EricW

Temporary insanity or uncontrollable phobias are well supported by H P Lovecraft's writing.

The Horror at Red Hook

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Not many weeks ago, on a street corner in the village of Pascoag, Rhode Island, a tall, heavily built, and wholesome-looking pedestrian furnished much speculation by a singular lapse of behaviour. He had, it appears, been descending the hill by the road from Chepachet; and encountering the compact section, had turned to his left into the main thoroughfare where several modest business blocks convey a touch of the urban. At this point, without visible provocation, he committed his astonishing lapse; staring queerly for a second at the tallest of the buildings before him, and then, with a series of terrified, hysterical shrieks, breaking into a frantic run which ended in a stumble and fall at the next crossing. Picked up and dusted off by ready hands, he was found to be conscious, organically unhurt, and evidently cured of his sudden nervous attack. He muttered some shamefaced explanations involving a strain he had undergone, and with downcast glance turned back up the Chepachet road, trudging out of sight without once looking behind him. It was a strange incident to befall so large, robust, normal-featured, and capable-looking a man, and the strangeness was not lessened by the remarks of a bystander who had recognised him as the boarder of a well-known dairyman on the outskirts of Chepachet.

He was, it developed, a New York police detective named Thomas F. Malone, now on a long leave of absence under medical treatment after some disproportionately arduous work on a gruesome local case which accident had made dramatic. There had been a collapse of several old brick buildings during a raid in which he had shared, and something about the wholesale loss of life, both of prisoners and of his companions, had peculiarly appalled him. As a result, he had acquired an acute and anomalous horror of any buildings even remotely suggesting the ones which had fallen in, so that in the end mental specialists forbade him the sight of such things for an indefinite period. A police surgeon with relatives in Chepachet had put forward that quaint hamlet of wooden colonial houses as an ideal spot for the psychological convalescence; and thither the sufferer had gone, promising never to venture among the brick-lined streets of larger villages till duly advised by the Woonsocket specialist with whom he was put in touch. This walk to Pascoag for magazines had been a mistake, and the patient had paid in fright, bruises, and humiliation for his disobedience.

 

The closest comparison to fictional Lovecraftian madness is survivors of psychological trauma - people with PTSD, rape survivors, victims of wartime atrocities. Some people seem to survive relatively unscathed, though who knows what horrors they endure in the prison of their own minds. Others become completely dysfunctional - people develop insane obsessions like compulsive hygiene, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, all sorts of weird and horrible problems.

When you consider the possibility of such stresses being coupled with experiences which shake the foundations of someone's sense of reality, you start to wonder if the game san check system is too generous.

None of the people who see Cthulhu walk away unscathed. Some dropped dead of fright, some gibbered and drooled, lost complete control of their actions, the one person who survived and escaped was the closest to a functional survivor, but he was plagued by horrific nightmares.

The Call of Cthulhu

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Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Ångstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water.
 

But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.

That was all. After that Johansen only brooded over the idol in the cabin and attended to a few matters of food for himself and the laughing maniac by his side. He did not try to navigate after the first bold flight, for the reaction had taken something out of his soul. Then came the storm of April 2nd, and a gathering of the clouds about his consciousness. There is a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comet’s tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus.
 

Out of that dream came rescue—the Vigilant, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home to the old house by the Egeberg. He could not tell—they would think him mad. He would write of what he knew before death came, but his wife must not guess. Death would be a boon if only it could blot out the memories.

 

Where is the "drop dead of fright" check? Two out of six suggests a 30% chance people who see an entity like Cthulhu should simply die on the spot. Johansen managed to maintain a facade or normality, after a prolonged period of shock, but who knows how long he would have been able to maintain that facade of sanity if he hadn't been murdered? 

Real fact - scientists have noticed a substantial rise in cosmic ray flux, caused by weakening of the sun's magnetic field.

Just as the Earth has a magnetic field, so does the sun - a gigantic forcefield which protects the inner solar system from cosmic radiation. The weakening of the field means that space is now more deadly for astronauts. Even people in airliners are receiving a higher dose of radiation - enough that the radiation is considered a hazard for pilots and air stewards, for anyone who spends long periods at high altitude.

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/03/05/the-worsening-cosmic-ray-situation/

The ray flux is expected to increase even further in coming decades, with a real possibility the sun will enter a new grand minimum, a prolonged period of weakness.

Does the Sun's magnetic field protect us from things other than cosmic rays? Will a period of weakness bring new dangers? Could be an interesting basis for a scenario.

On 18/03/2018 at 12:18 PM, Vorax Transtellaris said:

I dunno, I always treat "insanity" through Mythos Exposure as a fictional condition that has nothing to do with actual mental illness. Its symptoms being as described in Lovecraft's stories. I skip the actual diagnostic labels suggested in the rulebook. I personally don't feel the need to make it more "realistic" even in modern settings.

I am no stranger to mental issues myself, but I don't feel offended or alienated by Call of Cthulhu's in-game use of insanity in the slightest.

Very good point, in Lovecraft's universe Cthulhu helped make us what we are, Cthulhu and his fellow monsters helped shape our very earliest steps as a species. It makes sense that a being who created a slave race would add a few useful kinks in their psyche which the slaves themselves might not be aware of until they were triggered. Maybe we all have a little Deep One in us...
 

From "The Call of Cthulhu"

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These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals.

Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

All of these (and basically most of the SAN loss in the games I have played) might as well come from PTSD, which wasn't exactly a diagnosis back in the 1920ies although well known from the trench warfare of WW1.

In my Cthulhu games (as a player) I had only one character ever completely losing it upon direct confrontation with a Great Old One, and it was fun to keep playing him as an agent of Nyarlathotep without the rest of the party aware of that changeover.

Hilarious :-). What gave it away?

One thing which distinguishes Lovecraft is his insane people are often victims, even when they are perpetrators, when they gain some kind of horrible benefit - the price of losing your humanity is always too high.

From "The Picture in The House"

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“What d’ye think o’ this—ain’t never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, ‘That’s suthin’ ta stir ye up an’ make yer blood tickle!’ When I read in Scripter about slayin’—like them Midianites was slew—I kinder think things, but I ain’t got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is to it—I s’pose ’tis sinful, but ain’t we all born an’ livin’ in sin?—Thet feller bein’ chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at ’im—I hev ta keep lookin’ at ’im—see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar’s his head on thet bench, with one arm side of it, an’ t’other arm’s on the graound side o’ the meat block.”

As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now, with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.

“As I says, ’tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin’. D’ye know, young Sir, I’m right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, especial when I’d heerd Passon Clark rant o’ Sundays in his big wig. Onct I tried suthin’ funny—here, young Sir, don’t git skeert—all I done was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market—killin’ sheep was kinder more fun arter lookin’ at it—” The tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer seemed not to notice it.

“Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun—but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’gits a holt on ye— As ye love the Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy—here, set still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow ’twud be ef I did— They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye new life, so I wondered ef ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer ef ’twas more the same—” But the whisperer never continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple though somewhat unusual happening.

 

The evil madman in "The Picture" gained unnatural longevity and good health - but he led a nasty, lonely life where maintaining that longevity became the sole focus of his existence.

I think HP Lovecraft made his view of Cthulhu insanity clear - insanity in HP Lovecraft's vision takes the form of impaired ability to function in the world, or realignment of motives to an inhuman perspective. Or both. 

Both Lovecraft's parents IMO were barking mad, so Lovecraft had a substantial personal experience of the effects of insanity on people.

From "The Call of Cthulhu"

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Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come—but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.

Or this from "The Horror at Red Hook"

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Not many weeks ago, on a street corner in the village of Pascoag, Rhode Island, a tall, heavily built, and wholesome-looking pedestrian furnished much speculation by a singular lapse of behaviour. He had, it appears, been descending the hill by the road from Chepachet; and encountering the compact section, had turned to his left into the main thoroughfare where several modest business blocks convey a touch of the urban. At this point, without visible provocation, he committed his astonishing lapse; staring queerly for a second at the tallest of the buildings before him, and then, with a series of terrified, hysterical shrieks, breaking into a frantic run which ended in a stumble and fall at the next crossing. Picked up and dusted off by ready hands, he was found to be conscious, organically unhurt, and evidently cured of his sudden nervous attack. He muttered some shamefaced explanations involving a strain he had undergone, and with downcast glance turned back up the Chepachet road, trudging out of sight without once looking behind him. It was a strange incident to befall so large, robust, normal-featured, and capable-looking a man, and the strangeness was not lessened by the remarks of a bystander who had recognised him as the boarder of a well-known dairyman on the outskirts of Chepachet.

Or this from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

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It was then that I began to study the mirror with mounting alarm. The slow ravages of disease are not pleasant to watch, but in my case there was something subtler and more puzzling in the background. My father seemed to notice it, too, for he began looking at me curiously and almost affrightedly. What was taking place in me? Could it be that I was coming to resemble my grandmother and uncle Douglas?
One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may have been sardonic. She had changed—as those who take to the water change—and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders—destined for him as well—he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was to be my realm, too—I could not escape it. I would never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man ever walked the earth.
I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand years Pth’thya-l’yi had lived in Y’ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y’ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and had brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once more. For bringing the upper-earth men’s death I must do a penance, but that would not be heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a shoggoth for the first time, and the sight set me awake in a frenzy of screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I had acquired the Innsmouth look.
So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of splendours await me below, and I shall seek them soon. Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! No, I shall not shoot myself—I cannot be made to shoot myself!
I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse, and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.

Some people have remarkable pickpocket skills.

A street magician once gave us a display of his magic skills, card tricks mostly, outside a pub in London.

We were way impressed at his skill, when he finished said "wow, thanks for the show, let us give you something".

He said "Then you'll be needing these", and handed us our wallets.

The Weapon Makers, a 1940s science fiction book, had an interesting take on this.

The main character in The Weapon Makers uses a machine which projects him into an ethereal plane very like your description, to save himself a few hours in the future, by creating a dazzling display of overwhelmingly superior technology to intimidate an organisation which has overstepped its own rules.

The characters could have entered this ethereal state because of a machine built by a scientist, as in The Weapon Makers. Their only hope of re-entering the real world is to find the portal, and fight their way through whoever is still in the lab which contains the portal. You have to think of a convincing reason why they don't know where the portal is - perhaps they were kidnapped and dumped in this bizarre place by people who thought they wouldn't survive long, a convenient way of making enemies disappear - no bodies. 

Of course being a Lovecraft adventure the etherial plane is inhabited, terrifying creatures which might also stumble across the portal, false paths to who knows where, temporal anomalies, the temptation to try to manipulate time for their own gain, along with awful risks of paradox or worse, and in the distance an eerie demonic piping sound...

The stories look like the list available on http://www.hplovecraft.com 

HP Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House is pretty Satanic, one of the protagonists is "the black man" of the old European witch cult, both an avatar of that which Christians describe as Satan and a manifestation of Nyarlathotep. Lots of interesting angles, a math genius being driven mad by nocturnal wanderings and strange journeys to the court of Azathoth, an ancient witch still preying on children. Obviously needs some work to turn it into a scenario. The investigators could be drawn in by a frantic parent searching for their loved one, or the math genius could be referred to them by a parent, friend or teacher worried about their deteriorating mental health. 

I grew up in a rough area, lots of fights to defend myself when I was young. Sometimes people attacked me with weapons, though never a gun.

If an attacker is close and swinging punches, pulling a weapon is very risky, you need both hands full time to try to fend off the assailant. If you drop a hand to pull a knife or gun, the assailant will land at least one or two nasty punches on your head before you can deploy the weapon - likely rendering you incapable of defending yourself. If you can break free and the assailant doesn't follow up for a few moments, you can maybe pull a weapon - but if they realise what you are doing, they will likely close in and grapple to get control of the weapon.

This is one of those situations game mechanics probably doesn't handle well, but at the very least in the middle of a fight I would give the assailant a chance to seize the gun from the defender, or knock it out of the defender's hand, and maybe one or two attacks with severely reduced defence.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/ of course. Loads of stories written by the master, and other gems such as the history of the Necronomicon.

The best book to understand the mythos in gaming terms IMO is the mythos stories themselves - they are the definitive source material.

Also watch the movie Dagon - excellent homage to The Shadow Over Insmouth.

Seems to me that a con artist or even a cultist might offer eager players a fast means of transport. Cash up front. Step into this box, the one with the lock on  the door...

True Detective Season One has references to The Yellow King and other Mythos elements. Nice and subtle. You are never 100% sure something supernatural is happening. But definitely some "slasher" elements.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_1)

You could pen your own homage to the movie In the Mouth of Madness. 

From H.P. Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon"

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... In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. ...

This implies that once the Necronomicon was far more accessible than today's fragmentary scraps - first editions could have been almost as readable as a modern howto book.

What impact would such an accessible edition have on today's world? An electronic edition which people could email to their friends? I think you would have your slasher scenario.

The sacrificial "victims" could be leading cultists themselves - which would make the ritual a gruesome attempt to concentrate the knowledge and power of the worst humanity has to offer into one person.

The investigators are expendable decoys to distract from the real rescue attempt.

"Spies Like Us" meets "Night of the Living Dead"

You could have all sorts of fun with the "rescue" scenarios. Furious rival cultists thirsting for revenge all alone with the rescuers, badly in need of recharging their necromantic potential. 

See how long you could convince players Sarah was innocent in the midst of mounting evidence to the contrary.

Of course the ritual would go horribly wrong if performed, it wasn't designed for humans.

13 hours ago, Darius West said:

Recovered SAN? Difficult?  I'm going with "no".

 

"But I survived, and I know it was only a dream."

Cliche ending.  Think this ending over and resubmit it Howard, this is just not up to your usual standard.  I know you are home schooled but even you should know this. 1/10

He he. Not sure it is that simple.

Spending an afternoon with Nyarlethotep exploring the ruins is probably worth a mythos point or two.

But the protagonist rationalised the supernatural component of the experience as a dream.

Is this coping strategy really a worse outcome than facing up to the experience? Normally you have to work through your problems, but is there really a way to integrate appreciation of what really happened when confronting a horrifying mythos god with a sane view of the world?

Sure his "dream" rationalisation would be shattered by another encounter - but contemplating the full ramifications of what he experienced might be even more damaging.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

*chuckle* well, go ahead and amputate then

Only if Cthulhu tells me to... :-)

Design looks really simple. You could probably make a version which could be worn over your hand at a game convention with a few weekends of swearing at your 3D printer, an Arduino and a stepper motor. Give it a bit of paint and it would look really creepy.

Sounds similar to The Horror at Red Hook - a HP Lovecraft story about a cultist who sets up mass sacrifices on an industrial scale on the back of a people smuggling operation. Big difference is instead of gaining access to a scroll, the goal of the cultist is some ghastly sorcerous personal transformation, to defeat old age and who knows what else.

The Horror at Red Hook has come under a lot of criticism for alleged racist overtones - many of the perpetrators were foreigners just off the boat, though they were led by a white occultist.

Still maybe worth reading - no problem borrowing some plot twists from Lovecraft to spice up your new scenario :-)

Going temporarily insane might actually be beneficial in some circumstances. This might not be completely cannon, but a lot of HP Lovecraft's characters escape because they lost their grip on sanity. For example, consider the following from "Under the Pyramids"

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Then it did emerge . . . it did emerge, and at the sight I turned and fled into the darkness up the higher staircase that rose behind me; fled unknowingly up incredible steps and ladders and inclined planes to which no human sight or logic guided me, and which I must ever relegate to the world of dreams for want of any confirmation. It must have been dream, or the dawn would never have found me breathing on the sands of Gizeh before the sardonic dawn-flushed face of the Great Sphinx.

The Great Sphinx! God!—that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before . . . what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent? Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged . . . that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus . . . the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore paw. . . .

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream.

 

If the lead character in "Under the Pyramids" had not fled in blind panic, if he had tried to find a rational way to escape, he would likely have failed. 

Perhaps the way to handle this is to roll the character's mythos skill when they are afflicted with temporary insanity - the more mythos skill they have, the more likely they are to respond appropriately to extreme circumstances. 

Did the character in "Under the Pyramids" recover some sanity after surviving the horror? Difficult to say.

Don't try to help the investigators survive. CoC is lethal. D&D can turn into a big bug hunt. In CoC, the players are the bugs. Players have to learn that if they want their characters to survive more than 5 minutes, they need to think.

New CoC themed video game going to be released...

The following is a short extract of the scene I was referring to. In the Mouth of Madness is a very Cthulhu themed horror film, tentacled monstrosities taking over the world, but the opening scene of the film is pure black humour.
 

The opening scene from In the Mouth of Madness is dark comedy - the Sam Neill character being hauled into an asylum, starting a shout "I am not insane", which all the other inmates join "I'm not insane if he isn't".
 

One of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen is The Thing. There's a few utterly alien scenes with tentacles and grisly transformations, but the real terror is that nobody knows who is still human. The thing assumes the likenesses and behaviour of the people it infects - attacking people on a cellular level, until they are consumed and become a part of the alien menace. Nobody can trust anyone - someone trying to get you alone might be your friend trying to talk to you, to work out a plan to survive, or it could be the alien horror setting an ambush in the guise of someone you trust.

The setting is an isolated Antarctic base, so there is no getting away - in fact, some of the people on the base are determined nobody will get away, because if The Thing escapes it might destroy the world. The only reason the world wasn't destroyed 10s of thousands of years ago is The Thing crashed its starship in the Antarctic wilderness, and promptly froze solid. But now its loose again, and trying to find a way out - the fate of the world hangs by a thread.

Well worth watching, if you want some ideas on creating a setting of mind bending horror with a few simple props.