"You enter a 10 ft. x 10 ft. room. You see Cthulhu. Roll for Initiative."

[radferth]

For D&D, I've avoided direct stuff, though I've made the Far Side a bit more Cthulhu-ish.

I am picturing several daemon pipers with the traditional flute, and one wearing sunglasses and playing a saxophone, while Azathoth looks up irritatedly.

 

[Desdichado]

For D&D, I've avoided direct stuff, though I've made the Far Side a bit more Cthulhu-ish. Soon the group will be headed to visit a shattered Asylum and we'll see what elements worm their way in.

Uh... presumably you meant the Far Realm. I don't think Gary Larson was all that Cthulhish...

 

[HellHound]

It's a bit hard to maintain the mystique if the players start shouting things like "it's the Big C!" and laughing when Cthulhu comes up out of some lake in your D&D campaign.

I have the benefit of players who enjoy Call of Cthulhu and who like to set the stage properly, so they don't purposefully sabotage the game like that.

Also, changing the names and appearances slightly works well for me. My "byakhees" used a picture that I scanned from my copy of Creatures of Rokugan (and I don't think I ever actually named them) for instance.

True, that. I don't use the servitor races or the monsters as is - they are never named in the games, which is all the better as it keeps the players on their toes. And I describe them instead of providing pictures, so I can vary their appearance as needed, or only hint at their true hideous natures.

Oh, and are you using Sanity? It just seems wrong somehow to use Cthulhu elements without Sanity playing a role in your game.

No.

What makes the Cthulhu deities sanity-shattering is that there is more to this world than the characters in the stories can believe in. This breaks apart their belief in the world around them, sundering the very foundations of their psyches.

However, that there are such things in D&D is not a paradigm-shattering revelation. After all, these same characters may in time travel to other dimensions, believe in deities, have seen living oozes, wathced the dead rise from their graves, and have quite likely died themselves, existed in a state beyond death, and then returned to tell the tale.

Thus, that there are creatures beyond the boundaries of this world... not really a big surprise all things considered. That they are alien and strange and malevolent? So is an Atropal.

I -do- love the sanity rules, but I don't feel they belong in D&D, even with the mythos involved.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Uh... presumably you meant the Far Realm. I don't think Gary Larson was all that Cthulhish...

That was the nature of his Cult, to make you not believe it, even when someone tells you!

And besides, Far Realm is just as silly anyway!

 

[Shemeska]

A DM we had for a PS/FR/Birthright game I was in several years ago (in which we learned how sick Spellfire was) had an amusingly deadly house rule: if you said Cthulhu or named one of the major Great Old Ones, you had a 10% chance of them actually showing up.

And on one occasion, in the middle of Waterdeep harbor, Big C actually did show up. Half of the dockside district obliterated later we all sort of slunk out of the city over the piles of rotting Deep Ones and made our escape so as not to have to answer to any questions from the authorities if they suspected anything. Khelben was not happy with us...

It was amusing, but sometimes distracting from the game. The rule was adopted from the same one that her husband used in his own games, and he was a hardcore DM vs Players sort of guy.

 

[barsoomcore]

Hastur stepped on my halfling thief once.

Don't get stepped on by Hastur. He's heavy.

Ah, those heady, intoxicating days of the first printing of Deities and Demigods!

 

[Warrior Poet]

Uh... presumably you meant the Far Realm. I don't think Gary Larson was all that Cthulhish...

Ya know, in a way, I think you could make an argument that Gary Larson was VERY Cthulhish.

Comedy Cthulhu, to be sure.

As to the question, I've tried to introduce Cthulhoid elements into my games, and every time I do, I am threatened by my players with either bodily harm and/or leaving the game. I'd love to do it in a more modern game, and not a completely hopeless one, either. A few months ago there was a discussion about Cthulhu games with a fighting chance, and shooting howitzers at flying polyps and so forth. Good fun. Pulp Cthulhu! Sure they're awful and terrible and not meant to be known, but sometime, dynamite should work!

Warrior Poet

 

[focallength]

<ROLL> ok I fail my sanity check and loose <ROLL> 1,368,921 points of sanity and I gibber and drool on myself on <ROLL> -357, so I guess Im going last...or first depending on what order he decides to eat us.

 

[focallength]

Hastur stepped on my halfling thief once.

Don't get stepped on by Hastur. He's heavy.

Ah, those heady, intoxicating days of the first printing of Deities and Demigods!

OK first off you should not be naming he who SHOULD NOT BE NAMED! Not only that but you put it in PRINT!...

Foolish mortal

 

[focallength]

Yes, as deities in one of my campaigns (files attached - I wrote them up back when 3.0 was first released, long before the release of CoCd20, and never updated them once later editions and books were released).

And also I've used the Shoggoth against a nearly epic party in one campaign that was a lot of fun. Scary beastie.

WHATS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! Just going around throwing names out like you trying to choose baby names!

Its sad really...oh well I suppose you deserve the bloody and particularllly painful demise youve brought upon yourselves...