Cthulu? Wtf..?

[Piratecat]

I love you, Henry. You should know that. I'm not, however, allowing you near my pets in the foreseeable future.

Wasn't there a thread a few years ago called "Baby Pictures of the Elder Gods" with ..., well, ... baby pictures of the Elder Gods ?
Damm it, I guess they are lost forever now. I should have downloaded and saved them on my HD...

Gone? HARDLY!

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=8495

 

[EditorBFG]

And the even better Walker in the Wastes by Pagan Publishing... dang! that adventure is, ummm, cool!

I would put forth Beyond the Mountains of Madness as possibly the best RPG campaign ever written, even beyond The Masks of Nyarlethotep and The Walker in Wastes. And all three are even better than Dragonlance series, The Temple of Elemental Evil, White Wolf's Transylvania Chronicles (though I'm the lone voice on that one) and the early Warhammer FRP module campaign (name escapes me at this moment and I hate myself for that). But it's a hard distinction to make isn't it? It probably suffices to say that the best campaigns ever written have been for Call of Cthulhu.

 

[EditorBFG]

No, you're thinking about the Disney Cartoon, "The Little Mermaid" where the guy rams a ship into Queen Ursula's gut.

There's a cold place in hell for you for saying that, you know.

 

[jdrakeh]

Good. Frankly, I thought d20 Cthulhu, as an overall concept, blew monkey chunks. The book had some cool stuff in it, but simply the idea of melding Cthulhu and d20 was ill-advised. Long live the classic system!

I actually like the d20 edition of CoC better than the BRP editions of CoC. The sole exception would be the 3rd Ed CoC Hardcover from Games Workshop, which trumps all other editions of CoC, hands down.

 

[Kristivas]

I've been away a few days....

Wow, this is awesome stuff. It's actually, after hearing about it, shaping out to be some info I could use in one of my campaigns.

The premise is the BBEG is trying to reawaken some dead, evil god. He's made it to the point where the god's soul is inside him, giving him niftly little powers and "hints" and such (while draining his life/soul/good looks/ect). I've also given his minions a cultist feel, as they're all trying to help in summoning this dead god back.

In the last adventure, the PCs are going to try and free a captured Angel, just as the cult is summoning something terrible from this deep, dark hole that they've been throwing sacrificial hearts/sexual organs into in the hopes of waking this thing up to stop the PCs "meddling".

I just need to find such a creature that would really scare the balls off the lot of them. Abomination subtype, probably. I want the thing to have an alien feel and be disgusing, but really freakin' powerful. Any suggestions? (PCs are at 9th level, probably 10 when the encounter will take place.)

 

[SWBaxter]

I just need to find such a creature that would really scare the balls off the lot of them. Abomination subtype, probably. I want the thing to have an alien feel and be disgusing, but really freakin' powerful. Any suggestions? (PCs are at 9th level, probably 10 when the encounter will take place.)

There's a pseudonatural template - actually, several of them - in some of the WOTC splatbooks that's designed to turn a normal D&D monster or character into a Cthulhoid-style entity. If memory serves, there was a scary-powerful version in the Epic Level Handbook (with a minimum CR adjustment of +10), and a lower-powered version in the Manual of the Planes and probably other books. You'd probably want the latter version unless you're looking to create a threat the PCs aren't supposed to beat down directly.

 

[Alhazred]

The Evil Dead trilogy was inspired - or, at least, influenced - by Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Many horror movies owe something to Lovecraft.

FYI, Lovecraft himself never intended to write a coherent Mythos; he wrote individual stories, some of which possessed common references (Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, the town of Arkham, Mass., etc) which lent a degree verisimilitude to his world. The stories themselves were not connected in any meaningful way (ie, no plot connections/continuations, no character crossovers). I believe that it was August Derleth who coined the term 'Cthulhu Mythos'.

Some of my favourite Lovecraft stories include:
Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Colour out of Space
Cool Air
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Whispered in Darkness
The Lamp of Alhazred (which is semi- quasi- kinda- autobiographical)

 

[Aaron L]

The Rats in the Walls!!

The Dreams on the Witch House!!


[brown jenkin scares me. eep]

 

[Stormrunner]

To the tune of "Camptown Races" (and no, this isn't mine):

Who's that elder God we fear?
Cthulhu! Cthulhu!
Who sleeps on from year to year?
Cthulhu is his name.
Gonna chant all night,
Gonna chant all day,
Till he rises from the ocean floor,
Then we'll run away!

 

[ShrinkyLink]

You can also find references to the Mythos in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, the classic, must read 'Swords Against..." series.

One question, though. I'm playing Bethesda's 'Call of Cthulu' game right now, and there's an Arkham Asylum in the game. Now I know Arkham is from Lovecraft, but I don't remember running across the Asylum before. And if there was, was there any mention of a white skinned, green haired lunatic?