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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 1642906" data-attributes="member: 7177">I disagree. Lovecraft presents a universe where science and magic are both wrong - they are both flimsy constructs of a belief system that make us think we know how the universe works. Which is wrong, of course - our primitive brains are literally incapable of truly understanding the universe. That doesn't mean that some humans haven't come close to such an understanding in the past - but in the process, they have become something both more and less than human.Again, I disagree. This is nothing more than our own hubris. We believe we know all the answers, unlike those primitives back in the 1920, and that we are so jaded that nothing can shock us. But we are conveniently forgetting that they believed the same about earlier times, and have been proven wrong - and I have no doubt that we will be proven wrong some day, too. Perhaps sooner than you think.The only time when we will truly know all the answers will be when mankind has become "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy". But then it will be too late - and it seems like that time is fast approaching.Incidentally if you are interested in learning how the Cthulhu Mythos fits into our modern times, pick up Delta Green and its follow-up Delta Green: Countdown from Pagan Publishing - these books are absolutely brilliant.Do they really? Sure, they hear tales and myths of other places and strange monsters, but deep down they don't really believe that the world could be as bad as that. As long as the sun rises each morning and the seasons of the year turn onwards, most people will believe these tales to be just that - tales. Sure, some brave wizards and adventures might go out and search for the strangeness, but there's a reason why they are widely considered to be excentric. Mad, even.And even they tend to have their own paradigm on how the world works. I mean, take the clerics of Eberron. They believe that the gods they are praying to exist. What is if they are proven wrong - or worse, discover the true nature of what they have been worshipping? Same goes for wizards. If they encounter any weird phenomena, they expect them to be, well, magical. They expect their spells (detect magic, dispel magic, anti-magic field, etc.) to work against them. What if they are proven wrong, and suddenly strange spiders crawl under their skin?It all depends on the presentation of the GM. He absolutely must convey that the PCs have encountered something absolutely alien. Obviously, not all Lovecraft critters are equally suitable for this. Deep Ones? Probably not. Shoggoths? Probably - they are much, much more malevolent than mere oozes. Colors out of Space? Now you are talking.There are quite a few creatures in Lovecraft canon that would work as written - and quite a few D&D critters that could work as Lovecraft critters (like destrachans, for example). As long as the players understand that these creatures "don't belong here" it should work out fine...Actually, I dislike the Sanity resistance rules from CoC d20, because they pretty soon make the PCs immune to Sanity loss from pretty much everything. I agree that mere orcs shouldn't trigger Sanity loss, but there are plenty of creatures that should, even at higher levels.I've read an alternative rule somewhere about getting used to monsters - if you succeed in a number of Sanity checks versus a certain creature equal to the maximum possible Sanity loss, you are now immune to Sanity loss from that creature. Something like that might work...</blockquote>

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