This thread is meant to inspire Lovecraftian Veeky Forums (like Delta Green and CoC) and discuss Lovecraft's works for inspiration along with anything else that fits into this genre or takes place in the Yog-Sothothery. >Previous Thread: ?
>Please create a new thread when the Bump Limit has been reached and we are in the Lower Pages or if the old thread dies. >If you don't Nyarlathotep will shitpost in other threads.
I finally watched AM1200 yesterday, and I loved it. Well, maybe loathed is the better word, but in a positive sense. Definitely a good piece with Lovecraftian elements. Pretty easy to turn into a CoC 'adventure' too.
Alexander Nelson
Never heard of it, what's the deal?
Noah Nguyen
Seconded, tell us.
Wyatt Jenkins
Yog-Sothoth best elder god
THE WATCHER, THE KEEPER OF KEYS AND GUARDIAN OF GATES
Ian Johnson
He's also the entire Universe.
Jonathan Jackson
>elder god
But he's an Outer God, user...
Robert Martin
Precise categorization is the enemy of horror.
John Long
A sage truth.
Austin Wilson
>has a third arm for a dick
whut
Levi Morales
More original than a third leg.
Bentley Gutierrez
But you just categorized it as an Elder God. If you're going to bother categorizing him at all, it might as well be the correct category.
Brayden Sullivan
First, I'm not . Second, my point is that elder god vs. outer god vs. great old one /shouldn't/ be categories, except in the vaguest sense; there is no 'correct' categorization for a cosmic horror. None that can fit inside a human mind, anyway. An enemy with defined characteristics is always less scary than one with undefined characteristics, and thus such definitions are to be avoided; a cosmic horror story should only include categories to violate them.
Andrew Foster
Nah, he's a hoopy frood.
John Flores
no u
Samuel Reed
You can watch it, for free, on Vimeo. It's only forty minutes to boot. vimeo.com/102372269
Bascially a businessman does something stupid and is on the run, hears a strange radio transmission, and ends up at the radio station where terrible things lurk.
Isaiah Bell
Nyarly is the hoopiest of froods.
Ian Collins
Is Thomas Ligotti his literary successor?
Noah Walker
Ab-so-lutely.
Nathan Rivera
>mfw I helped create yog-sothothery
Oliver Flores
>my pic is posted yeee
Wyatt Baker
Generally speaking, Shub, Hastur, and Nyarly seem to make for the best modern day horrors, right? What are some of the more obscure creatures you've used in your game?
I've always wanted to use the racist street that ate people.
Jason Fisher
So that's where Morrison stole Danny the Street from.
Matthew Peterson
Yog-Sothot is pretty good as well, considering he pretty much is space-time. Messing around with particle accelerators or studying spatial topology might have unintented consequences when the space-time continuum is alive and aware of you poking at it.
Leo Gomez
Also because old yoggy isn't a malevolent cunt like Nyarlathotep.
The article just preaches on how Lovecraft was racist, and how we all know that. Fair points. It is in his writings, as well. Racism doesn't drive the plot, nor does it hold the meaning of his stories. It was always the fear of the unknown in many forms, be it an ancestor, a dark city, a problematic neighborhood, or even a place seeing how it was swapped between people.
Are these valid points to take change the award being in the shape of HPL? Is it insulting to give out awards in such a form to colored writers? HPL should be remembered for his writings, and that's why the award exists, but his writings seldom stem from racism.
I'm on the fence, and I am curious what you lot might think about it.
Levi Diaz
People are always free to decline the award. No one has ever declined a Nobel Prize because the founder was implicit in thousands of deaths.
Caleb Lewis
a scientist at CERN finds a note crumpled up on his desk: "stop that, I'm ticklish -- Yogg-Sothoth"
Dylan Wood
On of my favourite stories involving the Hounds of Tindalos was centred around someone inventing a tachyonic antitelephone.
It works quite well until they start getting messages telling them and then begging to just turn it off.
Ayden Davis
>nobody has used Y'golonac It hurts man
Lincoln Bailey
I did. I ran Love's Lonely Children.
It's fucked up as all hell.
Which is fun.
Carson Williams
Does anyone know where I can find an ebook copy of I Am Providence (the biography)? I'm not used to downloading books and Im a complete poorfag in a shitty country so even finding a paper copy is right out.
Cameron Moore
May those that dwell in the dark bless you a thousand times.
Robert Ramirez
Bumped.
Owen Campbell
found it in 3 seconds on kat.cr try harder next time
Nicholas Lopez
I hope y'all niggas are reading the greatest love story ever told.
Blake Davis
I feel conflicted about this.
Nicholas Brooks
Thank you for using the proper term instead of the more popular "Cthulhu Mythos".
When the Old Ones return, you will be the first to be granted merciful release from this life.
Hunter Price
Alright, Veeky Forums, let's talk mash-up.
Lovecraftian zombie apocalypse.
How does it happen? What does it look like? How does it vary from established zombie tropes? How does it conform to established zombie tropes? How does Michonne's katana still manage to cut through it?
Pardon me boy, Is this the Lair of Great Cthulhu? In the city of slime, Where it is night all the time.
Bob Hope never went Along the road to Great Cthulhu, And Triple-A has no maps, And all the Tcho Tcho's lay traps.
You'll see an ancient sunken city Where the angles are wrong. You'll see the fourth demonsion If you're there very long. Come to the conventicle, Bring along your pentacle, Otherwise you'll be dragged off by a tentacle.
A mountain's in the middle, With a house on the peak. A gnashin' and a thrashin' And a clackin' of a beak. Your soul you will be a lackin' When you see that mighty Kraken. Ooo-ooo, Great Cthulhu's startin' to speak.
So come on aboard, Along the Road to Great Cthulhu, Wen-di-gos and Dholes Will make Big Macs of our souls.
Under the sea, Down in the ancient city of R'lyeh, In the Lair of Great Cthulhu They'll suck your soul away... (Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu --- Suck your soul --- Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu) ...In the Lair of Great Cthulhu, They'll suck your soul away!
Eli Bailey
Just started reading the collected works of Lovecraft. Good stuff, I highly enjoy it.
Cameron Thomas
I'm half way through right now. Just finished The Colour Out of Space. I would have sworn it was a parable about nuclear radiation if I didn't know the date it was written.
Noah White
>Are these valid points to take change the award being in the shape of HPL? No. S. T. Joshi has written pages of rebuttals regarding this and returned his own awards after the change decision has been finalized. You can read them on his blog.
One of the few, if not the only racism or xenophobia-driven story Lovecraft has written is The Street, and it's pretty much a universal consensus that that story is fucking awful. Using it as a setting for a campaign is genius though.
Camden Russell
I agree regarding the story, but I just thought this would be the best place to ask what people feel about Lovecraft, his racism, and people who are insulted by his opinions getting awards in his shape.
S.T. Joshi rips this apart, obviously. I didn't even consider the fact that they honor Lovecraft's work by having the award with his features, and not honoring his political views. Still, the poem that caused this uproar is to this day hilarious in every shape and form: A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,/ Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.
Jose Cook
Don't get me wrong discussion is of course welcome, but I think people should be aware of what Joshi has written on the subject and build on that instead of trying to make the same arguments, it'd be a waste of time. But to address one of the salient points that comes every single time and that blows my mind all the time, is they never address the fact that reading Lovecraft's letters is basically like reading his thoughts. The article even comments on this: "and seemed to have no filters". But of course the thing is, if everybody was as honest as Lovecraft was... ho ho! Do I even need to say anything? I'm pretty damn sure that most white Americans of his days harbored pretty much the same thoughts, but never actually committed them to writing. So somehow their silence means that they weren't like Lovecraft, and Lovecraft's voice means that he was literally Hitler. Except not, because he never actually supported any anti-minority causes other than rant about it, and he didn't even mistreat the people he saw as shit.
To be fair to the article is actually slightly calmer and better thought out than the many other similar articles, but the very end tells you all: that for that writer, Lovecraft was racist first (I also love how antisemitism is separate from racism for some reason, what the fuck) and a writer second... and a complex human being with many unlikeable traits like all of us last.
Jose Torres
It wouldn't bug me so much if they hadn't arbitrarily decided to make the bust that of some unknown female black author who didn't create an entire genre of writing.
Hudson Turner
They also conveneitnly avoid the fact that in his letters he apologized for being racist and said his wife had made him see that his attitude was horrendous and ignorant.
That's right, they ignore the fact that he turned away from racism and apologized for it. Isn't that what their whole movement is all about?
William Walker
Well, I guess I know what I'm doing on the train home
Cooper Brooks
What letter(s) was this?
Anthony Rodriguez
The radical left just wanted the thing to be a black person. That's seriously all there is to it.
Mason Torres
I agree entirely, and they only showed that one horrible, but bloody hilarious poem, which sparked the entire debate. Not to mention the convention was created in 1975, and it was based around Lovecraft, it's the main reason the convention exists. It is a curious thing as to why they didn't choose Tolkien as their face. Maybe even Shelley, Machen, Dunsany, Poe. They also throw away the argument of "Product of his time, and disastrous childhood." like if it was nothing. BUT it's not just the letters that have racism in them. Jermyn's story (race mixing), Red Hook (huge influx of immigrants and their paganism), Innsmouth (niggers at a beach), Rats in the walls (towards colonials), Re-animator (gorilla nigger). He kind of embraced his views on race in his works, not just in lettes. The ending of the article is outright insulting, yes. It had to be a minority, and a female, I guess, because a nigress got angry and some latino sparked the petition. Yeah, the article cites letters from the end of his life, and how his racism still holds, though. 1936: [Hitler’s] vision is of course romantic & immature, & colored with a fact ignoring emotionalism … There surely is an actual Hitler peril–yet that cannot blind us to the honest rightness of the man’s basic urge … I repeat that there is a great & pressing need behind every one of the major planks of Hitlerism–racial-cultural continuity, conservative cultural ideals, & an escape from the absurdities of Versailles. The crazy thing is not what Adolf wants, but the way he sees it & starts out to get it. I know he’s a clown, but by God, I like the boy!–Letter from Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei, November 1936. It's not as fierce as the earlier ones sure, but he agrees with dealing with minorities, and getting them out of white countries, but yes, you are right, he didn't agree with how, he just didn't like the idea of race mixing and multiculturalism.
Leo Miller
Well of course from time to time racist passages pop up in his writing, but none of his works aside from The Street are actually writings based on the WASPS ARE THE REALEST NIGGAZ EVERYBODY ELSE FUCK OFF view. I don't agree that Rats has racism in it though. Colonials aren't a race and it's the story of white men falling into sickening depravity solely due to their own fault. It's also worth noting that the unga bunga type of minorities in Lovecraft are not particularly dangerous. White men on the other hand... we got white boys stealing corpses and raising the dead, white boys possessing their own descendants and having torture dungeons of magic zombies, white boys infecting their offspring with a fragment of ancient oneness, white boys setting up breeding-torture-cannibalism dungeons, mutated incestuous white boys living in tunnel networks, white boys becoming cannibalistic because they looked at some pictures, white boys harboring artifacts of the old ones, white boys setting up a rape cult with fishmen on their own community, and much more. The truly horrific humans in Lovecraft's fiction are always whites, the non-whites are generally "mere" degenerates. But the racism critics never bring this up.
Juan Nelson
Letters to Poe.
Jacob Anderson
Fuck. Never thought of it like that. I was so under that veil of insulted minorities that I didn't even consider how disgusting white characters were in his stories. Damn, this stuff is dangerous to the mind.
Aiden Brown
Sauce?
Jordan Turner
I can't find anything called "letters to Poe" m8
Jace Brown
Makes sense when you consider that one of Lovecraft's main fears, and also the reason for his racist views, was the degradation of civilization. More specifically, he considered Victorian-era British culture to be the pinnacle of civilization, and that everything has gone downhill from there. His racism largely stems from the idea that any foreign influence would make western (specifically anglo-saxon; as far as he was considered any other western cultures were as bad, at at most barely better, than non-western ones) culture worse by diluting its "Englishness".
Thus you commonly see in his fictions civilized people (read: white anglo-saxons) falling to atavism and depravity, and cults/deep ones/other hidden influences corrupting society from within. The "scary minority" people are less dangerous because they're merely "acting according to their nature", and therefore less horrifying than people who should be "better" descending to depravity.
Reposting this since I finished it pretty close to the end of last thread. It's the second Lovecraftian DnD 5th edition thing. Unless somebody has any comment on changes I should make or ideas for some more spells, I'll probably just do the finishing touches (fix typoes, find a cool looking coverpage) on this one and be done with it.
Christian James
Maybe 15 years ago. Delta Green is official again.
Noah Davis
I wouldn't mind seeing more archetypes and variants for other classes.
Like the idea of a Yithian mind-swap sorcerer.
Others could be: Tomb Robber Roguish Archetype, Oath of Dagon for Paladins, Sorcerer Hunter Martial Archetype, or the Circle of the Black Goat for Druids
Ethan Williams
Were souls even part of Lovecraftian fiction?
Matthew Bell
I doubt it, it would imply humanity possesses something immortal and of value. Nyarlathotep probably just likes convincing people to sell him their 'souls' since it represents passing a point of no return for people who believe in it.
Brayden Perry
>being a Yithian
The problem with that is that you'd know too much. You'd have way too much information to be able to plausibly NOT be baffled by simple problems like PCs can be.
Caleb Thompson
The idea was more that you'd picked up some alterations from your time as one of their vessels.
Think like Jack Walters in DCotE And just like him, it might be a bloodline thing, fitting in with the other sorcerer origins
Isaiah Turner
MusicAnon, were you the one that used the Earthworm Jim theme to create one for Nyarlathotep?
Austin Clark
Nah, that was me, this one's someone else entirely.
Evan Wood
Why would a humanoid Shubby look like that when she'd probably look like this.
Thomas Bennett
Aw... Still good work. Or this for slightly cuter Shubby
Jace Ward
Is it bad I find this one fuckable?
Benjamin Allen
Eh, not really, she's pretty hot. My question is why she has a drink in her hands?
Landon Murphy
It's from some lovecraftian smut comic. I forget the name.
Jack Barnes
Congratulations, you've been selected for a Mi-go brain removal. Any last words?
Evan Cooper
Gusset
Liam Nelson
HASTURHASTURHASTUR or maybe if I'm feeling sadistic Y'golonac
Brayden Cruz
Here's what causes it: The Stars Come Right.
When the Stars Come Right, it is said that Man Will Be As The Old Ones. That is generally interepreted as meaning mad, free from the false shackles of good and evil - but it also applies to our relationship with life and death. We would, like the Old Ones, live and be in a death-like state, but never REALLY die when the stars were wrong - but once the stars come right death ends for humanity. Those that were dead rise again, their minds removed (or ascended) by their contact with the void beyond death.
Nicholas Johnson
I quite like this idea.
Although the going mad part also reminds me a bit of Crossed, which is like zombies without the dead part.
km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html >What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is fat and jolly and smiles all the time. He is friendly and gregarious and always ready to help travellers in distress. >Except that none of that can possibly be true. >Consider: By his own account (and by Elrond’s surprisingly sketchy knowledge) Bombadil has lived in the Old Forest since before the hobbits came to the Shire. Since before Elrond was born. Since the earliest days of the First Age. >And yet no hobbit has ever heard of him.
Joseph Roberts
>The spell that binds Bombadil to his narrow and cursed country was put in place centuries ago by the Valar to protect men and elves. It may last a few decades more, perhaps a few generations of hobbit lives. But when the last elf has gone from the havens and the last spells of rings and wizards unravel, then it will be gone. And Iarwain Ben-Adar, Oldest and Fatherless, who was ruler of the darkness in Middle Earth before Sauron was, before Morgoth set foot there, before the first rising of the sun, will come into his inheritance again. And one dark night the old trees will march westward into the Shire to feed their ancient hatred. And Bombadil will dance down amongst them, clad in his true shape at last, singing his incomprehensible rhymes as the trees mutter their curses and the black and terrible Barrow-Wights dance and gibber around him. And he will be smiling.
Kayden Lewis
What makes this theory so awesome is that it's definitely not what Tolkien intended, but it fits the narrative as presented much better than the "canon" explanation does. This is exactly how cultists "read between the lines" when they study mainstream holy books, which makes the whole thing almost perfectly meta.
Brayden Thomas
I love you /ysg/ for enlightening me to shit like this.
Asher Rogers
>Lovecraftian zombie apocalypse. That's literally what happens in the second half of the "Nyarlathotep" short story; it's just told from the perspective of one of the zombies.
The narrator is exposed to Nyarlathotep's message and thereafter just describes these brief surreal glimpses of a world torn apart by violent conflict and the passage of what must have been an enormous amount of time, though he perceives it as the same night. One can only imagine what has happened in the interim, but it seems there are no longer any people who are not similarly zombified. At the end, he's aware that he no longer has an independent will and is being lead along into some yet more horrifying fate, but can do nothing to resist it.
If you change the perspective to someone who hasn't seen Nyarly's message and is trying to survive in a world where a large portion of people have become like the narrator of the original story, you've got basically all the feel of a zombie setting.
Parker Gonzalez
Circle of Black Goat is already a thing in the first "splatbook" I made. As is Yithian, actually, although as a "subrace" in the same vein as the Revenant in one of the Unearthed Arcanas pdfs. Although I did originally also have a thing based on "Polaris" and "Beyond the Walls of Sleep", where you got powers by remembering stuff from your past lives. Removed that because I didn't really have a good idea on what to do with it, but perhaps I should try reworking it in.
I fully admit it was a kind of silly idea I didn't even orginally make for the pdf in mind, and only added it in afterwards. Still, could work in a more high fantasy-ish campaign instead of a horror one. Just be glad I didn't try making playable Elder Things (which crossed my mind, but as a joke; this was around April 1st, so I considered including it in the pdf for lulz and removing it in the next version).
James Brooks
Even in canon, he's pretty much a non-asshole Nyarlathotep or similar being. He's confirmed to not really be a human, much like how Gandalf and the other wizards are also not actually human but more like angels. But he's not a wizard like Gandal either, but some kind of even older spirit, probably associated with unspoiled nature. So he's an extremely old and powerful spirit, who takes on a human form and mostly just fuck around to amuse himself. Only he mostly does that by chilling in his forest and banging his hot tree-wife, unlike Nyarlathotep who starts nuclear wars for fun.
Bentley Thompson
>implying Nyarlathotep isn't fucking constantly with Yhoundeh
Adam Watson
Canonically he's an artifact. Tolkien liked to pretend that he didn't write Lord of the Rings, he merely "translated" it from the original Westron as he found it in an ancient book. One of the features of ancient books is the occasionally inclusion of totally unrelated stuff, like you might be reading the annals of a monastery and in between entries reading "January- Brother Maynard died of the flux" and "April- A cow was born with two heads. there was much lamentation" you might find a poem, or a snippet taken from another book, or just a random story the author liked, that he decided to put in the book to liven it up, or as writing practice.
This is what Bombadil is meant to be, he's a Hobbit fairytale that was "accidentally" included in the larger Lord of the Rings legend by some lazy or bored copyist at some unknown time.
Ryan Clark
Except wait, the hobbits have heard of him and tell lots of silly stories about him. Tolkienfag here, Tom Bombadil is a mystery wrapped in an enigma who doesn't fit in well with the setting but is pretty much definitely NOT an eldritch horror of any variety. Deal with it. Shit like is just fucking retarded. In all probability he's either a weird Maia (probably of Yavanna, though perhaps of one of the other Valar) or some other kind of spirit who came into the world either when it was created or after it was ordered. Remember, the universe of Arda is a strictly monotheistic one, and there's nothing before Eru. The closest things to eldritch horror in that universe are Ungoliant and the things that live deep beneath Moria (which I suspect are basically an animate form of Morgoth's corruption, the so-called 'Morgoth element').
Brody Hall
>I'm not going to read the blog post. I'm just going to shitpost all over the topic.
