Innsmouth added as new Ravenloft Domain of Dread, bringing Lovecraft to D&D

Whizbang Dustyboots · 2026-04-18T02:11:01+0100

Bayushi_seikuro said:
Apparently, there's a Call of Cthulhu season planned, according to wikipedia

Checking their feed, it looks like they just reuploaded all of their episodes again on April 10, so something's going up, for sure.

trib · 2026-04-18T08:50:06+0100

Mark Craddock said:
Is Innsmouth in the public domain or is this part of an agreement with Chaosium?

As I understand, Lovecraft's works have passed into the public domain. So it's not a Chaosium thing, but an estate thing. Chaosium has ownership of various forms of words and of things specifically created within Call of Cthulhu, but Innsmouth as a place was within Lovecraft's writings.

QuentinGeorge · 2026-04-18T09:17:41+0100

Deset Gled said:
This makes no sense to me at all. In "Dagon" Lovecraft literally calls his version of Dagon a "fish-god", and described it differently than Cthulhu. He also described Dagon's fish people minions that sound a lot like the Innsmouth folk. I can think of nothing in The Shadow Over Innsmouth that would suggest Dagon is actually Cthulhu.

If you're going to change the story, just admit you're changing the story. I have no idea what the point of all the weird mental gymnastics is.

Are you unfamiliar with this poster.

Paul Farquhar · 2026-04-18T11:01:34+0100

trib said:
As I understand, Lovecraft's works have passed into the public domain. So it's not a Chaosium thing, but an estate thing. Chaosium has ownership of various forms of words and of things specifically created within Call of Cthulhu, but Innsmouth as a place was within Lovecraft's writings.

It was complicated even back when they removed the mythos content from Deities and Demigods. I believe it was more to avoid the cost of a lawsuit with Chaosium even though TSR would probably have won. There was an element of “he said she said” to it.

Nikosandros · 2026-04-18T11:33:57+0100

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
That was a very good podcast. I'm sorry that it ended.

Personally, I really loved it at first, but it drifted too much into government-conspiracy staples, for my own tasted. OTOH, the acting was always top-notch.

Autumnal · 2026-04-18T11:57:21+0100

QuentinGeorge said:
Are you unfamiliar with this poster.

And he’s citing Wikipedia’s quotes from Robert Price, by far the least reliable of prominent Lovecraft experts. Price is the equivalent of that astronomer who keeps claiming unusual asteroids/comets are aliens: he’s got genuine chops in th field, but for a long time now, you learn more about what’s in his head rather than what’s in Lovecraft’s stories. I would never use him as a single source of interpretation for anything more complicated than a business card.

GarrettKP · 2026-04-18T12:37:45+0100

Spotted on Instagram. Wizkids teasing Ravenloft minis with this premium Cthulhu figure.

Thommy H-H · 2026-04-18T14:02:43+0100

Autumnal said:
And he’s citing Wikipedia’s quotes from Robert Price, by far the least reliable of prominent Lovecraft experts. Price is the equivalent of that astronomer who keeps claiming unusual asteroids/comets are aliens: he’s got genuine chops in th field, but for a long time now, you learn more about what’s in his head rather than what’s in Lovecraft’s stories. I would never use him as a single source of interpretation for anything more complicated than a business card.

Nevertheless, it is the case that the historical Syrian fertility or weather deity Dagon/Dagan mentioned in the Tanakh (and hence the Bible) was incorrectly associated with water and the sea by later translators due to the fact that his name is similar to a Classical Hebrew word for fish. That's the tradition Lovecraft was referencing by citing Dagon as the god of the fishlike Deep Ones (and their descendants) in The Shadow over Innsmouth, but they did also worship a goddess called Hydra and there are references to Cthulhu being their ultimate overlord.

So basically, it's fine. Even if we assume this is a direct lifting of Innsmouth, the presence of Cthulhu is perfectly consistent and he isn't 'replacing' Dagon. But it won't be a direct lifting because, for one thing, it's a Domain of Dread with its own map and not a spooky fishing village in 20th Century Massachusetts. It's not going to be completely consistent with the Cthulhu Mythos because it doesn't have to be, any more than Strahd and Barovia have to be consistent with the broader mythology of vampires, Dracula, and the historical medieval Balkans.

Bayushi_seikuro · 2026-04-18T15:32:53+0100

Nikosandros said:
Personally, I really loved it at first, but it drifted too much into government-conspiracy staples, for my own tasted. OTOH, the acting was always top-notch.

Understandable - not everyone wants it to become X-Files, etc.... but I felt the Pleasant Green route played well into the modern era, and would especially tie in well with Delta Green, which is all directly post-Innsmouth. I especially thought with the Pleasant Green - when Matt keeps saying it on the phone to trigger being contacted - tied in well with modern security stuff, post-9/11

On the topic of modern Mythos setups, I really liked the idea put forth in Brian Lumley's Titus Crow books that there was an organization that had cracked how to manufacture Elder Signs, would find sleeping Mythos creatures, and go and bury Elder signs around the bodies so they wouldn't wake up, and they'd do it under the guise of taking geological samples or drilling, for example.