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Extra Credits: Propaganda Games & Why Games Do Cthulhu Wrong
Edvard:
I'm not saying that the Cthulhu stories don't feature vast forces so large that they are beyond our control.. I'm just saying that I don't read that as the key, core element. Madness seems the key to me.
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Well... I don't think your opinions are so different from the video's author, really. I mean, it's not so broad a jump from here to there, is it? The natural result of facing the situations he described would be utter insanity in the face of them, no? That IS the crux of many stories by Mr. Lovecraft.
They often start out somewhat benignly in that the main character has come across some peculiar phenomenon and will explore further. Then as a result of his (many times dangerous and/or foolhardy) investigations, discovers forces beyond his control or comprehension that brutally exposes his own smallness in the face of the vastness of what he observes. This, in turn, drives him stark raving mad and/or drives him to pen an entry in a letter or diary warning the rest of us not to tread the path he forged.
You've actually got a pretty good grasp of the argument, as madness IS the inevitable end, and I think you'd agree with the author's opinion that any game based on the Cthulhu mythos would be better served by NOT making defeatable bosses out of unnameable horrors. I mean really...
Renegade:
I suppose everyone will have their own take on Cthulhu and Lovecraft, but what I see as the bedrock is "hopelessness".
Everything else springs from that. There is no hope. Now... what horrors and insanity will grow in that fertile bed of despair?
Discovery and learning are merely the beginnings of the downward spiral into insanity where at the bottom, there is nothing but an abyss of despair in which any flickering idea of salvation is quickly extinguished.
But, that's just my own take on it.
tomos:
His focus on the specialness of Cthulhu was that "Cthulhu represents our fear of the possibility of our own human smallness.. Cthuhlu presents us with the revelation of forces that are so much larger than us that they're beyond our control... The fear in Cthulhu is not that it's powerful, it's that it's powerful on a scale that we can't even comprehend."
-mouser (July 19, 2014, 06:27 PM)
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[^] that is *not* they key element from my perspective.
The key element as I understood it was the idea of something so horrific and alien and scary that your mind could not process it, and it drove you mad with fear.
-mouser (July 19, 2014, 06:27 PM)
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Leaving out the going mad aspect, it seems to me that the two above could be reduced to the same underlying ideas: fear of the unknown, and of our inability to control it.
as a result of his (many times dangerous and/or foolhardy) investigations, discovers forces beyond his control or comprehension that brutally exposes his own smallness in the face of the vastness of what he observes. This, in turn, drives him stark raving mad and/or drives him to pen an entry in a letter or diary warning the rest of us not to tread the path he forged.
You've actually got a pretty good grasp of the argument, as madness IS the inevitable end, and I think you'd agree with the author's opinion that any game based on the Cthulhu mythos would be better served by NOT making defeatable bosses out of unnameable horrors. I mean really...
-Edvard (July 20, 2014, 03:09 AM)
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Yes, "making defeatable bosses out of unnameable horrors" sounds like a fail, but reassuring us about the unnameable horrors seems like an okay idea to me (if maybe impossible in a game). FWIW, I guess I'm saying the idea that madness is the inevetibale end is Lovecraft's belief - and doesnt have to be our's, or the game makers'.
Going back to the fear of the unknown: it's interesting that in most fairy tales, the unknown is mostly presented very casually - and the main protaganist gets help left, right, and centre on their journey into it (the unknown). The evil characters usually represent some behaviour known, or something vaguely known (for the listener), like the wolf in little red riding hood (who represents getting sexual at too young an age).
Edvard:
FWIW, I guess I'm saying the idea that madness is the inevetibale end is Lovecraft's belief - and doesnt have to be our's, or the game makers'.
-tomos (July 21, 2014, 12:46 PM)
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Well sure, I'll agree to that, but don't call it a Cthulhu game if you do, that's all I'm saying. I'm not opposed to "Making defeatable bosses out of unnameable horrors" per se; it is probably fine for any game that requires it. But if you want to stay true to the Cthulhu mythos at all, you really shouldn't do that, because that's simply not what it's about.
From the man himself:
Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. To me there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form—and the local human passions and conditions and standards—are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all. Only the human scenes and characters must have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, (not catch-penny romanticism) but when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.
— H. P. Lovecraft, in a note to the editor of Weird Tales, on resubmission of "The Call of Cthulhu".
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Themes
Wow, I'm getting WAAAAY too passionate about this subject... :( :-[
Stoic Joker:
While it's an interesting philosophical debate on the sanctity of a mythological "force" ... I gotta go with tomos on this. It's a game. It's supposed to by fun. There's plenty of time and opportunity IRL to deeply grasp just how badly life can incredibly and pointlessly suck ... It doesn't need to be feathered in for entertainment value.
This is why the original Grimm's fairy tails - which really were - got touched up a bit and given happy endings. Because cautionary tales don't have to be aphoristic and horrifying.
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