HP Lovecraft fans?

jj said:


Oh!

Did any of your characters go insane? :D :D :D :D
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Isn't that the point of the game?

:D

One of my players found out he had Innsmouth Blood - he did end up going insane, but at least he's immortal!
Another investigator is confined to Arkham Sanitarium right now, muttering "The birds, the birds...they're after Calvin Cooledge..." over and over.
I usually play the 1920's version, since the firepower isn't quite so deadly, if anyone just goes postal it's a lot harder to kill the rest of the group with a .38 revolver than it is a fully automatic AK-47. And it really cuts down on the whole "I call so-and-so on my cell phone while I google for the bad guy's company name on my computer," kind of gaming.
 
I've played and DM'ed CoC games, I own a copy of Shoggoth on the Roof, I have a Miskatonic University sticker for my car... my name's Uther, and I'm a nerd.

-Uther
 
Lanius said:

I hate my first post to this board to be pedantic like this, but I just have to point out the use of the word player above where you probably meant character.

The humor in one of the players going insane and blowing everyone else away is just too much to ignore given that you're playing Call of Cthulhu. Of course, if you're still around to tell the story, then who else could have done it? *backing away slowly*

Oh, and so this isn't totally off topic, I too am a big fan of Lovecraft's work. I think I'll have to go with "The Dunwich Horror" as my favorite for now.
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Okay, you got me.

Of course I wouldn't suggest that you go digging in my back yard and as for that report of five people missing from a roleplaying game in Carson CIty, Nevada. Well, that wasn't me.....
 
Lanius said:

I hate my first post to this board to be pedantic like this, but I just have to point out the use of the word player above where you probably meant character.
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Not pedantic, just wrong. The unspeakable one was summoned. :p
 
Abdul Alhazred said:


Not pedantic, just wrong. The unspeakable one was summoned. :p
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Well, you know what they say about those eeeeeevil roleplaying games. Int he case of Call of Cthulhu, they're ALL TRUE!!!!!!!!!!

IA! CTHULHU F'TAGHN!

Oops, sorry, lost control of myself for a second, it won't happen again...
 
Nyarlathotep said:


Well, you know what they say about those eeeeeevil roleplaying games. Int he case of Call of Cthulhu, they're ALL TRUE!!!!!!!!!!

IA! CTHULHU F'TAGHN!

Oops, sorry, lost control of myself for a second, it won't happen again...
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Now I must be pedantic.

It is:

IA! IA! CTHULU F´TAGHN!

Two IA! - get it?
 
I read a bio of ol' HP, and he was not a particularly pleasant individual, apparently. Racist, white-supremacist, and perhaps "rather more dependent on mum than one should be".

His books are full of descriptions of "half-caste Laskars", sub-men, degenerates, and so forth....

Of course, that may be the product of the times, there was still more than a bit of thought to the effect that the White European Male was the epitome of evolution....
 
Bikewer said:
Of course, that may be the product of the times, there was still more than a bit of thought to the effect that the White European Male was the epitome of evolution...
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... except for Arthur Jermyn. :p
 
Big fan here. I'd have to say that "The Whisperer in Darkness" is my favorite. A genuinely scary story that gave me the creeps.

Ia! Ia! Shubniggurath the black goat of the woods with a thousand young!
 
My favorite is "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" with the Dream cycles following close behind.

Giz
Now comes the real test - who's played the roleplaying game?
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I've played both major editions (Chaosium and the new WotC - Chaosium is better in that it sticks to the feel of the stories more)
For more info try Cthuugle.com

I've played, DM'ed and co-opted HPs stuff for a number of other games.

Now speaking of movies check out Dagon, based mainly on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

Ossai
 
I've never played the game.

Hell, I have yet to make it through "The Shadow Out of Time," let alone At The Mountains of Madness.

I have spent a day following in the steps of Charles Dexter Ward along Benefit and Jenckes streets, admiring the mansard roofs and those four haunting spires atop the church of St. John. Also entered the Atheneum, where I was surprised to find only one Lovecraft book. Maybe the rest were on display somewhere, or maybe they're all at Brown.
 
Hah I've played through most of the major CoC campaigns and I'm still not mad I tell you!!!HAHAHA Favourite short story: The Haunter of the Dark. Favourite CoC campaign: The Masks Of Nyarlathotep. Favourite not HPL Mythos writer: Richard L. Tierney and his Simon Magus series.
Haakon
 
Bikewer said:
I read a bio of ol' HP, and he was not a particularly pleasant individual, apparently. Racist, white-supremacist, and perhaps "rather more dependent on mum than one should be".

His books are full of descriptions of "half-caste Laskars", sub-men, degenerates, and so forth....

Of course, that may be the product of the times, there was still more than a bit of thought to the effect that the White European Male was the epitome of evolution....
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Yes H.P was racist, though he seems to have recovered slightly and eventually married a Jewish wife. As for being dependent on his mother - I'm not so sure about that. After moving out when he failed to graduate high school, Lovecraft seemed to make a point of regularly sending letters to his mother, even though her house was definitely within walking distance. When she became hospitalized, he never visited her.
 
Yeah, I'm a huge Lovecraft fan. ( [peeve] You know how hard it is to find a decent female name in HPL's works? [/peeve]) I've never played the game, though.

My favorites are The Call of Cthulhu, Shadow Over Innsmouth and Whisperer in Darkness.

Folks like me who think that it's the most screamingly funny send-up of woo-wooism ever, and hard-core woo-woos who don't know when they are being got at.
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The woo-woos surrounding HPL go all the way back to HPL's time. He had a correspondent and revision client by the name of William Lumley (no relation to Brian Lumley) who believed the Mythos was real. This is what HPL had to say about him to Clark Ashton Smith:

"He is firmly convinced that all our gang—you, Two-Gun Bob, Sonny Belknap, Grandpa E'ch-Pi-El, and the rest—are genuine agents of unseen Powers in distributing hints too dark and profound for human conception or comprehension. We may think we're writing fiction, and may even (absurd thought!) disbelieve what we write, but at bottom we are telling the truth in spite of ourselves—serving unwittingly as mouthpieces of Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleasant Outside gentry. Indeed—Bill tells me that he has fully identified my Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep . . . . . . . so that he can tell me more about 'em than I know myself! With a little encouragement, good old Bill would unfold limitless chronicles from beyond the border—but I like the old boy so well that I never make fun of him. "

(Edit: I just wanted to add that I do have those two CDs that Rosencrantz mentioned. I've been singing along to the demented genius of 'A Very Scary Solstice' all week. It is absolutely bloody amazing.)
 
Wow, Keziah, a shallower Lovecraft fan would have picked Asenath Upton or Lavinnia Whateley for a female name. You grabbed a semi obscure one! Good job!

I wonder what the Gentleman of Providence would have thought had he lived long enough to have gone to a convention or two?

"Mr. Lovecraft, could you read my mythos story? It has Cthulhu and Cthuga fighting the X-men with an army of furrie Tcho-tcho people!!! Like my costume? I made it myself!!! I've read all your books!!! Even, like, the long ones!!! One thing, though, could you like, use smaller words, 'cause my friends and I don't know what eldritch ichor means ... is it like Extacy or somethin'?"

And then Cthulhu eats them...

And I will add my vote to the idea that "Darkness of the Hillside Thickets" is sadly ignored by mainstream consumer music fans.
 
Candace said:

And I will add my vote to the idea that "Darkness of the Hillside Thickets" is sadly ignored by mainstream consumer music fans.
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Probably due to the lack of big names, but don't fret... one day when the stars are right!
 
Joshua Korosi said:


Yes H.P was racist, though he seems to have recovered slightly and eventually married a Jewish wife.
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HP wasn't a racist in the modern sense of hating some group of people or advocating enslavement or extermination.

Furthermore, an alleged racist of the unpigmented persuasion such as HP is not necessarily a general practitioner of racism.

These days hatred of Jews is the thing internationally. Hatred of blacks is specifically the thing here in the USA.

But one can suppose oneself genetically or culturally superior to "Lascars" without hating Jews or blacks or whomever.

The case for HP's racism towards blacks or Jews rests only on the fact that he never mentioned either of them.

I'd call him a race-snob, not a racist in the modern sense. Not nice, but not an opressor.
 
HPL was no more racist than Robert E Howard. They both wrote things like "ape-like negro" and such. HPL I think in Herbert West: Reanimator in regards to a boxer that they reanimate, and Howard in a bunch of those Soloman Kane stories that take place in Africa. They were products of their time. But they were writers also, so we still see the reflection of their society. We can't put it all on them personally. Doesn't mean it was right, but also doesn't mean they were bad.
 
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