Pathfinder 1E World of Golarion going Lovecraft too much?

[Systole]

I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of the Mythos as part of a reality outside of and larger than the "normal" D&D multiverse. I'd rather it be a part of it. Cthulhu and such can be demon lords and such, rather than being by necessity greater and more powerful than everything else. Maybe they represent a previous dynasty of demon lords or something, the way that the titans were overthrown by the Greek gods. Hounds of Tindalos don't have to be from "outside space and time" - they can be hunting creatures from the Astral Plane, which if I remember my Planescape right, was essentially "outside space and time". You don't have to invent new and grander places for these things to be from; I'd prefer to see them incorporated into as coherent a whole as possible rather than feel shoehorned in.

In this case, I could kind of deal with Cthulhu. If it was incorporated in, rather than automatically being a million times worse than anything you could possibly imagine ... then, okay. Maybe.

 

[Piratecat]

It's funny. I love Call of Cthulhu, and I love Pathfinder, but I really don't like the two mixing. I have no shoggoths in my D&D, any more than I have machine guns or laser pistols (I know, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but that's not my favorite adventure either.) Lovecraftian monsters renamed and re-imagined? Hell yes. Just not imported completely.

 

[N'raac]

It's funny. I love Call of Cthulhu, and I love Pathfinder, but I really don't like the two mixing. I have no shoggoths in my D&D, any more than I have machine guns or laser pistols (I know, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but that's not my favorite adventure either.) Lovecraftian monsters renamed and re-imagined? Hell yes. Just not imported completely.

In large part, they have just been imported, though not renamed. In Lovecraft/CoC, try fighting a Shoggoth. In D&D, it's another big ugly monster to be defeated.

I do agree with merging Mythos elements to the existing structure, though. Hounds of Tindalos could fit quite nicely in the astral plane, as suggested in an earlier post. An uber-powerful being sleeping/imprisoned beneath the waves hardly seems a stretch for high fantasy campaigns.

What does not fit is the feel of Lovecraft, where there is ultimately no hope, and just peeling back the layers to understand the true nature of reality means insanity. But that's campaign tone - Call of Cthulhu expects the PC's to band together and battle against these horrors, which is not itself consistent with Lovecraft's writings.

That's OK - games are a different medium. Stoker and Shelley didn't have their monsters going toe to toe with stalwart warriors and powerful wizards either.

 

[ahayford]

I apologize for the brevity of my post. I had intended to provide more detail but got interrupted. It simply seemed to me you were choosing to pick apart his analogy and purposefully misunderstanding his point....That being, when you take a look at all the material that has been published for Golarian and PF, Mythos related material is really a small fraction of the total body of work.

 

[Systole]

Well, to be fair then, you were not altogether wrong. I was choosing to pick apart his analogy, but only because I didn't think it was a good analogy.

Golarion is a shared world, and while you can choose not to play a particular adventure, that adventure is a part of Golarion whether you like it or not. Now, this isn't so bad if you don't like, for example, Linnorm Kings. You can avoid Linnorm Kings. You can level to 20th eight or ten times over and never see a Linnorm King.

But with Lovecraftian cosmic horrors, you don't have the choice to avoid them. Cosmic horror is everywhere. It permeates everything. Doesn't matter if you're 1st level slaying goblins or 20th level slaying ancient red dragons. Each of your character's actions and victories is ultimately hopeless, because eldritch abominations exist and someday they're going to wipe out the universe. It's a built-in downer ending (Warning: TVTropes link).

There's nothing inherently wrong with downer endings, but adding Cthulhu to PF is like asking the guy who directed Melancholia if he could remake Conan the Barbarian. Hey, the hero slew the evil sorcerer and rescued the fair maiden ... and then a rogue gas giant obliterates the entire world like an SUV running over a hamster.

 

[billd91]

Golarion is a shared world, and while you can choose not to play a particular adventure, that adventure is a part of Golarion whether you like it or not. Now, this isn't so bad if you don't like, for example, Linnorm Kings. You can avoid Linnorm Kings. You can level to 20th eight or ten times over and never see a Linnorm King.

But with Lovecraftian cosmic horrors, you don't have the choice to avoid them. Cosmic horror is everywhere. It permeates everything. Doesn't matter if you're 1st level slaying goblins or 20th level slaying ancient red dragons. Each of your character's actions and victories is ultimately hopeless, because eldritch abominations exist and someday they're going to wipe out the universe. It's a built-in downer ending (Warning: TVTropes link).

I find this line of reasoning utterly bizarre. If the DM isn't interested in Lovecraftian horrors, use of them can be avoided in a campaign just as easily as avoiding a Ulfen raider from the Land of the Linnorm Kings.

 

[Systole]

I find this line of reasoning utterly bizarre. If the DM isn't interested in Lovecraftian horrors, use of them can be avoided in a campaign just as easily as avoiding a Ulfen raider from the Land of the Linnorm Kings.

You can avoid them, but they still exist in Golarion, and no matter how far you run, someday they're going to render everything you ever accomplished utterly meaningless. Linnorm Kings don't have that kind of baggage.

 

[BobROE]

You can avoid them, but they still exist in Golarion, and no matter how far you run, someday they're going to render everything you ever accomplished utterly meaningless. Linnorm Kings don't have that kind of baggage.

But can't that "someday" be 65 billion years in the future?

 

[Lwaxy]

A grand total of TWO of them are Lovecraftian in nature: Carrion Hill and From Shore to Sea. Arguably, Crucible of Chaos might also be termed "Lovecraftian" - I don't agree but I'll play it on the safe side:

That explains it, as those were the last "power play" games I played (as in, finish an AP/adventure in a certain time). It did feel very Lovecraftian to me. Could be the GM, too, my cousin is a true fan of CoC.

Unfortunately, for most official adventures I need to wait for my cousin to be done with them before they are handed down, so I only really know about half of them.

Still, I'm not in favor of Cthulhu things in my particular Golarion. My players even less so (as in they'd not even play CoC), which means for my "play all the adventures" Golarion crew (see story hour forum) I will have to do some changing around. Which is not too bad, I need to do that all the time with our ambitious plan to make it fit somehow.

Now as for billd91's comment:

I find this line of reasoning utterly bizarre. If the DM isn't interested in Lovecraftian horrors, use of them can be avoided in a campaign just as easily as avoiding a Ulfen raider from the Land of the Linnorm Kings.

In theory, yes. But if you are somewhat having to stay with the official version, as future adventures or APs might depend on assuming the Lovecraftian parts as given, it is a bit of extra work to avoid them. I guess if we would not have this silly idea of playing all of the published adventures eventually (well what I get handed down or can afford anyway), with mostly the same crew of characters but at least players, it would matter a lot less.

 

[Crothian]

You can avoid them, but they still exist in Golarion, and no matter how far you run, someday they're going to render everything you ever accomplished utterly meaningless. Linnorm Kings don't have that kind of baggage.

Not true. If it doesn't happen in the campaign then it doesn't matter to the campaign. It would be like running a Star Wars game set on Alderaan. Just because at a future date the planet gets blown up doesn't make the fun or purpose of the campaign any less.