Is it possible for lovecraftian horror to exist in a medieval fantasy setting...

>Fantasy kinda-sorta undervalues that, because you have shitload of different races, thus making the grand revelation of "we are not alone and we are also insignificant" lost.

Why isn't Veeky Forums better read?

Fantasy races tend to be different flavours of human though. They all have humanity in the sense of sharing the same values, just some have pointy ears.

Lovecrafting horror still works because eldritch abominations are so removed from that. Mass Effect is a decent example, although it's technically sci-fi not fantasy. Humanity isn't alone in the universe but that doesn't make the Reapers any less incomprehendable.

Not exactly. Conan when he encounters these weird horrors from beyond the stars just as often bolts from them, or if he fights them engages in a frantic struggle to kill them as fast as possible.

I didn't read any Lovecraft, hence the asking.

So it works because people THINK they matter and realize that they don't?

>xenomorph in a high fantasy setting and still get a sense of fear

I wouldn't really call a xenomorph Lovecraftian, but there's actually multiple examples of xenomorph-like creatures, with the closest probably being the kythons .

As far as Lovecraftian horrors, those have been touched upon in each edition of D&D, often with the denizens of the Far Realms acting as powerful but very alien creatures. There's even a book called Elder Evils that explains how to work other kinds of Lovecraftian Superhorrors into campaigns, from low level adventurers investigating cultists to epic level adventurers hoping to figure out some way of stopping the Elder Evils directly.

As for the sense of fear, that's done easily enough. Even in an ordinary campaign you can terrify players with strong monsters, force them to question their sanity by experiencing hallucinations and visions, or fill them with dread that something beyond their understanding is coming to kill them all.

The line between science-fiction and fantasy tends to blur quite a bit, and you can see the influences of one in the other quite often, since there are many overlapping themes and concepts. For example, Dagon of Lovecraft fame finds himself as a demon lord in D&D.

Not in most fantasy settings. Everyone is mentioning references to Lovecraft that you already knew like if they're considering you to be retarded, but they're not understanding that you're asking for lovecraftian horror, not lovecraftian monsters.

In a setting with elves, dragons, demons, etc. no you can't unless you got very impresionable players. Stuff like or are only monsters of the week.

It's literally what makes his work horror, not spooky tentacle monsters.

>Stuff like or are only monsters of the week.

In the Conan stories, what often happens with Lovecraftian horrors is that they're forgotten things dwelling in hidden places that Conan typically wants to get the fuck away from as fast as humanly possible. They're never central to the story, just a hint that there's shit outside of even his skill and breadth of experience.

Sorry, apparently someone made and developed my point earlier and better.

But they aren't human. It's that fucking simple. You are not alone. The concept of other race, humanoid or not, is no longer something freaky, because it's an every day matter.

If you think Lovecrafian horror is about being dangerous, then you are missing the point.

He still doesn't have a PTSD or nervous breakdown by simple fact of standing next to them.

If you didn't read, why do you ask? Try At the Mountains of Madness, probably the best and most defining thing Lovecraft ever did and is most iconic (forget Cthulhu, that's literally a meme by his copy-paste followers).
Or, alternatively, go watch The Thing, the Carpenter one. That's also good way of examining it.
Either way, if you are accomodated to the concept of different races and the world not being antropocentric, then Lovecraftian horror is dead.

>I didn't read any Lovecraft, hence the asking.

I'd recommend doing so before making any attempts to incorporate Lovecraftian anything in your settings.

It's also worth noting that Lovecrafts works weren't exclusively horror. He often focused just on weirdness and surreality as much as horror.

Maybe warhammer fantasy?
Especially older, where old ones where aliens, lizardmen have laser weapons and chaos warriors could get sc-fi equipment.
Chaos itself is in many parts massive rip-off from lovercraftian horror, so whfrp could be used if adventure would be constructed correctly.

>He still doesn't have a PTSD or nervous breakdown by simple fact of standing next to them.

Maybe, but that's not entirely exclusively what happens to people in Lovecraft's stories either.

Frankly, I recommend entirely against focusing on that element. If you can't scare your players without making the dice tell them they go bonkers, you're not cut out for horror or weird anything.

>Old Warhammer
>Warhammer at all
>Lovecraftian

Dwarves and Elves look humanoid and have human motivations and are essentially the same as humans. They seek power and wealth and love like everyone else.

To say Lovecraftian horror doesn't work because elves exist is to say Lovecraftian horror doesn't work because black people exist.

OH, I'm not OP, I was just gettin in on the discussion, cause I have never read Lovecraft, and
I thought this thread might convince me to

I am interested in this kind of horror anyway, the progenitor god in my setting is supposed to be a horror, the idea that to attempt to observe it would drive the observer to instant insanity.

So yeah, I think I'm going to go read some Lovecraft now.

>If you can't scare your players without making the dice tell them they go bonkers, you're not cut out for horror or weird anything.
Agreed on that, but it also depends on players. I've once had a group with two guys who were constantly spoofing horror cliches, completely ruining it for themselves and rest of the group, when eventually other players told them to fucking shut up, because it's a good game and they are fucking it up.
Never felt so good like back then as a GM

>I wouldn't really call a xenomorph Lovecraftian

A forgotten horror on a dead world that's found by otherwise unsuspecting humans, reproduces through an obvious rape metaphor, and then stalks and kills them all for a bizarre, inscrutably alien behavior? Yeah, I don't see anything Lovecraftian there.

It depends on what you mean by Lovecraftian horror, because the term is not really clear due to a lot of reasons.

If you mean "spooky shit with tentacles", then you frankly don't need to focus much on misanthropy. Just add Illithids, water, insanity and inbreeding with humans. It's more the pop culture idea of what Lovecraft is like rather than what he actually is, but if this is what you want there's nothing wrong with it. For roleplaying adventurers, this is fine.

If you want to use the actual themes of Lovecraft, then you need to understand that most of the horror doesn't come from spooky fish creatures, but the fact that humanity is like a blind child in a world of terrible adults. Our mind are weak and break easily, all our collected works and knowledge don't really amount to anything of significance, and there's infinitely much we do not understand. And will never understand. The unknown isn't something that might or might not be scary, it's completely and utterly beyond us. Any victory is temporary or an illusion.
Then you add important secondary themes like corruption, the loss (or in-existence) of the pure, a lack of closure and uncertainty.

Tentacles, goo, fish, and occultism are all just aesthetic, a way to represent "the other" in words and a comprehensible form.
Pop culture sort of had a look at Lovecraft and decided to keep the aesthetics and forget the themes. But I'm not one to say which is right and wrong, as long as you find something you enjoy

No, what makes his horror work isn't "We're not alone", but the degree of uncertainty that his stories introduce.

It is the fear of the unknown that powers his works, primarily the fear that all that we know is wrong, or more precisely the way that we think is limited, naive, and ineffectual.

This is not lost in a fantasy setting, and in fact is often enhanced in one where there are literal gods providing answers to people in a clear and well defined world. These gods are all comforting, relateable, and understandable, even the evil and sadistic ones since they are still modeled after mortal creatures (or vice versa), and people can enjoy the security of their universe being sensible, ordered, and sane.

Until creatures like aboleths and mind flayers are introduced, throwing out any sense of certainty or understanding, and when the monstrosities that dwell in the Far Realms force people to question the powers of their own gods and the truth of their dogma, panic and dread are inevitable.

Nope, I already got spooky fish monsters, they aren't part of my theme, they're just in some places.

What you're describing, the horror, that IS what I want, still not OP tho

But they aren't human, don't you get it? It's no longer anthropocentric. How similar they are isn't even important, because uncanny valley kicks in.

And since you are about it - half about Lovecraftian stories are about being afraid of negros and Irish, so go fucking figure.

>Agreed on that, but it also depends on players. I've once had a group with two guys who were constantly spoofing horror cliches, completely ruining it for themselves and rest of the group, when eventually other players told them to fucking shut up, because it's a good game and they are fucking it up.

Yeah, but the thing about horror is that it only works if the players are willing to be scared.

OP here, thanks for all the comments so far. helping me to get a better feel for it
you explained it pretty well, thanks for understanding that I wasn't asking about fighting a cthulhu-man in my campaign.

It really is my focus to want to make something that scares my players/ audience if i decided to make a story around the idea.

Lovecraft sort of expects you to be a white guy who's afraid of black people.

If by medieval fantasy setting you mean something like D&D - no.

If by medieval fantasy setting you mean something like Thief or Darkest Dungeon - fuck yeah.

Odd as it may sound, there's nothing truly "alien" about them, at least in the Lovecraftian sense. They are understandable. They have a biology, an origin, and motives that stem from recognizable stimuli. While gruesome, the more you investigate them, the more becomes clear, to the point where they had already begun to unravel them on the genetic level.

I think that's the distinction between something being Lovecraft and not. With something in Lovecraft, the more you investigate and learn about something, the less you understand and the closer you are to madness.

That's bullshit. The friends part.

Anyhow: the problem is that basically in HPL you don't have a frame of reference for the otherness that the people encounter, it's out of our average human experience. But at the same time it's not REALLY unthinkable. It shouldn't be there when it is discovered, but it is something that with our science, our culture and lack of assumptions we could understand. At least a great deal of it (consider At The Mountains of Madness: basically everything to the last page).
It's a VERY modern, contemporary even, train of tought. I guess the most you could really sketch a "proper" HPL-like protagonist would be perhaps the 1700s, if he's educated and all.

(notice that actually most of HPL "horrors" aren't particulary aggressive toward humanity. Hell, take the Mi-Go: they probably are SINCERELY well-disposed toward us. This is probably the worst part of this peculiar disruption of our welthschaaung.)

Now, it's not like you couldn't have fun with a bunch of teutonic knights trying not only to survive some Deep Ones, but also trying desperately to reassure themselves these demons are "normal" demons, but I think it does kinda get out of what our dear Providence recluse thought as "his" horror.
I'd suggest not to think of doing DND with the idea of doing horror, tough, Lovecraft or not.

But there are things outside of playable races is the point everyone's missing. Dragons exist, Demon lords exist, all the gods exist. When you try to bring Lovecraft style horrors into the setting its far to easy for them to come off as edgier gods/outsiders. when you believe other planes exist near a and parallel to our own, Lovecraft creations fit too snugly to have the same impact.
"Chaotic Evil daemon lords exist, but this Nyarlothotep is apparently REALLY not into the PC races."

>So it works because people THINK they matter and realize that they don't?

Sort of but not that simple. Lovecraft was famous for being terrifying to read in a time where being a god fearing christian wasn't all that rare, and then the guy who believe he was made in the image of God and was the center of existence was faced with a cold, uncaring cosmos personified by giant eldritch monstrosities and their left overs across the stars. That was a shock. An atheist who already faces the notion of a cold uncaring cosmos would only be reading monster horror. But then the second layer applies. If that atheist is a rationalist, as many were back in his day, he would be faced with horror that logic couldn't comprehend. Science and geometry can't understand the elder mazes and the aberrations that live within. So for a man who prizes rationality and knowledge, learning that his brain is too small and his science lacking to understand the universe might be also in some measure, an moment of horror. So, what sorta made lovecraft clever back them, was having an style of horror that could prey on the faithful and the rational alike, though not necessarily working on the same scale.

Today, religion has far less weight than back then, and believing or not no longer plays a major role in defining the self. Neither does Faith x Logic debate. So in a way, lovecraftian horror lost a lot of power.

Except people is already into a different mood by that point and more monsters are not gonna surprize them no matter what. There's already magic and dragons and shit unexplained (or half-assedly explained) and more unexplained things will not cause fear beyond "this dude looks badass and my PC could die".

Damn. That is a shame. I am an athiest, but I really love the idea of there being a cosmic knowledge that could drive someone insane to even learn of it's truth. Similar I guess to whatever drove Big Hat Logan and Seathe mad in the dukes archives, or what happens to moth priests who read too many Elder Scrolls.

>Implying Howard wasn't friend with Lovecraft
>Implying he wasn't one of his biggest supporters
>Implying he didn't paid half of his bills
>Implying he didn't help him get few deals for last of his works
>Implying he didn't help Lovecraft with his style and focus

Son, revisionism is one thing, but that's one of the most famous "oddball friendships" in history of literature. Saying it's bullshit is like trying to pretend Tolkien and Lewis didn't knew each other.

I'm implying he was not his only friend. Quite the contrary.

Are you an HFYfag? You're starting to sound like one.

You're distinctly wrong on this matter, because in a fantasy setting, what is familiar can be reset quite easily, just like how what is familiar and understandable changes even in nonfiction depending on your surroundings.

How alien elves and dwarves are to humans only matters to the humans of the setting. If they recognize that they share a common mentality, then that is what defines what is "anthropocentric."

If humans and dwarves both mine the earth and drink ale, they are free to think of themselves as similar enough that experiencing each other's customs wouldn't drive each other insane.

In a campaign where you have to regularly rely on the knowledge of omnipotent gods and oracles, hearing the words "I don't know" can be terrifying.

>He still doesn't have a PTSD or nervous breakdown by simple fact of standing next to them.
Why would he? Lovecraft only had people doing that because it seemed (to him) the most natural reaction to strongly considering that humans weren't the most important thing in the universe.

>How alien elves and dwarves are to humans only matters to the humans of the setting.

What about the humans outside the setting? Your players? It doesn't matter what humans on the setting are used to if your players can't empathize with it. The second you not only say "dwarves exist" but also "dwarves are like us" you already opened the pandora's box and everything can happen without the anyone blinking an eye.

kek

>Except people is already into a different mood by that point and more monsters are not gonna surprize them no matter what.

You'd be surprised. That's actually the folly of many players who expect Mind Flayers to just be octopus-headed brain eaters, or an Aboleth to just be a really big fish

And, often, some DMs make that mistake as well, or rather, choose to keep them simple.

But, these are monsters that are designed to prey upon the worst fears of players, with the death of their character being their least worry. Having your mind stripped of all of its secrets and used against your friends and loved ones before you yourself are transformed into a willing servant of an uncaring and unfathomable master? That's like the introduction level of what terrible things those monsters can do.

There are plenty of monsters designed with Lovecraftian influence, but their big issue is that you need your players to agree to play in such a campaign first before you can really flex those horror muscles. Lovecraft was rarely kind, and a DM that hopes to emulate his stories is going to seem quite spiteful and nasty if the players don't understand what he's hoping to do.

Not everything in Lovecraft was completely inscrutable either. The ghouls were pretty easy to grasp, and Mi-Go for the most part exhibited the same basic aims as your standard thing that was dependent on physical resources to survive.

There was more to Lovecraft than going bonkers because you couldn't wrap your head around something.

The middle ages is like the best time ever for Lovecraftian settings.

You're talking about a time when people felt that the world was slipping into chaos and madness, when millions were dying of disease and the cultists of a cruel dark god in the East were rising and threatening to sweep away Christendom, when the lawless blackness of the forests closed in around the flickering lights of civilization, when the written word was all but lost and each book held the promise of priceless secret knowledge or the utmost blasphemy.

>you already opened the pandora's box and everything can happen without the anyone blinking an eye.

Short, bearded miners with a fondness for ale and axes are hardly the limits of imagination. It's easy to establish them as strange, but comfortably strange, like odd neighbors.

On the same token, you can have players be far more terrified of other humans than dwarves. What makes a deranged cultist scary is not whether or not they're human, but how they think and what they're worshiping.

While a dwarf and the player can agree that living is good and having four limbs is good enough, the deranged cultist that wishes to reflect the five limbs of his dark god by splitting one of his own arms down its center and hoping to do so to everyone else in the world is going to be pretty creepy.

>like having a xenomorph in a high fantasy setting and still get a sense of fear
The moment you call it xenomorph in front of your players, it will ruin immersion.
On the other hand...
>be DM
>players are exploring the side of the mountain after a strange avalanche revealed some ancient ruins
>they delve deep, unlock the heavy stone trapdoors to find a treasure room (or a prison?) with a pedestal
>there's a strange mirror that only reflects some eldritch fog inside
>a player touches it
>the fog inside twists and for a moment, something from inside extends a pseudopod to touch the sphere, as if to make a contact
>a shockwave originates from the point of contact
>the character falls unconscious for the damage and the others heal him
>the glass is shattered, players believe it was a trap, gather the treasure and return to town to spend the gold
>player awakens with a strange sense of hunger, starts consuming lots of food at the tavern, but is otherwise lively as usual
>then, slowly, his hunger gets the best of him, and he consumes much more, and even has thought of cannibalism that manages to suppress
>you pass notes to the player, writing that he doesn't feel so well, his body doesn't really react properly and that he needs to roll will and then fortitude
>as he passes the first but not the second, he notices something in the mirror
>his reflection twists, something inside is not right
>soon his insides start moving accordingly to the reflection
>a monstrous creature with no eyes and a silvery metallic carapace comes out of the character's mouth and dives into the mirror, disappearing and leaving the poor guy behind screaming
>others find him. he's badly hurt, lots of con and wis damage, his jaw is badly dislocated, can't speak or tell them what happened, and even if he could he'd be in a great shock.
>soon many citizens are found in their private rooms in the same conditions
>but sometimes the creature manages to keep control and wears them
>and it feeds

>implying it is not
try whfrp instead of whfb and you can pretty easy recreate much of Lovercraft's themes by using chaos as source of eldritch horror.
Theme of people discovering something that turns their live and beliefs upside down and potential drives them crazy is easy to do.
Chaos is incomprehensible thing that forces people to check their beliefs, puts them in misery and madness while proving how insignificant humans is in great scale of things.

>extends a pseudopod to touch the sphere
I meant the mirror's surface. My bad.
However, see? It's the same situation, a monster that grows inside then comes out, has the ability to move through places that others can't cross, and from there it strikes. It says nothing about xenomorphs but it's the same thing. All you have to do is change it a bit to make it fantastic, rather than an alien species.

Lovecraft toed the line of what is or is not "supernatural". Impossible things would happen, but that's because they only seem impossible to our limited comprehension. You can't call his magic "magic", but at the same time you can't explain it with our present science or understanding of the universe, or even the basic method in how our logic is constructed.

There are only theories on ghouls, and most of them contradict each other, defy conventional understanding of animals, or become more confusing the more details you obtain about them. Whether they are evolved or devolved humans, human hybrids or mutants, completely unrelated to humans or created by something remains a mystery.

"Weird, misshapen cannibals" is a basic description, but what they could possibly be, and what that means about humanity, actually becomes more terrifying as you explore the possibilities. The notion that they might be humans transformed through our own weaknesses and decisions makes us hesitant to find out what it would take to discover that truth.

On the other hand, while xenomorphs are also scary, that's largely because they are extremely efficient and deadly animals. The better we understand them, the more we learn about their abilities and limitations, and revelations about their connections with humans are interesting, rather than damning.

There's metaphors in their designs, but what makes them scary is that they are really, really good at killing people.

>With something in Lovecraft, the more you investigate and learn about something, the less you understand and the closer you are to madness

I thought it was just the opposite? You're trying to understand something that's clearly not meant for a simple human to understand. Going further down this path unveils terrible cosmic secrets which either ravage your mind or sound like insane rambling to the normal person..

Or at least that's how I thought it goes.

how would you employ the "exposing of secrets" in a campaign setting?

that was always how I saw it. They know now. they know and they can't trust the things they used to believe anymore.

>I wouldn't really call a xenomorph Lovecraftian
In a way, I think you actually could argue that it is. The technology and concepts of science are more modern and there is a little flavour difference in part just because of the nature of the form of media used (monster movies), but they actually share a lot of themes.
Bigger older stuff being out there and humanity being a small primate fleck on the cosmic scale and themes and imagery tapping into primal human fears. The xenomorphs themselves are rogue weapons of wars humanity can't even imagine the scale of and the human misfortune they cause is largely coincidental.

>If you think Lovecrafian horror is about being dangerous, then you are missing the point.
I don't think anyone is arguing that and you're just pulling a strawman out of your ass.

If you think that lovecraftian horror is all about "we are not alone" then you are missing the point just as much as you accuse others of being.

It goes even beyond that.
The shadow over innsmouth was largely inspired by lovecraft's own personal terrifying revelation that he himself was *gasp* part-welsh!

Hey, most of the horror of Lovecraft is that there are things man were not meant to know, let alone come face to face to.

It's an existential kind of terror.

>The moment you call it xenomorph in front of your players, it will ruin immersion.
I feel like this rule can be followed with 90% of fantasy monsters, including and perhaps especially the D&D staples that everyone knows the details of at the first mention of the name.

Bit self evident if your trying to push the horror aspect, but noteworthy none the less.

A name is one thing, but a well done description and set up can carry you much further.

It's called gothic fantasy

>Not him, but for Lovecraftian horror to work you need to assume that there is nothing else, but humans.
Nope.
Lovecraft never actually said that there couldn't be aliens IRL as far as I know. In any case the insignificance part doesn't come from there, it comes from the fact that the universe cannot be controlled and the ravages of time ultimately defeat everything, and none of this is part of a grand plan of an omnipotent deity, and the human mind will never be able to grasp or know everything. This can be very easily extended to other beings, even beings that are mostly incomprehensible to humans in the first place.
Hell, plenty of Lovecraft's stories mention lesser alien races existing alongside humans AND Old Ones. Did you even read Whisperer in Darkness?

>Try At the Mountains of Madness, probably the best and most defining thing Lovecraft ever did and is most iconic (forget Cthulhu
Worst advice you could give. Cthulhu being a meme extends only to the entity itself; The Call of Cthulhu is a masterpiece and the single most defining pure mythos story he ever wrote (Mountains is sci-mythos, possibly the best in that category).

The cosmic secret is that there are cosmic secrets. Prior to the revelation the characters generally believe they have a fair understanding of the world, and as they progress the character comes to realize their world was very small and there is far more to understand than they had previously thought. It's like a bacterium thought there was nothing outside it's petri dish, and then one day realized it was being watched through a microscope. It knows more now, but the scale of what it thought it didn't know has been magnified infinitely. It now knows it's hopelessly ignorant.

well to to be fair, welsh are a lot more like fish people than black people are

This is a bredy gud post lad. I'm putting a word for you with Starry Wisdom.

And below, in that limitless chasm of chaos, they will realize the truth of it:

"WE ARE NOT THE FLAME!" they will cry out. "WE ARE BUT MOTHS AND WE ARE DOOMED!"

No it uses lovecraftian monsters not lovecraftian horror

Lovecraft himself could be classified as a fantasy writer. Has anyone at all read his Dreamlands cycle? It's fantasy. It came before Tolkien forever solidified the defining tropes of the genre, so modern people often fail to recognise it as such, but it's absolutely fantasy.

What time period is Darkest Dungeon intended to be in? There are pistols and plague doctors, and I don't know enough about history to pin it down

It's about as grounded in real history as Warhammer 40k. Most of the aesthetics seem to come from the XVIIth century, though.

Lovecraft wrote some fantasy but you couldn't classify the man as a fantasy writer. His main genre was weird fiction and horror.

Fantasy was just a side project.

And who determined what was the main genre and what was the side project, exactly? That was certainly not the man himself, because he held his "Poe pieces" and "Dunsany pieces" in equal regard, as is evident from his correspondence. The only source of this perception may be cursory familiarity with his body of work.

A fantasy map based on Lovecraft's Dreamlands that's ready to be used in a custom campaign. Just put elves and dwarves there.

Well if I were to introduce lovecraftian concepts to an semi-accurate medieval fantasy game then I would play with the ideas about the supernatural things of the time that were not religious.

By which I refer to what you all probably refer to as the Fey. So the lines between angel, succubus, fairy, ect were extremely blurry during these times because of the lack of communication and agreement between individuals on the words used in their stories (which were largely believed). At the time the existence of monsters was reality. By which I mean the majority of people believed in them so it was the assumed reality.

Imagine your party is walking through a forest at night when flickering lights start to come into view. The lights move around the party and what vaguely sounds like feminine voices in the back of the pcs minds whisper a mixture of seducing, disturbing and mad things. Imagine the lady that comes at night and takes children away into the sky never to be seen again.

>Nope.
As a PC within derivative roleplay of HPL's works intending to create similar horror, you will almost necessarily start off ignorant of these details.

The original Alien, by itself, is Lovecraftian. As more stuff got added, that aspect was more and more lost.

Dan O'Bannon was a huge Lovecraft fanboy, even said Alien was about going the Old Ones' planet, and that the Alien was a cousin to Yog-Sothoth. Neither statement shouls be read literally though.

This

'Genre' is a term that people have taken to be hard categories but it's literally just a marketing term to pigeonhole target audiences.

First people write 'stuff.' Then people say 'I like that kinda stuff.' Then publishers try to create a term that applies that stuff so they can organize and sell books better. Then people who showed up late write in the style of this constructed 'Genre' and you tend to get awful shit that nonetheless appeals to the 'target demographic.'

That's why you go from Tolkein, who wasn't writing for 'Genre,' to crap like Sword of Shannara.

Just act easily disturbed by the idea of consensual race mixing and polytheism.

Like a dwarf.

I feel like it's important to stress that Lovecraft's work isn't necessarily tied to the idea that you're powerless and will go insane. Most of his stories are not about that - humanity being utterly irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things also means that the true greater beings don't give a fuck about us. Dagon, the deep ones, even Cthulhu; they're not invincible.

Dankest Dungeon's whole concept is this. I think it does alright.

I wrote a novella last year about an eldritch abomination in a medieval setting. Unfortunately, I made the main character a female, so it didn't sell well compared to my other works, but I received a lot of positive feedback regarding the concept itself.

As long as the entity is only ever seen by the main character(s), and it makes them question what they're seeing, it works. HPL was all about people being driven insane by what they saw. But the minute you add the ability to actually fight off the enemy, it's no longer Lovecraftian and it makes it camp.

Way to ruin it.

>HPL was all about people being driven insane by what they saw. But the minute you add the ability to actually fight off the enemy, it's no longer Lovecraftian and it makes it camp.
This is not HPL. It's post-Lovecraft stuff, like Derleth and the people who came after.

>US navy dropped depth charges on the deep ones which drove them further into isolation
>cthulhu got rammed by a steam ship and fell back into the ocean, atleast mildly injured
>the dunwich horror is straight up killed
>both Danforth and Dyer survive an encounter with a shoggoth with only one of them showing signs of serious trauma

Nah, the idea that the characters HAVE to be incapable of fighting back and HAVE to go insane at the sight of unknown creatures for something to be Lovecraftian is a meme in its literal sense. It should be focused more on the mystery much more than the encounters, but there's more than enough room for some kind of combat.

I fucked up that last sentence there but I think you'll get my meaning.

This is a really good point, but the reason this throws a wrench into things is that demons and dragons are handled very poorly in modern fantasy media, where they're not meaningfully alien or unknown. Lovecraft (and some of his friends like Clark Ashton Smith) did a great job with this sort of thing in the ghouls; they're alien and horrible, but relatable to some extent. You can befriend them, even, but they're never a known quantity.

You don't need your world to lack non-humans, it just needs to put humans and things that are basically human at the center. Everything else exists on the periphery and is to some degree unknown and dangerous.

>is it possible for lovecraftian horror to exist in a medieval fantasy setting?

Half-elves and half-orcs and all manner of miscegenation is part and parcel of stock medieval fantasy, as other have mentioned. So not only is it possible, but it's already baked in!

I think it's pretty easy to pull off shadow over innsmouth in fantasy

Almost, but each of those examples have a counter-point.

>US navy dropped depth charges on the deep ones which drove them further into isolation

The Deep Ones are just a race of fishmen, so it's not surprising they can be defeated.

>cthulhu got rammed by a steam ship and fell back into the ocean, atleast mildly injured

In the story, Cthulhu's head immediately begins to heal itself as soon as the ship passes over it. Even the momentary injury to his head wasn't enough to actually do anything but allow the characters to escape, i.e. fighting isn't possible, but running is.

>the dunwich horror is straight up killed

However, he is a half-spawn and is defeated by magic. Even so, when it gets revealed by the powder, it sends one character into shock just looking at it. It seems you can defeat the lesser beings, but there's no chance with the greater ones.

>both Danforth and Dyer survive an encounter with a shoggoth with only one of them showing signs of serious trauma

They both escape, but it's once again a case of fleeing instead of fighting, with one driven mad at the very sight of it.

I will, however, offer an example where you're correct to say fighting back is still possible, while keeping the same feeling. It isn't a Lovecraft book, but the game Bloodborne seems to perfectly encapsulate the feeling of unknown abominations, while still allowing you to fight them.

>is it possible for lovecraftian horror to exist in a medieval fantasy setting?

Yes easily. The root of Lovecraftian horror is confronting the vast and uncaring nature of the universe, as embodied in ancient alien intelligences which are largely indifferent to human life. Dragons, particularly intelligent ones, could be done as Lovecraftian monsters. Just portray them as wholly indifferent to human life, not even wanting us as food. An ancient dragon could wipeout a city by accident, because he wanted the local volcano to erupt.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say you haven't read much Robert E. Howard.

>Pop culture sort of had a look at Lovecraft and decided to keep the aesthetics and forget the themes
honestly that was the right move to make for the most part, especially as not many modern writers can use those themes well, as most people these days have a mindset different enough from Lovecraft's that they can't really convey his kind of horror properly

Lovecraft actually had dozens of friends and acquaintances, although Howard was definitely one of his dearest

sometimes I like to think of a world where Howard didn't kill himself, or one where William Hope Hodgson didn't die in WW1

Bloodborne's probably the best example of Lovecraftian themes in a fantasy context that I can think of, even if it's more modern than what OP stipulated

I'm guessing somewhere between early Renaissance and the 30 Years War

have a similar map, although this one isn't a pure copy of Lovecraft's version

In its themes it's basically a lost Lovecraft book. I think it gets what Lovecraft was trying to say a lot better than the bulk of modern fiction based on his works, especially the DLC. It took a Jap to faithfully represent a quintessentially American author in videogames.

>Just put elves and dwarves there.

Or you could try not being a lazy fucking hack for once.

Hey, people asked for classical fantasy. I assume that this involves elves and dwarves. I agree that they're absolutely unnecessary for a Lovecraftian setting, especially since Lovecraft created a whole bunch of his own original races, not all of which are almighty cosmic abominations. Men of Leng and Thuum'ha are not that different from lizardfolk and satyrs.