Tag: cthulhu mythos

Check out @kennethhite’s proposed online course on H.P. Lovecraft!

I signed up for this: hopefully it’ll get enough interest to actually run.

The Emperor in Yellow: some thoughts on a potential new RPG campaign world.

For the next Patreon offering. This would be explicitly Cthulhu Mythos, with a HEAVY reliance on The King in Yellow. Thoughts?

Patreon!

Idea: Emperor Norton I did die on January 8, 1880 — and his body was taken over by the King in Yellow, which then used Norton’s miraculous ‘recovery’ to insidiously spread through California.  Now it’s 1911, and San Francisco mayor Winthrop is about to run for President, on the strength of his leadership during the horrible statewide earthquake of 1906. And Norton’s husk is finally about to die.

Continue reading The Emperor in Yellow: some thoughts on a potential new RPG campaign world.

‘The Funniest Joke in the World’ through the Cthulhu Mythos lens.

It occurs to me that virtually every scheme I’ve ever seen in gaming that involves somebody trying to weaponize or commercialize some aspect of the Cthulhu Mythos (or other horror concept) effectively takes this skit as its template for a successful weaponizing or commercialization. This is how it’s always supposed to work. And it never, ever does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbnvkMRPKM

Some thoughts on this ‘Lost in Smoke’ scenario hook from Pelgrane.

The basic idea – Mythos-infused tobacco causing destructively-seductive ghostly apparations and visions – is pretty good all on its own.  But you could also tie it in with the black lotus and whatnot found in the Conan novels, and thus bring in the Hyborian Age stuff that Trail of Cthulhu, I think, would find rather entertainingly useful.  I mean, there’s some of it in there now, obviously, because Lovecraft and Howard were friends and pen-pals.  But you could really ratchet up the Howard for a Pulp game.

Something to think about, I guess.

Cthulhu macrofasciculumque fhtagn! Cthulhu macrofasciculumque fhtagn! IA! IA! IA!

Couple things about this story:

 

  1. Cool.
  2. Cthylla? …Um.  Yeah. That’s kind of, well.  Look, I’m not going to say anything bad about Brian Lumley, OK?  And God knows that nobody should be too high and mighty to say that only certain people can play in the Mythos sandbox… so, yeah, I should shut up now.  Nevermind.
  3. …Again: cool.

The intersection of these two essays would be interesting.

Batman and Evil, Ben Domenech.

The Man Who Shot Joseph Curwin, Ken Hite.

Postulate: If HP Lovecraft had lived and gotten a job with DC he would have been one Hell of a writer of Batman comics*.

Discuss.

Moe Lane

*Admittedly, I’m kind of stealing at least the skeleton of that postulate from Ken.  Hopefully, he won’t mind.

So. Just read Radiant Dawn & Ravenous Dusk.

Radiant Dawn and Ravenous Dusk were written by a fellow by the name of Cody Goodfellow, and I picked them up on the recommendation of Ken Hite’s… recommendation… in his intro to Delta Green: Strange Authorities.  Cthulhu Mythos books, so therefore horror; and as to style… well. Take Delta Green, give it enough ergot-tainted rye to choke a horse, then try to treat its symptoms with more horse-choke doses of cut-rate Mexican methamphetamine.  And ether!

This is not a criticism.

“There is a hole in your mind…”

More accurately, there seems to be a hole in my Delta Green collection.  Delta Green is, of course, the modern government conspiracy/investigation setting for the Call of Cthulhu RPG; and it has an internal narrative in its back-story.  I bring this up because I have just picked up the latest book (Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly: book-book, not gaming supplement-book), and it’s clear that there is a gap in the narrative: apparently, some stuff went down when I wasn’t looking.  I think that I must have not bought a particular book or something, but I can’t figure out which one.  Minor mystery, but slightly aggravating.

Here’s what I do have:

There’s a couple of short stories on The Unspeakable Oath site and all that, but I don’t think that they’re the missing links.  What am I missing?