The Defiler Edition

I believe he said it was his personal favorite as well. It's definitely at least in the top 5 of his best, probably competing for number one.

his work varies in quality pretty greatly. Colour out of Space being one of the best, both in terms of creativity of the alien, and in doing a good job describing the human element of the horror, with the growing helplessness of the family.

I'd add Shadow over Innsmouth, but at the end of that list. It's pretty classic.

So Colour out of Space, then Shadow over Innsmouth?

So adding this in there, but New Delta Green makes me pretty excited.

It goes a fair bit beyond just Lovecraft works, all of the Call of Cthulhu games have done a fair bit do this incorporating other works in the mythos, but DG also pulls in conspiracy theories and other bits to make it is own thing.

Which, btw, Lovecraft would probably be totally cool with, he worked with other writers and mixed their worlds and references together. He liked that shit.

Delta Green makes things a little bit more concrete and unified that Lovecraft did, as you kinda need to when making a setting, but I like that they do still spend some time to keep things vague and optional. Even when they go 'x is really this in our writting, but you can do other things, like this or this, or whatever you want'.

If my current main campaign group falls apart I'm making a DG campaign if it kills me.

Well SoI is a bit longer, all of the novellas a fairly short, but CooS and RitW are both very quick reads.

But yeah, those are great reads to start, you could easily finish all three in a day.
If you look in the right places they are free, because they came out before copyright laws shut that down.

I'd also suggest Haunter of the Dark, if only because it's comfy as shit.

I asked this in this other thread
but this one seems more active.
Which is better: Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu? Is either better for certain types of games? I'm thinking of running a game in 1930s Appalachia.

"The Haunter of the Dark" is probably one of my favorite Lovecraft stories. I don't know how good of an introduction to his "Mythos" it is for people looking for that (since it doesn't really interact with or contribute to it that much), but it's a great read.

Regarding that user's original request for reading, I'd suggest grabbing one of the Penguin Classics collections--probably "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories", if only because it was the first one published chronologically. They're cheap, pack a lot of content, and have extensive footnotes and appendices that shed some light on how the stories are related to each-other and to Lovecraft's life.

That sounds like a lot for an "intro", I know. But seriously, it's good shit. The stories themselves are slightly updated versions of the Arkham House versions, who were themselves corrected versions of the originally published stories (painstakingly done, based on hunting down the original manuscripts to figure out which textual errors, typos, and other fuck-ups were done by Lovecraft or added by the crappy magazines he was mostly employed by, among other tedious and boring things). This is a long way of me saying that they're easier to read and more accurate to Lovecraft's original writing than the published ones you'll find for free. Speaking for myself, that justified me paying money for them as opposed to just googling "The Works of H.P. Lovecraft" and reading the published versions off of a website.

In addition: the appendices were actually, written by the same guy who corrected the stories, S.T. Joshi. The man knows his shit, and they make for a good read themselves.

Dagon & Beyond the Wall of Sleep: the ones where his themes start to show.

Call of Cthulhu: the one where he gets its all together and working.

Color out of Space & Whisperer in Darkness: the best written ones.

Shadow out of time & Mountains of Madness: the ones he thought were his best.

Haunted in the Dark: him at his peak

Figure I should mention it here, the podcat HPpodcast has summaries and reviews of all Lovecrafts works, including the ghost written and cowritten ones, and some excellent readings.

Don't be discourage by the stuff on the front page requiring a paid subscription, that's for the stuff they did after they finished all of Lovecrafts works and started covering other stuff of similar themes. Last I checked the Lovecraft stuff is still free.

They are fantastic
Really their are so many good CoC and HPL podcasts.
Good friends of Kackson Ellis
Miskatonic university podcast
Skype of Cthulhu
Unspeakable Oath

Real talk, are the Skaven (and more specifically the Doom of Kavzar) meant to be a homage to Lovecraft?

not really.
There are some references, but not as an overall thing.

The Dark Heresy rule books have quite a few reference to Lovecraft as well, though those books are full of references and easter eggs.

>/ysg/ became a stable general
Feels good

ok but

ok but

ok but tg

where the eldritch porn at?

The anime versions of eldritch gods or the actual good stuff?

My personal favorite is "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath".

It's not his best work by any means, but it's kind of a grand tour. The ending might be considered a cop-out, but without spoiling, I think there's something melancholy about it that makes me forgive. Particularly given what I know of Lovecraft and what happened to his work afterwards.

>not fapping to ASG on /ysg/?
Why live?

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but I've always thought it would make a great animated children's movie. Studio Ghibli style.

There's a CoC supplement for playing in the Dream Realm right?

there's good stuff?

So... Anyone have experience with trail of Cthulhu?

Looking for good PURIST style modules to run. Starting with The Watchers in the Sky.

>Niggerman
Wasn't that the name of Lovecraft's cat as well?
Saved

Why does that seem typical of Lovecraft to name his cat Niggerman?

>youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aprpylMuCdnaFEYwTzAobqUZGxS1D5p

These videos are awful. The names are pronounced all wrong, and the narrator clearly doesn't understand significant concepts of the Mythos.

>ahgast I beheld the gibbering, shuddering nigger!

>Mup da doo didda
>po mo gub bidda be
>dat tum muhfugen
>bix nood!
>cof bin dub ho
>muhfugga

It was a childhood cat. His parents named it.

Even more typical.
This is why we need the black people eating penguins

youtube.com/watch?v=BV_1P4YYczU
Better?

What the fuck is this...
youtube.com/watch?v=pkPqFt5Z0RQ

Oh, sweet lord. There's is six of these?

>pronounced wrong
>not knowing that HPL himself constantly changed how he pronounced the names, to show they weren't really pronounceable by the human mouth, to keep the mythos intentionally amorphous, and just to fuck with people.

is there any point in that where it starts being remotely lovecraftian.
Cause I'm skipping through it, and all I'm getting is a black man talking about race.

Are you from Appalachia?

I have no idea.

And lo' the dark god, Nyarlathotep, cloaked in his masks bided his infinite time.

Does the narrator mispronounce Nyarlathotep? Because that can be, it's a human name.

Does Nyarlathotep have a true name?

I think you guys should see this.

Threadly Reminder that Derleth is a dead hack too.

So is that fat, fuck Cthulhu possibly the biggest threat in the Yog-Sothothery due to him wanting to wake up Azathoth?

So besides CoC and Delta Green what are some other good Cthulhu Mythos rpgs out there?

Tangently related to the thread, but: does anyone have that screencap about winning a CoC game purely by applying logic? Image quality was rather low and the plot was about (living?) dead that were put out on display at university's ceremonial dinner because of a tradition.

They forget how to spell aeons or something?

Y'golonac was always my favorite non-Lovecraft-created deity, he'd make a perfect antagonist for a game. Ramsey Campbell's stories are pretty underrated. I feel.

He'd actually would be a perfect BBEG

Perhaps they were testing our memory upon quotes?

/ysg/ is having a slow day. I blame the Flying Polyps.

Treat yourself to The Final Revelation, Graham Walmsey's purist anthology which includes a campaign frame that hangs the 4 of them together.

My normally very pulpngroup enjoyed it as a real palate cleanser, just be sure to explain the set up: no victories, enjoy going made and dying, don't try to "win" scenarios just ride the rollercoaster.

I have the idea for a Y'golonac campaign, having him resurrect famous serial killers and having the investigators take them down. Having several serial killer boss battles anyone?

Honestly, I imagine he is to Azathoth what we are to him.

It would kind of fit the Lovacraftian theme that even the mightiest Old Ones are but merest specks in the void.

Cultists can wake Azathoth as well. Both would destroy the Yog-Sothothery completely

And the gurgling madness /ysg/ spoke in the voice of many men.

"BUMP."

What diety or worshipable monster could i associate with the moon besides the moon beasts?

The Moon Cats.

Aren't they from Saturn though?

Yup, but Saturn Cats don't have a ring to it and besides they chill on the Moon's Dark Side

Tennessee, but not Appalachia.

Flora

Trail of Cthulhu, Nemesis, Nights Black Agents... pretty much anything in the horror genre could be pressed into service.

I'm of the mind that horror works best with a rules light approach, and how the GM uses the rules (and intangibles like atmosphere, controlling information, etc) matter far, far more than the system itself.

I love that being the name of the Presence.

Flora (due to being inspired by him) would be a perfect child of Nyarlathotep

They could easily be aspects of each other.

The Moon Beasts are said to be infested with a hideous, five-legged parasite that clings to their facial tendrils and absorbs overspill and surface viscera as the beast feeds. To breed, the ticks crawl into the desiccated and tormented corpses the Moon Beasts leave behind, growing within the chest cavity. In this form, the ticks resemble bloated craniums, filled with sausage-like egg pods. At full maturity, the pods burst, releasing millions of tiny spores. Though most of the spores will inevitably perish, some find their way into the lungs of sentient beings, where they grow and wait to be consumed by a Moon Beast and complete its life cycle.

Like a Mask or an aspect of Azathoth as in sister or brother?

He feels too.

I feel as well.

Possibly both? I mean, Bloodborne isn't exactly compatible with classic Lovecraft (it's pretty much one, or the other, if you're building a setting). But the Big N's arrangement is supposed to be inscrutable. Masks, aspects, siblings, and mirror selves are all possible.

So, which way does the wind blow where you live?

Up here, it's always from the west, from the mountains. On a rare day it might blow from the north-west, carrying arctic cold or smoke from the latest forest fire. Even rarer, from the south-west, warmer and slower.

But when the wind blows from the east, perhaps one day in every two years, everyone is on edge for no reason they can explain. Flags fly backwards. The air tastes different. The scent of refineries and stockyards and slaughterhouses reaches places unused to it. The leaves in the park fall "wrong", the trees move "wrong", the dust flows "wrong"... and that's just the wind.

When you're used to a thing being one way, and it suddenly changes, your skin begins to crawl and you can't explain why.

There is literally no way we could pronounce it.

Why must everything be a constant general thread, started by people who have nothing pressing to say?

This is Veeky Forums. Nobody's ever had anything pressing to say.

Generals are generally pretty good. At best they give you a group of people who are knowledgeable about a topic; at worst they keep people from spamming the exact same thread five times a day.

>Saturn Cats don't have a ring to it

Never heard that he wanted to wake Azathoth up, just that he was the high priest of Azathoth. Azathoth seems to want to stay asleep, so there's no reason for his priests to want to wake him up.

>Does the narrator mispronounce Nyarlathotep?

Yes. The preferred pronunciation is "nee-ar-lot-hoe-tep", although "nii-ar-lat-hoe-tep" is also acceptable. Remember that "Nyarlathotep" is pseudo-Egyptian. In the Egyptian language there is no "th" sound and "hotep" is actually a word (it means "to be at peace" or "is at peace"). So, the "th" in the middle of the name should never be pronounced with the English "th" sound, and the "hoe-tep" should always be distinct.

To quote Solaris, why does it have to /want/ anything?

...

Well, Azathoth has dreamed the universe into existence. Fantasy usually flows from desire or compulsion. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude it wants the universe to exist.

Maybe he just likes hydrogen, and living things are more or less an accidental byproduct of his symphonic dream of stellar fusion?

except it was made up my HP Lovecraft who likely had no idea how Egyptian words were actually pronounced.
For example, the author of the Necronomicon, is named Abdul Alhazred, which is not how an an arabic name would be written. It contains the definite article 'al' twice.

So using actual linguistic guides to create a 'correct' pronouciation of HPL names is also wrong. Because he made them up and didn't know those linquistic guides.

The best way to know you are wrong about the correct way of pronouncing an mythos name, is to think that your way is the only correct one.

I've been playing around with a sort of Lovecraftian Space-Opera. The basic premise is that, advancing into the twentieth century, the dark secrets of the world have started to come into the light. Herbert West's more reputable experiments have become part of the medical mainstream, and improved upon (and the less reputable parts have become part of many dictator's arsenals (and also improved upon)), subsequent expeditions were able to bring live Elder Things back to civilization (resulting in several wars over control of Antartica), irregular diplomatic contact has been established with the Mi-Go and the Great Race of Yith, serums have been developed that can change a human into a Deep One and then back again, millions of people walk the 'near' Dreamlands as an escape from their dreary waking lives, the lucky parts of Germany are merely radioactive.
So, when "Big Green" (there is a general superstition that naming calls, so most people don't) began to rouse from his slumber again, the governments of the world both recognized the signs for what they were, and had established plans for planetary evacuation.
The year is now 21XX, and no sane humans remain on Earth. (What's left is not sane, or not human, or not either.) Humanity is scattered across the Solar System and some of the near stars, each one with its own opportunities and dangers.
Despite the loss of the homeworld, humanity is generally confident. They've faced a great existential threat, and not just survived but thrived, procreated; they're on many worlds now, not just one.
They are probably going to be horribly disabused of this confidence.

So, I have two questions for you. First: my knowledge of Lovecraft is spottier than I'd like. I know something about the Mi-Go, the Elder Things, but I don't know much about what 'minor' beasts populate Lovecraft's solar system. What am I missing?
Second, I've only got fuzzy ideas for most of the solar system and beyond, so further input would be great.

What I've got so far:
>THE EARTH
Cthulhu's influence is still limited and does not extend beyond the near side of the moon. He is not yet fully manifest; the stars are *almost* right, but not quite yet. There are still, surprisingly, a lot of humans on Earth; many who heard Him most clearly in their dreams refused evacuation, and the rest of mankind were happy to leave them to their fate. More room and the evacuation barges. They kill and revel and are eaten by the thousand and are generally deliriously happy, because they have seen The Truth and it is /glorious/.
Occasionally, they try to build rockets to bring The Truth to the rest of blind humanity, which generally explode. Cthulhu himself isn't interested; if he cannot feel and eat their dreams, they might as well not exist for him.

>ORBIT
Within Cthulhu's mental influence. There's still a lot of stuff in Earth orbit; fueling stations, hydroponics, magnetic launch arrays, gravity wheels. Most of it stripped of everything useful and sabotaged in the final stages of the evacuation, to make it harder for Earth-bound cultists to follow, but there are still pockets of air and such.
More importantly, there are great artificial reefs, habitats created to capture, cultivate, and harvest the many varied and bizarre creatures of space. They weren't very successful, but armed with strange sciences those cultists which made it into orbit have made them bloom. Earth Orbit is an immense jungle, with a small but growing population of cultists. They build ships out of orwood and space-foam, powered by insectile solar-sails and harnessed dream-whales, and plot campaigns of piracy.

>THE MOON
The near side of the Earth is under the influence; the far side is not. However, the near side is not filled with cultists; experimental psionic-suppression technologies were deployed, and were successful. You know, if you call 'causing the population to degenerate into drooling sub-humans as a side effect' to be successful.

>THE MOON, CONTINUED
The near-side population persists, maintaining the robust life-support systems by rote and religious rite. Ominously, there are some people who have maintained their intelligence, but they have done so by horrific methods- consuming the alchemically-prepared brains of their fellow man. Using their superior intelligence, they prey upon the moron population. The more degenerated of these ghouls, slowly losing their intelligence despite their best efforts, act as simple predators, kidnapping victims and dragging them into deep, unused tunnels to feast. The more intelligent have set themselves up as god-kings, dispensing technical knowledge and governmental decree in return for a steady stream of sacrifices.

The Dark Side of the Moon remains free of influence; the people there are dour, somewhat paranoid, industrious with the meticulous obsessiveness of the veteran spacefarer. They maintain walls and defenses against the light side of the moon, in preparation for the day when the psychic wards finally fail, or the ghoul-kings start getting a hunger for fresh, un-damaged brains. They have yet to be tested.

There are millions of miles of tunnels, extending all the way into the dead core of the moon. Only a fraction of the system has been explored, so so far the impression has been of deadness. Except for the occasional wild lunar fauna, nothing. If there's anything left of the tunnel's former occupants, they're down deep. Mostly they've been walled off, but unsavory sorts (naturally) make use of it, and the dark-side nations make periodic military sweeps to make sure the ghouls aren't using the tunnels to get in.
(Pic related is part of the tunnels; they seem at least sort of alive, but all tests have indicated nonsentience. Exploration continues.)

Underrated post

>THE ICETEROIDS
Techniques for cryogenic-chemical extension of life were already well advanced by the time development of space began in earnest. The problem with this method of longevity was, of course, that it required that the user remain chilled below freezing. Refrigeration systems were distressingly failure-prone; the Antarctic was, for obvious reasons, right out; the Arctic bore its own hazards. The eternally-frozen worldlets of the outer system beckoned.
Now, these Grey Enclaves are collectively one of the largest human settlements in space, having only grown larger and larger as cryonic longevity became more accepted. The fact that such icelets are staggeringly uninteresting to everyone, and thus devoid of annoying prior inhabitants, only enhanced the appeal.
Such immortality is not without its drawbacks, of course. The people of the Grey Enclaves tend to be slow physically and mentally (not unintelligent, they just take longer to complete an action or thought), conservative, at times verging on senile, at times slightly autistic. (Or perhaps simply a bit alien.)
Given the amount of exotic chemicals involved in the preservation process, it's probably a miracle that they don't get more unhinged.

>THE ELDER THINGS
Twenty-two of them had been found, excavated, revived, and retrieved before the evacuation of Earth put a permanent end to digging. (Increasing Shoggoth attacks had forced a hiatus several years previously.) They are a resentful of having to feel gratitude towards monkeys for their rescue, resentful for having to give up their technological secrets in exchange for a colony of their own, resentful that any attempt to retake their lost homelands will have to wait for millennia yet, at best. There is contention among the group, whether to set out among the stars on their own in search of remnants of their empire... (cont.)

I love it, you sir are now dubbed Flash Gordon.

Mirror selves would be interesting because Flora is rather benevolent.
Please at least you don't walk upstairs and end up in your basement.

Nyarlathotep is either his dreamself or his soul, so its reasonable to concluded that everything exists to suffer as his playthings.

>THE ELDER THINGS, CONTINUED
... whether to wait the million years for Cthulhu to return to his slumber, then make a return to Antartica- or to remain with humanity, and manipulate the monkeys into doing all the heavy lifting? So far, monkey-manipulation has been winning by default.
On humanity's side, the Elder Things are valued sources of information, even if they haven't been everything hoped for. Sure, on the scientific side there have been flesh-melting ray guns, excellent genetic engineering (or rather, manipulating primordial life-stuff; much better suited to creation of life ex nihilo than modification of existing life-forms, and with the example of the Shoggoth rebellion not used to anything like its full potential), "solar" sails that harness currents of dark energy, sorcerous wards against the more common threats. On the diplomatic side, there have been explanations as to how Mi-Go think, the opening of steady communications with the Great Race of Yith... but their knowledge of current galactic affairs is a geologic age out of date. Even the long-dead (hopefully) tunnels of the Moon are too recent for them to shed any light. And the hoped-for ultra-magic turbo-nukes are nowhere on the horizon.
Perhaps the relationship between Man and Thing will one day collapse into bitter war and mutual extinction. Most likely, they will eventually go their own ways, to their own destinies. But maybe- just maybe- this is the start of a beautiful friendship.
As their first discoverer said of them- "After all- they were men!"

>Mi-Go
The Mi-Go have their outpost on the tenth planet of Yuggoth, out beyond the Kuiper belt on an orbit tilted fifty degrees from the ecliptic, where everything else in the solar system orbits. It may be entirely artificial, it may be a captured interstellar wanderer, it may be that all conventional theories about how solar systems coalesce from dust are wrong. (cont.)

Aww, thanks!

Interestingly enough it could be a corruption of the Mad Arab's name and the most popular version translates to "the servant of the Great Devourer"

There are cats who are servants of the Outer God Bast
The Ghouls, Flying Polyps and Dimensional Shamblers would be a start for Mythos related creatures known here.

Nyarlathotep is highly important to the Universe so he should play some part.
No problem Flash.