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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3304239" data-attributes="member: 4937">I disagree that the protagonists in a Lovecraft story are ever ordinary people.  The original poster asked to not focus on the nature of the protagonists in a Lovecraft story, probably for the very good reason that in an RPG its not really the place of the DM to tell the players too much about what sort of characters that they create, but Lovecraftian protagonists have alot of traits in common that distinguish them from the ordinary.  One of these in fact is that they begin by telling the reader that they are in fact not ordinary.Lovecraftian protagonists pretty much always are the following:1) Inexplicably attracted to the macabre and bizarre.  Almost all of them have had some unusual contact with the occult before the events of the narrative, most commonly by having had contact with mythos books such as the Necronomicon.  This contact leaves the peculiarly able to understand the events that follow in a way that ordinary people (mercifully) do not.2) Unusually compotent in thier chosen field, well educated, and thus presumably unusually capable of facing the challenge which they are going to face.  That they are so often frequently overwhelmed is supposed to convey to the reader that in the same circumstances no one would fare any better and almost everyone would fare much worse.  Quite often, the narrator in the face of his failings will plead with the reader to understand this.3) Very often they have some familiar attachment to the mythos, either through direct family ties (thier ancestors were mythos cultists) or else by being close friends of someone who has those ties.  This often is the source of thier attraction to the macabre and bizarre, although the protagonist may not realize it at first.A Delta Green investigator fits the type of a Lovecraftian protagonist quite well.  They are unusually compotent, holding jobs which require high degrees of personal skill, courage, and training.  They are generally tied to Delta Green through some close familiar tie (it wouldn't be unusual at all to play the descendent of someone who had participated in the Innsmouth raid), and they possess secret knowledge of the occult which is not widely known.   The primary difference between someone in Delta Green and a Lovecraft protagonist is that they are explicitly part of a team which would be rare for a HPL protagonist, but this is easily  excused as a necessary RPG convention.</blockquote>

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