Innsmouth added as new Ravenloft Domain of Dread, bringing Lovecraft to D&D

Innsmouth, the iconic home of several HP Lovecraft stories, is being incorporated into Ravenloft as a new Domain of Dread. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast revealed the contents of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, including the number of subclasses, ancestries, and new creature statblocks in the game. Wizards also revealed that 16 Domains of Dread will be profiled in the book, including the new domain Innsmouth. Assumably, its Darklord will be Cthulhu, who was previously confirmed to be in Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, complete with a statblock.

Cosmic horror has long had a place in Dungeons & Dragons lore, with Cthulhu originally appearing in early copies of Deities and Demigods. Due to a licensing dispute with Chaosium, TSR removed Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian creatures from later printings of the book. Cthulhu along with Lovecraft's other creations have since passed into the public domain, thus removing any restrictions on featuring the characters in a D&D book.

Of course, Innsmouth (at least in Lovecraft's work) is supposed to be a turn of the century New England coastal town, which doesn't exactly jive with the high fantasy trappings of Dungeons & Dragons. We'll have to see how much of Innsmouth is changed to line up with D&D when Ravenloft: The Horrors Within releases later this summer.

 

[Selas]

D&D already has 3-4 variants on Deep Ones.

Sure, you can use Kuo-toas and Sahuagins as replacements, but it doesn't have the same impact. What makes Deep Ones horrifying is their genetic nature and their fanatic devotion to the big C itself.
Ultimately, it's fine if they're not in the book, but seeing as Innsmouth is the domain, it'd be rare for them not to appear.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sure, you can use Kuo-toas and Sahuagins as replacements, but it doesn't have the same impact. What makes Deep Ones horrifying is their genetic nature and their fanatic devotion to the big C itself.
Ultimately, it's fine if they're not in the book, but seeing as Innsmouth is the domain, it'd be rare for them not to appear.

There is nothing paricularly horrifying about the genetic nature of Deep Ones.

PC Tiefling: "So, your daddy was a fish person? My grandpa was Dagon - the real one who is a demon lord. Would you like to see my tail?"

Sahuagin hybrids have appeared in D&D before, in Eberron for a start. And we have the likes of skum and kraken priests who are humans transformed into aberrations. We probably will want a hybrid stat block though. I was surprised that it wasn't a playable species option, but there is a way to do it by tweaking the Second Skin Dark Gift, which will be a feat in this book.

You have got to be aware that the story has lost it's capacity to shock - most players are probably at least vaguely aware of the plot for a start. You need to assume that the PCs will turn up at Innsmouth already knowing it's a town of fish people hybrids. And if they are hostile, it will turn into a massacre - and not of the PCs. You need to use the setting differently. Here are a couple of suggestions:

• The Deep Ones have split into two factions, one want's to awaken Cthulhu, the other wants to keep him asleep;
• Obed Marsh hires the party to hunt down a mysterious killer who has been murdering deep one hybrids just before they turn;
• The Deep Ones are at war with another aquatic species, the PCs are caught in the middle (see the Saltmarsh trilogy);
• The waters of the domain are running out of shipwrecks to loot for treasure. In order to maintain their bargain with the town the Deep Ones hire the PCs to keep them supplied with loot.

 

[Maxperson]

Adding Cthulhu and Innsmouth is pretty uninspired. Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll were Public Domain as well, but we still got Strahd, Mordenheim and Malken instead.

While it may not be the most creative addition, Cthulhu has a place in the hearts of D&D/Fantasy gamers in a way that the other three do not.

 

[GothmogIV]

I played Call of Cthulhu for 40+ years. You just can't escape Lovecraft!

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure, you can use Kuo-toas and Sahuagins as replacements, but it doesn't have the same impact. What makes Deep Ones horrifying is their genetic nature and their fanatic devotion to the big C itself.
Ultimately, it's fine if they're not in the book, but seeing as Innsmouth is the domain, it'd be rare for them not to appear.

Sahuagin

Blood Frenzy. The sahuagin has advantage on melee attack rolls against any creature that doesn't have all its hit points. Limited Amphib...

www.dndbeyond.com

Ac12 22 hp and a relatively harmless attack... There is nothing "horrifying"about them. The 3.5 version wasn't innately either but it had a higher chance of being scary because players knew even vaguely implied fluff could be blatant spotlighting of the fact that the gm applied any number of unpredictable templates like worm that walks Or NPC class levels

5e lacks the mechanics to support "horrifying" monsters unless the players just escaped Plato's cave.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sahuagin

Blood Frenzy. The sahuagin has advantage on melee attack rolls against any creature that doesn't have all its hit points. Limited Amphib...

www.dndbeyond.com

Ac12 22 hp and a relatively harmless attack... There is nothing "horrifying"about them. The 3.5 version wasn't innately either but it had a higher chance of being scary because players knew even vaguely implied fluff could be blatant spotlighting of the fact that the gm applied any number of unpredictable templates like worm that walks Or NPC class levels

5e lacks the mechanics to support "horrifying" monsters unless the players just escaped Plato's cave.

Pretty much anything in D&D, from a goblin up, would be horrifying if encountered in the real world. But to a fantasy hero it’s just another day at the office (see Conan).

You can horrify players with what the monsters (who might be human) have been doing though.

 

[Alzrius]

The nature of Dagon is debatable; in the two stories discussed in this thread, we have reference to a speculative conversation between the narrator of "Dagon" and an ethnologist, and we have the musings of a cult in Innsmouth which may or may not be based on reliable information. But the identification with a huge, ancient Deep One seems pretty consistent.

The first paragraph in the "Dagon" entry of Daniel Harms' Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, Third Edition, states:

"DAGON. Minor being that leads the deep ones and in turn serves Cthulhu. Dagon appears as a deep one of tremendous proportions, or more rarely as a cloud of mist. One description provides him with a single lidless eye in a bullet-shaped head and translucent skin. The deep ones and some coastal humans worship him alongside his mate, Mother Hydra."​

The fourth paragraph adds more:

"It has been claimed that Dagon is only an avatar of Cthulhu, a portion of that being which was not trapped beneath R'lyeh. Past encounters with the god, however, suggest that Dagon is merely an exceedingly large deep one, and that the names "Dagon" and "Hydra" may be titles given to the largest of the species."​

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The domain includes a large island on which the town is situated at one end, and, in true Rhode Island tradition, a large amount of water.

They also love their johnnycakes and coffee milk.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sahuagin hybrids have appeared in D&D before, in Eberron for a start.

And they rarely are born looking like sea elves. A few times in D&D history -- before canon got as locked down as it is now -- there were suggestions that sahuagin are the sea elf equivalent of the drow, just mutated by Sekolah or something else.

 

[tetrasodium]

Pretty much anything in D&D, from a goblin up, would be horrifying if encountered in the real world. But to a fantasy hero it’s just another day at the office (see Conan).

You can horrify players with what the monsters (who might be human) have been doing though.

I personally lack the ability to spawn monsters in the "real world" and have never met or heard of a gm capable of doing so. What you describe is one of the common tropes in gamelit and litrpg fiction that involves system apocalypse stories and similar rather than "real world" games of d&d.

This seems like something one would quickly learn with even the slightest experience in going from reading d&d books to actually sitting down to play d&d with others