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Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
I...I donīt think Non-Euclidian Geometry means what you think it means.

As per example, some non-euclidian architechture below:
https://pixabay.com/p-854113/?no_redirect

Thatīs making you mad? Really? Thatīs ....more or less rather boring.
Non-euclidian just means itīs "non-flat" per se. Heck, most church-insides are "non-euclidian".
Lovecraft must have been a pansy.

Also, wasnīt all of the Great Old Ones shtick that they are somewhat above our petty concerns and
basically donīt give a fart about humanity because we are only incidental to their existence?

PS: Literally blow your mind? Donīt you mean....figura...you know what? Iīll stop now. Sorry :/

Edit:
Okay, maybe wasnīt as nice a thing to post.
Apologies. I just donīt think that the different aspects that Lovecraft illuminated as horrible
either hold up nowadays or even work when analyzed in retrospect because they are, as has
already been described, inherently horrible to Lovecraft. The rest of us mostly just dulled to the idea.
Maybe we need some sort of distance from the whole "Cosmos-ism"..."Astr"...what is this thing called again?

Edit2: Changed offensive image to more correct link to page.

Mr.Misfit fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Oct 19, 2017

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marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

Nessus posted:

Extraordinary weapons? Piffle. No sir, if we're going to make this metaphor work, it needs to be cheap, low-grade ammunition, ideally with some overtones of being banned by Space Geneva Convention, just so we feel extra bad about ourselves.

Let's move it up a notch by saying things suck because Hell wants Bad Flavor Frag Rounds out of our immortal souls; it's just that any improvement would be just as bad, because we'd just be putting out Good Flavor Frag Rounds instead. Both sides are equally bad, when you get down to it.

vvv- the thing with Cthulhu is that Cthulhu doesn't give a gently caress about you. He's in a coma on Earth but could give a poo poo about humanity. At best his cult is some of his hangers-on having manipulated humanity in pre-history; more likely, it's just everyone periodically getting a big dose of his cursed dreams semi-regularly. The guy who drove a boat into him was the equivalent of banging your head when you stagger out of bed to take a late night piss.

A game where you play soldiers in one side of this war between heaven and hell but mechanically if you need to shoot a bad guy and ran out of ammo you need to suck the souls out of a bus of school children to reload.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

Kavak posted:

They're probably insured.

The Dunwich Claims Process would drive lesser men mad!

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Infernal was lovely third person shooter were you were working for the devil and shooting AngelCorp dudes. You reloaded by sucking souls outta bodies.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kavak posted:

It imparts the despair and impossible, desperate odds that Lovecraftian heroes are supposed to be feeling much better than vanilla CoC. I don't know if it's the black ops aspect or just the writing focusing on people's experiences more than the Mythos and setting.

Very few of the stories were about abject despair though. Many of them were about success against impossible odds. Horror at Red Hook (which is possibly his most racist story), The Dunwich Horror, Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and of course The Call of Cthulhu were about normal modern (19-teens and 20s) humans saying we've had enough of this poo poo and fighting back.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Mr.Misfit posted:

As per example, some non-euclidian architechture below:


Well, no-hotlinking images certainly are a thing.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.
As a note I'm pretty sure Lovecraft fans take his stuff way more seriously than Lovecraft himself did, given the name he used for it wasn't the Cthulhu mythos, but "Yog-sothery" And he had an ongoing contest with Robert Bloch (the youngest member of the Lovecraft Circle, who went on to write Psycho), to see who could kill off thinly disguised versions of each other in more disturbing ways in short stories.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Death of the racist author, I guess.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Very few of the stories were about abject despair though. Many of them were about success against impossible odds. Horror at Red Hook (which is possibly his most racist story), The Dunwich Horror, Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and of course The Call of Cthulhu were about normal modern (19-teens and 20s) humans saying we've had enough of this poo poo and fighting back.

That story ends with the protagonist realizing he has Deep One heritage and surrendering his will to their dream-mind, while planning to break his Deep One uncle out of psychiatric hospital so they can continue doing evil Deep One stuff. CoC ends with a message about how while Cthulhu may have gone back to sleep this time, his awakening is inevitable and human meddling may bring it about sooner than expected.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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The big horrors of Lovecraft can essentially be boiled down, most of the time, to 'I am not the center of the universe, how can I cope' and 'Miscegenation!!! shock and terror!'

Neither of these is all that horrific if you aren't as WASP-y and racist as he is.

MightyMatilda
Sep 2, 2015
There are many optical illusion - such as a two-pronged item that also has three prongs - that I absolutely hate looking at. I know they're simply pieces of art, but since they are not things that can exist in real space, looking at them fills me with utter revulsion.

Anyway, when I read cosmic horror, I just think that looking at R'iyeh or Y'golonac or whatever is like looking at an optical illusion that actually exists, and that does the trick.

potatocubed
Jul 26, 2012

*rathian noises*

Mors Rattus posted:

The big horrors of Lovecraft can essentially be boiled down, most of the time, to 'I am not the center of the universe, how can I cope' and 'Miscegenation!!! shock and terror!'

Neither of these is all that horrific if you aren't as WASP-y and racist as he is.

That's a very succint way of putting something I was turning over in my head earlier.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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potatocubed posted:

That's a very succint way of putting something I was turning over in my head earlier.

It's why I vastly prefer Poe, whose recurring themes can be described generally as 'my friend is dying and I can do nothing', 'the world is falling apart around us and we ignore it' and 'the guilt of what I have done is destroying me'.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
That being said, other authors have done good work with the bones of cosmic horror. Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy and the Alien franchise have substantial elements of the genre and are legitimately scary. Then there's Dead Space, which got increasingly trapped in its own convoluted lore but did some solid work in the genre. Even closer to home, Lovecraft Country notably tackles racism head on, and The Laundry Files melds it with spy fiction.

There is something about the core concept that grabs people, and from which Lovecraft's racism can be largely excised or appropriately addressed by conscientious authors.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.
On that note, Winter Tide s free on Tor.com in ebook form for the next 48 hours, and the elevator pitch is essentially 'survivors of the Innsmouth raid teams up with an FBI agent to investigate the possibility of Russians using Waite-style body-switching sorcery.'

The setting of Winter Tide and the prequel short story basically run on the idea of "Lovecraft's ideas about what the Deep Ones are like turned out to be just as racist as all his other writings on other races"

Barudak
May 7, 2007

JcDent posted:

TLD questions:
So how did the Nazis lose if they were antiGod's favored in antiGod's realm?

Why does it matter that it all started 200million years ago, aside from a desire to upset Biblical Literalist Dad?

So you have aliens ensouled in Eden and then embodied on Earth? Where does this metphysical turducken end?

If only Eden and Earth were specifically created, why does the rest of the physical universe exist? Is there space in Eden?

How did Eden not get exhausted in 200 millio years of exploitation? Can Mazda just miracle up resources for them?

Who do messiahs keep reincarnating as nee people, instead of going "yo, it's me again?"

Is this game just meant to trigger WASPs?

I have absolutely no idea why the Nazis didnt win. The game dedicates maybe 10 lines total to WWII, one of whoch is a smug response to someone saying the Nazis were beaten with a “Yeah, sure” and picture of the Eternal Reich.

The only thing the timeline in TLE is good for is confirming that Dinosaur Bones are a trick by evil.

The metaphysical turducken is studiously ignored. The game will later mention that if your soul dies in Eden you die forever and just leaves it at that as though it never raised any other possibilities. Mechanically its a complete mess well talk about later.

Eden is described as Earth but more so. More smell, colors, sound, life or death, etc. and since you point to point transfer between eden and earth, presumably Eden has a massive empty universe too for no discernible reason.

The technology of Eden is pointedly phenominally better technologically, they have magic due to their spirituality thay earth cant match, and Eden is earth but more so regarding resources. If this makes you start wondering how the hell GODHEAD was ever a credible threat to Ahura Mazda, congrats you thought about this more than TLE.

The game never explains why say Jibril wouldn't just tell everyone who they are. The game presumes a White Wolf style shadow influencer game of trenchcoats and seedy bars and thats about as far as it thought.

If I had to guess, it was written to specifically piss off the parents of two second-gen Bosnian-Americans living in New York City.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I really liked the idea of the Marines storming Innsmouth while the Navy depth-charges Dagon's resting place ... and then the story picks up with having to hunt down all of the Marines that survived the raid and "retiring" them.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I think we may have a new winner for "worst metaplot ever", and it's Last Exodus the Interactive Story Arc of the Third and Last Dance Gaiden Turbo Edition Colon The New Beginning.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk



wow, they managed to create bible fan-fiction that's even less coherent than Nice Pete's. that's, uh, that's quite a waste of paper and ink for no real purpose.

I always wonder if the people that write these rambling, meandering diatribes about make believe have logorrhea and are just compelled to write words words words regardless of whether they make sense or produce a coherent meaning because it keeps their sad brain quiet

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

JcDent posted:

Death of the racist author, I guess.

Yeah, I'm surprised at the "He was afraid of new math" model of argument being made about a guy that was terrified about Jews being allowed at the beach.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


I'd like to see a game about how the gangster computer god locked the human race in a timecube.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Mors Rattus posted:

The big horrors of Lovecraft can essentially be boiled down, most of the time, to 'I am not the center of the universe, how can I cope' and 'Miscegenation!!! shock and terror!'

Neither of these is all that horrific if you aren't as WASP-y and racist as he is.
Alan Moore made this point in his introduction to the recent annotated collection of Lovecraft's stories - that for all his weirdness, the heart of HPL's horror is of a boringly ordinary middle class white man being afraid that he wasn't as in charge of the world as he thought he was.



Also, you all thought I was kidding when I said The Last Exodus was the ultimate Vampire Heartbreaker with all the knobs turned up to 11. Well, who's laughing now, huh? HUH?!?

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

FMguru posted:



Also, you all thought I was kidding when I said The Last Exodus was the ultimate Vampire Heartbreaker with all the knobs turned up to 11. Well, who's laughing now, huh? HUH?!?

I only object because Vampire Heartbreakers should obviously be called Heartstakers.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

I'd like to see a game about how the gangster computer god locked the human race in a timecube.

Sounds like a nWoD God-Machine game to me.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Freaking Crumbum posted:

I always wonder if the people that write these rambling, meandering diatribes about make believe have logorrhea and are just compelled to write words words words regardless of whether they make sense or produce a coherent meaning because it keeps their sad brain quiet
I personally think it's because they can't suspend their disbelief at all, and can't just let the central premise stand on its own. They're convinced that nobody's going to just accept their core idea and have to stack bullshit concept on top of bullshit concept to support it, regardless if those concepts will ever even come up in play. Like, if they don't explain what happened 50,000 years ago in some sub-dimension, all it'll take is one question from a reader and the whole setting will collapse like a house of cards.

unseenlibrarian posted:

I only object because Vampire Heartbreakers should obviously be called Heartstakers.
Second.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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FMguru posted:

Alan Moore made this point in his introduction to the recent annotated collection of Lovecraft's stories - that for all his weirdness, the heart of HPL's horror is of a boringly ordinary middle class white man being afraid that he wasn't as in charge of the world as he thought he was.


My only objection to this is that we've already devoted so much ink to understanding the fears of white men who hate others becoming as powerful as they are, and understanding those fears has not gotten us any closer to finding a way to make the white men stop being petulant children.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


MonsieurChoc posted:

Sounds like a nWoD God-Machine game to me.

Only if you pass it through some custom text filters.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

unseenlibrarian posted:

I only object because Vampire Heartbreakers should obviously be called Heartstakers.

Dang thats a good un.

Also, for TLE ive tried to include little particiaption bits into each update? Should I cut those or make them more prominent?

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
The only trouble with TLD is that you're not posting fast enough, maaan.

Dallbun
Apr 21, 2010
Welcome to AD&D, game of limitless possibilities. Adventure! Excitement! Intrigue! Low-level humanoids!



The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 3: The Deck of Goblins and Kobolds

Look, you’re an AD&D PC. What did you think you were going to encounter?


19: Toll Bridge?

Low danger, happens in a forest "next to a ravine 100 feet deep. There is only a single, rickety bridge to cross the ravine for miles in any direction." Obviously.

Anyway, the bridge is rickety, and 10 goblins are there threatening to destroy it if passerby don't pay a five-copper toll. How much traffic comes through here, goblins? And what are you going to do with the loose coinage? How about going and raiding farmhouses for chickens, instead? These logistical questions are breaking my immersion.

The only good part is that if the PCs do decide to pay (much to the goblins' relief), and try to pay with anything larger than a silver piece, the leader gets publicly embarrassed over not having enough cash on hand to make change, and just waves them on. Cute, but that's not what's going to happen in play. Pass.


20: The Summoning

So the PCs are doing whatever, and suddenly appear on a tundra to fight 10 goblins on behalf of a wizard who cast monster summoning I. They must do so. If they take out the goblins quick, though, the wizard gives them each a gem, apologizing because she "didn't know she could summon adventurers."

And indeed, the metaphysics of AD&D 2E say that she cannot. (Unless they’re planar adventurers). I don't think summoned creatures can bring stuff back with them, either. So... :shrug:

I’d keep it, except that the PCs are summoned to an ever-shifting field of screaming crystalline faces by a giant slug bedecked with strange ornaments to fight a bunch of slow but relentless faceless metal golems. Try to knock them into the screaming faces so they get bitten and pulled down into the depths of the earth! Also, the gems (although made of a material perfectly common on the PCs' world) are engraved with what appears to be tiny, intricate writing. So given that I just had to rewrite the entire card, I guess that’s actually a pass.


21: Changeling

In a thick forest, the players hear a rustling ahead, and a wailing wicker basket pushed out on the road. They'll see a short figure fleeing through the forest, and if they pursue it, it will disappear into a small hole "that only halflings and gnomes would have any chance of climbing into and going down."

In the basket is a one year-old goblin baby. "When it sees the PCs, it stops its screaming and begins to coo and whimper with hope." :3:

Something about this seems off. First, a year old? That's pretty old for foisting off an unwanted baby; I would have done it earlier if I was a single goblin mother or whatever. Secondly, do goblins live in holes in the forest?

And finally, the card acts like the PCs’ only options are abandoning the baby, taking it into town to find another family for, or adopting it as their own... but I'd put my money on the the PCs going down that mysterious hole. If they don't have any gnomes, halflings, or long-lasting reduce effects now, I'll bet they will in the future. This hole is going on the map.

I’m not thrilled about improvising what’s down the hole, but I’m a sucker for random goblin babies. Keep.


22: The Goblin and the Ogre

On a natural trail through rough terrain, the PCs hear a crashing noise from ahead followed by an ogre. When it spots the PCs, it throws itself at their feet and pleads with them to save it. A goblin comes around the bend, wiggles its fingers at the ogre, and disintegrates it painfully. Then it demands the party's treasure.

The ogre is actually an illusion created by the perfectly ordinary goblin's ring of spell storing. Cute trick, goblin. But, uh, you can only do it once, ever. I hope this scam works out for you!

And look, I know high-level wizards are dangerous, but a single spellcaster is still easy prey for a whole group of opponents, and the PCs know that. They are not surrendering their treasure. In fact, the PCs are never going to surrender their treasure in an encounter like this! They are going to kill this goblin (probably before it has a chance to open its mouth), and they are going to get a free ring of spell storing. Maybe middle-school Monty Haul GM me would have been okay with that, but adult me isn't thrilled. Pass.


23: On the Warpath

Okay, so it’s hilly and lightly forested, and the PCs hear drums in the distance coming over the hill. It’s a group of 20 goblins force marching through the woods, painted for war. They’re on their way somewhere, and won’t notice the PCs unless they attack. Where are they going? :iiam:

I like the mystery, and the fact that it doesn’t force the PCs to fight. Keep.


24: Kobold Raiding Party

A group of kobolds has come to raid a tiny farming community for food, money, and livestock. The PCs are supposed to show up after they’ve already looted and burned two homes, and killed three farmers. They’re well-organized and well-armed (I mean, they’ve got four bows and enough short swords for everyone. That’s pretty good for kobolds). They’ll retreat, grabbing whatever they can carry, if they think they’re outmatched.

The card gives a short description of the layout of the town, which I like - it’s just enough for me to draw some shapes on a piece of paper or whiteboard and say “here’s the animal pens, here’s the meeting area around the well, these are houses, those two are on fire.” I also appreciate that the PCs aren’t forced to stick out their necks any more than they want to. Keep.


25: Ambush

A low-danger monster encounter. Six kobolds from Kobold Raiding Party have... wait a minute, the same kobolds? Why isn't this labeled a Part 1/Part 2 encounter like with the pilgrims?

Anyway, those surviving kobolds have set themselves up on the road, demanding a toll of one silver each, if the PCs refuse they give a show of force and are ready to fight, yada yada.

What’s with all these low-level humanoids in the Deck of Encounters practicing highway robbery? Well, maybe we can build a whole campaign out of this, like the intro claimed. Here's our first setting element: the human kingdom's power has fallen dramatically since its height, and there's either not the military force or the political will to ensure safe travel between distant, well-fortified cities. Rival humanoid mafias control different stretches of road, and paying them is simply an established and accepted cost of travel - it's cheaper and less of a gamble than paying for caravan guards.

Unless that’s an idea I really want to run with, however, pass.


26: Rite of Passage

There’s a bare gnollknoll in the hills, on top of which is a bonfire being fed by six kobolds, and around which are tents and cookfires of more kobolds. Forty-six total. They’re singing and dancing and such, celebrating the rite of passage of ten young males. (They need to run a gauntlet, presumably representing the fact that the universe has it in for kobolds.) The PCs could crash it, of course, but they could also loot the camp while the kobolds are all distracted up on the hill.

I approve of this brief taste of kobold culture. Keep.

Dallbun fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Oct 19, 2017

MightyMatilda
Sep 2, 2015

Mors Rattus posted:

My only objection to this is that we've already devoted so much ink to understanding the fears of white men who hate others becoming as powerful as they are, and understanding those fears has not gotten us any closer to finding a way to make the white men stop being petulant children.

I think a big mistake would be to assume that those fears are particular to white men, and not universal for all people in power.

Anyway, when talking about Lovecraft's racism, people often focus on the Deep Ones, which are an obvious metaphor for miscegenation IF you're already aware of Lovecraft's racist beliefs. Reading his stories makes his hatred of non-English folk obvious, but most people get into the Cthulhu Mythos through adaptations and professional fanfics, where even the African and Mediterranean cultists are no longer specific to any ethnicity. Or like how Abdul Alhazred is still an important part of the Mythos, but many modern stories call him "The Mad Scholar", since people will accept an insane man who was an Arab, but not an insane Arab, if that makes any sense.

I'm rambling here, and I completely forget how this discussion started.

MightyMatilda fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Oct 19, 2017

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Yeah, I didn't get any of the racism before I was told about it, and it's perfectly normal to hate... the French? Whatever non anglos Lovecraft despises.

Speaking of leaving backstory unexpanded, would saying "there's magic and elves now, deal with it" be enough for space skelly AK-47 adventures?

kaynorr
Dec 31, 2003

I can't believe I'm going to bat for TLE, but I'll just let the awful voices in my head win and see where it goes. If we're going to rip this to shreds, let's at least do so correctly.

Barudak posted:

The technology of Eden is pointedly phenominally better technologically, they have magic due to their spirituality thay earth cant match, and Eden is earth but more so regarding resources. If this makes you start wondering how the hell GODHEAD was ever a credible threat to Ahura Mazda, congrats you thought about this more than TLE.

The premise is that the GODHEAD is an imperfect clone of Ahura Mazda made by Lucifer from a few cells scavenged during a meeting with Ahura Mazda's physical presence. GODHEAD probably isn't a real threat to Ahura Mazda so much as a huge threat to everything in Eden (for all we know the initial casualties from GODHEAD's birth are the divine equivalent of a temper tantrum by a toddler who doesn't yet know any better). Earth is a kind of cosmic time-out corner to give everyone a chance to cool off and, I don't know, stop creating diving beings for just a little while?

As to why Ahura Mazda sends all the souls down to Earth, the answer is apparently just that Ahura Mazda is acting like a dick and throwing a bit of a temper tantrum of her own. To clarify the backstory a bit, the reason for creating the GODHEAD is that the souls of Eden are terrified because the Serpents have returned and already hosed up a chunk of Eden. Back in the first paragraph of the incomprehensible backstory, you have the Akashics (which are described as beings of pure information) encounter Ahura Mazda while they are fleeing from the Serpents for reasons unknown. They're from somewhere outside Ahura Mazda's reality, it's not really specified. Ahura Mazda offers them refuge but has to create souls for them because they aren't native to Ahura Mazda's reality and can't exist there long term in their informational form.

So the context for all this GODHEAD bullshit is that the mortal enemy to the souls of Eden have caught up to them, already broken in and done some damage, and when the people go ask Ahura Mazda to do something about she just says, "Chill out, everything will be OK". Which is not really reassuring when you're facing an existential crisis, and Ahura Mazda is being too enigmatic for her own good. So it comes down to Ahura Mazda asking for too much faith and/or the people of Eden having too little. I think it's deliberate that Ahura Mazda isn't without blame here, given that what follows is several thousand years of her trying to find ways to bring souls back to Eden without letting the GODHEAD or any of his little shits through.

I actually don't think it's too bad as setups for a gnostic universe go, and it provides some context beyond "the demiurge is just a dick" by having two dueling demiurges who want to keep you in or break you out of the prison respectively. Now, things go rapidly downhill once you get into the details of how poo poo plays out over Fake Real Theology and the like.

In terms of what you're supposed to actually do in the game, it basically boils down to being a member of one of the Big Six churches and spreading what we now consider Social Justice Values against the evil churches who are Racist/Classist/Sexist/What-Have-You Giant Dicks. It's pretty black and white "fight the power" type poo poo. How exactly making Earth a better place ties into leading souls back into Eden is never addressed.

Hypnobeard
Sep 15, 2004

Obey the Beard



gradenko_2000 posted:

I really liked the idea of the Marines storming Innsmouth while the Navy depth-charges Dagon's resting place ... and then the story picks up with having to hunt down all of the Marines that survived the raid and "retiring" them.

Sounds like a fun proto-Delta Green campaign.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

quote:

In terms of what you're supposed to actually do in the game, it basically boils down to being a member of one of the Big Six churches and spreading what we now consider Social Justice Values against the evil churches who are Racist/Classist/Sexist/What-Have-You Giant Dicks. It's pretty black and white "fight the power" type poo poo. How exactly making Earth a better place ties into leading souls back into Eden is never addressed.

You can be a GODHEAD offspring and join the evil churches. Hell, something like 5 straight deiform bonuses in a book with a very limited set of bonuses are increasingly high ranks in the military of the Eternal Reich. You might be supposed to be a social warrior but the game provides nearly as much material to being evil, and in some cases more.

The games issue which you point out is it has an ostensible good versus evil thing going, then tries to twost that with shades of grey but forgot one of the sides are eternal spiritual Nazis.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Horrible Lurkbeast posted:

Why has nobody ever used Warren ellis' idea that heaven and hell are just two war engines powered by souls? Learning that after my death all my individuality and personality would be broken and rendered down to metaphysical fuel would be plenty horrifying.

The very notion of a "war for souls" as posited by some Medieval Catholics (and part of the mindset that would lead to the early Inquisition) already led to horrific results in the real world; the notio of performing battlefield conversions on enemy soldiers and then killing them before they could recant was seen as a very practical matter. That's part why you wanted confessions from heretics, so you could then go and execute people after they admit their wrongdoing and hope that their souls entered God's ledger instead of Satan's. Of course, that's also why heresy had to be stamped out before it could spread, because souls going to the other side was untenable. The notion that one is tallying a score for Heaven that'll get counted in the Apocalypse - and one we better win if we're going to come out of that proper - I think is more horrifying for what it leads people to in life than the notion of what might happen after it, which is pretty abstract.

A friend of mine ran a game where a lot of Medieval Catholic theological notions were correct (even if the positions on such weren't necessarily "right"), and that resulted in one of the more creepy and eerie settings I've played in at times. But it was still essentially anthropocentric - horror came from somebody perpetuating heresy or engaging in the occult, not just from random forces assaulting our universe. The idea of an entire region becoming quite literally damned had literal, not just spiritual consequences, and such places often could feel like worlds where alien invasions had won. You don't even really need modern deconstructions of religion to get to the point of horror - some religious beliefs were plenty horrific enough in and of themselves when you take them to their "logical" conclusions.

seriously, medieval monks, you had entirely too many hangups involving demons and penises

MonsieurChoc posted:

Sounds like a nWoD God-Machine game to me.

Yeah, the God-Machine is essentially a more subtle and low-key version of the rantings of Francis E. Dec Esq. and similar paranoid schizophrenics.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

kaynorr posted:

I actually don't think it's too bad as setups for a gnostic universe go, and it provides some context beyond "the demiurge is just a dick" by having two dueling demiurges who want to keep you in or break you out of the prison respectively. Now, things go rapidly downhill once you get into the details of how poo poo plays out over Fake Real Theology and the like.
That's as maybe, but the problem is that none of the backstory matters in the here-and-now of the setting, where the PCs are. Unless they were intended in one of the future supplements to go there or something, then all that stuff is completely irrelevant.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Who needs aliens when you have Anabaptists.

Your friend doesn't have the notes on the setting readily available? I and probably the Christianity thread would be interested.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I do like the idea, floated a little while back, of a Cosmic Horror revelation that is actually 'the trick to being a good person is to be kind and loving' - specifically, it's the revelation you acquire after sinking most of your life and intellectual energy into strange and abstruse philosophy, burrowing down into the depths of the world seeking the hidden truth.

I've known people who would almost certainly swear themselves to evil if it let them have a more complex system of reasoning. I know this because at least one of them pretty much did (in almost those words), it was an extremely dumb college thing to do. Here's a bit of advice, anyone who explicitly identifies with the gnostic demiurge is probably a dick.

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I love that TLE somehow managed to Out-edge REIN*HAGEN by having the evil christian god with an invasion army made of Nazis headed by mirror-universe christ vs LITERALLY MOHAMMED.

Also a game that specifically states that Muslims are the good guys coming out just months before 9/11? Yeah...

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The very notion of a "war for souls" as posited by some Medieval Catholics (and part of the mindset that would lead to the early Inquisition) already led to horrific results in the real world; the notio of performing battlefield conversions on enemy soldiers and then killing them before they could recant was seen as a very practical matter. That's part why you wanted confessions from heretics, so you could then go and execute people after they admit their wrongdoing and hope that their souls entered God's ledger instead of Satan's. Of course, that's also why heresy had to be stamped out before it could spread, because souls going to the other side was untenable. The notion that one is tallying a score for Heaven that'll get counted in the Apocalypse - and one we better win if we're going to come out of that proper - I think is more horrifying for what it leads people to in life than the notion of what might happen after it, which is pretty abstract.
If you read into the backstory of Iron Kingdoms, this is also what's happening. Menoth made mankind as a long term investment because the ultimate fate of all men is to serve in his eternal army against the Devourer. Every follower of Morrow or Thamar is one less soldier. Even Thamar (the ostensible Evil god to Morrow's Good, Menoth's Law, and the Devourer's Chaos) is mostly devoted to extreme self interest and dicking over Menoth and her brother at every turn. She gave magic to mankind mostly because she thought it was hilarious.

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