really two things going on, Cthulhu and Cosmic Horror.  The way to keep Cosmic Horror "fresh" obviously would be to do it without Cthulhu.  

Keeping Cthulhu fresh...do it without Cosmic Horror? Hmm. In just about every incarnation, the Mythos seems to be the Truth™, the secret history of everything, and all of humanity's religion, magic, etc are a result of the Mythos.  Change that maybe.

Have the Moorcockian or Warhammer Mythos be the base cosmology and fit Cthulhu into that.  Or have a Christian God/Devil Mythology with Cthulhu & Co. being part of that or simply being aliens.  Don't make them the uncaring cosmic nihilists that drive you mad with the crushing power of your own insignificance, make them actively malevolent, at war with the christian God and even the fallen angels.

Or make Cthulhu a good guy.  The reason people get driven mad is because they become aware of his nightmares, he's in torment due to his imprisonment, and the decrepit cults that worship him, while insane and evil, are actually doing what needs to be done because Cthulhu is the only thing that can prevent the Old Ones from awakening.

As a player, though, I find a good Cthulhu adventure can still be scary.

Quote from: Ladybird;621550I think the thing to do, is to take the concepts and build from there - hostile universe, the emptiness of realizing there are powers as far above you as you are above insects, etc - and start there, rather than "Now, what can I have the Cthulhu cultists do this week?". You can build a lot on that chassis, without needing to go down the "how many tentacles?" route.

I like this a lot. Go this way and before you know it, you're working up the next Delta Green. Which is probably almost due a revolutionary update in a few years....

Observation: CoC mashes up the "they're highly advanced aliens from space" and "they're aliens, but from another dimension instead of space" and "they're actual gods" aspects of a Mythos into a creamy mush. Lovecraft himself never actually did this: in some stories the Old Ones where decidedly material, in others quite the opposite. (This was on purpose because he wanted to emulate the sort of irreconcilable inconsistencies you get in any sufficiently ornate mythology).

So, one way you can rejuvenate the Mythos in general is to pick one of those themes and stick with it for the campaign, trimming away all the monsters or deities which you can't make fit. Are the cultists possessed of real magic, or have they been duped by the Mi-Go's sufficiently advanced technology? Are the Old Ones dreaming buried in the deep places of the Earth, or decidedly active forces existing in another dimension, or an extinct race from the Antarctic whose Shoggothy minions walk among us in human shape? Cthulhu is called the "High priest of the Old Ones" in the story - does this mean Cthulhu was a creature that worshipped the Old Ones, or does this mean that Cthulhu was an Old One who led them in the worship of other beings who may or may not actually exist? Decide whether you're going to go for an approach to the Mythos based on alien incursions, otherdimensional weirdness or dark gods of old, and then make some tough decisions based on that, and I think you'd have something which feels much fresher than shrugging and saying "well, it's kind of all of these and none".

Warthur speaks wisely.

Another thing is to forbid any OOC talk about the mythos during game sessions, except as directly affects game play - players may not trade stories, jokes, or anectdotes.  Often, I find fan humour concerning the mythos during CoC games to be off putting.

Horror, in RPGs, is serious business (unless you are running a distinctly humorous game), and I ask my players to keep chit chat and such to a mininmum.

Also -

Props help. A weathered knife, fake manuscripts, handouts created in InDesign, for GMs who have the time for these things.  Really lends to the immersion.  CoC did a fantastic job of these things and these are examples to be emulated.

Lowering the lights a little and putting on moddy music is great for horror games.  I've seen this used to great effect in Wraith and CoC games.

Quote from: The Traveller;621795Have a read of A Colder War, one of my favourite Mythos stories.

Actually just to emphasis that there's still life in the thing yet, a quote from that (free) story:

Quote"No,'' says the colonel, and this time Roger knows he's lying. Mission four, before the colonel diverted their payload capacity to another purpose, planted a compact radio telescope in an empty courtyard in the city on the far side of the gate. XK-Masada, where the air's too thin to breathe without oxygen; where the sky is indigo, and the buildings cast razor-sharp shadows across a rocky plain baked to the consistency of pottery under a blood-red sun. Subsequent analysis of pulsar signals recorded by the station confirmed that it was nearly six hundred light years closer to the galactic core, inward along the same spiral arm. There are glyphs on the alien buildings that resemble symbols seen in grainy black-and-white Minox photos of the doors of the bunker in the Ukraine. Symbols behind which the subject of Project Koschei lies undead and sleeping: something evil, scraped from a nest in the drowned wreckage of a city on the Baltic floor. "Why do you want to know where they came from?''

...

Roger realises that Professor Gould is staring at him. "Do you have a question for me?'' asks the distinguished palaeontologist.

"Uh -- in a moment.'' Roger shakes himself. Remembering time-survivor curves, the captured Nazi medical atrocity records mapping the ability of a human brain to survive in close proximity to the Baltic Singularity. Mengele's insanity. The SS's final attempt to liquidate the survivors, the witnesses. Koschei, primed and pointed at the American heartland like a darkly evil gun. The "world-eating mind'' adrift in brilliant dreams of madness, estivating in the absence of its prey: dreaming of the minds of sapient beings, be they barrel-bodied wing-flying tentacular things, or their human inheritors. "Do you think they could have been intelligent, professor? Conscious, like us?''

How about something where the Mythos is the good guys.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;621944How about something where the Mythos is the good guys.

"He's a primordial idiot god at the centre of the universe. She's the black goat of the woods with a thousand young. They fight crime!"

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;621944How about something where the Mythos is the good guys.

I like this idea.  I'm just not sure who the bad guys would be.  I guess a world-wide conspiracy of terrorists who keep trying to "investigate" - which generally means blow up or burn down - people who are different than normal.  

It might come across a bit like Mage: The Ascension or Changeling.  You're people with magical ties, and there are extremists trying to destroy you all.  

There's probably more interesting ways to do it, though.

I'm generally done with the idea of the Cthulhu Mythos as scary, largely because the notion of a cold and uncaring universe as exemplified in the Mythos is sort of my default understanding of the way things work, sans tentacles.

More upsetting to me would be something like the opposite state, wherein the universe does care about humanity - but it hates us, and boy do we deserve it.

Quote from: This Guy;621991More upsetting to me would be something like the opposite state, wherein the universe does care about humanity - but it hates us, and boy do we deserve it.

Somehow it's still more comforting to have some awful thing that hates me, knows I exist and wants to kill me... vs. something that anonymously crushes me without realizing I ever existed.

If I run a horror game where mankind matters, has some import, then it's going to be something like The Whispering Vault, Kult or Noumenon... which are frightening but not quite as nihilistic.

Another take on Lovecraft might make for a very weird/wild science fiction game... moving about spacetime in a strange 'clock' (a darker shade of Dr. Who), mental projection into alien bodies, disembodied brains in canisters conversing with sentient gases and minds from the far future... all trying to avoid the notice of Nyarlathotep and its masters.
Eldrich Skies doesn't strike me as doing much with those potentials though, based on what I've read it just seems to shove ghouls, deep ones, Mi Go and whatever into a relatively generic space fantasy setting. I might be wrong though.

Quote from: Simlasa;621996Somehow it's still more comforting to have some awful thing that hates me, knows I exist and wants to kill me... vs. something that anonymously crushes me without ever realizing I ever existed.

If I run a horror game where mankind matters, has some import, then it's going to be something like The Whispering Vault, Kult or Noumenon... which are frightening but not quite as nihilistic.

Yeah, different fears for different folks, etc.  I'm comforted by the impersonal since I know it's impersonal, is all.

Could go all hard sci-fi with it.  Use the 23K ruleset, but Mi-Go and Elder Things instead of Kafers and Pentapods.  (I sort of like this because the default 23K aliens seem to be made of one gimmick each; the Cthulhu badguys are weird and disparate.)

Quote from: P&P;621999Could go all hard sci-fi with it.  Use the 23K ruleset, but Mi-Go and Elder Things instead of Kafers and Pentapods.  (I sort of like this because the default 23K aliens seem to be made of one gimmick each; the Cthulhu badguys are weird and disparate.)

I had pretty much the same thought. The Cthulhu Mythos as a hard/military sf setting along the lines of Aliens (which, per the GDW folks' admission was the primary inspiration for the look and feel of the 2300 universe) could be pretty cool.

Quote from: T. Foster;622003I had pretty much the same thought. The Cthulhu Mythos as a hard/military sf setting along the lines of Aliens (which, per the GDW folks' admission was the primary inspiration for the look and feel of the 2300 universe) could be pretty cool.

Isn't that pretty much what Cthulhu Rising is meant to be?