How would you depict a character who has glimpsed the beyond and learned a fragment of the eltritch truth of the cosmos...

I actually have to agree with this.
Make them withdrawn, rather than agitated. For inspiration, you can take a glance at Borges, namely his stories "The Immortals", "Zahir", "Aleph" and arguably the "Garden of Forking Paths". All deal with people confronting with reality beyond normal comprehension (each in a somewhat different way). He often focuses on the subject of those who face the reality "beyond" or from a different perspective will likely start losing actual interest and investment in the narrow view that we call "reality", becoming more of a recluse: perhaps sad, melancholic, but gradually more disinterested and detached. They may not be exactly willing to share their discovery, most likely knowing that it's both impossible to communicate anyway, and also probably not going to even have any effect in the grand scheme of things, because no matter what you would want to do in the small, laughably insignificant portion of world we call real, it would be meaningless in the grand scheme of thing.

Make them have habits in keeping with their knowledge. They look up at the sky every night and they either have a look of comfort or paranoia because they are aware of something going but then they realize they can't explain it because it's such a long con it wouldn't have immediate relavence

It depends on the cultural setting. Lovecraft had a kind of "white man's burden" worldview, and the notion of a chaotic and uncaring eternal cosmos is horrifying to someone vested in western notions of 'culture'.

Whereas someone with a comparatively more counter cultural worldview might find the truth of a vast and unknowable universe to be liberating because they might be more inclined to cope in such a situation. Nothing is absolute, everything is permitted.

Completly Dada

That's just the Joker.

Honestly, there is a bit from The Name of the Wind that is probably the best way to go about it.

Loosely paraphrased:

"God, I never have any idea how much to tell you people. If you believe me you will be so panicked out of your mind you will be next to useless, and if you don't believe me you won't listen. Just... just stay on this side of the fire, and if you see anything that looks horrifying try not to die."

Basically someone who knows that what he is saying sounds crazy, and has just sort of become really exasperated by the whole thing. He has shit to do, and it would be much less complicated if he was doing this alone, but now you're here so please just do as he says and try not to think about it.

A manic depressive alcoholic with PTSD, who kinda fucks around looking for fun.

He saw the infinite cosmos learned that humans are insignificant, after he just stops trying to find meaning & just wants to drink, & do drugs & have sex to fill his head with something other than the bleak truth. If he stops for too long or has to deal with mundane problems he becomes morose & listless & suicidal

>Dead eyes
>Serene fearlessness that's hard to distinguish from enlightenment
>Not stark raving, only the odd bout of lunatic laughter
>Dismisses your questions with "if only you knew" or similar vaguely cryptic bullshit

Lovecraft's writing is full of those, The Shadow out of Time has the best example. Basically, they don't change very much and their minds aren't really damaged by what they've seen. They're only put in a padded cell if they keep publicly insisting that what they've seen is true.

I can think of two other ways:
Like The Question: always paranoid and looking for further hidden connections. His way of thinking seems mad those who first meet him but when his bizzare logic turns out to hold water, it becomes clear that it is real.
Or, like Dyus, from Oblivion. He knows things that he shouldn't with pristine clarity and no acute negative effects, but the implications of that knowledge are so far beyond him that he finds it hard to care, about that or anything else

Honestly, pic related.

I know /tg hates this but...

...

...

Make him somewhat supernatural himself, an individual who stopped fully existing in just one world and seems like a disembodied voice, the figment of others madness who no one can be sure is truly real.

Nihilistic hedonist is almost never done in a compelling way.

He totally took it up the butt from Azathoth after his first portal.

He wants it back and won't stand your bullshit turn-all-humans-into-apes masterplans

I disagree.

...

Pre-movie reboot, late run Dr. Strange. He's detached, sullen, one step from total disassociation. He looks at you, but he doesn't really see you.

If it wasn't for the fact that he still carries on, you would think he's given up. But you have to ask yourself: does he still fight because cares, or because of wrote habit now?

Rote.
The word you're looking for is "rote"
The first hint should've been that "wrote" (the past tense of write) makes no fucking sense in that context.
If you need a good dictionary in your life just use onelook.com

Autocorrect on a new phone. It's yet to learn my writing habits. It's even worse when I try typing anything other than English

Distant, antisocial, cordial but doesn't really seem to care about anyone. No one and nothing is real to him. You're all puppets dancing in front of cardboard sets, and now he's seen the ones pulling the strings. Maybe you go full Dr. Manhatten and make him a fatalist nihilist because he knows that he's not really in control of anything, that choice and freewill are illusions,and everyone and everything only exist at the whim of beings beyond his comprehension

Those beings are of course your playgroup, and you specifically

Don't be that guy.

They're filled with determination, because they KNOW the truth. Their actions might not make sense, you don't know what they know, but to them it's completely self-explanatory.

Or they're absentminded, their concentration drawn elsewhere, to something you can't see.

This is really interesting to me.
I've been looking for a way to integrate an insanity-mechanic into my setting, which will be sort of an unavoidable side-effect of leveling in magic-using classes, to some extent.
The idea is that madness / disassociation from reality is intimately tied to mighty sorcery, because reality LITERALLY IS malleable and not entirely set in stone, for you. You can change it entirely by yelling and waving your hands.
However, I am a little stumped on fun mechanics for it, that aren't just annoying and takes away from player agency.
It's no fun to have the GM announce "Jim's Char does this because he's having a panic attack" or something. That's just shitty GM'ing.

So - on the topic of madness / disassociation as a mechanic for players, what might be fun?
All advice welcome.

He finds things funny that other people don't, and sees things in an entirely different context than everyone else. He's probably difficult if not impossible to become genuine friends with, because he's played this game before and knows how these things always turn out.

I'd personally try to stay away from fourth wall breaking, if only because that's been done a lot in various video games lately and is very easy to do poorly.

at least he's trying, dickhole

Have his insanity tied into altered perception. He sees monsters the others don't see (which also act on the world). He sees paths where other do not (and may pass through). Higher insanity means more often and more kinds of things.
The Twist:
These things are actually not there. If the wizard wasn't present the things he sees wouldn't exist. But he imagines them, and subconsciously makes them real.
It may be good for the party (suddenly a new path where originally there wasn't one).
It may be bad (there now is an additional monster that only the wizard can see, but which can kill all of them)

If you system has the equivalent of a wisdom modifier, how about making wisdom checks / will checks?
Make the DC relative to progression - It gets higher and higher as a magic user progresses and applies to more and more mundane tasks.
To leave control in the hands of the player agree on it in advance, and have perhaps two tables of random results they have to roll from, one for mild and one for severe (like warp related effects in warhammer). Fill them up quite nicely, let the player roll, and if they "fail" they get to RP it out

>Being negative against base Gropey
Nigger, now you've done it.

Oh and forgot: Don't tell them the twist.
Make them think that these things either were there and the wizard found them, or that they weren't there and they had no wizard to check.
Maybe also give the wizard players their info in secret.

They repress it. Their laugh sounds hollow sometimes, and they can stare at the void for hours on ends if they think nobody is watching.
Some day, they might very randomly do something extreme and completely out of human bounds (like murder) to prove a point to themself, and sadly argue to the people arresting them that it doesn't matter any more than a rock falling or a star dying.

It depends on the nature of the revelation. If it's one of insignificance without immediate threat then:
Has it right.

If it's one of immediate personal threat then :

Is right on.

Another interesting one might be something like "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" where a bunch of kids get hold of an educational playset from higher dimensional beings. They just get weird.

This character has had their eyes opened to something, and now can perceive more than they want to. As a result they can do things that others can't. Sudden insights into people's past or future, the ability to look through containers, or move briefly through the 4th dimension. It obviously can't be game breaking, and he or she won't want to do it, because it means opening their eyes back up to this elder world, and maybe catching the attention of whatever lives there.

The last time I played a character like this the guy was a complete hedonist. He'd seen what lies beyond, he knew it was bayond mortal understanding and trying to tell people was a waste of time, so he devoted his every waking moment to getting the most out of every moment he had on the mortal plain.

Alternatively, pic related would work too.

Or overdo it. That shit can break you down completely.

Just have them act slightly off. Nervous jitters, head on a swivel, biting nails. Muttering to themselves, but only when they think nobody is looking. Avoiding social interaction, generally acting like they just don't have time for the real world because they're too preoccupied being terrified about the shit that's outside that.

Cynical 15 year old boy that has knowledge comparable to a man in his golden years.

...

Make them have a really really weird diet, or maybe wear 90's 3-D glasses, something that shows his altered altered perceptions. 3D glasses because now he sees all 12 colors & it hurts or eats mostly spam & relish because only thick meats & Britney foods taste close to normal but sugars & grain taste like the rippling nightmare or the unwashed sea.

The Truth is an eldritch horror, father sees humans as ants. Yep this checks out. Now I want to see Brotherhood with a more Lovecraftian vibe

Most Rick and Morty hate is directed at the people who see Rick as some kind of badass role model instead of what the post you replied to describes. Or directed at the memers, which is basically the same thing.

>15 year old
>boy

Bazinga.

Somebody who had seen glimpses of the Truth and wish for more even at the cost of his own mind or body. Somebody that wishes to use his newfound knowledge to go beyond his simple human shell. Somebody that don't care anymore about rules written by men. Who could kill, rape, destroy, torture if it helps in his research for godhood. Somebody determined to join Them

Villages full of fish-man hybrids are going to be horrifying regardless of how much post-modernist bullshit you've swallowed.

ADA
MANTIA

What sort of culture are you picturing, where nothing is beyond it?

Also, didn't Lovecraft also have stories starring hillbillies and shit dabbling with the elder gods? How does that sit with "darkies are the weird ones making deals with the devil"?

It not because it challenges "white" culture. It's because humans aren't even lice on the back of a dog when compared to the vast entities that exist in the cosmos. It's about ultimate futility of all of mankind's creation, morals, or existence. To know that you can also never ever elevate yourself to their level. The best you can do it glimpse their larger world. Think of how an eyelash mite might view a concrete lot. It only knows that it exists, not it's construction or its use. That is humankind in Lovecraft's work. To think that even a LGBTBBQ would find that liberating is asinine. You can't cope with being so far under the pecking order of the universe that the "Patriarchy" isn't even a footnote.
There isn't enough hair dye in the world to dye your hair purple, pink & blue enough to stand out. No amount of body mutilation will metamorphosis you into being close to them. You are nothing, & exist as fancies within the fraction of an eyeblink of beings that exist that are far above you & that pray to a God hoping it doesn't wake up & end the dream that is our existence

>Not AMARANTH
GHARTOK AE ALTADOON!
HERMA MORA AE ALTADOON!

I once had a baker who saw behind the curtain as an npc. Wrote him with weird tendencies, like how he tried getting customers to eat marionberry goods for a mandoran would think it tastes like chalk. Or mistook a woman screaming about a messed up cake order for a wraith. Locked her in the freezer since in the setting a lot of things hate the cold. In his mind all the things he did were rational thought and he performed them with a demeanor like it was just another thing to do during his work day.
Had fun with it.
Got more stories of Dan the Baker man

Well I mean it kind of is. Not so much "white" culture but judeochristian culture, which explicitly is based on the ideas of human importance in the grand scheme of things and of a caring, loving god, neither of which really works with lovecraftian nihilistic cosmism. Just the concept of the actual scope and scale of the universe would have unsettled lovecraft and basically anyone else who bought into those ideas, maybe even more so than the mythos being real because at least it's *something*. There are some kind of forces out there manipulating things, even if they're horrible or malevolent. The idea of literally no one at the helm and the universe being coldly mechanistic would probably be much more disturbing

>Not knowing more about Christianity than just Catholic or modern Protestant views

Christian Gnosticism talks about how everything we know as a nightmare bubble ruled over by a flawed, ignorant, tyrant god. They just believed that if we could free ourselves of that we might be embraced by the true & caring God.
This is basically the same as Lovecraft except that Christian Gnostics believe of a better God outside the Dream, which is a spiritual prison we cannot escape without great faith & hardship

I'm aware of gnosticism and other esoteric branches of Christianity. They're far from mainstream. Majority christian groups, and most minority ones, function under the belief of a world created and run by a caring and loving god, and in a chain of being where humans are very much near the top, in some cases second only to God himself

I actually like doing that for characters who have dealt with that shit they become sad clowns or stepford smilers to not let on they know things that are that horrible

I want to touch Grant Morrison's butt. For magic, of course. And also lick his brain. Bet its just chock fulla the Best Drugs.

fnord

He lives an entirely normal and unimportant life up until the age of thirty, at which point he leaves his old life behind and starts wandering from village to village telling people not to be dicks to each other. More importantly, he stops giving two shits about what anyone else thinks and will call out bullshit wherever he sees it.

youtube.com/watch?v=gxM79UNvKqc
youtube.com/watch?v=3D7bsf5toMw

I'll admit I have favoritism for watchmen stuff, but what if they saw beyond our perspective, but didn't see chaos, but saw the exact opposite.

Shifts in personality, greater insight causing strange albeit logical decisions, coping mechanisms, total acceptance, or really anything.
>Upon witnessing the visage of an untouchable god, something so far removed from your concept of life and seemingly impossible to kill that you feel weak, powerless, angry, so angry you want to kill someone, prove that in this meaningless life of yours that there is still something weaker than you. Kill everything until you and whatever it is are all that's left, become the second strongest thing, nothing else matters.
>The very knowledge itself was awful, something burning so brightly in your lizard brain that it brings about it migraines to recall it. You never knew what tinnitus felt like before this, but now you know it to be a defense mechanism, at least for you, drowning out everything with static. It even drowns out the things you don't want to see, the sky is fuzzy, the old ladies face is fuzzy, the things that follow the school kids every morning is fuzzy, your hands are fuzzy. You were speaking to a friend and found him clutching bleeding ears, your bad, you must've told him. It's getting harder not to tell everyone your secret, it hurts so much to keep it to yourself.
Insanity can be as insidious as you want it, perhaps the breaking of the mind changes a person for the better; turn a sinful man virtuous, a coward brave, or give the mute a voice. A secret, a revelation so alien that it changes the very nature of the form to fit its awful truths. Eyes sprout from your organs to keep watch for the worms, your heart grows teeth to eat all the things that make it weak, your eyes melt away to better perceive the auras of unseen things.

It may not be exactly mainstream but it's always been in the background.
It features in the background of many religions

Which runs of Doom Patrol was that from?
That kinda things seems right up my alley and I've not read as much of that comic as I've wanted.

Come up with a big, involved eldritch truth of the cosmos.

Figure out which snippet of it the guy knows. Make it big enough to totally rock any normal person's worldview, but not enough to come close to putting together the whole truth.

Reveal none of the truth to the players, only what comes out in this character's acting (rationally, given the totally whack insights he's got) on the fragments he knows.

In other words, run him as a perfectly sane guy acting rationally on an utterly outrageous premise, and make that outrageous premise something that fits coherently into some bigger picture that nobody else knows about.

Bonus points if the "eldritch truth" has something to do with the fourth wall, but the guy doesn't know enough of it (or doesn't know how to express it well enough) to make it particularly obvious that's the case.

That's just being a Buddhist.

...

>knows doom patrol
>doesn't know the single most popular run
Someone replied with the author. Look upthread.

Teehee Macaroni

Break the fourth wall, just once or twice, not too grandiose or relevant to the plot.
I.E. the character knows he's in an rpg, or knows about certain inventions he's trying poorly to emulate.

What you see as judeochristian culture is far from it.

Do you know the character Lunna Lovegood from Harry Potter? Just like her which is to say perfectly normal minus their noticing/mentioning of things other people can not see (seemingly magically animated carriage is actually pulled by skeletal horses) and partaking in odd but otherwise innocent personal rituals (wearing "festive" hats they claim are appropriate for the event at hand).

Tie the previous stuff into whatever truth your PC gained and you are good to go OP.

I'd like to see this happen one day.

Thank you user, you've given me a new favourite thing.

Now I'm just wish I knew how to properly get into capeshit in the first place

Michael Moorcock already did that.

Just steal the character of the Ancestor from Darkest Dungeon.

Yes, boy. Anything under 20 is a child.

This sounds amazing, actually.

>Oh? Is...is that the big secret? Really?
>Oh no, it's fine
>I just expected... more...
>sigh

The Occultist is literally perfect for this. An intelligent, inquisitive mind that has dipped into the tenuous folds separating humanity from... them... and emerged with a darker, bleaker understanding of the universe - one that no longer fazes him, but perturbs and unsettled those around him. Nonsensical, outlandish chants and rituals channeled through his dark fetishes bring him closer to the precarious edge of that gaping void, staring into the black unknowing with newfound senses.

Depends heavily on what that truth is and what the character's outlook and motivations are. A modern scientist finding out that he is a tiny speck in an uncaring universe with fantastically powerful things moving around him would probably shrug. Thats basically the current state of cosmology, just replace Cthulhu with a gamma ray burst or false vacuum.

He said almost.

I might sound weird here, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who ever had that happen.
Have you experienced this sudden fleeting moment of clarity? Not an actual epiphany, mind you - you don't really discover or realize something. Just going absent-minded for a while, letting the thoughts drift away... And then snapping back into reality after a moment that feels like eternity. For a few short moments you just sit, staring into nothingness, feeling like your subconsciousness discovered The Answer, but never shared it with your consciousness. And then it just fades away.

I would play a character like that. His subconsciousness, being filled with eldritch energies and forbidden lore, worked as an electric fuse - figuratively burning out, losing the contact with the Truth, and only sending a useless cryptic metaphor to his consciousness. The character looks for a new bit of that Truth - but deep down he knows that his inner self will not be able to connect to it again anymore, and the only option he's really left with is unraveling that metaphor.

Found a quote that sums up the experience better then the vague shit I wrote:

> "I remember once sitting on a sofa smoking and looking at an ashtray. It was an ordinary copper ash-tray. Suddenly I felt that I was beginning to understand what the ash-tray was, and at the same time, with a certain wonder and almost with fear, I felt that I had never understood it before and that we do not understand the simplest things around us.
>The ash-tray roused a whirlwind of thoughts and images. It contained such an infinite number of facts, of events; it was linked with such an immense number of things. First of all, with everything connected with smoking and tobacco. This at once roused thousands of images, pictures, memories. Then the ash-tray itself. How had it come into being? All the materials of which it could have been made? Copper, in this case—what was copper? How had people discovered it for the first time? How had they learned to make use of it? How and where was the copper obtained from which this ash-tray was made? Through what kind of treatment had it passed, how had it been transported from place to place, how many people had worked on it or in connection with it? How had the copper been transformed into an ash-tray? These and other questions about the history of the ash-tray up to the day when it had appeared on my table.

>I remember writing a few words on a piece of paper in order to retain something of these thoughts on the following day. And next day I read:

>" A man can go mad from one ash-tray"

>The meaning of all that I felt was that in one ash-tray it was possible to know all. By invisible threads the ash-tray was connected with everything in the world, not only with the present, but with all the past and with all the future. To know an ashtray meant to know all."

He thinks he understands what he saw perfectly and acts smug about it but he actually just arrives to a lot of hasty and poorly constructed conclusions.

A lot of these suggests are strong, but we've seen a lot of them before. The complete hedonist, the guy laughing in the dark, and the depressed nihilist, all these guys can make for compelling stuff, but they're just reacting to the knowledge they've gained without actually "acting" on it.

I'd like to suggest a few more active guys. What about the person who becomes so horrified that they are meaningless to the Forces Beyond Them that they dedicate themselves to trying to get their attentions? To prove that if they can at least get one of them to look at him, to recognize he exists, he will mean something? You can get a compelling cultist right there.

Or why not have them be driven to fury? How DARE he be irrelevant in the grand scheme. If he he nothing, than he will at least hurt the scheme however he can. An ant might not be anything compared to a human, but get enough of them together and swarm them well enough, and that human will die. Do the same to an Elder God. Sure, that is only one, and mankind will be crushed by the countless others, but in that person's mind that might be worth it.

So like a typical STEMfag?

>It’s not a gun
It has a protrusion, short enough to be gripped with one hand, wide enough that you could use two if you wanted
>It’s not a gun
There’s a long tube sticking from the protrusion, though only one hole is open at the far end. You get the feeling that you should avoid looking into it.
>It’s not a gun
Between the protrusion and the tube, is a cylinder with six evenly spaced ridges. With a finger you can spin the cylinder with ease, but always one ridge sits within the tube.
>It’s not a gun
Above the protrusion, behind the cylinder, is a claw. It is small and if you were to hold the protrusion, you could place your thumb easily on the claw.
>It’s not a gun
You pull down on the claw with your thumb. It sets into the object with a audible click.
>It’s not a gun

bump

First of all, have him experience that one thing people sometimes experience. The lasting worldview that comes from when you stop competing and look past your own skin. I can't describe it very well, but it happens.

Well, it really depends on what the "Eldritch Truth" is. Bloodborne had it as a grasping of the "true nature" of the universe, as an understanding of how the universe fundamentally operates, any who partially grasp it become violent and magical, those who fully grasp it ascend beyond humanity. It's knowlege literally changing who you are physically too, but you don't have to run it that way.
In lovecraft, the "Eldritch truth" would more just be the fact that there is no god and the universe on the whole couldn't give two shits about humanity. Understanding this makes some hedonistic, some depressed nihilists, and some violent, and you could run all three as interesting characters by having them spout some pseudo-philosophy about how if god doesn't care about us X is justifiable. Hell, by this logic you could have charitable, kind humanists who have embraced there is no "divinity" in the universe and have decided to focus on helping people out individually, absurdism really.

"Muh unknowbable unfathomables" is boring, if you want to know how the true nature of the universe affects your characters you'll have to know the true nature of this universe yourself.

>Is it a gun?
The protrusion almost seems like it could be gripped, but it squirms underneath your hand as you grip it.
>It might be a gun?
You look down the tube, but there's nothing there, and now you have a headache.
>I guess it could be a gun.......
Absentmindedly, you flick the cylinder, but while it spins in place, you you see seeyouself
>I thought it might be a gun but I don't
Thethethe the claw notaclaw my thumb whatisathumb itsets so easy mythumb?
>click

Take the science route.
He's seen something he doesn't understand, something no one else can understand either.
But he wants to know more.
Why? When? By whose will?
He's going to find the answers to everything.
And death isn't an option.