There's Powerful Deviltry at Work Here...

[Eidalac]

IIRC, and I could be dead wrong on this, as I don't have time to look it up, the Necronomicon is real.

Kinda.

The name comes from the term "Book of the Dead", which is really the collective funerary rites/rituals of the ancient Egyptians. I think the modern term is the "Book of Going East at Dawn", or some such.

I rather doubt this real "book of the dead" was something Lovecraft was even aware of, and the only link with the fictional book is that it has ritual magic.

 

[Nifft]

actually a 1/4 German.

Ooo, me too!

Does this mean I can freely say-- Nifft verboten ist für die Verbrechen des Witz.

 

[JohnSnow]

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, JohnSnow defending Scientology - mass hysteria!

Clearly, the end times are upon us.

You have no idea how accurate that is.

To bring this back around, I seem to recall that there was something in Ghostbusters that tied it into Lovecraft's Cthulu universe (or at least its Wold-Newton equivalent), but I can't recall what.

 

[Eidalac]

No direct reference, IIRC, but the whole story of Gozer (sp?) is, at the very least, an homage to Lovecraft's work.

 

[Mallus]

Does this mean I can freely say-- Nifft verboten ist für die Verbrechen des Witz.

You can freely say it just as I can freely not understand it. Ignorance is bliss, not to mention cheaper than Berlitz.

(My grandmother --err, Grossmutter??-- bless her soul, never got around to teaching little Mallus to speak the language)

 

[JohnSnow]

No direct reference, IIRC, but the whole story of Gozer (sp?) is, at the very least, an homage to Lovecraft's work.

Yes, that's true.

But in The Real Ghostbusters TV series, which pretty much involves the same characters, they run into both Cthulu AND the Necronomicon. I KNEW there was some connection.

For the geek-inclined, I should point out that J. Michael Straczynski was the head writer and story editor for the first 78 episodes of that series.

 

[RithTheAwakener]

2) I think not including the druid is a mistake. I think the whole nature connected priest is important to the core ideals of fantasy roleplaying.

Agreed. If the druid is not in the PHB in some form, I will be a sad panda. However, that is the only thing I've seen thus far that I don't absolutely love about 4E.

 

[Scribble]

Yes, that's true.

But in The Real Ghostbusters TV series, which pretty much involves the same characters, they run into both Cthulu AND the Necronomicon. I KNEW there was some connection.

For the geek-inclined, I should point out that J. Michael Straczynski was the head writer and story editor for the first 78 episodes of that series.

I believe they actually mention the Necronomicon at some point in the movies...

 

[KoshPWNZYou]

For the geek-inclined, I should point out that J. Michael Straczynski was the head writer and story editor for the first 78 episodes of that series.

It's my geek-inclined opinion that that's why the show rocked so hard.

 

[see]

Along with these there are counterpoints for good:
Warlocks no longer have to make pacts with infernal powers...possibly good pacts with fey?

Warlocks, in 3.5, didn't have to make pacts with anybody. The character had inherent powers, albeit derived from dark ancestry.

Let's look at the 4e warlock, with his Boon of Souls.

It is apparent no non-evil entity would offer the Boon of Souls. To offer someone power only for killing foes — not defeating foes, but specifically and solely killing them — is to tempt that someone to murder a foe who surrenders. Any entity that desires to tempt people to commit murder, or doesn't care that it is tempting people to commit murder, is (at least as far as I am concerned) evil. The game rules might try to claim that some aren't evil, but the patrons should be judged by what they do. They all offer the Boon of Souls (apparently), so they are all evil, whatever the authors put in the "alignment" box.