I have a dumb, noob question about Cthulhu and physical corruption. Are there any mechanics for altering your characters body (like growing tentacles) in the Cthulhu rpg, because of being exposed to too much dark lore? I am a complete beginner with Cthulhu and I tried googling it, but I always end up on websites with info about mental corruption aka insanity mechanics.
Not really, but there are options. If you visit Arkham cemetary on the right starry night, get close and personal with the fun guys from Yuggoth, or dont run away when your scientist acquaintance starts talking about proto-shoggoths, things can happen. If you attract the attention of an Outer God things could get interesting. But apart from weirdness in the Dreamlands, most physical alterations would be winging it. And your mind would likely go before any tentacles are fully grown.
No mechanics for such things that I know of but probably not too hard to add. I'd save if for being around the bigger bads, and I'd want something that was tailored to whatever entity was causing the distortion.
Lovecraft's story The Colour Out Of Space depicts physical mutations due to close proximity of some outre being.
I always thought the Japanese comic Uzumaki was very 'Lovecraftian', and that's chock full of physical mutations and peculiar manias, brought on by similar causes as in Colour. People become obsessed with spirals and also manifest spirals on their bodies in various horrific ways.
I always took it that the madness from being around the more overtly alien Mythos creatures was at least partially due to how their presence warps the reality around them... that it warps human minds in a similar way... and so physical mutations could easily go hand-in-hand with such effects.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1109030I have a dumb, noob question about Cthulhu and physical corruption. Are there any mechanics for altering your characters body (like growing tentacles) in the Cthulhu rpg, because of being exposed to too much dark lore? I am a complete beginner with Cthulhu and I tried googling it, but I always end up on websites with info about mental corruption aka insanity mechanics.
If you are talking about Call of Cthulhu, then you will likely only get insanity mechanics. Almost all transformations that occur in HPL stories (other than The Colour Out of Space, which is a weird radiation sickness) come from some form of corrupted ancestry. You become a Deep One or Ghoul or cannibal crazy (aka "The Rats in the Walls") because it runs in your blood.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1109030I have a dumb, noob question about Cthulhu and physical corruption. Are there any mechanics for altering your characters body (like growing tentacles) in the Cthulhu rpg, because of being exposed to too much dark lore? I am a complete beginner with Cthulhu and I tried googling it, but I always end up on websites with info about mental corruption aka insanity mechanics.
Not much really because the corruption and twisting was usually a mental and metaphysical one.
Those that ever dud change physically tended to do so because they had inherited something and exposure to the source triggers changes.
That said. There are though several instances of decay due to necromantic delvings. And there was that rather grotesque devolution in Colour out of Space.
But growing tentacles and such tended not to happen. Least in the core.
Drift out to the works of others and all bets are off as to what may happen.
What you'd need to do is dig though the various eldritch beings and see which ones grant transformative gifts/curses. And its 90% of the time not going to be beneficial.
Some I recall vaguely are a being that turns people slowly to stone. One that replaced the person with a mass of worms that retain a kinda human shape. And so on.
But the most common route to take for any sort of bio-morphosis is that it is hereditary. It is not so much gaining something new as something you had all along finally starting to express. Deep ones are the best example.
There should be more physical corruption in horror RPGing.
Quote from: Simlasa;1109047I always thought the Japanese comic Uzumaki was very 'Lovecraftian', and that's chock full of physical mutations and peculiar manias, brought on by similar causes as in Colour. People become obsessed with spirals and also manifest spirals on their bodies in various horrific ways.
The movie was also quite good! Totally Lovecraftian in theme. And its been years since we saw the movie, but my girlfriend always calls out "Uzumaki!" when we encounter a weird spiral.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1109059There should be more physical corruption in horror RPGing.
Completely agree. I dislike the disconnection of mental/metaphysical from physical in that regard. Yes, insanity can hide behind a "normal' appearance. But that is the exception rather than the rule.
So deformities are more reserved for cultists and not really for pc's? I asume there are cultists in the game with corpse-like skin or with an eye instead of a belly button or something like that. All the answers are fine btw, just looking for some clarity. Trying to decide if I want some elements to port over to my homebrew, modern horror setting. It already contains a lot of similar elements from Cthulhu like the focus on investigation, the corrupting influence of all things magical and the abundant presence of the occult (grimoires, symbols, strange languages), so I thought why not bring insanity/corruption to the table. Only difference is my lore is way different from Cthulhu.
Physical corruption resulting from association with chaos shows up a lot in Warhammer Fantasy and in Moorcock's Elric and Corum series where there is a conflict between Law and Chaos. There isn't that sort of conflict in Lovecraft. The horror in the stories does not result from someone associating with chaos, it results from the realization that the underlying nature of reality truly includes beings like Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Yog Sothoth and that our view of life and the universe as inherently orderly and good is wrong. And this realization effects the mind and the psyche, not the body. Mirror that, Call of Cthulhu uses a Sanity mechanic to model a breakdown of the psyche.
Adding physical corruption, especially corruption that effects the player characters, will significantly change the tone of the game setting. Which is fine if that's what you want, but it isn't what I would expect to encounter in a game of CoC.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1109119So deformities are more reserved for cultists and not really for pc's? I asume there are cultists in the game with corpse-like skin or with an eye instead of a belly button or something like that.
I've never seen, and wouldn't really expect to see, an eye instead of a belly button. Corpse-like skin would either be a literary and metaphorical description of someone who doesn't get out in sunlight and has some sort of vitamin deficiency or, more likely, because that person actually is a corpse reanimated from the dead.
I played in a convention scenario when exactly this happened. We found something that physically corrupted my Investigator, with boils turning into eyes and so on. After some DIY surgery with a hot knife, the boils returned and she ended up blowing her brains out, while she could, rather than going insane and killing everyone else. She had also seen the result of such an infection and let's just say that it wasn't nice, not nice at all.
I enjoy the various Corruption rules in GURPS, and have used them in the past for not only Lovecraftian-type things but also a general rule of spellcasting, doing evil, walking through "corrupted" areas ala high-magic zones or places tainted by true evil, things like that. They are nice in that they tally up and can then be rolled against, so there's a gambling element, but in the end they essentially result in a negative point value. That basically means you have to either get rid of Advantages or lower one of your attributes, or take new Disadvantages. I like that because it leaves the door open to make the corruption do what you want to flavor it as, as GM. So sure, it could be mental, or if it's because your dark god is feeding you more powerful magic it could physically corrupt you with tentacles to make you look more like Him, or make you physically ill and sick, or mentally deranged, or even give you an Enemy of dark hordes hunting for you attracted to His power they can sense emanating from you, whatever.
Quote from: Bren;1109178Physical corruption resulting from association with chaos shows up a lot in Warhammer Fantasy and in Moorcock's Elric and Corum series where there is a conflict between Law and Chaos. There isn't that sort of conflict in Lovecraft. The horror in the stories does not result from someone associating with chaos, it results from the realization that the underlying nature of reality truly includes beings like Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Yog Sothoth and that our view of life and the universe as inherently orderly and good is wrong. And this realization effects the mind and the psyche, not the body. Mirror that, Call of Cthulhu uses a Sanity mechanic to model a breakdown of the psyche.
Adding physical corruption, especially corruption that effects the player characters, will significantly change the tone of the game setting. Which is fine if that's what you want, but it isn't what I would expect to encounter in a game of CoC.
Except for all the examples of physical corruption that do indeed show up in HPL's works as pointed out in examples within this very thread.
One of the old CoC campaigns (spawn of Azathoth, I think) had an alien item that would cause the holder to slowly sicken and die. There are a few spells that do similar things, and the milk of shub-niggurath has some pretty wacky effects in several scenarios. But the physical deformities that go with the worship of such deities usually occur from inbreeding, or having some alien ancestry, rather than being something that can affect a PC if they fail some roll.
IIRC there's a spell somewhere in CoC that changes you into a Ghoul.
Quote from: Cave Bear;1109188Except for all the examples of physical corruption that do indeed show up in HPL's works as pointed out in examples within this very thread.
With the exception of the Dreamlands, physical changes tend (ghouls possibly excepted) to be the result of inherited traits not learning or using the Mythos as in, "Wow! Bob's character just grew a third eye in his stomach after reading De Vermis Mysteris!" or "Ewwww! Sue's character just grew another tentacle after using that whistle to summon a Byakhee. Wasn't the one she grew after drinking that Space Mead enough for her?" That sort of corruption is something seen in settings other than Lovecraft.
Quote from: Bren;1109236With the exception of the Dreamlands, physical changes tend (ghouls possibly excepted) to be the result of inherited traits not learning or using the Mythos as in, "Wow! Bob's character just grew a third eye in his stomach after reading De Vermis Mysteris!" or "Ewwww! Sue's character just grew another tentacle after using that whistle to summon a Byakhee. Wasn't the one she grew after drinking that Space Mead enough for her?" That sort of corruption is something seen in settings other than Lovecraft.
Yes, I think that's right. Apart from the Ghouls, 'corruption' is due to Tainted Blood - Nature over Nurture. Growing tentacles is a Warhammer thing not an HPL thing and is associated with something like D&D's Far Realm creeping in from Outside. But in HPL there is no Outside; the Outer Gods are a natural part of the Cosmos.
Quote from: S'mon;1109277Yes, I think that's right. Apart from the Ghouls, 'corruption' is due to Tainted Blood - Nature over Nurture. Growing tentacles is a Warhammer thing not an HPL thing and is associated with something like D&D's Far Realm creeping in from Outside. But in HPL there is no Outside; the Outer Gods are a natural part of the Cosmos.
Without bothering to look up specifics I'm pretty sure there are references in some stories of entities coming from 'outside'. Whatever that means in the context of the Mythos I'm not sure, but they are presented as distinctly NOT natural to our corner of space... as having a corrupting influence on people and places. It's not so overt as the spontaneous growth of tentacles, but
Colour alone is enough, IMO, to allow for having physical mutations due to prolongued exposure. If you want them.
There are other mutants as well,
The Beast In The Cave had been a man. The Martenses in
The Lurking Fear had been human. There's no mention that I recall of them mating with outre things.
I wouldn't a lot of sudden/random big mutations (ala Warhammer), or mutations for minor dealings (read a book, roll for crab claws)... but subtle effects, maybe just a reduction (or increase?) in Appearance might capture a vague sense that the character's exposure has left them tainted.