A new "Cthulhu" Mythos

[Bendris Noulg]

Let's take the mouldy Arabic text issue. What are other creepifying sources of knowledge?

Gothmog's got a kewl angle there... Another thing to consider is that Lovecraft went with the idea that these beings were known in the most ancient of times and by the most ancient of people. To our current knowledge, that is Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Egypt, and China. However, RE Howard also used Lovecraft's mythos in his Conan stories, and that brings knowledge of these beings into the Hyborian Age. While this era is completely fictionous, so are the mythos themselves, so the idea of sunken ruins beneath the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or even beneath the Mediteranean, could be a source of lore. The markings on the wall of an Aztec Temple (or perhaps the ruins that the ruins were built ontop of) could be a suitable source. An ancient scroll of ancient writting found within a forgotten Native American burial site in central Illinois could be a source.

Off the wall suggestion: Have a Lunar or Mars Mission find a tablet, ala 2001: A Space Odyssy, but instead of Jupiter, have the tablet translate to point at Maine. Stephen King's address would likely be appropriate.

 

[Pants]

What are other creepifying sources of knowledge?

What ghastly knowledge canst one find upon the bowels of the internet?

*click*

IEE! Naked Anna Nicole pictures! Sanity loss! Sanity loss!

 

[Eosin the Red]

The thread on RPG.net is stellar. Thanks for pointing it out Joshua!! Next time link, it was on page 3 or 4 and I did not know the title.

I will ponder the mythos and see if I can contribute.

 

[DrZombie]

Ctuhlu is a game wich you should only play with good roleplayers. The athmosphere of tension, anxiety and the realisation that you're going insane is something very hard to convey to your players, and if you've got one player interrupting a tense moment with "hey Maarten, do you have some more beer in the fridge?" just ruins evrything.

I'm trying to GM a PbM Ctuhlu game, and even the players don't know that it's actually a CoC game yet, it's working out OK, things are getting a bit more freaky, I dunno how long I can convince them it's just a modern game (link in my sig)

 

[The Cardinal]

What about an ancient, incomprehensible entity that exists solely as data? Think of a cross between Cthulhu and Snow Crash.

In our everyday lives, what are we dependent on without really being aware of? That's some pretty scary stuff right there - what happens when the things that were unnoticed under our noses begin acting up?

you really should read the Madness Dossier (in GURPS Horror 3e - which is a must-read in itself)...

 

[Desdichado]

Let's take the mouldy Arabic text issue. What are other creepifying sources of knowledge?

Things that are questionably human. Strange, alien artifacts.

I've always had a fondness for things that uproot our assumptions about history as well. Ideas like the Sphinx being thousands of years older than always assumed, and having lots of rain erosion on it open up possibilities for creepifying sources of knowledge. Things like look like obelisks and pyramids on the moon, or on Mars.

 

[Desdichado]

I dunno, I don't really see the need for a NEW mythos of gods, but if Lovecraft encouraged it, there's no reason not to. New is good, but there's nothing really wrong with the old if they're used right and not overused. That's my two cents.

Then again, your example doesn't really use the old one either. That's a valid point; minimize the mythos and it doesn't matter what you use. However, for some genres and some games, the mythos itself becomes important. In a lot of the Lovecraft stories, the Mythos, or elements of it at least, was important.

So it depends on what kinds of games you're running, I suppose.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Ants. Ants are incredibly adaptive. The reason they haven't devoured everything is that differnet colonies constantly struggle against each other.

There's a labyrinthine ant colony in Japan on an island that's actually many different colonies that grew together. It seems the ants in this isolated location lost the ability to distinguish ants' colony markers, and so started treating each other as part of the same hive.

Now imagine a group mind developing...

If nothing else, it's rich with possible ways to damage characters' psyches.

 

[Geoffrey]

I like the idea of taking a select number of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories and considering those "canon". Ignore everything else. Then start from scratch building upon the small Lovecraftian canon you selected.

This way the "new Mythos" is still the Cthulhu Mythos, but one that is considerably different from the norm.

 

[Desdichado]

I like the idea of taking a select number of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories and considering those "canon". Ignore everything else. Then start from scratch building upon the small Lovecraftian canon you selected.

This way the "new Mythos" is still the Cthulhu Mythos, but one that is considerably different from the norm.

Given that the original core mythos is the problem presented here, that doesn't really help, though.