D&D and the Cthulhu mythos: Adventure ideas?

[LostSoul]

1. The Old Speech:

That is so awesome.

 

[Wraith Form]

This thread is one of the best ever...

Thanks...and especially a big THANK YOU to the wonderful people who responded!

There are people that (at one time) visited these boards that I'm a little surprised haven't added their unutterable wisdom to this post, but maybe they're gone now..? Joshua Dyal? As I understand, he often had a squamous detail or two to add... ...and there are others.

 

[shilsen]

Joshua Dyal? As I understand, he often had a squamous detail or two to add...

I think Hobo is the artist formerly known as Joshua Dyal.

 

[Wraith Form]

That would make some sort of crazy, twisted sense.....in a madness-inducing way....

 

[Ibram]

To the original poster: look into the master of weird heroic fantasy for ideas to mesh Mythos-style horror with fantasy, Clark Ashton Smith. Many of his works are on wikipedia, especially Averoigne. Check out the Ballantine Books paperback Zothique for some of his absolute best.

There is also:

Zothique

and:

Eldritch Dark

 

[iron-spyder]

There is also:

Zothique

and:

Eldritch Dark

Quite right you are. Zothique is an excellent cycle as well, stories like The Charnel God, The Black Abbot of Puthuum, The Voyage of King Euvoran and The Empire of the Necromancers really stand out as excellent themes for a game blending the Mythos and DnD/fantasy. I had noted Averoigne in particular because the stories are on the wikipedia page and linked directly to the stories on The Eldritch Dark.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Oh, and a small request: Deep Ones, sahuagin, mi-go, beholders and mind flayers are over-done, played out, cliché and tired. I'm looking for something...different. Heck, I'd love to hear about some human opponents--after all, we're the most hideous monsters, aren't we?

Take a page out of "Shadow Over Innsmouth".
Small hamlet adjacent to water, inhabited by Deep Ones. MAybe you could even tie Abholeth into the story, segue into an Underwater adventure. ("Lords of Madness" is well worht the price!!)

Or, Dungoen Crawl Classics #2 ("Lost Vault of Tszanthar Ro") also has a Lovecraftian fell, with a suitably eerie climax.

 

[Wraith Form]

Thank you, but again, as originally stated, I don't want to turn this into a "who can name the most books that Wraith Form already owns" contest.

I'd like to keep generating plot ideas of our own, not referencing existing products.

(And I already mentioned Tsathzar Rho several posts back. )

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

1. The Asylum: Deep in the mountains (or other stock remote locations that nobody goes to) is a monestary dedicated to a god/ess of healing. It houses the kingdom's criminally insane, ordinary serial murderers of course rather than monsters and those dedicated to dark gods like the advanturers usually deal with. One of these inmates, however, has unfortunately attracted the notice of dark powers, scribbling nonsense on the walls that he believes are real magical formulae. They have granted him/her a modicum of power, somehow psychically connecting him to the other inmates. It isn't long before the inmates, forming a hive mind, overpower their guardians and, somehow, turn them to their way of thinking.

I used the free module "Where Madness Dwells" in a similar fashion. The group I play with had already run through it once while I was a player, and I did something of a "return too" as a Dm in the same world with different PCs. An old nemesis of theirs, whom the believed dead, was held in the sanitarium, but had become so trusted by the staff that she had freedom enough to move about the other patients. She was an artist, and had been creating busts of many of the patients, and a few of the staff as well. Embedded in these bust was a rune carved charm that channeled power from my version of the far realm, subverting reality to the desire of the wielder, or in this case, the fantasies of the mad.

As the PCs confronted her, she activated them, and the full power of the charms took effect. I had patients turning into a werewolf, invisible, a child, one that flew, a pyromaniac that turned into an evocation heavy sorcerer. The looks on my friends faces when I describe the ceiling creaking above the and them hearing a loud fe fi fo fumm! was great. The party was separated over three stories and two wings, trying to deal with BBEG, a partially burning building, and an asylum full of somewhat dangerous foes that were in fact innocent patients that they really did not want to kill. I didn't run it as an overtly Cthulhu style adventure, but it could be tweaked.

The original WMD had Illithids and dark portals in it, so you could run it as is, just slap on some sanity checks.

 

[Clavis]

In a fantastic D&D world, much of the alien horror of Cthulhu has it's wind taken out of it's sails. PCs use magic, it doesn't drive them insane. PCs fight monsters, they don't drive them insane. The planes are wacky, and they don't drive the PCs insane either. Differentiating a Great Old One from being just another supermonster like the Tarrasque, or Mephistopheles trying to bring about Hell On Prime is also going to be tricky.

Remember that CoC is actually a bit of a parody of Lovecraft's work. Although the game has fostered the perception that in all of Lovecraft's work contact with the Old Ones absolutely destroys your sanity, its just not true in the stories.

A perfect example of how to blend the Mythos and swashbuckling fantasy is provided by Lovecraft himself, in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Hell, the protagonist even has an extended audience with Nyarlothotep himslef and comes away from it quite sane.