Forgotten Realms + Call of Cthulhu = Fun

[Black Omega]

Frankly, I think the key is it is not Weave or shadow weave magic. It's already firmly established investigating that won't drive you insane.

So it should be a new form, and perhaps divine magic as well as arcane. you want the books to research but they should be able to grant spells.

You don't even really need to take out the 'UBER NPCs'. Imagine the opening of the campaign is simply the group going to meet Elminster. They find his tower a wreck, obviously a great battle was fought, etc etc. Elminster's still alive, huddled in a corner gibbering. A form of madness for the moment incurable even by other's magic or divine miracle. A detect thoughts cast on him should give some chaotic images, and do 1d4 wisdom damage. Even if the PC's don't really know FR, establishing Elminster as 'the big wizard in this world' should get the message across. Something nasty is out there. And perhaps Elminster found something that needed him to be taken out.

 

[Sagrabah]

The way I was sort of envisioning it was that Far Realm bit in T&B.
As the Alienist learns more about the outer limits the more insane he goes until finally when he dies, these freaky tentacled creatures just come for him and take him away (hee hee ha ha)

So, the Arch Wizards of the Realms know about this Far Realm but also realize that the less *know* the safer they are. I sort of picture it like Gandalf and the Ring. He would sure like to put it on, but he untimately knows it would do him in. It makes a great excuse for all the power figures to doff the responsibility on to PCs.

 

[Victim]

Lovecraftian monsters and such in a DnD game?

You mean like Mindflayers, aboleth, etc? These creatures are already staples of DnD worlds. Fear auras and tentacles are nothing special in a world dripping with monsters and powerful magic.

The only thing lacking is Sanity - and that would be so out place it isn't funny. A tiny group of highly skilled characters can take out a thousand guys. It's not like this would surprise many people on Toril. With DnD "physics," individuals can attain mindboggling levels of personal, intrinsic power. The Simbul isn't a powerful person because she's Queen of Aglarond or very rich, she's powerful because she's a 30th level sorcerer and can level towns and fight battalions by herself. In general, FR people aren't powerful because of their position, they have their position because they are powerful. "Normal" people from our world would take Sanity damage from watching powerful adventurers.

Since FR already has enough weirdness to make Lovecraftian horrors expecting a placid, rational Earthlike world run in terror, you'd have to use other means to inject some Cthuluid horror.

First of all, you have to establish something as normal. If the players aren't familar with the world, then any odd disturbing things might be taken as a normal situation. Once the people get used to the world, you can start messing with it. Lovecraft's stories are generally set on "earth," so readers were automatically familar with the normal situation. You have to establish the normal situation yourself.

Since weird monsters are kind of normal, you have to find other ways of introducing weirdness. Maybe have something change in town while the PCs are aways, then have everyone insist it's normal and always been that way. Then keep changing things and have the rate of change, along with the magnitude and area effect, increase. People start behaving oddly for no reason.

 

[demiurge1138]

Wow, KM, somebody else is as crazy as I am

In my CofC/FR fusion, a splinter group of kir-lanan, those charcoal-skinned, god-hating gargoyles, have found religion. More specifically, they've found Cthulhu. Although none of them are capable of casting divine spells, their leader, a Crazed Cultist (PrC of my own twisted design) has convinced the naive kir-lanan that he can. Any of them who stuck to the old godless ways were killed.

The cult leader, 'Ulll, has made an alliance with Urigaunt, an oozemaster of Azathoth whose dealings with That-that-should-not-be-known destroyed first his mind and then his body. While Urigaunt summons enough eldritch creatures to keep Elminster and the other iconic Faerunites busy, the kir-lanan capture Waterdhavians in massive raids staged during the depredations of the Haunter in Darkness (as per Lovecraft's final (?) work). After the kir-lanan have kidnapped 1,000 Waterdhavians, they intend to sacrifice them all under a new moon to Nylarthotep, the Crawling Chaos, who will grant 'Ulll the power to move the stars into the proper alignment so that Rl'yeh will rise and Cthulhu will destroy the world.

And the PCs are the only ones who can stop it, or stop Cthulhu if that fails (this is an epic campaign).

Oh, and did I mention that one of their mentor NPCs is an alienist?
And did I mention that one of the characters is rapidly discovering her deep one heritage?
Sorry 'bout the length.

Demiurge out.

 

[jester47]

1. The red wizards are the agents of the Great Old Ones. This "happens" when there is a clensing of the old religious front. (i.e. the followers of Kossuth) They all get killed and replaced by cultists loyal to the Great old ones.

2. When Cthulu awakens in The Call of Cthulu, psychicly sensitive people go crazy or have weird dreams. So, when Cthulu enters Toril those sensitive to magic are driven mad, or are catatonic from the shock, or fall in with this power. The more powerful the magic weilder, the harder he or she falls.

3. It is a trope of the Cthulu mythos to have the servants living on the planet from the last time the Great Old ones showed up. The same is with Toril, they are deep undergound and are already beginning to act.

Aaron.

 

[Xarlen]

All right, here's something weird.

Imagine something with Tentacles and access to Trans-locational magic. Essentially, it opens a wormhole, shoots a tentacle through, grapples, and yanks whoever through.

You could have the beastie show up, and the PCs never, ever know what it is.

I imagine the Cthulu has got something going on with Mindflayers and Aboleths. They seem just Naturally drawn to the Great Old One.

Depending on how high you want to take this... What would happen if a Demi-lich found Cthulu when traveling the cosmose? What if a great war between factions who used a LOT of translocational magic opened an enormosu rift in the Prime's link to the planes, allowing gates to randomly open to different planes, or just tore the fabric into the Realm of That-Which-Should-Not-Be-Known.

First of all, Wizards shouldn't be going nuts. Think of other things. How are *dragons* reacting? Imagine the sheer horror if Dragons go Ape****. They're flying around, crashing into the ground, acting like animals (And not predators).

I imagine Psionics are seriously going to go haywire now.

 

[DM with a vengence]

You really need to get rid of all the Spellcasters, because D&D magic is much better than CoC magic. So here's a good way to do it. Everybody has a sanity score as normal, but spellcasters and creatures with spell-like abilities lose ability points for each spell slot or spell-like ability they have with the individual loss at 1d'level'

So a first level Sorcerer would lose 3d1+1(cha) sanity points, while a 6th level Sorcerer would lose 6d1+1(cha)+5d2+d2(cha)+3d3+d3(cha) and so on. Obviously servents of the Mythos, already being insane, do not suffer damage from this, however, to prevent them from over using spells, give D&D spells pretty hefty ability and sanity drain costs.

Of course all these crazt casters and magical beast go around ravaging the countryside until ability loss causes them to fall unconcious and be beaten to death by the surviving peasentry.

One interesting side effect is the availability of magic items. With all the powerful spellcasters dead or insane, no one is making magic items. I could see the cost of a wand of Cure Light Wounds tripling in price, and potions going for quadruple.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Read below...

 

[I'm A Banana]

YEAH!

Okay, since FR is fairly 'typical fantasy world' it shouldn't be TOO hard to get a sense of what is normal...have a few adventures where they're hearing about famous people, growing up, fighting some enemy, etc. Sort of a mini-campaign of an adventure or three long, shouldn't be too hard to establish what the world is like (e.g.: not drastically different from a typical homebrew/fantasy world).

After that...I believe things go boom. I think it'd be cooler if it was something they didn't know about, rather than something people already know is dangerous...where's the fun if they already know about it.

===
So beneath the desert there has lurked ruins that no one has been able to uncover...not nessecarily for lack of trying, but because they try, and go a bit mad once they get too close...

Meanwhile, the head of the Red Wizards has been looking with an eye toward this area...great power, great magic, a foothold in ancient ruins, it's all too tasty to pass up. so he finds a way to reach it by going through the Plane of Shadow.

He dissappears for several weeks. The Red Wizards go crazy covering it up, making it seem like nothing's amiss.

And then he comes back, no different than before.

And starts some great plan/mission.

Now, to the PC's, this is just another fight against an evil wizard type. Only, when they interrupt his great ceremony, maybe finding a way to off him, maybe just providing a distraction while Elminster and Drizzit go in an whip things butts (or whatever. ).

At the completion of the ceremony, things are getting drained...even the big heroes are having trouble. But they've weakened 'em. The PC's go up against a HIGHLY weakened wizard (he's been harmed, drained levels, had his Int damaged a bunch, etc.), and take him out.

"You fools...what have you done?"

Only, nothing goes boom...

It's not until people startcasting the healing spells that things start go to wrong...

Using the CoC as a guideline, I assign ability damage to each spell.

The first time Elminster is HEALED, the priest is drained of all his energy and collapses, skeletal, onto the ground...
===

That should make 'em good and scared.

So now I have this 'new magic,' and everything follows it's rules. As people try to see and sense the weave, it's still there, but there's something on the other side...something hungrily feeding off of every spell cast in the world.

So, rationally, you do some research...try to uncover something...only tomes and the like seem to share this...even magic items will feed off of their wielders, if nothing else than with sanity (which I could introduce, not as nessecarily something to go mad from sights, sounds, etc., but mad from the 'magic of the mythos', so to speak).

Have the PC's go on another adventure or two where the natural world is turned on it's face. I love the image of dragons falling from the sky -- any supernatural or spell-like power does sanity and/or ability score damage. Maybe Elminster isn't insane, but Mystra and any other dieties of magic most definately *are*. And the big E isn't far behind.

The more you know about how this happened, the more you succumb to it.

It's amazing what the simple removal of magic can do to the world.

But I need BIG things, too. This is a stubtle threat, more terrifying than horrifying (more 'uh-oh! Oh, crap!' and less 'AAAUGH! I'M GONNA MESS MYSELF!')....I need BIG terror. I need things that start to REALLY hurt things.

So, where to I go from here? A ritual has summoned enough of the Mythos-power to make magic a VERY dangerous thing...how do people react to this?

(I think I'll also have some of the magic mutate things instead of simply damaging their ability scores or rendering them insane...things which have become so normalized to magic, like with a beholder's flight).

Okay, things are starting to gel...keep it going, I think I'm nearly there.

 

[dave_o]

Muhahaha.

Just a couple of big, pants-crapping things for your PCs to witness:

-- A massive, betentacled, amorphous THING flops out of a rift in the sky onto Waterdeep, writhing and eating through it. It seems pretty much immune to magic, and is simply too large to hurt physically. Over the course of a few days, it eats (like acid) through Waterdeep and into the ground below. Upon investigation, the thing is gone, with only a massive, slimy cavern headed East.

-- Tentacles, ooze, etc. in Portable Holes, Bags of Holding, and all other extradimentional forms of storage. Speaking of extradimentional storage, Bags of Devouring hint at some deep, dark evil inside that grubs upon whatever is placed in it - have something in a Bag of Devouring pour out the other side.

-- The stars becoming just WRONG.

Hope these help!