"I want to remove the horror from Lovecraftian Horror...

> It is like saying "what if I did Tolkien style fantasy without elves, dwarves, orcs, or hobbits?"
This actually wouldn't be so hard. Dwarves don't really matter to the setting's greater themes (which was represented by them being Aule's creation rather than Iluvatar's), the function of elves can easily be filled by some sort of celestial beings or just a different flavor of humans that is closer to the gods since they have few things in common with D&D elves, orcs were just a shorthand/caricature for foreign invaders and modernity, and hobbits were tacked into the setting for the sake of Tolkien's children.

What you'd really need would be copying the stuff about Fate™ which permeates the whole setting, the contrast of humans vs elves, the nobledark atmosphere, make it really low-magic and have the world be intrinsically doomed on a spiritual level. Some analogue to Valinor would go a long way towards making it recognizable as a Tolkien homage but it could be too in the nose

It's simple. Cosmic horror and gothic horror aren't exactly the same. The vastness of the universe compared to the human experience is instrumental to the first and not the second; therefore. Removing that element from cosmic horror results in a shallow and superficial imitation that has no understanding of the things it's mocking; this is not true of gothic horror, because they aren't exactly the same.

What exactly is left of cosmic horror if you take out the "HUMAN MINDS CANNOT COMPREHEND! WE ARE BUT PAWNS, IF THAT, TO FORCES TOO GREAT TO REASON WITH OR EVEN COWER FROM!"? It'd just be Men In Black. Which is a cool thing and viable and all but it's so distinct as to be an entirely separate thing. It's like a hamburger without the bun or the lettuce or the tomato: i.e. Meatloaf.

There is no "medieval" horror.

There is gothic horror alright, and it's not really compatible with HPL's shit (execpt with his necrophile stories, to an extent).

Was that really that fucking hard?

>The whole point of lovecraft is the horror if you take that away it is no longer lovecraftain
My main point being, why do people treat this as if it's a problem? Yes, it's different, but that doesn't mean that it's automatically bad/inferior

What I was trying to convey was, the idea of undead hidden in crypts and witches hiding in the woods used to be something fundamentally horrifying and villainous. And yet, modern fantasy is often okay with these things now, treating them as heroic or antagonistic without issue.

And yet people don't make nearly as big of a fuss about other kinds of horror genres losing their horror.

Interesting antagonists/lifeforms from four-dimentional universes, arcane science that humans are only barely beginning to understand, and squid-faced godlike being sleeping beneath the ocean.
So basically the exact same thing as regular Lovecraftian horror, only you can look the the shoggoth without becoming a dribbling lunatic, you'll be able to understand the arcane science one day, and the squid-faced godlike being dies if he's hit with a sufficiently large nuke and/or antimatter bomb.

So kind of like early 20th century Men In Black? (BPRD?)

>Interesting antagonists/lifeforms from four-dimentional universes, arcane science that humans are only barely beginning to understand, and squid-faced godlike being sleeping beneath the ocean.
>So basically the exact same thing as regular Lovecraftian horror, only you can look the the shoggoth without becoming a dribbling lunatic, you'll be able to understand the arcane science one day, and the squid-faced godlike being dies if he's hit with a sufficiently large nuke and/or antimatter bomb.

Then it's just science fiction. It's the Lovecraft label that's weird because it refers to a very specific thing. Gothic is by no means as strict a label as Lovecraftian. If you're setting has eldritch alien forces and crazy 4th dimensional super science with not a single shred of horror, and you're calling it Lovecraftian, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, what's the point if you're being dishonest about the genre. To people, it would come off as a cheap attention grab.

>not skrd of nothing
>i dynamite cthulhu

This basically sounds like every CoC game I've ever seen, played in, or heard of. You can, people play that way most of the time as far as I can tell. Most people want to pretend to be super heroes who save the day, not regular folks who lose their minds and can't do anything because they're totally insignificant. They get enough of that in real life.

Main problem people probably have with your approach at that point is calling it lovecraftian, or calling it horror. Its not really those things anymore and nerds get persnickity about categories. Its more Better Monster Fighting Through Modernity.

Peasy to do. Just don't use the sanity rules.

If you want to quite literally argue semantics, then fine, you can call it "Arkham" or "Eldritch" instead of "Lovecraftian." Eldritch Fantasy, or maybe Eldritch Sci-Fi

>with not a single shred of horror
Not so. Just because something isn't a Horror doesn't mean that it's completely devoid of all horror. It just means that horror isn't the central theme.

There's no point in going half-way, though. If we're gonna pretend that it's Lovecraftian Horror when it isn't, why not explore this new and cool permutation of a genre? Why not take Delta Green to its logical conclusion and let us actually win against the Ineffable instead of just fight against it?
Why is there so much pushback?

Usually CoC games turn out like that with sanity rules too.

Because once you take out the Horror, it's just monsters from another dimension. That's all over the place without any need to call it Lovecraft.

>That's all over the place
Fucking where, does it have supernatural elements, and does it have a century of mythos to pull from?

No one is saying you can't play that game. Not even a bit. But no one is going to call that game lovecraftian because it ignores the entire thematic orientation. Its basically hfy-scifi at that point. Going all the way in this case is going into a different thing. Like, do it, kill the big squidman. But its not lovecraftian anymore, its just a big squidman.

War of the Worlds, Apokalips, Annihilus and the Negative Dimension, Men In Blak, Conan the Barbarian, countless others. When you remove the horror, you've just got a basic pulp setup. It's literally what sets Lovecraft apart, while things like gothic fantasy still have recognizable elements to pull outside of the tone.

It's hardly semantics when you've stripped away the core concepts and are left with an entirely different genre. I really don't understand what you're trying to argue for here. In fact, I feel like this idea of yours would end up as nothing more than Lovecraft references for the sake of it.

>I really don't understand what you're trying to argue for here
Sorry, that's probably my fault. Allow me to clarify.

As I see it, Lovecraft's stories had two related, key points that made his fiction distinct.
>the universe is filled to the brim with powerful, alien, supernatural beings. They are either malicious towards humans and their rational societies, or are so advanced/ineffable that they simply don't give a shit; we are like ants to them.
>there is nothing humans can do about these powerful, alien, supernatural beings. Their forms cannot be dissected, their science cannot be reverse-engineered, and their logic cannot be deduced. Most of all, we cannot fight back against them, and its only a matter of time before they completely destroy are world, one way or another.

Basically, I accept the first statement and reject the second statement. I want to do to Lovecraft what WoD did to Bram Stoker.

Or more specifically (the reason I started this thread), every time I've tried to do this, I've gotten flak from people. People who are perfectly okay with other horror being adapted into fantasy, but get their nickers in a twist at the thought of the same happening to Lovecraft.

You're being clear. We're being clear. The two listed related key points are indeed related key points. You can't remove one without irrevocably altering the other. Its the same with gothic horror and fantasy rpgs. Ravenloft was never scary, it was about trying to kill the drakula. WoD was rarely about moody goth subcultures having poetry slams to decide the fate of mortals, people ended up playing it as superheroes.

You basically think you can alter the content without altering the form. You can't. You're actually saying that you want to make a four sided triangle and people are saying that's a square. Squares are cool too. They're just not triangles.

You basically want Pacific Rim the game. Sounds fun, punching big weird monsters. There's a fate splat for it, and CP's mecha has a thing for it too.

That's because if you just do the first part, you're just writing a Conan the Barbarian or Superman story and calling it Lovecraft. Hell, even stuff like Diebuster does it. The problem isn't that adapting Lovecraft to other genres doesn't work, it's that the stuff already exists without the Lovecraft name. If you strip that second part out, you're adapting something else.

>Basically, I accept the first statement and reject the second statement. I want to do to Lovecraft what WoD did to Bram Stoker.
That's basically what Cthulhutech did and that game sucks.

To note, lots of shit does this with lovecraft anyway. Its not like the munchkin expansion or the plush doll have much to do with otherworldly horror and the insignificance of man to unimaginable forces.

Most attempts are lovecraftian writing these days, most videogame design, etc. miss the point and go for body horror fish people and jam some tentacles in there.

Might have something to do with most people not actually reading any of the fiction and just going for the recognizable marketable parts.

You're aware that there's a happy medium, right? Like, shit doesn't have to be either horrors or superheroes. You can have low fantasy or fantasy drama or a whole bunch of other shit besides those two extremes.

Fine, then call it "modern-day Conan" or "MIB/James Bond but with cultists and magic" or "Dark Heresy in M2". I don't give two shits about what name you wanna give it, because either way it'll be CoC with Henderson as the norm and deep intrigue as the memorable exception.

Also what Darkest Dungeon did, and that game kicks ass.

>it was about trying to kill the drakula.
So was Dracula itself.

>Also what Darkest Dungeon did
Doesn't that game end with the ancestor actually being an avatar of the crawling chaos and when you beat him it's implied that the player's victory is ultimately a temporary delay of world's ultimate demise?

>I don't give two shits about what name you wanna give it
Clearly you do, as there's no fight unless you push the name itself.

That's kind of the thing though, utterly incomprehensible horror that shatters your sanity to glimpse doesn't really have a happy medium.

Also weren't you just saying there's not point going half way? You want to deconstruct the lovecraftian themes. Cool, do it. Its fun. Its not lovecraftian anymore though and people will rightly question you if you continue to refer to it as such.

>'Lovecraftian HORROR'
>Remove the horror
That just makes it something else entirely.
Kind of reminds me of Night Before Christmas, with these weird creepy monster things being all friendly and cheery.

Fucking rekt

> I want to remove the horror from Lovecraftian Horror.
So, Alice in Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass?
I fail to see your point.

wew

>hurr durr turn lovecraft into a shoot 'em up

Please drown in a fire.

Thank you.

Yes, but you still kill him with swords, black powder, and dumb luck. The principle is sound.

There are plenty of incomprehensible things that humans have dealt with and eventually understood. Those things being literally everything mankind has ever learned or discovered, from flint tools to atom bombs. None of that shit put people in sanitariums, so I don't see why dissecting shoggoths to make a viral agent capable of killing them is so unique.

And this isn't going half way. This is taking an idea, and moving it to its next logical step forward. Just like how geriatrics in drab robes with pointed hats went from giving poisoned apples to princesses to raiding dungeons and saving the kingdom.

third time's the charm

Then Darkest Dungeon doesn't really fit your description. Delta Green works the same way, the horror can be pushed back, but never truly defeated. We just don't have the tools for the job.

I don't really know how to explain it anymore, the thing you're doing isn't bad, or wrong. Its idea is the incomprehensible things are uncomprehensible. We don't win, or understand or even count. You don't have to play it that way. You can add modernism to all kinds of settings and have fun. Its just not a thing many people would agree to call lovecraftian because it no longer works with the acknowledged premise. If you're worried about pushback its because you're mislabelling a thing.

Within premise = lovecraftian
outside = scifi with mythos aesthetics

You think the OP pic was unintentional?

Darkest Dungeon's still not far enough, yes, but it does go further than Delta Green at least.
Delta Green's pretty solid on the whole "studying/reverse-engineering the spooky shit is a really bad idea." Meanwhile, Darkest Dungeon has the Occultist, Abomination, and Antiquarian.

>Eldrich forces
>Rational thought
Pick one

>Replying to replies to shit bait

And I'm perfectly okay with it "just" being scifi with mythos aesthetics. That sounds like a lot of fun.

But, the whole reason I started the thread was because I'm upset with people who look at that as if you just killed their sacred cow. You know, people like .

Oh. I get it now. You're wondering what is about.

That's some sacred cow shit. People don't like change, you're tampering with nerd things, etc. It probably doesn't trigger people as much if you explain what you're up to from the beginning so you get people who want that kind of game.

Just saw this. Yeah. Sometimes people just want a thing to be upset with I guess.

> You think the OP pic was unintentional?
Well, the only real problem I see with OP post is the phrase "interactiong rationally and effectively".
Remember, traditional logic doesn't really apply in the Wonderland, and Alice is influenced more and more throughout the narrative by the Wonderland's inhabitants.
"One who gazes into the abyss long enough" etc.

This is stupid though. You're saying that having magic in your system means it's a horror system.

Gothic Horror and High Fantasy are entirely different things.

Lovecraftian horror and magic modern, modern horror or whatever are different.

There are very specific key points required to call something Lovecraftian horror. If you take those away, it's not that anymore. Which is fine, just don't call it that.

Yeah, I didn't really make my point clear enough in the OP.

Gothic Horror and High Fantasy are different, and they're treated as different things
Lovecraftian Horror and Mythos Fantasy are different, but the latter is treated as a perversion/inferior-version of the former.
This should not be the case.

>Lovecraftian Horror and Mythos Fantasy are different, but the latter is treated as a perversion/inferior-version of the former.
But they aren't, unless they specifically try to invoke Lovecraft. Nobody shits on Conan the Barbarian for this.

>this should not be the case

Spergs gonna make arbitrary hierarchy based on aesthetic preferences and apply them as if they were truth statements. Don't let it get to you.

No, nobody shits on Conan because it's in a low tech fantastical setting. If someone tried the same shit in a 1920s noir urban sprawl, it'd be called a shit lovecraft adaptation by someone who never read lovecraft.

>>"I want to remove the horror from Lovecraftian Horror. I want a setting where people can interact with eldrich forces rationally and effectively, instead of dying/going insane."
That's called science-fiction.

>where people can interact with eldrich forces rationally and effectively
that's like, definition of missing the point though

Except you've done nothing but delay the inevitable and revealed that you're still cursed, and have accomplished nothing.

>What is At the Mountains of Madness
>What is Shadow out of Time

There's actually a fair number of examples in Lovecraft where human interacts with the Mythos and doesn't go insane. The Elder Things have a surprisingly grounded worldview and the Yithians, while alien, are not wholly unpleasant.

Even the Deep Ones paid humans to willingly mate with them.

The 'problem' with taking the nihilism out of Lovecraft is that the plot stops being Lovecraftian and turns into the average Good vs Evil heroic fantasy story.

A more interesting take would be to make the Horrors, while fundamentally alien, not inherently malevolent.

Just because Cthulhu doesn't see you as sapient doesn't mean he just wants to eat you.

...

>the world is confusing and chaotic
>reason and logic cease to exist
>the gods of this world are beacons of logic and reason
>those maddened by the insanity of the world and made sane again simply in the presence of a god

>all these muppets whose knowledge of Lovecraft is based on second-hand sources or the odd short
C'mon guys.

The beings that are small enough to interact with humans (and are generally fucking nasty) aren't necessarily going to cause you to go insane, nor are they necessarily unkillable at all. The idea of the protagonist going insane is a theme in some of his stories, but it's hardly the main theme at all. It's about the unknown, the grand scale of the cosmos compared to our tiny species, things that existed before we did and will continue doing so after we are gone.

Shit, in At the Mountain of Madness they encounter a Shoggoth. Both survive the encounter and only one of them seems to have PTSD. Again; it's NOT about going insane. It's an aspect of it, often used to stress how absurdly spooky these creatures are, but the sanity meter idea is a clumpsy way of representing it.

Fuckin Johansen was lucid enough to ram that Cthulhu motherfucker with his steamship. Cthulhu, aka (arguably) the prime spookster on Earth. Azathoth and the outer gods are oblivious to our existence anyway; it's not about malevolence with them, it's that they're utterly uncaring.

>Remove horror from fantasy game - get fantasy game
>Remove horror from lovecraftian game - get sci fi game

Not that easy, but close.

If you remove the dark parts from let's say warhammer, you have a humerous fantasy setting, you're not having the real warhammer fantasy picture, but a normal fantasy game.

If you remove the obvious horror/ getting mad by seeing strangeness parts from Cthulhu, you have a world with aliens and much more significant beings than humans.
Problem is human insignificance is a big part of the lovecraft horror.
If you remove that you either have super powered humans (talking big league sci fi) or no/ insignificant elder beings.

Either way you'll have a huge change in setting and that's why autists (tg as a whole) sperg out.

...

>Not "EveryThreadOntg.png"
missed a trick there frindo

>And yet people don't make nearly as big of a fuss about other kinds of horror genres losing their horror.
Such as?

>Autism Speaks: the Thread

Take a look at that thread, someone probably gifted the autist daycare some computers

So you essentially want Men in Black?

Bloodborne manages the combination really well, but mostly by emphasizing the contrast.

I don't know, I liked Cast A Deadly Spell.

Well I find this problem in general rather interesting. On one hand, when you remove core ideas and leave only aesthetic and tropes, your work might end as dying mess, but sometimes sideproduct is better than that main message. Some are horrible as YA dystopias or cogfop, but we also have post-cyberpunk that revived science fiction, and epics of monster hunters born from horror plots.

Because Lovecraftian Horror - Horror = Heroic Fantasy. Howard and Lovecraft wrote in a shared universe; the difference is that in Conan, the unspeakable eldritch abomination is killable. Or consider the Greek mythology, which is hardly Cosmic Horror despite the things the heroes fought definitely being eldritch abominations.

Nothing wrong about Heroic Fantasy, but call it by its name.

I bet OP is the same person who made a thread to complain about Cthulhu plushies.

...

Solid

You can take the horror from Lovecraft too if you like. The result is Fallen London, or maybe Chambers' stuff if you substitute tragedy.

>Darkest Dungeon
>good
It has a nice aesthetic and that's pretty much it.

That... that's not a change. Do you actually read Lovecraft?

That's a dope fucking idea

On point. Love craft is boring as fuck because you just go insane, very uncreative.

Fuck. First post best post.

Why is everyone freaking out at OP, it's not like he's the first to think of that.

>I want to remove the horror from Lovecraftian Horror.
so basically a quarter of lovecraft's canon, in particular the dreamlands stuff?

>The whole point of lovecraft is the horror i
Someone hasn't read Lovecraft.

Er no, he was also a fantasy and sci-fi author.

lovecraft predates the fantasy/sci-fi split. he published in a mag called weird tales. which sums lovecraft up nicely. most bullshit spouted above him is just maymays.

>I want to remove tomatoes from tomato soup
vs
>I want to remove olives from olive pizza

>Nyaruko

>dealt with rationally

user...

I can't. It's just too embarrassing and horrifying. I'd die of shame.

Sure. I would still maintain that he regarded himself as a science fiction author and he did keep up with contemporary scientific research that served as inspiration for his stories.

The Dreamland stories also seems to be pure fantasy.

>that feel when you get so buttmad you prove the OP's point

Removing the horror removes everything that makes it Lovecraftian in the first place. Anything that isn't cosmic horror is by definition not Lovecraftian. It's just somewhat racist Victorian science-fantasy.
Furthermore, altering Lovecraft's actual universe to remove the cosmic horror would mean making all of the gods and great beings into, well, no longer those things. "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die" would have to be untrue, Cthulhu would have to be some big giant octopus godzilla, instead of an incomprehensibly powerful spirit. Yog-Sothoth would have to be some sort of physical and temporal creature instead of being an infinite deity that exists simultaneously at every point in space and time. And once you've changed everything so that nothing is anything like it is in Lovecraft's canon, then why the fuck are you referencing Lovecraft in the first place? Why not just make up something else?

>bump

>racist victorian Science Fiction.

Sold.

I want smug British sounding Cthulhu who makes snide comments about humans and builds a massive cosmic mansion on the ruins of New York City. And goes swimming on the beach in the stupidest looking one piece swimsuit of the era.