What are some interesting alternatives for a horrific cosmology beyond the tired old "Lovecraft Lite...

What are some interesting alternatives for a horrific cosmology beyond the tired old "Lovecraft Lite, alien gods from beyond reality we can't understand" or "Gnosticism lite, god is evil, reality is an illusion, the true universe is a giant machine/city/machine-city" (it's weird how common that last theme is)?

We gain the ability to go everywhere. There is nothing there.

The problem here is that wide ranging concepts cover so much that you can't really pull yourself away from them.

I mean, take the Lovecraft-lite bit you said. You're basically covering "Things beyond our understanding" which is basically half of all possible cosmology, the other half being "Beings far beyond our power don't answer to our moral standards".

The trick isn't to try and break out of those concepts, it's to make them interesting with detail and presentation.

Take Bloodborne, to use a fairly popular example. It's absolutely influenced by Lovecraft, but rather than just going "It's kind of like Lovecraft!" it's presentation slowly builds towards that reveal.

Furthermore, the specifics of the beings themselves, their interactions with humanity, and the results of those interactions are what make the whole thing very interesting, rather than simply being another Lovecraft knockoff.

You'll never win trying to make an interesting setting by trying to be different from the word go. What you need to do is understand what makes those horror elements work, and then adapt them to suit your purposes and to provide actual horror and interest.

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Solipsism

Hmmm, I think not, honestly thats just as far as it gets if you get into metaphysical realm, I mean you can twist and turn them into something more interesting but they are still derivatives I guess

Christian/cynobite hell and almost everybody go there.

Atheist cosmology.

There is no god, nothing has a deeper meaning, and the big bang was a completely random event that could re-occur at any time and erase existence as we know it.

Ultraman.
The only source of actual good is a single source of Light in a single galaxy; all of the rest of thr universe is filled with titanic monsters that wish to consume everything in thier path. Only a single race is capable of fighting them off and they're of a very limited number.

>Ancient Aliens
Do it you fucks. You won’t no balls.

Isn't that basically Lovecraft Lite?

There are no gods at all, just humanity and its endless hungers.

If there are no indifferent powerful monsters capable of snuffing out mankind then no, it's nothing like Lovecraft.

I always liked the idea of the players exploring the galaxy and finding the bones of a dead alien civilization, but those bones are really creepy and weird.

I dunno, there's just something really appealing and mysterious about astronauts entering an ancient alien installation and finding a Giger Wall.

We are alone.
There is nothing out there - we get to space, explore the galaxy, and find we're completely alone, and know that our race is on the clock. There is nothing else - just us.
Optionally, we find something: and it's all long dead. We made it the FURTHEST out of anyone.

Another option: Cyclical nature. It's got Lovecraft influences, but the idea of "It doesn't matter what happens, we're doomed to repeat the past forever, the best we can hope is to extend the time before we restart" is always something that unsettles me on some level.

>no policeman
>no way out
>night never ends

We live in the best possible reality.
Think about it for a moment.

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Blindsight - Sentience is waste of resources and other,alien-civilizations has advanced to post-sentient life. You got their attention and like a insect horde they will destroy you. The only way to survive is to become like them.

reverse Lovecraft.

the universe is normally an inherently good and nice place but something inherent to our consciousness warps and twists the very nature of the world around us and life into nasty, brutish and short existences. we're the lepers and boogiemen or reality

Christian theology, interpreted as uncharitably as possible. There is a judge, there are rules and they are very strictly enforced. Most will endure eternal torment beyond human understanding. A scant, lucky few will get to spend the rest of eternity in constant, ceaseless worship and praise of Him. There are no other options

There was a demiurge here, it's gone now. Everything you can ever perceive has been abandoned as a failure by a creator gone to where you can never follow.

I might as well share my super edgy setting I wrote as a teen fascinated by Lovecraft and get it off my chest.

Great Nothing is limitless potential creeping everywhere beyond the boundaries of existence. It is bound in self-destructive cycle, seeking to return to the state where nothing exists even itself. Only objects capable to manifest within Nothing and not be consumed by it are gods, anything capable to come to existence within Nothing by proxy possess limitless power to change and shape the potential. In the wasteness of Nothing there is incalculable number of gods but separated by infinite void of unfulfilled potential they exist as if alone, drifting in the darkness. The farther you go from one universe the higher the chance you stumble upon another. Beyond them Nothing lives in the state of undeath, it no longer exists where gods manifest, killed by their birth, and within the gaps of potential between them it's still alive. It seeks to destroy them and return to its pristine state.

By chance a new god manifested where ancient god came to be. Confined by the same borders of infinity they are bound to consume each other. They are omnipotent but their wills shape reality through time. Younger god rules over small part of the infinity while the ancient one changes at glacial pace comparing to him. They are connected by the breach which servants of the ancient god sealed. Somewhere in both of them there is a place where the seed of existence manifested and remains and boundary with Nothin is the thinnest. Parts of the ancient god remains in the new universe, his breath, blood and bone caught here when it suddenly appeared. God's breath resonates when shaped by the will and desire and commands the angels as if by god's voice. Young god uses this to draw the power from the old universe and to himself. Over aeons passed in his reality he built ecosystem supporting this cycle with human beings at the top as its primary engine.

Humans weren't the first ones to fill this role. There were precursors built not from flesh who created advanced civilization over countless years. They eventually learned about the state of the world, many of them decided to side with the ancient god and leave for his universe. They used divination and limited contact with the other world to predict coming of angels. With pneumatic thinking machines Precursors planned for exodus and things angels would need in to complete their task in merging the worlds or destroying the new one. This ancient races created humans to replace them as engines of divine energy transfer so the new god won't take action to stop them. They constructed vast storages of materials and ancient machines meant to help residents of the world in their future tasks. Precursors left the world in giant arc and left few of their own willing to stay as Earthbound.

Aeons passed in the new world, mere seconds in the old universe, humans spread over the growing universe. Their wishes and pleads resonating in pneuma summoned the angels who came to restore the order of things. Strange cults formed over wonders left by Precursors
and discovered by humans, one of the most prominent ones is cult of scavengers fascinated by thinking machines run on god's breath capable of predicting future. Servants of the new god and angels fight to harvest divine energy drawn and carried by pneuma for different goals.

This kinda sums it up. Back in the day I wanted to explore the idea of two omnipotent beings competing for survival as animals, honest to god benevolent beings seeking to destroy everything you love while having your best interests in mind (in the end angels don't possess the knowledge how to achieve their monumental goal in merging the world or destroying the new universe completely and create many apocalyptic scenarios to fulfill their task, wiping out humanity many times). It's funny looking back at all that. I said it, now I can get over it.

Alternatively: You were made to pass the butter. Nothing more.

Creating an entire universe to pass a stick of butter seems like an awful lot of work.

>We gain the ability to go everywhere. There is nothing there.
fpbp, especially if you combine it with this . The Big Bang was a one-off random event, never to happen again. Ditto for intelligent/sapient/sentient/whatthefuckever life as it exists on earth. We're completely alone, and will die eventually out unnoticed. I like to call it the 'Boringverse.'

More like finding ancient alien dicks.

>we discover the writings of an ancient alien civilization
>they just depict images of alien genitals
Pottery

>find the ruins of an alien civilization
>find their computers
>turn them on
>realize you're perusing the long-dead archives of SpaceChan

What kind of spicy memes would the Forerunners have shared?

I want to right HFY based on this now.

The Aztecs were right.

regular sacrifices are required to keep the king of the gods Houitizopalcle or whatever his name is ontop of the cycle and prevent Qzetacoatle from taking over and rewriting all of creation in his ideal form?

A cosmology like the Greeks: the gods very much exist, and are very, very much spiteful, pretty dicks who are going to ruin your life. You may or may not realize this

The gods exist and they're just like us

ie. they just wanna put their dick in everything regardless of anything

There was a web series a while back where humanity had, at some point, become biologically immortal and no one knew why. Most of it was about the forms of escapism people used to cope, from the point of view of space probes which had spontaneously become sentient. This was part of the setting - space exploration fizzled out after a few centuries because nothing of interest was found, and people devolved into kind of pretending their lives were still normal while killing time in shit like "football" games which often lasted centuries or millenia

The Three Body Problem

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>Gnosticism lite, god is evil, reality is an illusion, the true universe is a giant machine/city/machine-city" (it's weird how common that last theme is)"

What examples are you thinking of? The Matrix is an obvious one, and in TTRPGs you have Kult (city) and Demon: The Descent (machine), but I am not sure it is quite as common as you are suggesting.

17776

All Tomorrow's is nightmare fuel, read it and see what happens when we find out we are not alone.

I play this as a setting occasionally for supernatural espionage games.
>The Sun is a great authority that judges you with it's beams of light. It demands souls to stay charged and protects our solar system from the Alien.
>The soul is contained in the heart, people with heart problems have compromised spiritual essences and are worthless to any divinity.
>The United Corn Growers of America are in league with cult (Guardians of the Maze) that sacrifices humans in the name of the sun and humanity. Sacrificed humans are devoured by the Sun, normal deaths land people on the moon.
>The Moon is a giant astral city for the dead. It is very crowded. These unquiet dead have built monuments to the Alien, contemplate eternal life-in-death and have traded secrets with the Soviets.
>There is a second sun sleeping beneath the earth, it will awaken when enough blood is spilt in it's name. It's called the Reptile Sun.
>The Sun executes criminals with heatrays, these appear to be spontaneous combustion.
>Vampires are people who have learned to extend their lives by drinking the heart's juices. They count as solar criminals.
>There is a literal black market for alien magic and technology which hides from the sun.
>There is Black Manifold where demons, aliens, wizards and agents of the CIA live. It opens onto the drafty dunes of pluto and abandoned doorways and windows. From it they watch mortals sleep. See pic related.
>There is a Red Manifold with an existential throne where a broken idiot rules as god over the losers of the world
>There is a pyramid of steel and lead buried in a mountain somewhere in Alaska. From it a slavic messiah has started selling superweapons by mail.

A post-physical memetic lifeform propagates itself among the universe living an aspect of life through each individual's thoughts and emotions. Every society has a symbol that somehow traces it's way back to this elusive being and no one really understands how or why every intelligent species shares this common thing among them.

The Invisibles, which is what a good portal of nWoD lore was ripping off.

It's a pretty sweet graphic novel though, all things considered.

*portion, top tier spelling there, me.

I've just woken up, but off the top of my groggy head, you got Kult, Demon: The Descent, Lacuna, In Dark Alleys, and Over the Edge (with its description of the astral plane). Even if it's just 4 or 5 examples it's still a weirdly specific idea to repeat in independent games like this.

I read some of The Invisibles in the past (I maybe should go back and read more, I really liked Flex Mentallo and The Filth). Does a machine sustain the visible universe?

Maybe I am just hesitant to accept the assertion because city and machine are two distinct concepts. Lacuna's mind-city is not really anything like Demon's God-Machine.

What is the astral plane like in Over the Edge?

>What is the astral plane like in Over the Edge?
Technically formless, but IIRC humans tend to "interpret" it via a certain layer of symbolism and it's stated that for most modern day humans, that is "an infinite, huge city."

It's not exactly rocket science, people. It's just imagery stemming back from the 19th century dudes' horror of urbanization and industrialization as these sorts of "cosmic cancers", the city/industry (two closely interlinked concepts) being grimy, smoggy tumors stretching infinitely across the land, vast and incomprehensible, making the individual feel tiny and lost.

Back in the 80's anti-progressivism came in vogue again alongside the enviromentalist movement, it just became natural that for a horror setting you'd want to imply that the big, scary, unknown place outside reality looks like a big city/factory/computer.

Also, while I'm saying that, add JAGS Wonderland to the list (the lowest layer of reality is a universe sized machine called "The Department of Works").

If that's Lovecraft Lite then you can't escape Lovecraft's shadow at all. Lovecraft just gives names and tentacles to our fears of the uncaring universe that we live in, with its myriad of potential extinction level events that were they to happen we'd have no way of meaningfully impacting.

JAGS Wonderland gets extra points for also adhering very closely to the whole "reality is a lie, humanity is imprisoned" formula albeit with a very unusual twist: it's actually an optimistic setting, to the extreme. True: reality as we know it is a sham and the parts underneath it are generally horrible, but the whole deal was not created to *imprison* humanity but to *nurture* it. Reality is a cosmic cradle, and those who made it did so with every intention of mankind eventually figuring it out, breaking through and moving forth to whatever it is that lies beyond. Not only is that possible, but in fact inevitable and predetermined: the reason the powers of Wonderland hate us so bad in the first place is because they can't deny that for all of how boring, stupid and weak they find us, we are the crown jewels of creation, not them, and we are predestined to surpass them in every way.

There exists an incredibly powerful and ancient being but it still doesn't know what's going on in the universe.

I read the whole thing and it had a happy ending. It's only really that bleak during the initial invasion of the Qu, and it's later mentioned the unified galaxies destroy them

This is a basically accurate description of the historical progression; the God-Machine is Blake's "dark satanic mills" writ large.

I was actually just about to mention JAGS Wonderland, so good catch.

Interestingly, while it closely adheres to the quasi-Gnostic idea of the universe, as you point out it does not correspond to the horror of urbanization and industrialization. The Department of Works is not really horrific or evil.

Liu Cixin's "chain os suspicion".

"The universe is full of life. Life in the universe functions on two axioms: 1. Life's goal is to survive, and 2. Resources are finite. Like hunters in a dark forest, life can never be certain of alien life's true intentions. The extreme distance between stars creates an insurmountable "chain of suspicion" where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location, thus solving the Fermi paradox." — from the Wiki page.

The trilogy of books where it is from is called "Remebrance of Earth's Past", and it's quite evocative.

>Lovecraft Lite, alien gods from beyond reality we can't understand
The opposite is just as terrifying. Cosmic gods that know you intimately, can manifest at any moment and accidentally annihilate all life, and will grant untold magical power to the highest bidder? Yeah, that's a nightmare. You don't even have the comfort of believing they don't exist since they're basically public entities like Time Warner or Disney. They're everywhere. Everyone.

It's also terrifying how that's basically real life.

Jesus fucking Christ dude i wasn't ready for anything close to this holy fuck. I can't even describe the despair and hopelessness I got from reading this..... fuck the mantalopes got me in a tinder area I didn't know i had

It gets better once new sentient species start arising. At the end it turns out the whole book was narrated by some sort of alien archaeologist talking about events that happened over a billion years ago

All tomorrows is like, existential horror porn. It's practically /d/'s pocket bible.

If you like humoristic campaigns my group once played one in a setting ruled by a greek-like pantheon (Gods show up as often as they can to fuck things up just because). The twist is that they were all playing fedora-tier atheists that refused to acknowledge the very same gods they see more or less every day.

I don't deserve this existentialism I have to work tomorrow pls gib more like this

>horror cosmology

Total nihilism. Not only is there no meaning but we fail to actually create meaning. Even what we perceive as judgements are not real but illusion and so science, all fields of study, and reason itself are shown to be illusory.

For something more fun, try:

>Dante-esque Heaven/Hell cosmology. We are meant to devote ourselves towards love (willing the good of the other without self-interest) and reject vices that draw us to our own destruction. Heaven is a meditative calm, joining with the creative aspects of the universe in some ethereal landscape with others all in this state, perpetually choosing to act in love. Hell is a city of people fallen to vices and left to their own devices to see it destroy themselves on a tremendous scale, perpetually choosing to not love. Somehow you have immediate interaction with either or both.

>You world is actually a contain biome for the actual world. The biomes exist to protect people from the world outside that is dominated by horrible, horrible things moving in droves.

>The dead are no longer tied to their bodies and each and every single one of them has total control over matter besides a way to influence each other. There may or may not be a means of influencing them when matter. The dead may not be all there too.

>The universe's cosmology is much how we know it today (just roll with whatever) but it's now entirely falling apart and at random without any knowledge of what is causing it. It begins with bits of matter just vanishing and coming back at a larger and larger scale. Suddenly major laws to nature stop applying and abstract concepts begin to disappear.

God exists in the most conventional sense possible, but reality, with us included, is only there to serve as a form of eternal torment for them.

There is Man After Man, but the style is pretty different

Fuck, /thread.

Love it, gonna go write with all this new inspiration maybe it'll be another diamond for my group.
anyone know if starfinder is actually a good sci-fi system?

>God has to create his own hell
>god has to fill it with his demons
>god has to watch as they cling to their estranged father clinging for purpose
>we are what god fears most...

That bear needs a gun.

>Spoiler
No, it's pretty bad. It's a bandaid on the septic wound that is it's parent system, with very little to nothing actually being made fitting for the genre. There are amany better systems for space fantasy

There's only one thing more terrifying than that.
Ants using Veeky Forums.

well shit thats disappointing whats a good one?

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Looks like it's just a cosmology with a demiurge that's forward about being a jerk to you. How would we get involved in this cosmology?

>there's suffering
Not too different from real life
>God exists in the most conventional way possible and maintains the world's goal of being torment
This would be akin to playing a game with the most OP wizard of all time and he's against you.

I mean the thought of the cosmology is fun and potentially startling to think of but I can't see what you gain in the story or gameplay from this.

Also the logic of the comic gives the image that the god is not actually serving a penance but hasn't learned his lesson at all.
If his creation to make things in his own image was expressive of vanity then creating a world for others to suffer in explicitly for his own penance is vanity to a far grander degree.
Perhaps this failure to grasp wrongdoings can add to the cosmology?

That bear is ded.

Depends on what sort of thing you want to go for. Generic systems like Fate, GURPS, or Genesys are always good, Traveller is really fun for somewhat more realistic games, I hear the FFG Star Wars games are fun, and if your group likes D&D Stars Without Number is an OSR Scifi game specifically meant to be compatible with classic DnD.

"REMOVE QU", "I wonder if sentient cockroachesaurs that take our place will get this meme", "this text made by insane combat AI is kinda funny"

>The Department of Works is not really horrific or evil.

It is very much horrific, and more importantly, it is incomprehensible. That it isn’t actually malevolent is just the ending twist (besides, you could say the same about Metropolis from Kult or the Deserted City from In Dark Alleys. Both of those places used to literally be *heaven* before the Demiurg screwed the pooch).

There is the Firmament, where all things are
There is the Abstract, where all things are not
There is the Abyss, where all things cannot be

You live in the Firmament, the plane of reality, beyond the first wall is the Abstract, the collective existence of all things that are thought of but are not real. Then there is the Abyss.

In the Abyss, the only things that exist are the things that cannot exist.

When the first wall breaks, nightmares and dreams come through the other side, though the wall is quick to reform itself.
These things may be harmless or they may be terrible beyond comprehension.

When the second wall breaks however, though it is quick to reform, whatever was there, no longer is. Simply nothing.

>Hating on Lovecraft

More?

>MFW this is the actual truth and as a CIA agent we're going to bring the party van to user's house

It is half in ruins and can be quite dangerous, certainly, but it is not actively antagonistic towards humans the way Metropolis is in Kult.

As far as participating in such a cosmology, it offers *many* ins, dearest tripfag.

*We exist to torment and upset god*. How is that not rife with narrative potential? Our very existence is salt on wounds outside our comprehension. And yet, somehow, they can never eliminate us, being hamstrung somehow. Morally is one way, sure. But to know, that no matter what happens, god will always be upset with us, but no matter how much we offend them, they will never manage to kill us all, is *incredible*.

It's basically a "apocalypses are likely, but every apocalypse is survivable" guarantee. Great for PCs.

Xenogears has a neat take on this: everyone in the world was born, bred, and their development manipulated just to be replacement parts to fix 'god.'

Fuck, I keep forgetting to save that. Thanks!

Obviously you don't believe in the Emperor hard enough.

Now aware of our role within the universe how do we bully God into doing our bidding?

Perhaps not a lot for a god.

Reading comprehension, user. We're better than this.

But what if that god torments us only because we believe that it torments us as a way to please us and strengthen our beliefs because a god is nothing without those who believe in it?

>because a god is nothing without those who believe in it?
What if god really hates tormenting us but knows that if he uses his powers to give us happy and fulfilled lives we will no longer believe in him and thus he ceases to exist, leaving use exposed to the true horrors of the universe and torments far greater than what he inflicts on us?

I'd run that as a setting.
>God has to hurt us because he cares

Dead Space style. We go out and we are utterly alone, though many still believe.

God is real, more of an entity than a force. He strengthens us by making us suffer.
We need to be strong for what's coming, because he can't stop it.

Sounds fantastic, albeit a little too reminiscent of Fallen London, with its Judgements, sunlight-as-law and soul trafficking. Is the resemblance accidental?

Anyway, tell us more about the Reptile Sun, if you don't mind.

>captcha: la fausse happiness
I guess that's existential horror of a sort too.

>He strengthens us by making us suffer

True irl

As far as lovecraft/gnostic-inspired cosmologies go, I liked La-Mulana's.

>A long time ago, a powerful alien being crashed into Earth. She created the first sapient beings, and they called her Mother. Mother hoped her children could bring her back home, but this was not possible. When her creations inevitably failed, she wiped them out, made a new civilization, and fell asleep. Humans are her latest attempt and they don't even know what's going on. The sages who watch over Mother's body worry that she'll wake up, wipe out humanity then die of exhaustion, so they want to put her to rest.

To an extent, I also enjoyed Homestuck's cosmology, with not!Jumanji as a form of cosmic chess, deciding whether a universe will perpetuate itself or die out. Also the occasional reference to Gnosticism. But then it became clear the author had no idea what he was doing and preferred to cash in on the alien soap opera nonsense. I'm probably going to salvage some of the comic's concept for my own setting one of these days.

Still a good read, but I have yet to understand the part about diamagnetic cabbages. Is that actually a thing?

What if he torments us because he knows that if he does not we will become hollow and unfulfilled in a dull utopia without conflict?

>Still a good read, but I have yet to understand the part about diamagnetic cabbages. Is that actually a thing?
Yes, cabbages are diamagnetic, but they're far from the only thing that is.
They could have used pretty much anything that wasn't ferromagnetic or paramagnetic, it's a pretty big list.

From what I understand: The situation: They had to toss something attached to a cable all the way to the back to the cyclotron at the rear of the projectile, but the cable couldn't touch the cyclotron (because the space magic wouldn't work or something).

The suit was paramagnetic, so it would get pulled towards the magnetic fields around the cyclotron. The cabbages inside the suit were diamagnetic, so they would get kicked away. The two cancelling each other out, and thus the cable would be kept on course.

If you like the idea of Starfinder, you might want to take a look at Dungeons the Dragoning.

It was a fun read