D&D 5E Cthulhu'ing up D&D

[hastur_nz]

I've run a few now, and I'd say while obviously they were more like D&D than a Call of Cthulhu game, they were all good, if not great, changes of pace. Adding some form of Madness (as per DMG) can easily be done, but isn't essential.

And Madness Follows, Dungeon #134, was a great 3.5 urban adventure which I used as a side-trek for mid-level PC's.

Last Breaths of Ashenport, Dungeon #152/156?, was a great 4.0 (and 3.5?) adventure set in a place that's definitely inspired by Innsmouth, so could easily be the Purple Rocks. From memory, I ran it under 4.0 rules, again as a bit of a side-trek. I thought it might have been released under 3.5 and 4.0 rules, but I might be getting that confused with another adventure released around the time 4.0 was brand new and Dungeon was newly digital and in the process of converting over from 3.5 to 4.0 adventures...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

A huge part of Lovecraftian flavor is an atmosphere of slowly increasing terror. You can write and run a perfectly Lovecraftian adventure using nothing but goblins, or hell - nothing but humans.

The campaign I run is set in Primeval Thule, which is even designed around Lovecraftian ideas such as hidden cults, lost secrets, and terrors just beyond sight. A party of characters going to to toe with a shoggoth is less Lovecraftian than a group of commoners descending into madness through the manipulations of a charismatic gnome who plans to use their life essences to create healing potions.

It does take a slightly different approach to running the game, and not all groups will dig it. Wolfgang Baur wrote an excellent article in Dragon Magazine back in the day in which he laid out a Lovecraftian horror interpretation of an Al-Qadim campaign, and that article is the foundation of my approach to D&D campaigns. If you can pull a Lovecraftian feel out of a setting based on flying carpets, genies, and high adventure, you can pull it out of anything.

Yeah adding in Lovecraftian elements is different than running a Lovecraftian campaign. But as you say, running that type of game is not for all . My players I know are not at all interested in running a game that has PC along the lines of the typical ineffectual narrator from a typical HPL story going mad and being largely helpless against the dark and terror. Good for a read, but not the ideal game for our group. My players would be more like a group of Titus Crows.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Paizo just wrapped up one of their six-part adventure paths for Pathfinder that was all Lovecraft called Strange Aeons that you could check out for inspiration. Sure, it is for basically 3rd Ed and for a much higher magic world, but it could be useful.

 

[SheWantstheD&D]

You touched on it, OP, that lovecraftian elements are difficult to incorporate in a D&D campaign. Hopelessness and the fear of the unknown are the core tenants of CoC (or at least Lovecraft's body of work) and that doesn't jiibe easily in a game where you're expected to overcome obstacles on a regular basis, rather than simply survive as unscathed as possible. Plus for experienced players there's usually nothing new under the sun so that really strains the fear of the unknown. D&D just isn't geared to have a lot of permanent consequences for what you run into.

That said, it's really irresistible to lean there sometimes, isn't it?? I'm wanting to introduce them as well. In each adventure I'm highlighting common themes, such as the limitations of the gods, the instability of magic, magical healing as being painful and imperfect. The big bad is essentially Nihilism embodied, and the "boss" of each adventure is the victim/product of their own loss of faith or hopelessness. The deeper they go the more the players will learn the fallibility and vulnerability of their perceived highest beings. My thinking with the last part is if the gods are human-like (in our campaign they're the Olympians) then taking away their omnipotence will enforce anti-anthropocentrism. If you could work it in, maybe have the cleric discover that there is no god, that they're pulling power from themselves rather than from something external and benevolent to them.

That and lots and lots of visceral descriptions. I LOVED introducing the gibbering mouther, describing it: "A powerful wave of odor hits you, like ammonia poured over excrement. Then you spot it. A shapeless, wet amalgamation of gore and viscous ooze. Eyes of different shapes, sizes, and colors bubble up to the surface and disappear again. Mouths form temporarily in bubbles, bursting across its surface. Each moan and chatter and whimper before falling back into its mass. Several spots burst, sending a stream of jelly-like material down onto the floor, thickening into psuedopods to pull itself in your direction."