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Call of Cthulhu as a Horror Game
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7543527" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I think you say a lot that is true and which indicates you are quite experienced with horror themed games. And while I can see merit in the position you outline here, it does also I think speak to the problem I'm addressing, which is, is cosmic horror really something the modern reader can relate to?</p><p></p><p>Your suggestion that cosmic horror and the mythos be abandoned as unfathomable and therefore not horrifying at least within the context of a game suggests to me that our modern generation is greatly practiced at what HPL called not "correlating contents of its mind". </p><p></p><p>Relatable horror like you describe tends to make me angry and not afraid. What I found disturbing about HPL was its insistence on correlating the contents of what I believed. So, as I suggested, I quite knew that the distance between the nuclei of the atoms were astronomically large compared to the scale of the atoms, but I'd never actually imagined these gulfs within my person and the things around me. I was acquainted with Godel's incompleteness theorem, and the Big Bang, and the heat death of the universe, but unlike HPL, I'd never constructed a philosophy which depended on not knowing of these things. So, the discovery of these things could not bowl me over in terror as my intellectual underpinnings gave way, as it did I think for HPL. But then, I notice that many people who know of these things, are smug about them, as the Victorians and their like were smug regarding their knowledge of the universe, but also that the Victorians had vastly more reason to be smug. So I ask, is it possible for the mythos to be frightening to a modern comfortable educated person - the sort that would boldly claim we'd build mecha to fight Kaiju - and so is it all reduced to just blood and squick?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7543527, member: 4937"] I think you say a lot that is true and which indicates you are quite experienced with horror themed games. And while I can see merit in the position you outline here, it does also I think speak to the problem I'm addressing, which is, is cosmic horror really something the modern reader can relate to? Your suggestion that cosmic horror and the mythos be abandoned as unfathomable and therefore not horrifying at least within the context of a game suggests to me that our modern generation is greatly practiced at what HPL called not "correlating contents of its mind". Relatable horror like you describe tends to make me angry and not afraid. What I found disturbing about HPL was its insistence on correlating the contents of what I believed. So, as I suggested, I quite knew that the distance between the nuclei of the atoms were astronomically large compared to the scale of the atoms, but I'd never actually imagined these gulfs within my person and the things around me. I was acquainted with Godel's incompleteness theorem, and the Big Bang, and the heat death of the universe, but unlike HPL, I'd never constructed a philosophy which depended on not knowing of these things. So, the discovery of these things could not bowl me over in terror as my intellectual underpinnings gave way, as it did I think for HPL. But then, I notice that many people who know of these things, are smug about them, as the Victorians and their like were smug regarding their knowledge of the universe, but also that the Victorians had vastly more reason to be smug. So I ask, is it possible for the mythos to be frightening to a modern comfortable educated person - the sort that would boldly claim we'd build mecha to fight Kaiju - and so is it all reduced to just blood and squick? [/QUOTE]
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