/ysg/- Yog-Sothothery General

YSG doesn't have a place among the living generals, it can only lay eternally and be awakened when the stars align.

Exactly.
It awakens when it needs to, so it may terrify and remind us of its terrible and awesome power.

So once a month? Full or New Moon? :^)

Anyone working on scenarios?
I'm working on two and would like some idea feedback.
The first is for CoC and was inspired by my players who said "We want to be a hair metal band in the 1980's". So I said sure.

Basically I took Music of Erich Zann, set it in a dilapidated roc music theater, replaced Zann with a defuncted musician, and made the enemy an embodiment of Y’golonac.
Basically the players will show up and play a song and then go to their room with hookers and blow. During the whole thing they’ll hear NotZann playing weird music on an electric guitar. When they go to investigate he’ll act weird and reveal a bunch of clues. A few spooky dreams and dangerous events later they’ll discover that the apartment is built on to of a cavern that has a terrible pit of hedonism in it.

I plan on having heavy themes of hedonism and addiction. Really play up how fucked up a lot of rock stars really are.

Not sure how they players will end it. Maybe a counter spell NotZann was working on involving music? Anyone have any advice or suggestions?

Maybe he will retreat to the cavern and will be really really hard to reach through it. And the way to end it will be just killing NotZann. Maybe it has to be done in a strange way, like not having any emotion at all at the moment. Maybe, after it's dead, it posesses the killer and will manifest and take control of him again unless he avoids all pleasure until he dies, and thus is forced to live a life of ascetic isolation.

>implying the forces of the outer gods are dictated by the relative positions of a tiny spark of a star and two pieces of debris

bump

So I recently learned about Tremulus (yet another lovecraftian investigative rpg), has anyone here played it? any thoughts?

...

What if CoC was more like CoC?

are you familiar with neonomicon by Alan Moore?

Starting my first campaign of CoC this Sunday. My character has a 90 in Power and I intend to start learning magic when I can. You guys got any tips for me on how to use magic to the best of my ability without going too insane? How fucked am I for wanting to do this?

It had slightly less Rape than I was expecting, considering it's Moore

>The outsider who does everything he can to stay away from the weirdness but always gets dragged back in.

>The seasoned Veteran who been fighting this stuff from day 1 but who's sanity is on the brink of a break

Talk to me about modern cults, Veeky Forums. Which ones give off the most quietly menacing vibes? Do any of them fascinate you? Mary Kay, Scientology, Daesh, Westboro baptist, help me find some more examples.

If the other players in the group are fine with it, go nuts. REVEL in the insanity. Read every tome you can get your hands on, collect those artifacts. Live fast, die young and crazy.

Westboro baptist has never struck me as "scary" because they had no mainstream appeal. They are not a movement, just a bunch of wackjobs.

Scientology infiltrating the DOJ is certainly scary.

I find stuff like like Reiki and other new agey horseshit a little disturbing, because I see friends who are otherwise rational get all wrapped up in it and start talking about "energy work" and paying money do placebo exercises.

Here's one--the technoutopians of Silicon Valley.
>working 100 hours a week is good, even if it takes drugs and soylent shakes to do it.
>normally pleasant human behavior like sleeping and eating should be defeated to increase productivity
>privacy is so twentieth century
>living in a house or a comfortable apartment is so inefficient, why not just live in a hostel
>it's an arbitrary good to disrupt existing institutions and traditions with technology

Heaven's Gate. I, personally, think that someone manipulated their leader into making the cult commit mass suicide, and then quietly got away.

Aum Shinrikyo. Those people are so fucked up and nearly everything is so suspicious about them. There's clearly something wrong, they are not just a cult.

He'll get shot in the head quickly, just in case.

I'm starting a Delta Green campaign soon, and I want to compile cool secret-dossier-like files about the characters. Where can I find some examples of dossiers, personal files, records and so on, about people? What should they include?

Good stuff, thanks to you both. I had no idea about the silicon Valley stuff or Aum Shinrikyo. I'm working up a DG campaign about trying to run COINTELPRO ops on a domestic (U.S.) cult. I want stuff to seem above board, not all the branches are into the mythos side of it. Maybe even something a little tempting or relatable about it, and then start letting the unnatural slip into the game.

Probably Nyarlathotep.

Not the most modern but the Mason family is always my favorite.
It starts out as a pervert who wants a harem of woman and turns into this pseudo-religious movement based on Beatles music and racial violence.
Then they just start chopping up famous people trying to cause an apocalyptic race war.
It makes so little sense except in the most fevered of minds and the spiral out of control is just terrifying.
You think that dirty looking bum is just some poor guy but in reality he has plans for a mass homicide and a hippy drug orgy in order to wide out various ethnic groups.

Holy shit an HP Lovecraft thread without retards derailing it about how he was a racist, and then people biting the bait to go on about how he was a product of his time?

Two small groups of Confederate and Union soliders are reeling from a skirmish. They seem to be stuck at a stalemate, and are simply waiting for reinforcements to arrive. However the chose a bad spot to feed the dirt with the blood of men. For ancient seals left long ago thirsted for the blood of mortals, finally sated they unleash their horrid purpose.

The corpses of their fallen brothers are reshaped into gruesome forms. And the nearby wildlife undergoes a far severe change. Only those with a strong enough resolve and will hold off insanity. Most of their comrades are driven to violence, the pcs survive. They can be either confederate or Union troops. They are trapped within the valley. And humanity must learn to set aside their meaningless squabbles to fight the true enemies of man. At least as long as this shaky union between enemies will last.

Have you tried wikisource? They have a lot of pictures and documents searchable by topic.

hush, hush, delete this, quickly
if you mention shitposting's name, it comes

they forever lie
waiting beneath the surface
to spread salt

to post their memes
and to cause butthurt
the total dicks

I don't know why I decided to write this post in haiku form

Well... he was a racist, like super racist. And everything about the fishfucking and the Innsmouth look was literally just his own disgust at the concept of Aryans mixing with negros.

Actually, "Shadows over Innsmouth" came about due to HPL finding, to his great horror, that he was part Welsh. That's what he himself said inspired him to start writing the story.

Also, it likely also has a strong connection to him fearing that mental illness might run in his family. That is actually one of his central fears that influence a lot of his stories.

Lovecraft had this general notion of "degeneration" as a central theme to a lot of his stories, likely tied to his family losing most of their wealth and both of his parents suffering from mental illness. Racial and cultural degeneration (usually exemplified by a "pure" race mixing with an "impure" one, tainting their bloodline) is one aspect of it, but hardly the only one.
It's entirely reasonable to intreperrt "Shadows over Innsmouth" as being about Lovecraft dealing with the idea that his bloodline may be "tainted" by mental illness (the protagonist of the story actually has a lot in common with HPL's father, as well as himself, which would support that notion), rather than it being about him finding race-mixing terrible.

Anons? Terribly sorry if this is off-topic, but I was hoping you could help me. See, I basically want to craft a Serpentfolk PC race for D&D 5e, but the only Call of Cthulhu books I have are the 3e, 4e and D20 corebooks.

Do serpentmen in CoC, Delta Green, wherever, change from this standard formula?

STR 3D6
CON 3D6
SIZ 3D6
INT 3D6+6
POW 2D6+6
DEX 2D6+6
Poisonous Bite natural attack
Knows 2D6 spells
SAN Loss 0/1D6

Alot of his personal writings and correspondence do go into depth about his strong belief in the inferiority of the likes of blacks or what have you due to their inherent nature, to the point that exceptional individual individuals who are black are simply the exception that proves the rule and if they had kids their kids would still be shit.

He was very proud of his British ancestry, but I guess he doesn't count sheepfuckers as being truly British/anglo.

But yes his fear of mental illness is also a strong reasoning behind content of his work.

and they've shown up

haven't we had this discussion before?

Why can't you type properly?

Innsmouth was more likely about Lovecraft's own disgust about finding out some of his family were Welsh. He was a shut in nerd who worshipped Anglo gentlemen and he thought anything that wasn't that was inferior.

Out of the hundreds of pieces he wrote a very small fraction of it can be directly interpreted as Lovecraft expressing his racism and Shadow Over Innsmouth isn't even that good of an example of it since any of the racism is allegory that has to be interpreted by the reader. Red Hook, where he straight up compares the chinese to animals, is a much better example.

This is off-topic and there are lizardfolk the lizard people and yuan-ti the snek people races in the upcoming volo's guide to monsters, just wait

>a shut-in nerd

Please point to anything of value that was created by alpha dudebros and lasted. This isn't sarcasm, I'm really curious if such a thing ever existed.

Conan?

I'm a fan of Lovecraft but the dude was a 1920s NEET for most of his childhood. It doesn't lessen his work but let's be honest, he was a weird kid.

>Just play football and fuck girls dude, Sisyphus was happy

Point taken. Although it is often said Howard was bullied for being bookish, intellectual and oversensitive, so he started bodybuilding and boxing to compensate, so not sure he qualifies.

for a second I though you meant Howard Philips Lovecraft and imagined him ripped and in a boxing match

Pretty much every HP Lovecraft thread

I started a DG game with players of little familiarity with the setting. I made them full-blown DG agents despite almost everything advising to start new people as friendlies. How fucked am I?

Is that Camus?

No, not Nyarly-dude, just a crafty fed tasked with stopping those guys before they do something real bad.

Cool! Does this tie into P4 Division anyhow?

Yes.

So does anyone know any other Horror writers from Lovecrafts time who either interacted or inspired him ? Need ideas for a game

I have already read some novels from Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith and that one from A Merritt that inspired call of Cthulhu.

Also check out Guy De Maupassant's Horla.

Well now its over.
Post obscure Lovecraft stuff.

Can I just say how much I Love the humanoids from K'n-yan?
They are so often overlooked, probably because their not global like so many other Lovecraftian creature but they are absolutely terrifying and spooky.

" To see that the mutual encroachments of pleasure-seeking never crippled the mass life of the community—this was all that was desired. Family organisation had long ago perished, and the civil and social distinction of the sexes had disappeared. Daily life was organised in ceremonial patterns; with games, intoxication, torture of slaves, day-dreaming, gastronomic and emotional orgies, religious exercises, exotic experiments, artistic and philosophical discussions, and the like, as the principal occupations."

Thats also cool, actually that would be a cool Delta Green Scenario.
What if this agent got cold feet and started feeling bad about killing so many people and wanted to confess and go public?
Then some agents would probably have to silence his ass before he could spill the beans.

In my experience with that mistake they either interpret their position as government agents as license to do whatever they want with no consequences or completely neglect their ability to use their positions to make their investigation easier and behave as they would if their characters were regular people with no authority.

William Hope Hodgson was a bit before Lovecraft's time (he died in WWI), but his work had a big impact on Lovecraft, The House on the Borderland especially. I'd recommend it.

The three main ones.
>Robert E. Howard
>Clark Aston Smith
>Robert Bloch

The outer circle
>Frank Belknap Long
>Henry Kuttner
>Fritz Leiber

The one we need to respect but don't want to.
>Derleth

Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow is great

Honestly, the latter isn't that bad. At least if they fuck up and get arrested, they won't be charged with abusing their position.

Arthur Machen, Robert Chambers, Poe, Ambrose Bierce to name a few.

hplovecraft.com/life/interest/authors.aspx

It's not that bad but it's certainly disappointing from a GM perspective. One of the main reasons I like DG is getting to watch the players find ways to abuse their power without going too far.

...

Give them something but with stern limits. Have the contact who briefs them outright offer special, task appropriate resources with the caveat that if they're caught using them they'll be in deep shit.

>P4 the divison
Googled it and all I got was that horrid game. If it's an obscure reference I'm still fairly new to lovecraft. Only knowing some of themes, and I've only finished his story about crystal hiding lizardman mazes on Venus, rats in the walls, and of course call of cthulu.

Isn't it the best when they do go too far, though?

So it's Delta Green.

P Division, or P4 Division, stands for Parapsychological, Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena Investigation Division of the US Naval Intelligence. It was created in late 19th century and is responsible for the Innsmouth raid. Later it became Delta Green.

For the record, Ligotti is a fantastic writer and I highly recommend him. Aside from the book user's quoting, My Work Is Not Yet Done is great, and his short stories are all worth reading if you're looking for your horror fix.

they have similarity in that they're both lovecraft-influenced games about PCs dealing with supernatural threats but that's about it, and that's a very broad definition

Post a moment when you've experienced Lovecraftian horror in your life.

Ever been in a real shitty relationship? Not like a "throwing punches" shitty relationship, but more like a gaslighting shitty relationship. Where the other person latches on to every minor thing you might forget as more proof that your brain is obviously not reliable and maybe you should just do whatever they said. You remember agreeing to it, right?

>actually says "Daesh" like a good little progressive.

They're just practicing Islam as it's written, man. Stop being such a bigot.

What is it ? Need sauce

Well, the entire US political establishment might be involved in a literal Satanic blood cult. That's pretty close.

I once had a dream about the King in Yellow trying to get me to kill all my friends. It was really spooky.

...

Hi /ysg/. I'm fairly new to this whole thing, but by the will of the stars I have to run a game soon.

Are there any frost- or winter-themed monsters, similar to how fire vampires are related to fire? Maybe it's possible to somehow use Wendigos as supernatural antagonists?

Wendigos can fit into the Cthulhu Mythos. You just have to remember that there is no 'canon' with Cthulhu and the best thing to do with Mythos creatures is to refluff them a little to keep the players in the dark (not completely, but enough to scare them.)

>Maybe it's possible to somehow use Wendigos as supernatural antagonists
the trick when adapting existing monsters to remember that nothing in the mythos is specifically targeted at humans, if people who resort to cannibalism become wendigos it isn't because something from the mythos caused it, they don't give a fuck what we eat, it's because some entities natural life cycle and behaviours brought them about, it's like a lightning strike, it would happen if you were there or not, it's just your bad luck to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time

Isn't Ithaqua's whole schtick wendigos?

I'm going to be a dirty lazy bastard and pit my players against various SCPs (refluffed and slightly changed, of course). Is this a terribad idea?

All at once or will it be one at a time?

All at once is an end of the world scenario.

So one at a time, for starters.

>a shut-in nerd
I actually heard he liked to travel and go on walks. I forget where I heard it though.

pic related

When he got older he became pretty sociable and liked taking night time walks through whatever city he was living in at the time but most of his youth was spent inside reading books about chivalrous knights.

I'm personally not a fan of apocalypse scenarios/having a bunch of different monsters in the same scenario in Mythos games but putting your players against individual SCPs would be fine as long as the players aren't familiar with the material and you stick with the good ones.

Nah, Wendigos are pretty boring (Maybe it's just me I have been on /x/ when Wendigs were huge there).

If you want some unknown snow creatures, watch the cartoon series Moomins. Firstly, it has The Groke, which can easily be fitted into more mythosey entity, and more obscurely, the Lady of Cold

youtube.com/watch?v=IxJ-UzW99uU

Does the Slenderman mythos count as lovecraftian? It seems to have the whole, 'unknowable alien entity which defies normal logic' thing down and some of the lore involved is actually pretty interesting

Your pic reminded me of a thing.
youtube.com/watch?v=wGlZOSfTi8w

You mean my mother?

It definitely takes a page out of Lovecraft's work, the good stuff like Marble Hornets at least. Sadly it lasted all but three years before attracting the same folks responsible for cuteulhu.

Question for some fellow keepers.

What SAN loss would you attribute to killing a child? There's some kid cultists around and I'm kind of afraid my players aren't exactly gonna try and take them alive, so I kind of want consequences for that more immediate than "cops find out you killed them, during a localized apocalypse, somehow".

Add 2 or 3 to the base loss for killing someone. I think it's 0/1d8 or so? So 2/1d8+2.

Personally I don't think Manson planned any of that. I think he was a con man who couldn't let go and would pretty much spin any lie if he thought it'd help keep things going for a few hours longer.

Holy shit I remember those books. Had the whole series when I was a kid. Lady of the Cold never struck me as scary though, but maybe it's because I was a kid and the scene was written rather simply.

I'm totally using that. Now, to think of a way to get rid of that bitch...

I'm in a similar situation, thinking about starting DG soon with a whole group of people whose only exposure to Lovecraft is "it's kinda like Bloodborne". How should I approach this?

I was thinking that I could not even tell them about the Lovecraft parts of the game. I'd start them all off as non-DG federal agents, send them to an "ordinary" crime investigation, and suddenly spring cultists and horrors on them. And then at some point a grizzled DG operative would show up and somehow bring the surviving PCs into the organization.