How to incorporate the Cthulhu mythos into a Classic Fantasy game? Help wanted.

[b-dog]

I an using the Classic Fantasy source book which is basicaly AD&D done with Basic Roleplaying rules but I want to add in the Cthulhu mythos as well. The world has orcs and elves , demons and dragons and magic of many types but I still want to keep the bleak hopeless feeling of CoC. I guess the magic items of the Coc world are the most powerful and one day when thestars are right the Elder Things will return and destroy the world. But since there are the fantasy heroes, they can at least delay their return if not outright stop them at least for another day. There is true evil in theis world in the form of evil gods, demons and devils but they are sort of newbies because the CoC things are far more ancient. So there are two terrible forces in this world, evil and CoC monsters.

This is the set-up I have so far and if anyone has any ideas on how to expand this then it would be really helpful. Thanks.

[Bygoneyrs]

Well "b-dog" all I have to say is ...."Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkk why would you want to do that"...LOL

It appears your wanting to do what I do not, and that is add the Cthulhu Mythos into your D&D. If I understand everyone, by added the Sanity Check system and all that goes along with it your basically adding that element of hopelessness into your game. Eventually the Sanity elements will end up destroying your gamers PCs and causing them to loose their characters. Seems like you could do that just the same with the tone and flavor of your game without using the sanity check stuff. Have you ever DM'd Ravenloft D&D setting, you could add elements of that into your world sighting that a more Ancient Elder Darker force has re-awakened within the world. It seems that from time to time the world seems to be covered in a heavy fog at night where unspeakable horrors come out walk the Earth. Maybe the moon turns Blood Red when that happens too. Also maybe the gods seem to have become harder to hear or help their followers. There are all sorts of things a DM could do to tailor their campaign world to set the mood and present a darker setting.

Penn

Foot-note:

Here is my own topic that might give you some insight on either side of this issue of what direction you might want to move in..

http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/1816-A-question-about-Cthulhu

Edited March 4, 2010 by Bygoneyrs
Adding a foot-note

[cjbowser]

I would dispense with most of the piddly litte Mythos monsters. After all, why would a Deep One cause SAN loss but not a Sahuagin? One of the things with the Mythos is that it's firmly rooted in the protagonists are human milieu. If you have orcs, demons, and all the other tropes of a fantasy game, you'll need a compelling reason why seeing a deep one hybrid causes a SAN loss, but not a half human/half-orc. They're both signs of misegination. I'm not 100% how to do that.

One option would be to not include the SAN mechanic at all. Instead, you portray the despair and slow descent into madness entirely through tone and setting. The world is a depressed world where nothing seems to go right and everything that can go wrong does. You might want to check out Ashes to Ashes for some pointers on creating a compelling dark fantasy world. While Cthulhu Dark Ages exists, I don't think you need it. It tries to be very historical and avoids the fantasy tropes.

[Conrad]

Have you checked out Chaositech by Monte Cook? It is D&D meets HP lovecraftian monsters. It might give you a few ideas on the creeping corruption of mythos like creatures that offer devices that are a double edged sword.

http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_Chaos

[Tywyll]

Honestly, it sounds like you are going for the feel of Warhammer Fantasy, but with Cthulhu replacing the Gods of Chaos. That too is a doomed world, though it has evil gods and good gods, due to damages to reality long passed, they are all doomed to eventually fall before the inevitable tide of chaos. All battles are merely stop-gap efforts to hold back the tide and let people live for another day.

I'd recommend you look to that for ideas.

I'd also not recommend using sanity in a fantasy environ unless it was really, really low fantasy (no non-humans) and even then I'd drastically cut the amounts lossed for even the most horrible things.

[Thalaba]

One of the reasons CoC works to capture the 'bleak, hopeless feeling' is because the creatures are, for the most part, unbeatable by the investigators. They can only hope to banish them - and even then it's not a permanent thing. Furthermore, the rest of the world is blissfully ignorant that these creatures even exist, so the investigators work in a bit of a vacuum - it's them, by themselves, against unbeatable foes and nobody else believes them.

Traditional D&D style fantasy is quite the opposite of this. For the most part everyone knows the creatures exist and the prolification of magic users can really ramp up the buff power of the PCs to the point where your players will know that one day they can defeat the creatures. What's more, with healing and ressurection magic available, the fear of player mortality drops quite a bit, which doesn't help to keep that grim atmosphere.

So, somehow, you have to find the right line between the two genres. I think there are several ways you might do this. One that I can think of is to drive a wedge of magnitude between the danger of a normal magical creature and a Cthulhu creature. If earthly creatures cause HP damage, perhaps CoC creatures cause damage directly to CON or other charateristics in addition to HP. Or perhaps they cause damage to total HP which can only be healed by the expenditure of permanent POW. This would really make the characters think twice about how they engage them. Another tool might be to have the Cthulhu gods slowly killing the earthly gods off. This would be without fanfare, but maybe one day the clerics of a minor god suddenly find themselves without access to their god or spells. Then, maybe a year later, another one goes, and so on. This would take care of the 'impending' part.

I'm not sure how effective sanity will be, if you want to use it. It's a little harder to justify when normal scary creatures don't cause sanity loss. Maybe you could replace sanity with something else, like a kind of taint. Use the sanity rules, but as your 'taint' increases, you become more noticeable to the CoC mythos creatures and they start to pay attention to you. The lower your sanity, the more noticeable you are and the bigger the creature that comes a calling for you. I suppose you could use the allegience rules for this, too.

That's all I've got right now, except that I also wanted to say that you can get a bleak game without using either sanity or CoC creatures. And here I'm going to also plug Ashes to Ashes as one interpetation which has a setting somewhat like what you describe, except that (IIR) humans are the only playable race (elves have gone insane, dwarves and halflings are in hiding). In that setting, all fantasy creatures are just different types of demons (and CoC creatures could be, too).

Good luck with it.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Thalaba

[SDLeary]

Honestly, it sounds like you are going for the feel of Warhammer Fantasy, but with Cthulhu replacing the Gods of Chaos. That too is a doomed world, though it has evil gods and good gods, due to damages to reality long passed, they are all doomed to eventually fall before the inevitable tide of chaos. All battles are merely stop-gap efforts to hold back the tide and let people live for another day.

I'd recommend you look to that for ideas.

I'd also not recommend using sanity in a fantasy environ unless it was really, really low fantasy (no non-humans) and even then I'd drastically cut the amounts lossed for even the most horrible things.

I'm not sure that using SAN in a traditional fantasy setting is really an issue. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and the like are pretty close to one another, not much of a shock at all. Orcs/Trolls, etc, might provoke a small loss, if they are particularly ferocious. A Lich or a feeding Ghoul more so. Demons and Mythos creatures even more. It can work well to convey horror even in a fantasy setting, you just have to determine how different the creatures really are from the baseline.

In Glorantha for instance, because the base races are so different, I can see a human needing to make a roll if they see an Aldryami drop from its pod, or a Mostali lifted from the vat full grown... etc.

SDLeary

[frogspawner]

...one day when thestars are right the Elder Things will return and destroy the world. But since there are the fantasy heroes, they can at least delay their return if not outright stop them at least for another day...

Very close to the premise I've used for my campaign. Go for it! :thumb:

...why would a Deep One cause SAN loss but not a Sahuagin?

I got around this by giving them, instead of simple sanity-blasting horribleness, mind-blasting psionics.

This seemed 'right' to me, because psionics had been in AD&D since time immemorial but also most people think nobody in their right mind would use them! >:->

[BMonroe]

For those who're interested, I wrote an alternate Sanity/Stress system for BRP. It was designed to give more of the feeling of a desperate "Survival Horror" situation, rather than doomed cosmic dread. It would actually probably work pretty well for Mythos fantasy.

It's supposed to be included in the 2nd issue of Uncounted Worlds, which I gather is nearing completion.

[BMonroe]

It appears your wanting to do what I do not, and that is add the Cthulhu Mythos into your D&D. If I understand everyone, by added the Sanity Check system and all that goes along with it your basically adding that element of hopelessness into your game. Eventually the Sanity elements will end up destroying your gamers PCs and causing them to loose their characters. Seems like you could do that just the same with the tone and flavor of your game without using the sanity check stuff.

Bah. If Robert E. Howard can add mythos elements to -his- fantasy world, so can this guy.

;-)

[Bygoneyrs]

But but but...that would be ...EVIL<g>!!!

Penn

[BMonroe]

I'm not sure that using SAN in a traditional fantasy setting is really an issue. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and the like are pretty close to one another, not much of a shock at all. Orcs/Trolls, etc, might provoke a small loss, if they are particularly ferocious. A Lich or a feeding Ghoul more so. Demons and Mythos creatures even more. It can work well to convey horror even in a fantasy setting, you just have to determine how different the creatures really are from the baseline.

In Glorantha for instance, because the base races are so different, I can see a human needing to make a roll if they see an Aldryami drop from its pod, or a Mostali lifted from the vat full grown... etc.

SDLeary

Steve speaks wisdom. Now, the question that arises for me is what is B-Dog really trying to do? A "Fantasy with Mythos Elements" setting? Or a "Mythos with Fantasy Tropes" setting?

If going for the former, just plug shoggoths, deep ones, mi-go, etc. into your fantasy setting of choice, forget the SAN rolls, and just call them all 'demons' or whatever.

If doing the latter, then you're probably better off reskinning fantasy races entirely. Elves are more akin to Grey Aliens, who fell from the stars, and bred with the primitve ancestors of humanity. Orcs are vat-grown Mi-go experiments. Their own version of building slave labor, like the Elder Things' Shoggoths. Perhaps the Orcs are mountainous, and arctic-tempered, as they were bred to assault the Mi-go fortress city at the icecap at the bottom of the world.

So, that's my suggestion: figure out exactly why you want to mix up the mythos and traditional fantasy, and make the setting to reflect those themes.

[Tywyll]

Bah. If Robert E. Howard can add mythos elements to -his- fantasy world, so can this guy.

;-)

Yeah, but I think that hits the nail on the head.

Robert E. Howard's fantasy characters don't go insane upon seeing the otherwise mindblasting horrors that are, essentially, cthulean monsters with their serial numbers filed off.

Sanity within CoC is a function of modern society mired in its civilized delusions. If anything, it gives credance to the Howard idea that civilization breeds weakness.

In a world where people accept monsters (even non-cthulhu ones) and a reality that is malleable to will through magic, there is a lot more that they could accept.

But, there are plenty of other ways to make them scary, as Thalaba pointed out, without needing Sanity. Ditto with the Warhammer world.

[Thalaba]

I recently read the entire Howard Conan works - I don't remember any Cthulhu mythos in his Hyborian work. Sure he wrote Cthulhu stories, but they didn't take place in Hyboria.

(face saving caveat: my memory isn't what it was when I was younger! :ohwell: )

And while I heartily agree with Steve that you can mix the SAN rules with fantasy as he's described, i'm thinking that the result won't jive with what a lot of people think is 'traditional' fantasy.

[rust]

I recently read the entire Howard Conan works - I don't remember any Cthulhu mythos in his Hyborian work.

I seem to remember some Mythos creatures, for example the Serpent People (= snakes with

humans heads) ?

[Bygoneyrs]

I'd advise to just bag the Sanity Check all together! Use plot and background elements and good story telling to set the mood and character for the campaign.

Penn

Edited March 5, 2010 by Bygoneyrs
fix a typo

[tedopon]

My "Monster Manual" even when I was using AD&D was a combo of the old Runequest monster book and Malleus Monstrorum. My campaign world is slowly moving away from fantasy altogether and moving more in the direction of weird tales using the gonzo feel of old D&D. Since adopting CF (and subsequently basing my own houserule set patterened after what Rodney did with CF), I've been more aggressive about moving away from fantasy and it's moving more in the direction of Doctor Who meets Gamma World with Runequest grittiness thrown in. Lovecraft monsters (without all the silly overarching EVIL and sanity loss mechanics) are a great fit for a non standard fantasy game.

Hell, even a standard fantasy game, IMO. Remember the first printing of Dieties and Demigods (ie SuperMonster Manual) had all the Lovecraft, Moorcock and Leiber stuff in it.

Go for it, but I'd advise dropping the Sanity mechanic. It doesn't fit in a game that is supposed to be "heroic" all that well.

[tedopon]

I seem to remember some Mythos creatures, for example the Serpent People (= snakes with

humans heads) ?

Serpent People (or Tengu, as they're named in my world) are one of the core races.

[Thalaba]

They appeared in one of the Kull stories - if they were in Hyboria, I would suspect they went from Hyboria to Lovecraft and not the other way around.

[rust]

They appeared in one of the Kull stories - if they were in Hyboria, I would suspect they went from Hyboria to Lovecraft and not the other way around.

I finally found my Cthulhu Spielleiter-Handbuch (GM's Handbook), which also lists where the

various Mythos creatures did first appear in print. If it is right, the Serpent People were in-

troduced by Clark Ashton Smith, 1934 in "The Seven Geases".

However, a similar race described as "degenerate serpent people" first appeared in Robert E.

Howard's "People of the Dark", and I probably confused these races.

The Children of Tsathoggua are also a Howard creation, from "The Thing on the Roof", like-

wise Gol-Goroth from "The Black Stone", but I think that's it.

[cjbowser]

"Worms of the Earth" introduced the worms of the earth, another degenerate race. But, that's a Bran Mak Morn story, not a Conan story.

[Bygoneyrs]

Like I have said all along, you the DM/GM should be able to set the mood yourself without using that Sanity check which to me is counter productive to the enjoyment of the players as a whole.

Penn

[b-dog]

In the concept I have, the gods of humans, elves and other fantasy races are newer while the Cthulhu gods are part of the primordial chaos. Mortal races will go insane if they see the Cthulhu gods because they are so far beyond comprehension that they destroy the minds of mortals. The magic in the world that wizards use is less powerful than the Elder magic because Elder magic is not really magic at all, rather the true way the multiverse works. That said, the Elder gods need to be amped up to scare high powered fighters, magic users, clerics etc. There are evil monsters like demons and undead but these are the result of the split between the gods of humans. It is thought that the Elder Gods were the ones that engineered the split so that the gods would be divided between good and evil so as to allow the gods to be weakend so that the Elder Gods can return into the world easier.

The main things I am looking for are artisitic description and how to relate Cthulhu things and demonic things. The Cthulhu things most likely are beyond good and evil so they care little else than destruction while the demonic things like destruction but they also want control and evil power over the universe. The demonic things would use the Cthuhu things to aid in their expansion of evil but since Cthulhu things are impossible to control the alliance usually ends in chaos with the good gods battling the Cthulhu things in order to save the world. This is what I have so far...

[dragonewt]

How to incorporate the Cthulhu mythos into a Classic Fantasy game?

Have a quest where the objective is for the players to find Cthulhu, kill it, and take all it's stuff. :cool:

Or, in Mythos Russia, Cthulhu kills the players and takes all their stuff.

[GianniVacca]

in Mythos Russia, Cthulhu kills the players and takes all their stuff.

And uses the money to buy a football club in England :famine:

More seriously... I've played for years in an AD&D campaign where people in the countryside would worship ancient chthonic gods, ad it worked very well. So as suggested above-- just drop the SAN and make sure the toughest monsters (liches, demons, etc.) are all somehow related to the Mythos.