D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean, maybe that's the issue? A lot of Mythos writers are kind of incredibly terrible and don't get Lovecraft, especially ones from the 1990s and before. The newer generation tend to understand-but-modify, but a lot of '90s and earlier non-Lovecraft Mythos stuff is just like bad fanfic frankly.

August Derleth became the 'owner' of HPL's material, and he simply was both a crappy writer, and really hammed it up. He published a bunch of his own stories, and those of other writers in the genre, as well as republishing HPL's works very selectively. He is basically 'Mythos Lite'. He took certain references in some of the stories and recast the entire thing as a sort of 'battle of good and evil' where the 'Elder Gods' are sort of 'good guys' who once defeated 'The Great Old Ones' and locked them away. These 'Elder Gods' are still basically uncaring (humans are less than ants to them) but they will grant you power to fight the bad guys, and their signs and tools are a sort of 'good magic' you can invoke.

I would suggest entirely ignoring anything Derleth wrote, and a lot of what he published that was written after HPL. Most of it is junk. I mean, it might make a decent game of pulpy action. I'd say something like a less sci-fi version of EE Doc Smith maybe, where the PCs are helping to fight the Great Old Ones and keep them locked up, and agents of the Elder Gods, though quite dangerous and having little care for humans, show up to help now and then (at least maybe dropping a Star Stone or two around). It isn't Cosmic Horror though, not at all.

 

[Aldarc]

It is a trope; however, it is not 100% born out by the fiction that started the genre. There are plenty of examples of narrators/protagonist not going insane from interaction with the Mythos in Lovecraft's work. Much more frequent is the NPC insanity. So there is definitely precedent for the "heroes"* in the Lovecrafts work being able to withstand the mind bending influences of the Mythos.

*aka the player characters

In the stories, the protagonist survives (maybe), but CoC mostly deals with troupe play. Which is the main character that survives in your group of 3-5? Which are the ones that go mad and/or die?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I haven't been following the sanity/Lovecraft tangent incredibly closely, so there is a good chance I may be missing something....but I'll go ahead and say that anyone who was going to take Lovecraft's work and then turn it into a game is absolutely going to incorporate the ideas of sanity and/or madness into the game.

I don't even see how they would not do so. It's such an element of the fiction. And while yes, some protagonists may retain their sanity, it's always at risk. And plenty of side characters do suffer mental trauma of some form or another. That's establishing the risk.

Does a game that is intended to be based on a group of individuals rather than the typical single protagonists of the stories function a bit differently? Of course. But that's a side effect of making a game meant for more than one player.

I can't see how sanity isn't a fundamental element of any media that is trying to incorporate the Mythos in any way. To not do so would, I think, imply a fundamental failing of understanding the genre.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm curious how those in this thread view the rules of Call of Cthulhu and their Mythos skill... which, if I remember correctly... pretty much works as a skill that allows one to understand mythos related stuff. It's a rational skill and not madness and the higher it is the better you are at mythos stuff... though again using the skill can result in madness I believe

EDIT: In fact Im going to say I think this approach is much more common than madness equals understanding in most Cthuhu based games. I'm sure there are some but are they the vast majority... that I'm not so sure about.

As I've said, you literally lose SAN 1:1 as you gain Mythos skill, which starts at 0%. So, an amazing 100 SAN PC on day one could become quite a Mythos expert, eventually (it is hard to find information to increase Mythos, and it cannot increase in the standard experience mechanism of BRP). However, to reach a 50% Mythos, this incredibly sane guy would reduce his MAX SAN to 50%, and incur a 50 point loss in actual 'working' SAN (though probably over enough time that it wouldn't be a huge issue). Given other sources of SAN loss, you will probably end up with a quite low SAN at that point! Maybe you can defeat some stuff and take a lot of therapy and get back into the middle tier of SAN, but that's about the best you are ever going to do.

That's best case. The AVERAGE PC gaining 20% Mythos (IE 20% chance to know some fact or pass a check) will be perilously close to going stark raving mad.

Anyway, I think about 20% is probably the max I've ever seen anyone get and still be alive. Given you have to acquire VERY dangerous and rare books and such, at extreme peril, is a pretty hard limiter. I guess if you are lucky enough to find 3-4 of the 'tier one' books (Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscripts, etc.) you might manage to do pretty well, but those books are the very rarest of all.

 

[Imaro]

As I've said, you literally lose SAN 1:1 as you gain Mythos skill, which starts at 0%. So, an amazing 100 SAN PC on day one could become quite a Mythos expert, eventually (it is hard to find information to increase Mythos, and it cannot increase in the standard experience mechanism of BRP). However, to reach a 50% Mythos, this incredibly sane guy would reduce his MAX SAN to 50%, and incur a 50 point loss in actual 'working' SAN (though probably over enough time that it wouldn't be a huge issue). Given other sources of SAN loss, you will probably end up with a quite low SAN at that point! Maybe you can defeat some stuff and take a lot of therapy and get back into the middle tier of SAN, but that's about the best you are ever going to do.

That's best case. The AVERAGE PC gaining 20% Mythos (IE 20% chance to know some fact or pass a check) will be perilously close to going stark raving mad.

Anyway, I think about 20% is probably the max I've ever seen anyone get and still be alive. Given you have to acquire VERY dangerous and rare books and such, at extreme peril, is a pretty hard limiter. I guess if you are lucky enough to find 3-4 of the 'tier one' books (Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscripts, etc.) you might manage to do pretty well, but those books are the very rarest of all.

I admitted earlier I was mistaken about how this worked...

 

[dave2008]

In the stories, the protagonist survives (maybe), but CoC mostly deals with troupe play. Which is the main character that survives in your group of 3-5? Which are the ones that go mad and/or die?

That is a difference from the fiction for sure. But I personally treat all the PCs as the main protagonist.

EDIT: could be creepy to use the sidekick rules and have sidekick go insane.

 

[dave2008]

Anyone used Sandy Petersons Cthulhu Mythos for 5e rules? I have them, but I haven't used them. I really like the take on Mythos monsters in that book, but I haven't looked at what it recommends/alters to create Cosmic Horror. I will have to take a look when I get home.

EDIT: I just checked the PDF and there is Dread and Insanity with about 7 pages of description (4 pages of which are descriptions of 8 different types of insanity) on what they are and how to use them. Dread is similar to Exhaustion with 7 levels, but mind/sanity based. Sanity is hard to describe, you jsut need to read it. Nothing like sanity points that I can see though. Seems like a very interesting and 5e style implementation.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, I don't really disagree with this, most of what you're saying is just irrelevant to what I've been saying. My original point is that I don't find DW a particularly "unconstrained" game, I find it pretty constrained as a DM.

What I'm saying though is, there isn't really any such thing as 'pulling punches' or 'making a jab', not really. About as close as you can get is "what is the damage rating of this monster?" That will tell you if doing damage to a given PC at this juncture might send them to Death's Door. So that would be a kind of 'hardness' to a move, but you can see HP as just another resource you can put stress on, albeit there is a significant fictional/mechanical consequence of running out. Otherwise, moves are just moves, they advance the fiction. DW also has a concept of 'down time', so there's a point where the players can recover resources, although it often has its own dangers (town in DW is not a SAFE place, though usually being there means more soft moves). This is just a pacing thing though, there has to be a release of tension at SOME point, otherwise the game becomes a mess like Jurassic Park where the music is at 11 the whole time and there's not even 1 scene without a dinosaur eating someone (I really didn't think much of that movie, it does NOT manage pace well at all).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I didn't remember, but his adventures seem pretty extensive: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

It is also a strange mix of being their and not. It seems if he forgets he is in a dream he can be harmed. I.E. the Dreamlands area place he is inhabiting, but he can escape by waking up.

Not to knit-pick, but Dreamlands stuff is not really 'core mythos'. It occupies an earlier phase of HPL's work, although he is certainly developing themes, settings, and style which informs the later core mythos stories. I'd also say that there is an element of existential horror involved in some of this material, but it is not hard core Cosmic Horror. It is also pretty unclear what the narrators in these Dreamlands stories are like. Very little is said about their non-dream existence. When it is discussed it is stated or implied that they are artists and such, with the implication that artists are 'a bit nuts' to start with. This is also the work that Smith and Howard in particular were inspired by in their fantasy stories, not the later core mythos stuff.

So, I would not try to conclude too much about Cosmic Horror from Dreamlands and other early HPL stuff. And games like CoC, while it discusses the Dreamlands (and there was once a module to allow adventures there) isn't intended to really emulate those stories 'out of the box'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I admitted earlier I was mistaken about how this worked...

Sorry, I was a bit behind. The Sandy Peterson thing sounds interesting. I'd still probably use ToC nowadays though for Mythos play.