I think it's kind of telling that the only RPG growing of the mythos has come through the fanzine scene.  Even now they're generally quite good reads Cthulhu fanzines, a cut above the usual rules-heavy shit.

Do you not think there's a tension within DG though?  The UFO mythology is defiantly NOT about the absolutely incomprehensible insanity of the universe and the non-human creatures within it.  If anything, it's fairies and angels framed through bad SF all three elements of which are quite well understood and familiar.

Speaking of pulpy camp... the undead nazis from DG?

Heh, yeah, undead nazis.... it's fair to say - despite my comments above - that pulp is a totally legitimate approach to CoC, so they have a place, I guess. Camp, too, why not, and science horror absolutely - I mean, the big horror moment in Whisperer in Darkness is the realisation that they've put his mate's head in a jar - it IS an alien abduction. Of course, it comes from a different time, when even the idea of aliens new and unsettling, and BEMs were a horror movie staple right up to... well, they still are.

So, I don't think there's a tension, or rather if there IS a tension it's one that comes from HPL himself. The horror of The Dunwich Horror or Dreams in the Witchhouse is  very different from that in The Shadow Over Innsmouth. (The latter, in fact, is a good example of the total irrelevance of "the mythos" the Deep Ones aren't the source of horror here: it's more "I'm a stranger in a ceepy town - isn't decaying architecture freaky?" followed by "Oh Christ, I'm being chased and they want to eat my nuts!!!" and finally "Ooooh, I'm not who I thought I was!" The DOs could have been robots, aliens, or quantity surveyors and it wouldn't have made all that much difference.)

However, I think what B's post, and the original thread on RPG.net, is the "cosmic horror" aspect - recapturing that vertiginous feeling of "the world is not as it should be". There's an element of that in the Hastur mythos, certainly, where the world is seen to be something we did not expect. For HPL's audience, still coming to terms with Darwin and... erm, the tectonic plates guy, the yawning gulf of time and the possibility of non-human intelligences was pretty far out.

It's harder, of course, because HPL's stuff had the back-up of being true and real: there are yawning gulfs of time. I'm certain that's part of his early success - when readers put the books down they discovered that he was right! It's a huge challenge to find something like that now, and I don't know if the Hastur approach is quite it, as there's a danger of turning it all into a Jean Cocteau movie, and I think the horror of surrealism (and vice vera) is somewhat over-stated.

I'm just rambling, really...

Ned

Quote from: WerekoalaBy the quote you posted, I'd say the Old Ones are the prototypical 4-dimensional beings. Just about every part of that description sounds like how 4-d critters would interact with our dimension. They could easily destroy or create in the blink of an eye simply by moving things in or out of our plane of reference. They can tinker with mankind's genetics by simply reaching into our cells and tweaking a few switches, so to speak. And of course, we can only perceive the smallest fragment of their true form, and even then only if they want us to.

Not surprised - I know Lovecraft was a big fan of "strange geometries" and such. I think "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott is a good read to see how higher-dimensional beings act and interact with lower-dimensional beings such as ourselves.

This is I think a solid insight, I reread Dreams in the Witch-House last night and he actually refers to four dimensional entities, essentially the protagonist becomes active four dimensionally, and as such able to move at angles our world does not normally recognise and so "gate" to new places.

It's the story the gate spell is based on basically, but it is very clear in it that he is moving four dimensionally.

Of course, it also contains a rat-thing familiar (also different in key details to the Chaosium version), a witch who is deterred by a crucific and a "black man" who it strongly implies has cloven feet.  He gets identified as Nyarlathotep generally by fans, but the story does not explicitly state that and he seems more a satan-esque figure (you sign his book in blood, at one point he throttles the protagonist, neither is very Nyarlyesque).

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyHowever, the magical stuff began to take on a more psychological aspect (I reckon, I'm not that far through the book). It is there, perhaps, that your horror lies, although I guess all that chaos magic type stuff has robbed that of a degree of its menace, too.

Hardly.  The idea that everything we perceive to be reality, and even our conceptions of time and space, are just the product of chemical reactions in our brain sorting things through, and that in fact things like "time" don't exist in a way anything similar to how we actually see it; that idea that our brains are dumping massive amount of chemicals on us to basically warp the way we see reality because if we got pure unprocessed reality we'd go insane, that's Cthulhu shit right there.

RPGPundit

Assuming I'm even parsing that correctly, the title of the thread is "re-inventing the mythos" not "same old mythos".

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyAssuming I'm even parsing that correctly, the title of the thread is "re-inventing the mythos" not "same old mythos".

Ned

True, had I been feeling verbose though I would have said "reinventing the mythos as depicted in the game Call of Cthulhu".

After all, my answer is to go back to HPL and read what he wrote, the game is just one interpretation among many possible ones.

It does get the magic right though.

In the game as in the books, it's rare that any good comes from trying to cast spells.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalIt does get the magic right though.

In the game as in the books, it's rare that any good comes from trying to cast spells.

I think there's a fair argument for CoC not having magic, in that most of the stories were pulp sf really.

The Dunwich Horror, which really the whole rpg is based on, has spells.  Most of the stories though don't, at most they have alien science or mathematics and frequently in a way which does not make them magic by another name.

As I implied up-thread, I don't think there is a consitent line on just what the mythos is in the stories. IMO, HPL was naturally inclined towards the maths/science angle himself, but would cheerfully write a fully super-natural tale if it suited his fictional needs, or if he thought it might sell.

Ned

There are a number of stories that feature dark rituals though as well as sorcerors and the likes.  I always assumed that it was that that the spell system was all about.

Quote from: BalbinusAfter all, my answer is to go back to HPL and read what he wrote, the game is just one interpretation among many possible ones.

Yeah, that's what I got out of it. Of course we are of the same mind on how to go about it so maybe that's why I got it?  I know I didn't just reading the title.

I think the underlying question is what does the supernatural look like and still remain supernatural to the player. Or: how do we explain the unexplainable? I really like Ned's answer of ripping the prose and style. Even if it is only an answer that is a question in the right direction.

Spells? Well if they are there the likely shouldn't look, act, or smell like spells that the player has dealt with before. To the point you'd be inclined not to call them spells.

I have to say, I kind of like that ambiguity. Is it super-science? - not quite. Is it spooky magic? - not quite that either. I think that ambiguity can be quite unsettling.

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyAs I implied up-thread, I don't think there is a consitent line on just what the mythos is in the stories. IMO, HPL was naturally inclined towards the maths/science angle himself, but would cheerfully write a fully super-natural tale if it suited his fictional needs, or if he thought it might sell.

Ned

That's the thing. They are somewhat inconsistant with each other because they are written [necessarily] vague and often at the core really just a guy looking to put food on the table. They weren't written as a single body.

Quote from: -E.My take on it was that the house *was* malicious: didn't it kill someone (the brother?) after kind of toying with him for a bit? It's been years since I read it, so I might be remembering wrong.

I got the impression it was more judgemental than malicious: remember the bit where the guy is falling, but the blue glow that appeared in his dream appears and saves him?

QuoteEither way, a game based on that could be very cool. My concern is, once the players have discovered the house, how do you keep it from becoming a very big, dark, empty (and therefore somewhat dull) dungeon?

A friend of mine ran a JAGS Wonderland (think Lewis Carroll meets Silent Hill) game where a House of Leaves-style maze lead down to Wonderland.

I may take a bit of a beating over this, but I assume some here are familiar with the works of Colin Wilson.  Balbinus mentioned the (somewhat excremental) movie "Lifeforce" the other day, which was based on a CW story.  Wilson got into a sort of latter-day Mythos vibe during the late 60s and early 70s, with stories such as "The Mind Parasites".  Not the greatest stories ever, but he has an interesting take on the Mythos mentality.

I think that focusing on the extra-dimensional nature of the Mythos beings might be the way to go.  Things that exist co-terminously with us, but that don't interact with us physically because we don't occupy all of the same dimensions -- we may intersect or bisect one another, but seldom do we have all the same dimensions correlating to actually collide.  "Spells" are largely extra-scientific methodologies to bring other dimensional qualities into focus so that beings from different dimensions may interact.

Getting back to Colin Wilson and taking some inspiration from him, suppose that there are extra-dimensional beings that have hosted themselves in humanity.  Lacking full dimensional perspective on what we really are, they view a human being like we would a cave, or spreading tree, or some other natural shelter -- a convenient and increasingly abundant place to live.  While not especially malignant, they have no interest in human free will or the betterment of mankind.  They just want a good place to live and they want to keep it that way.

As for the greater Mythos beings, these are not great, rubbery, Godzilla-like monsters that drift from planet to planet.  They, too, are extra-dimensional beings, but beings with much greater awareness and control over their dimensional state.  Taking a cue from John Tynes' interpretation of the Hastur Mythos, these beings periodically benefit not from manifesting in our three dimensions and stomping across the landscape, but by setting up dimensional vibrations or landscapes or ecologies that can be influenced by human psychic states.  Tynes' Hastur thrived on an atmosphere of dissolution and social degeneracy.  A being like Cthulhu might thrive on abasement and violence.  The types of madness that they inspire in individuals would be tied to their psychic natures.

G'ah.  Am I making any sense?  In a Mythos game like this, the only "monster" anyone is going to run into is another human being who is manifesting the influence of one of these extra-dimensional beings.  An encounter with an extra-dimensional adversary is going to be more like struggling through a bad acid trip than like a shootout with fish-men in a sea grotto.

!i!