I am of the opinion objectively correct fanatical cultists make the best enemies for almost any horror campaign

Depends on how you are defining "objectively correct"

I have a game in the 1930s where the villains are two gay guys looking to destroy the world because of how shitty they are treated in it

Set it in the 1430s and make the left-handed instead.

>I KNOW TOO MUCH
>AND THE CULT STILL LIVES!

>I have a game in the 1930s where the villains are two gay guys looking to destroy the world because of how shitty they are treated in it
Are they cute? Also how have your players reacted to it?

I’m down with that.

But demons make the best villains.

What if I do them like this?

I'm legit thinking about using Sithrakian cultists but playing them straight. Can it be done without being edgy? Like they know their god is evil and hates them but if they follow him at least he can offer them oblivion before he burns the world/planes.

...

Wait....

Are there female deep ones?

Isn’t having humans become deep ones a good thing?

I think it would work so long as you make the cultists as chipper and kind as they are in the comic.

>religious fanatics are just lol crazy randum
Not true.

IRL fanatics are actually some of the most disturbing people you'll encounter. Especially when they get enough resources/clout to act on their beliefs.

Obviously you have shit like ISIS or al-Qaeda but Jonestown was also really chilling. Writers and GMs should remember cults are scary because of the people, not whatever tentacle monster they worship.

>IRL fanatics are actually some of the most disturbing people you'll encounter. Especially when they get enough resources/clout to act on their beliefs.

I'm not disputing this. I'm disputing that religious fanatics can be sumed up as "lol they're just crazy" or random. It's not even remotely the same behavior

Yeah, my point was I'm agreeing with you. There's way more nuance to fanatics than braindead rantings about the apocalypse.

Just because you are right does not mean you are correct.
Being wrong but is too far invested to stop is better.

But user, they're sane. A cult would think Sithrak DIDN'T hate us all.

What if it was an evil religion of secular humanism?

>I know this is wrong
>I really should put the sacrificial knife down
>Why am I trying to summon Xorkan the Annihilator anyway?
>This has gotten so out of hand
>But then all the other cultists would be let down
>It'd be super akward
>And I'd probably have to move back in with my mom and her boyfriend Steve
>And I'd have to admit he was right about me
>Man, fuck Steve

That's dumb.
Cultists are literally a side effect of other, better, and more interesting enemies.
They can't be the best, or they wouldn't be cultists. A fundamental part of culting is that you are worse than the thing you are cultisting at.

Never got to run it and I had them be ~30

The side effect thing really only applies of you're lazy and use cultists as mooks for some Cthulhu rip-off.

IRL cultists are actually quite scary. More GMs should take inspiration from them.

Not really.
They've got the same tier of fear as, say, rapist hillbillies.
It's only if they have a cataclysm engine or cthulu or big science machine that they become really scary.

Cthulhu or a big science machine make them camp.
Realism is relatable, and relatable can unnerve.

>He doesn't think domestic terrorism, child abuse, and mass suicide are scary

Not every story needs some massive world-ending threat.

Not really, no.
They're both so rare and so over-reported that I have stopped giving a shit almost entirely about these issues unless they have some additional teeth put on them.

The scary thing about cultists is that they’re not crazy, they’re normal people like you and me that have been convinced to believe these things.

What makes them objectively correct?

Touché

That's just our society. We're trying to escape that by playing RPGs instead.

Imagine them involving people you care about.

Already done, my family are born believers and I regularly have to pull them out of cons, trust schemes, proto cults, and the like.
It's exhausting. I presented stacks of paper to talk one out of going to an extraordinarily overpriced naturopathic chiropractor (?!?) to no avail until they actually got hurt.

Sounds like your sodomites act exactly like how E. Micheal Jones describes them.

>the portal to the Realm of the Endless Scream is ultimately opened because Ronnie Redrobes has familial issues and folds easy to peer pressure
I like this. I want to make this a whole campaign.

>players are all brothers/sisters in a utopia cult, trying to open a portal to revive a dead god to rule benevolently over the land that they see as rife with corruption and war
>turns out the book was mistranslated/the ritual was poorly read/the dead god was just a really dickish spellsword that was locked in a dimensional prison
>now the cult is scattered, the priest's head is on a pike, and the summoned jerk is on a rampage
>Can your loose group of newly-godless social rejects use dark magic, stealth and subterfuge, and a wide assortment of sharp/blunt objects to sucker-punch a jerk-god from Dimension Dick?
>Or will they (deservedly) succumb to the sea of chaos and terror (that they basically caused)?

Communism.

It's also fun to play as one.

He said that only to mess with our minds. He even hates us psychological.

Important is to humanize your enemies - makes them even more terrifying.

A good villain balances his madness with functionality.

M8, rapist hillbillies are pretty damned terrifying in their own right.

Unless the cultists are worshipping a god. In that way, it means that the cultists are the only enemy the pc had any hope of defeating.

"Last church" tier Imperial Truth.
It's not hard.

Wait, isn't Bullseye black?

So pic related?
Yes, we really do have to sacrifice you to save the world.

Who do you think Bullseye is?

I've always been a fan of the troupe in horror films where the enemies are just regular joes who are secretly responsible for whatever horror thing keeps attacking there town. And as soon as the main characters uncover that the regular joes turn on them.

...

Bump

this

How do I make my campaign's cultists terrifying besides just making them masochistic flagellants or suicidally beserk fanatics?

What campaign setting are you playing? My advise for a greater cult would be that it has connection to the goverment and has corporations under its control.

Rape rituals.
A bonus if it's with children.

Kinda like the pizzagate meme

Simply remember busting into the cultist compound and finding out everyone already drank the Kool-Aid is far more chilling than gibbering madmen and lame tentacle monsters.

I'll give you a quick rundown.

> Dwarves and Elves are not playable, they're borderline extinct, living in hidden isolated communities, long past their glory days.
> Humans are the only playable race, but they're by no means the dominant race, intelligent monsters and beastfolk outnumber mankind and are steadily driving them extinct
> Humanity was the dominant race several centuries ago, but a plague struck, the empire collapsed and intelligent monsters rose to fill the power vacuum.
> Now human society is in the early dark ages, living under feudal warlords or nomad tribes, quality steel is expensive, let alone enchanted weapons and armors, and are the domain of the rich and lucky.
> Magic is almost entirely the domain of spirits and certain monsters, mages bind their souls to part of a spirit in a pact, usually selling their soul after death, or, more rarely, selling the souls of others, and gain power over the domain of the spirit that bound to them.
> The gods of man have been silent since the fall of the empire, but the demon-gods of monsters and beastfolk grow more active by the year.
> Most humans worship their ancestors and pay respects to local spirits, but some still cling to the old gods despite their silence.

The campaign is centered around the land of Borzu, a middling-sized coastal kingdom encompassing a heavily forested region and part of a mountain range. The king has died without announcing an heir, and his three children, a club-footed crippled and bloodthirsty man bent on making a legacy for himself, a good-natured and humble man who doesn't want to rule but feels he must, and a cunning manipulative and ruthless woman bent on gaining power at any cost, are at war over the kingdom.

>cont.

Several human barbarian tribes are raiding and pillaging the kingdom to survive because their homelands have been conquered by monsters, organized hobgoblin legions are invading the southlands, entire warbands of orcish sea raiders are plundering the coasts, and a lich is killing and reanimating entire settlements in a war of extermination towards the former capital.

In the midst of this, a religious cult based around the worship of the old gods is spreading like wildfire. They believe the end-times are upon the world because the old gods have fallen to a slumber after they stopped being worshipped, and that the only way to ensure an afterlife for humanity is to sacrifice as many sapient beings as possible to awaken the old gods.

Any ideas on what I can do with that premise?

That's pretty fucked up, and honestly more inline with the monster demon cults, but I'll keep that in mind.

Right, and that could work pretty well with what I've got in mind.

There's just Best Girl Betel, isn't there? He's amazing, but he's only one baddie

>honestly more inline with the monster demon cults
If you don't think rape rituals are a part of modern, mundane cults then you don't know much about cults. Very rarely is any shit off limits for these creeps.

There's a reason they build their compounds in the middle of nowhere.

If you can fight whatever enemy the cultists worship, it's no longer a horror game.
Cultists are the wires of a time bomb. If the actual explosive gets involved, you're fucking done, so the game is really more about the wires.

It's still a horror game, just with something else.
The cultists are really only a spoor or signpost of the horror.

But then they're not objectively correct cultists.

And?

"The Villain Was Right All Along" is such a boring trope.

Nah, most people are just garbage at writing insane people because they don't understand the thought process.

Petelguese, Regulus, Rei, Roi, Rui, Sirius, and Capella.
Pandora and Subaru might count, too?

They'd only be crazy if they weren't brainwashed zealots, but decided to be fanatical cultists anyway
Choosing to serve a dark, cosmic power because you GENUINELY believe resistance against it would be futile, and instead serving it would put you on the 'right/winning' side of history ISN'T insanity

>That's pretty fucked up, and honestly more inline with the monster demon cults, but I'll keep that in mind.
That's actualy fairly common irl, and I bet that it would become widespread in a near apocalyptical or post apocalyptical setting

Reminds me of this crazy old guy I once talked to when I was serving at a Thanksgiving meal for the homeless/elderly at my church.
He talked to me about these aliens he believed were reading people's minds and influencing the government, stuff like that. The really strange bit is that he seemed entirely lucid besides, and he was seemingly looking to recruit me or something.
Did I just miss a Delta Green plothook or something?

>/pol/ is objectively correct

About what, exactly?

About the nature of God.

Had a game set in 9th century Poland with a group of vikings come to trade, then begged by the locals to protect them from a vicious cult of Chernobog.

The cultist were huge dicks, but the Vikings did sacrifice one of the ones they captured to Odin. It was left ambiguous if there was objective 'right' here as much as two distinct sides with their own opinions and power to enforce their will on others.

Though in my opinion, sacrificing a captured warrior to your war god is like 3 evil points and sacrificing a kidnapped person that hasn't done anything to you is like 20

I kinda have that, with a cult for the god of rebelions. They are fighting for a good cause against a tyrant, thing is that tyrant was put on the throne by the god of rebellion a good 20 years earlier, by rebelling against the republic that was.

So while they are "the good guys" who sacrifice people and incite dark rituals so that they can have luck on their side they are also following a god who is literally just gonna replace them when they move past its interests.

Doesn't help that its the former river god, its mindset is that it takes what it wants and cares little for what moves on.

>autistics make the best enemies for almost any horror campaign
Any campaign really. You can kill them and feel no guilt.

Black people do exist and some blacks are on welfare. One or more Jews have schemed something up, probably for their own greed. And somethimes a white person was smarter than all the nonwhites in the room.

Really its about context.

I think this is a genuinely good motivation for a villain. He wants to be someone in the world, he wants pride and respect. He's not creative, he doesn't really have enough of an interest in the world to learn about it, he doesn't even have real system of beliefs to live up to. He's just some dude.
But unlike all the other some-dudes in the world he has the nerve act even when he knows what he's doing is wrong and probably very stupid.

He's not a psycho or anything, in fact he hates himself for some of the things he does but he just has to keep going. If he stops and admits he's wrong he'll loose everything, everything he is, everything he could be. So he digs himself deeper and deeper. He figures if he digs deep enough a solution might appear, some way to escape or pull out the glorious victory he doesn't really believe is possible. Or even just the start of a redemption story that lets this all end in a way where nobody hates him despite all that he's done.

Until that happens though, he'll just have to steel himself and keep going.

replacement migration exists but its less about white genocide and more about increasing the supply of labor to increase supply and drive down upwards wage pressure that would happen as a result of population dropping in first world nations

>to sucker-punch a jerk-god from Dimension Dick?

I want to play this so much right now.

>They've got the same tier of fear as, say, rapist hillbillies.
motherfucker's never watched Deliverance then. Watch it, then go out in the back woods with the hillbillies and see if you don't shit your pants.

youtube.com/watch?v=pRxUbv90lLI

youtube.com/watch?v=SQQ-Kps9KaQ

I was-specifically talking- about deliverance.

Oh, right, light novel.

>Black people do exist
Was this a debated subject

Black people are obviously a Jewish plot.

>Black people do exist
no shit?

WN. Regulus and Pandora are in a flashback during arc 4, but the LN hasn't gotten to arc 5.

An idea: There is a cult that believes in using beastfolk body parts to augment their human bodies as well as to grant themselves a future.

Explain Japan then. There is absolutely ZERO need to import completely unskilled people in the millions, you do know that these migrants actually detract from the system, they do not add to it, right? They don't work, they take welfare instead, and they are not even qualified for any jobs more complicated than "housemaid" (and I've worked as a cleaner, many africans have trouble even there, I'm not joking).

>they are also following a god who is literally just gonna replace them when they move past its interests.
>A follower gains power and betrays your ideology
>You tell cultists to purge this heretic
>This is somehow a wrong thing for a god to do

Japan’s pension system is going to collapse like Kevin Spacey’s career unless they either figure out how to reproduce again, the Elderly commit mass suicide, or they import fresh young workers to prop up the decrepit hordes.

>Automation

People really, really don't realize how disruptive this will be.

Migration for low skilled workers is over. The global marketplace for cheap labor is dead.

Then they should probably stop spending money funding 3rd world survival, they're breeding too fast and they'll go wherever there is money. Without strict border controls, the western world will be totally swamped, and it's already happening. With family visas and liberal attitudes it'll only get worse.

Oh no kidding it’s going to change a lot, and it’s going to change soon. But it’s not here yet, and I firmly believe the Japanese are so xenophobic they would rather go extinct than let gaijin call themselves Japanese.