A recent RPGNet thread (login required to view) has made me contemplate how to make the Cthulhu Mythos work in a modern-day or near-future term. Some claim that the Mythos loses its horror as notions of living in a vast, uncaring universe become common. I disagree, and thus I present two approaches through which the Mythos can be brought into a new focus for modern times.


One approach is to emphasize the concept of memes. Let's say that the human mind is an emergent phenomenon arising from the memes which have "infected" the relevant brain - something which some proponents of the concept of memes have actually argued. The memes someone has accumulated over the span of one's life determine one's behavior to a large degree.

And the influence of some of the Great Old Ones also spreads as memes - and they are detrimental to the human mind, either rendering them into sociopaths or causing highly atavistic behavior. This is how cults arise and spread. This is also why Mythos tomes are so dangerous - they cause Mythos memes to propagate.

Now, it's possible to have some measure of resistance to Mythos memes, depending on your current personality (=current accumulation of memes) and the strength of exposure. However, being an open-minded person actually weakens your memetic defenses. If you readily accept ideas and concepts from other cultures, then Mythos memes have a far easier time to get a hold of you.

The implication is clear: Being a close-minded reactionary is actually your best defense against the Mythos! This seems to be in line with the original stories, since Lovecraftian horror was always a reactionary one - with the added advantage that we can ignore the blatant racism in his stories.

And now, thanks to globalization and the spread of democracy and the internet, the whole of humanity becomes more and more open-minded - which in turn makes the Mythos memes easier and easier to spread. By being progressive and tolerant, we are only embracing the End Times faster.


My inspiration for this was the introductory fiction in Delta Green - the final transmission of (retired) Major General Reginald Fairfield. In addition to warning of the dangers of the Mythos and its willing patsies, he also rants about MTV and "filth on television". And this doesn't make the fiction any less evocative, even if you disagree with his politics.

I think my point is that to truly effective, the implications of the Cthulhu Mythos must offend our sensibilities and values in some way. In Lovecraft's time, this worked via invoking a vista of a vast, uncaring universe and denying humanity the status as a special snowflake. But today, among many of us with a non-religious bend, a vast, uncaring universe where humanity is nothing special is already pretty well established and thus loses its horror.

But a lot of us pride ourselves in being tolerant, progressive, and open-minded - open to new ideas. Thus, it is these values that the Cthulhu Mythos must show as being wrong and dangerous to be effective in a modern setting.


Another approach works via Transhumanism. Old Castro said that as the End Times approach, "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". This could represent not only a merely behavioral change - perhaps mankind is changing itself on a more fundamental level.

We might think now that we can modify humans a bit to become stronger, smarter, and longer-lived yet still remain essentially "human" like we understand it today. But what if this isn't true? What if even small modifications radically alter human thought patterns, and turn them into something altogether... stranger?

We needn't even turn to genetic engineering. After all, aren't we already pumping our bodies full with drugs to be more "competitive"? And giving our children medications to make them more docile - accepting or ignoring the fact that their brains might be permanently altered in the process? And just what will the pharmacorps come up with next to "improve" us?

Imagine that you are an old man who once had a happy family, but whose wife and children died and most of whose grandchildren don't visit any more - and those who do visit do nothing but throw parties at his house with their gangster buddies, wreck his furniture and mementos, and mock him for his old-fashioned ways. And he can't keep them out of the house because they have keys and simply break in even if he changed the locks. His mind is fading, and he only survives on the meager scraps left by them, and he lives in filth and vermin because there is nobody who cares about him enough to keep him clean and fed and healthy. He contemplates suicide in his few moments of lucidity, but he has become too weak for even that.

This old man represents normal human beings as the End Times approaches and more and more humans are changing into something else.


So, what do you think? Do these approaches for the Cthulhu Mythos work for more modern times and settings?

In this RPGNet thread, poster "Bailywolf" had an interesting concept for a game setting.

Imagine that there was some powerful entity offering various people vast power with which to change the world - but in return it would transform them bodily into grotesque monsters. Furthermore, it will tell those it makes the offer to that there is a fixed total number of people it will transform - so if you refuse the offer, it will go to someone else instead who might be less inclined to use his power ethically and responsibly.

You were going to use your power responsibly - right?


This kind of campaign framework could be very interesting for a supers campaign, as it can come with a lot of pathos. The characters might start out with noble intentions - accepting the transformation so that the power won't go to outright villains who could wreak devastating havoc with it. But they will be shunned and rejected by society for their appearance and for the crimes of their brethen who are monstrous in mind as well as body - and how long can they maintain their nobility under such circumstances?

For some further ideas, maybe the power of the transformation works like the Essence shards in the setting of Exalted - there is only a limited number of them, but they are basically indestructible and when one carrier dies it immediately seeks out the next host. Thus, there will be a race to kill the "bad guys" in possession of this power so that the power can migrate to "worthier" hosts - while the "bad guys" will want to get to newly-erupted monsters in order to recruit them to their side for protection.

Continued from this post.

Now we come to the major ongoing projects the city has running. With a solid base of 25 seeds, I choose the maximum of 5:

• Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
  
• Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program
  
• Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive
  
• RAK Convention and Exhibition Centre by OMA
  
• The Army's Totally Serious Mind-Control Project
  

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Well, that's it for the basic framework of ideas and concepts that the generator has provided - and I have plenty of material now that I can flesh out further now. I hope you enjoyed the ride - and if you have any ideas and suggestions for the Random Nations Generator, I am all ears!

This series of posts is intended to demonstrate how to use the Random Nations Generator at the Arcana Wiki to flesh out a locale. My goal is to both show the usefulness of this tool as a source of inspiration and to encourage others to contribute to the Arcana Wiki by adding new entries which feed into the generator.

For this demonstration, I will use the city-state of Nimdenthal as an example, which I developed for my own Urbis campaign setting. For the record, Urbis uses many of the tropes and elements of fantasy - especially D&D - but combines this with social and technological elements of Industrial Age Western Europe via a magical industrial revolution which continues to transform the world.

So far, I have written the following about Nimdenthal:

"Population: 723,510

This city is infamous for surrendering to the invading armies of Negroth the Doombringer without a fight, and is still hated by the citizens of the other Flannish cities as a result, which suffered far more under his brief reign than Nimdenthal did. That the army of Nimdenthal was hardly able to withstand the might of Negroth's forces on their own is conveniently forgotten. Many other cities still levy large tolls against the goods from Nimdenthal, or boycott them outright. As a result, the people of Nimdenthal take an almost perverse pride in being self-sufficient."

"Negroth the Doombringer", for the record, was one of the last of the stereotypical Evil Overlord types in the setting, and his defeat resulted in a shift from the traditional pseudo-medieval feudal society to a more modern one - complete with revolutions that chased the aristocratic rulers away. However, all this was more than two hundred years ago within the timeline of the setting, and the other people in the region likely wouldn't be able to keep a grudge against Nimdenthal for so long if the city hadn't found new ways of aggravating them - and thus reminding them of their earlier "transgression" of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys against an overwhelming military onslaught. I'll keep this in mind as I interpret the results of the generator.

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To be continued...

I've mentioned the activities of one William Dempski at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before. Here is some new information on his courses - some of his exam questions, to be specific. Apart from the usual demands of arguing for Intelligent Design, I found this part to be particularly interesting:

"You are the Templeton Foundation's new program director and are charged with overseeing its programs and directing its funds. Sketch out a 20-year plan for defeating scientific materialism and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered if you had $50,000,000 per year in current value to do so. What sorts of programs would you institute? How would you spend the money?"


Personally, I think that if this question is more than hypothetical, it would make the Templeton Foundation into an awesome villain for Heroic Scientist PCs in a near-future RPG campaign to oppose.

And we need more Heroic Scientist PCs!

The Arcana Wiki keeps growing, and I have far more ideas for entries than time to enter them. So any help with adding material to the wiki is welcome - I and the other contributors could certainly use any assistance you can give us.

I'd like help with one issue in particular. The Arcana Wiki has accumulated a very large number of "stub" entries - essentially placeholder entries which were created to provide links to more interesting entries elsewhere. Here is the complete list of currently existing stubs:

Active Galaxy - Alaska - Ammunition - Ant - Apostles - Argentinia - Ark of the Covenant - Austin, Texas - Bajang - Bat - Bergen - Bergen Museum - Botany - Brazil - Bridge - Burma - California - Cattle - CERN - Chile - China - Chocolate - Christianity - Cipher - Coat Of Arms - Colorado - Comet - Computer - Corporation - Czech Republic - Death - Demonic Possession - Denmark - Disposal Of Human Corpses - Dragon - Drug - eBay - Economics - Ethiopia - Federated States Of Micronesia - Fiction - Ficus - Fly - Forest - Fountain of Youth - France - Frog - Gang - Genetics - Germany - Google - Greece - Greenland - Gull - Homicide - Hong Kong - Horse - Hundred Years' War - Husavik - Iceland - India - Ireland - Islam - Israel - Italy - Japan - Jellyfish - Kenya - Korea - Kutná Hora - Lagos - Lake - Land Vehicle - Language - Laser - Legend - Lich - London - London Underground - Manta Ray - Mars - Mermaid - Meteorology - Miami, Florida - Moscow - Moscow Underground - Mountain - Murder - Music - Name - National Security Agency - Neptune - New Jersey - New Orleans - Nicaragua - Nigeria - North Carolina - North Korea - Norway - Ocean - Opium - Order Of The Veiled Prophet - Penguin - Philippines - Phobia - Piracy In Somalia - Prague - Ras al-Khaimah - Riot - River - Rodeo Rider - Root - Roswell UFO Incident - Saturn - Sheep - Shopping Mall - Singing Cowboy - Snake - Society - Solar System - South Korea - Squid - St Louis, Missouri - Suicide - Switzerland - Tanzania - Temples Of Humankind - Texas - The Wild West - Thule Society - Tokyo - Tree - Turkey - Turkmenistan - Uganda - Ukraine - Unclassifiable Places - United Kingdom - United States - Uranus - Vampire Bat - Vehicle - Vietnam - Volcano - Wallaby - War - Weapon - Weather - Whale - Wichita, Kansas - Wisconsin - World War I



If you have some knowledge of any of these topics and can write something about them - a better description, a few gaming ideas, interesting links and so forth - please do so. Anything to justify getting rid of the "stub" tag!

Yesterday, the Monster Builder from Dungeons & Dragons Insider became available. And I must say, this is the best piece of dedicated gaming software I have ever come across, and it helps making D&D 4E one of the RPGs with the shortest prep time for running a game. Considering that D&D 3.X was among the games with the longest prep time - especially once you hit higher levels - this is a considerable achievement.

In honor of this release, I've started a new wiki - the DDI Wiki, which is intended to collect user-generated content for the DDI Character Builder, Monster Builder, and any future software tools published by WotC. I have high hopes for this one - after all, I created the d20 NPCs Wiki and despite doing hardly any work for it this it had been one of my most successful wikis so far. Let's see if I can get D&D gamers as fired up about this wiki as they got about the previous one.

Note that the content of this wiki will be useful even for people who haven't subscribed to D&D Insider - it's just that they can't submit any new content since they lack the tools for it.

As an example, here is a stat block uploaded to the wiki which I created in less than 10 minutes:

After my more depressing last post on the situation in California, on to a lighter note. While all those news must be disturbing for those living in California, others will find plenty of gaming inspiration in this mess. For this reason, I've added quite a lot of material to the California section of the Arcana Wiki.

I am particularly proud of this article and the gaming ideas therein - including a four-way struggle for supremacy between the human survivors of the government collapse and subsequent earthquake, rat kings spreading their filth throughout the state, a super ant hive mind controlling the coastal areas, and mysterious fire creatures emerging from the ground!


I might not quite have reached the level of Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmissions columns, but I'm trying to get there. ;)

Does anyone here remember the anti-D&D hysteria of the 1980s?

Well, not me - I got started with gaming in 1990. But over on RPGNet there is a thread with scanned newspaper articles from a Canadian town where this became a hot issue.

My favorite quote is this one:

"Also, the fact that it's mostly boys and men that show greatest interest in the game is an important consideration, for they are the future leaders of our country. Should we not be careful what we feed into their minds?"

Inspired by a recent RPGNet thread (login required to read), I started working on an entry for Arcologies on the Arcana Wiki. I thought a bit about possible adventure and campaign ideas, and then wondered how to use them in different genres.

Take fantasy, for instance. Sure, you could just use some giant building chiseled out of a mountain by a legion of dwarves. But that's been done before. So how about making the whole arcology into a gigantic, living creature - either artificial or natural? The human inhabitants could be seen as either parasites or symbionts - the creature would be able to provide them with food from its bodily fluids, and also recycle their waste.

Furthermore, these creatures might be migratory. Given how much energy they would require to move, they would likely move very slowly - possibly slower than human walking speed. Using legs as locomotion would not be a very smooth ride for the inhabitants. But maybe they move similar to slugs - they travel on a single, massive "foot" and crush the vegetation - including entire trees - below them and eating them - leaving a massive slime trail behind them which serves as compost for new plant growth.

Now imagine a herd of such creatures traveling through a vast forest into the direction of the sunset, each inhabited by thousands of people...



I really need to use that imagery...






Note: If you have any other good ideas for using them in games, please add them to the Arcana Wiki!

I just saw someone over at RPGNet trying to promote a new setting he wanted to sell. And he got promptly banned for spamming.

Still, his website is rather amusing - if unintentionally so.

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I don't want to be too harsh on this guy (even though he is a spammer). After all, he has obviously put a lot of effort into creating this setting and this website - something I can relate to with Urbis.

Unfortunately, from what he presented a lot of this effort was misplaced effort - and this means that he produced a science fiction heartbreaker.


EDIT: And after getting banned on RPGNet, he promptly creates a new user account and posts this message...

Hit this page until you have found inspiration.




Yes, I finally did manage to create a proper random page function for the Arcana Wiki...

If you have any good stories to tell from your gaming nights - memorable quotes, spectacular deaths, inspired plots - then I have a place for you where you can tell us all about them:

The War Stories Wiki

So far, three different tales by three different people have been uploaded:

The Trouble With Gankorou
The Marriage of Frisco Flagons
Captain John McCleod

I hope to see your stories there as well!

I've just posted a lengthy essay on how to deal with sociopathic player characters over at ENWorld. You might find it interesting.

The Arcana Wiki has grown nicely in the last two weeks - but of course, it could still grow faster. ;)

Here are some news for it:

- The first Arcana Wiki Contest has ended (only two people contributed...). The winning entry was for the Black Shuck, one of the many names of the spectral hounds of British legends. The winner will soon get his $25 gift certificate...

- I've started a new contest which will run for the entirety of August - this one is about "Places of Myth and Legends". Again, the winner will get a $25 gift certificate for RPGNow.

- I've started working on a historical timeline which is intended to showcase all sorts of interesting historical news and events. At the moment, most of the entries are merely "weird" newspaper items (see the 2007 entry for examples), not the sweeping moments of history that I hope for. But give it time...

- I've started a Tropes section, which is intended to mirror the TV Tropes Wiki - a brilliant resource for gamers, no matter what games you play. My intention is to integrate tropes into the adventure seeds provided with each entry - see the new entry for Pilatusstadt, a "sunken city" in Germany, for examples.


That's it - for now. But I'd like to spread the word about the wiki even further so that I can attract more contributors. Any suggestions for how to do that?

My plans for my ENWorld blog seem to be progressing nicely... :D

Oh, and I've just posted another review - this one is for Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast.

EDIT: I'm proud to say that I am currently the only person listed in the Best Entries and Best Blogs category - let's see how long I can keep this up.

Yesterday I noticed with delight that ENWorld has a new blog feature. I immediately started a blog of my own there. Two of my posts there are reviews of Exalted and GURPS Space. These concentrate on what these books have to offer to people who play D&D first and foremost, and I plan to write more reviews like them.

If you have an ENWorld account, please feel free to give these reviews good ratings. I'd love to be the first person who shows up in the "Best Entries" column for the ENWorld blogs... :D

Killjoy Cooking With the Dungeons & Dragons Crowd

"I'm so mad that there's a new edition of The Better Joy Cookbook out. Thanks for making my old copy obsolete, you greedy hacks! For five years now, my friends have been coming over for my eggplant Parmesan, and now I'm never going to be able serve it again unless I shell out 35 bucks for the latest version."

I think he nails it.

Ever since the announcement of D&D 4E, gaming forums have been gone crazy with rampant speculations, rumors, hearsay, and denouncement of every single snippet of information that has been presented about the new edition. A large number of gamers have already made up their minds that they are never going to buy this new edition - without ever actually having seen the new rules.

But really, we have been here before. Let me show a small selection of Usenet posts (does anyone here remember Usenet) from rec.games.frp.dnd, around September in the year 1999 - more than half a year before the publication of D&D 3E.

( Walking down memory lane... )

You might see why I am experiencing a strong sense of deja vu at the moment

"If shooting Jörmungandr in the face with a rocket launcher is wrong then I don't want to be right."

- by Rachel Cartacos