When working through a Lovecraft style Horror Campaign, there are a few monster fallbacks that make as a pretty good starting point.
For your human foes, especially at lower levels, your Cultists and Cult Fanatics serve as a base core, and you can also flavor any of the other "Humanoid" Enemies to simply have the right kind of esthetic while maintaining all of the same mechanical functions. Warlocks of the Pact of the Old Ones can also serve as excellent cult leaders that you can customize to a wide degree.
Undead can also serve as good enemies, as the power and influence of cursed magic or influence from the Elder Gods can result in the formation and raising of vengeful spirits, or else possessing and animating corpses either unintentionally, or for some wicked purpose.
Now, for your more properly unleashed creatures from the Other Worlds, my preferred starting point are all the Aberration type creatures. They are all otherworldly, unnatural creatures that also commonly have mind-affecting abilities that remain on theme. Gibbering Mouthers, Aboleths, Beholders, and Mind Flayers are all excellent examples, and you can always change their appearance in order to agree with more specific Lovecraftian creatures if that is your objective. Also, if you have access to Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes the Star Spawn are designed for this type of campaign, and they have a range of challenge ratings. You can always change Demons or Devils appearances and style to make them more Far Realm like as well.
Also, the optional Madness Rules in the DMG really help to add to those kinds of campaign feels.
This is a pretty old post, but look into the optional sanity rule. I actually made myself a table to work with it, but the easy way is to have them roll sanity to prevent madness. As for monsters, just do some homework on the kinds of monsters that are out there, and give them something more identifiably lovecraftian (definitely look at the Zendikar planeshift for Eldrazi creatures)
Also, don't be afraid to do something new and crazy. If it breaks or something horrible goes wrong, then that's kind of the point of the genre. Repairing major issues or unforseen character deaths with "It's just a horrible dream" works well in this setting.
I am a very long term Call of Cthulhu Keeper(twenty odd years now), and have written for both Achtung Cthulhu and the Arkham Gazette, which I hope will go some way to establishing credibility as someone who lives and breaths horror roleplaying and has a degree of expertise in it.
Here are some general rules for doing lovecraft in 5E D&D:
Abandon D&D's story structures and expectations.
Use very slow level progression.
Lovecraftian storytelling is not about specific monsters.
The Mythos laughs at your ideas of fairness and balance.
Abandon D&D's story structures and expectations.
5e is actually probably the most flexible version of D&D published since AD&D, at least in terms of tone. It manages that by being lighter weight, more hands off. While the default is still very definately heroic fantasy, you have the freedom to make it anything you want, and I suggest you do that. The reasons I say that is that this. Mythos monsters do not play well with heroic fantasy. If you can all up to Yog-sothoth and hit it with a holy avenger, and it dies, then you are not really fighting Yog-sothoth. It is the gate and the key, it is the pathway between worlds, it is time and space. It is not something you can kill in a punchup, even a superpowered one.
If you try to do heroic fantasy with lovecraftian monsters, all you get is a mess.
One that either steals away the monsters ability to scare, or which ignores the things that make the monster scary.
Use the flexibility of 5E, and adopt the story structure of games like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Such games focus on investigation and the slow uncovering of horrible truths, not direct confrontation with an enemy.
Use very slow level progression.
Powerlessness, vulnerability and limits of control of the narrative are important elements of a good horror scenario. These are not the natural state of highlevel PCs in D&D. You'll get better results in a horror scenario from lower level characters.
Lovecraftian storytelling is not about specific monsters.
Sure, there are some iconic titan and monsters, but you don't need to included them to make for a good lovecraftian story. One of the most successful lovecraftian scenarios of the last decade is "The Wives of March", which contains no specific lovecraftian monsters at all.
Any D&D monster can be lovecraftian if handled in correctly. This is even truer when we are willing to re-skin the monster as something strager still.
The Mythos laughs at your ideas of fairness and balance.
One of the core themes of lovecraftian horror is that universe is unfair, uncaring, and species such as humans, matter not in the least to gods and titans. Ideas such as encounter balance run directly contrary to these themes.
Second level PCs encountering CR20+ monsters in a lovecraftian campaign, and being crushed, is not unreasonable.
The reason that this lot grossly unfair within the context of the game, is that because of the nature of investigative play, the players should always make such an encounter as the result of their own poor decisions. We foreshadow the outcomes of their decisions.
This is a little late but as a newer DM to 5e and learning a ton this last year or so. I have to say this is the advice I have needed to actually bring in the fear I would enjoy bringing to the table. Thank you so much for posting this for us all aspiring Lovecraft loving DMs.
Cthulhu Mythos for 5e is something you might want to check out. I had picked it up and found it to have a wealth of information. It has the the gods and monsters related to the lore. There is a rather large selection of creatures. The book also contains details on cults, magic items, races, and a nice sized spell list. Thats just a small portion of what the book has in it. I highly recommend getting the book if you want to go all out Lovecraft with your game. I think it comes in digital format as well as hardback. Just trust me. Its well worth it. Amazing content within it.
Cthulhu Mythos for 5e is something you might want to check out. I had picked it up and found it to have a wealth of information. It has the the gods and monsters related to the lore. There is a rather large selection of creatures. The book also contains details on cults, magic items, races, and a nice sized spell list. Thats just a small portion of what the book has in it. I highly recommend getting the book if you want to go all out Lovecraft with your game. I think it comes in digital format as well as hardback. Just trust me. Its well worth it. Amazing content within it.
I’m about to start DMing a Cthulhu style campaign for four 11th level PCs next week. Where can I find that book?
Also, I would love any advice anyone wants to throw my way. It’s a DM substitution to prevent DM burn out. I get to start at a fresh point with the campaign, but the party is inherited except for the substitution, that’s why they’re 11th level. I am already planning to use the optional Sanity system from the DMG, and have already coded the feat for it to work on DDB’s sheet, complete with rolls.
The first encounter I have planned will likely end in a TPK that, when over they will all snap out of the delirium and find themselves unharmed, that’s when I’ll spring the sanity on them and make them save to set the tone of the campaign. They won’t know what’s real or what’s delirium, when they’re fighting for their lives or when their fighting for their sanity until after each/any fights. I think that will really suit the Lovecraftian horror feel very well.
Anything anyone wants to throw my way as either advice or critique is greatly appreciated.
Cthulhu Mythos for 5e is something you might want to check out. I had picked it up and found it to have a wealth of information. It has the the gods and monsters related to the lore. There is a rather large selection of creatures. The book also contains details on cults, magic items, races, and a nice sized spell list. Thats just a small portion of what the book has in it. I highly recommend getting the book if you want to go all out Lovecraft with your game. I think it comes in digital format as well as hardback. Just trust me. Its well worth it. Amazing content within it.
I’m about to start DMing a Cthulhu style campaign for four 11th level PCs next week. Where can I find that book?
Also, I would love any advice anyone wants to throw my way. It’s a DM substitution to prevent DM burn out. I get to start at a fresh point with the campaign, but the party is inherited except for the substitution, that’s why they’re 11th level. I am already planning to use the optional Sanity system from the DMG, and have already coded the feat for it to work on DDB’s sheet, complete with rolls.
The first encounter I have planned will likely end in a TPK that, when over they will all snap out of the delirium and find themselves unharmed, that’s when I’ll spring the sanity on them and make them save to set the tone of the campaign. They won’t know what’s real or what’s delirium, when they’re fighting for their lives or when their fighting for their sanity until after each/any fights. I think that will really suit the Lovecraftian horror feel very well.
Anything anyone wants to throw my way as either advice or critique is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Just look up Cthulhu Mythos for 5e on amazon. Also you can get it from Peterson games. These are the guys who wrote the book.
Well this is timely. I just purchased a collection of H.P Lovecraft stories and as I'm reading I get all these ideas for a D&D campaign. In fact I just finished Polaris which I suggest IamSposta check out if you haven't already. It's right up the alley of "is this a dream or is this reality"
Well this is timely. I just purchased a collection of H.P Lovecraft stories and as I'm reading I get all these ideas for a D&D campaign. In fact I just finished Polaris which I suggest IamSposta check out if you haven't already. It's right up the alley of "is this a dream or is this reality"
Thank you. I was heavily inspired by the video game. I shall have to check that story out, I haven’t read that one yet. I was also about to start my free HBO trial for their Lovecraft series. Trying to absorb as much as I can.
Other things that could be done to make a lovecraftian storyline is to take either mundane everyday things or standard horror tropes, and add something weird to it. For example:
The party is fighting a group of hags. After searching out the coven, the party fights them, and after one of them is brought to half health the hags flee into a cavern where the party follows them..****y to discover a vast subterranean city with strange dimensions and where the laws of physics aren't quite right, from which the hags have been drawing their power. The city (and any monsters within) hint at something far older and cosmic behind its origin, and the longer the party stays there, the more the laws of the universe seem to break.
Zombies are rising in a hamlet. The party sets out to locate the necromancer raising them, and after narrowing his lair down to an abandoned farmhouse, the party fights their way through the undead and storms the building..****y to discover instead of arcane rituals, the dead are being raised by a vast, near-incomprehensible machine. Attempts at figuring out the machine have bizarre and disturbing results, and the party can continue trying to shut off the machine and risk more of these results; alternatively, the party can destroy the machine, thereby ending the undead threat, but also releasing...something else into the world.
A criminal organization threatens to take over a city. The party infiltrates the organization, but come across something rather strange about it's members, who have odd, almost fish-like qualities to them. The longer the party investigates, the more apparent this piscine nature becomes. People who come into contact with these fish-monsters afterwards themselves start undergoing strange metamorphoses, as well as delusions that become more powerful and disturbing the longer the metamorphosis goes on.
An acclaimed musician has come to town to perform. Attendees of her latest performances have started to go mad however, and the party leaves to investigate her lodgings. Though they are unable to find the musician, they begin to hear strange frenetic music play in the distance. Attempts to discover the source of the music in the lodgings are initially unsuccessful, but as it continues to play the party begins to realize the world around them is slowly beginning to change, subtly at first, but gradually becoming more drastic and distorted the longer the search goes on.
If you haven't seen it, I can also recommend watching Critical Role's Call of Cthulhu special from halloween last year; Taleisin Jaffe does an excellent job of establishing the atmosphere and setting of a Lovecraftian session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhqZdJ8swQ
One hell of a book to have if you want to Lovecraft the shit out of your 5e games. Likely the best supplement I've bought for 5e.
I was very impressed when I got my copy. Amazing content within thats for sure. If im not mistaken Sandy one an award for the 5e version. Long story short. I had ordered mine pre-release. Waited about a month and a half for it. The day it was to arrive the UPS tracking showed that it was delivered to my door. It was not there. Made a phone call to UPS and the driver came back and checked around nearby houses. He had dropped it off across the street and 2 houses down. In the end I got it, but I was not a happy camper until then.
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General discussion for Lovecraft-style bullshit, I guess. Thanks for any insight into running the general genre of eldritch horror.
Edit: Appreciate all the comments! Lots of amazing ideas here.
When working through a Lovecraft style Horror Campaign, there are a few monster fallbacks that make as a pretty good starting point.
For your human foes, especially at lower levels, your Cultists and Cult Fanatics serve as a base core, and you can also flavor any of the other "Humanoid" Enemies to simply have the right kind of esthetic while maintaining all of the same mechanical functions. Warlocks of the Pact of the Old Ones can also serve as excellent cult leaders that you can customize to a wide degree.
Undead can also serve as good enemies, as the power and influence of cursed magic or influence from the Elder Gods can result in the formation and raising of vengeful spirits, or else possessing and animating corpses either unintentionally, or for some wicked purpose.
Now, for your more properly unleashed creatures from the Other Worlds, my preferred starting point are all the Aberration type creatures. They are all otherworldly, unnatural creatures that also commonly have mind-affecting abilities that remain on theme. Gibbering Mouthers, Aboleths, Beholders, and Mind Flayers are all excellent examples, and you can always change their appearance in order to agree with more specific Lovecraftian creatures if that is your objective. Also, if you have access to Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes the Star Spawn are designed for this type of campaign, and they have a range of challenge ratings. You can always change Demons or Devils appearances and style to make them more Far Realm like as well.
Also, the optional Madness Rules in the DMG really help to add to those kinds of campaign feels.
-
This is a pretty old post, but look into the optional sanity rule. I actually made myself a table to work with it, but the easy way is to have them roll sanity to prevent madness. As for monsters, just do some homework on the kinds of monsters that are out there, and give them something more identifiably lovecraftian (definitely look at the Zendikar planeshift for Eldrazi creatures)
Also, don't be afraid to do something new and crazy. If it breaks or something horrible goes wrong, then that's kind of the point of the genre. Repairing major issues or unforseen character deaths with "It's just a horrible dream" works well in this setting.
Hi EldritchPriest
I am a very long term Call of Cthulhu Keeper(twenty odd years now), and have written for both Achtung Cthulhu and the Arkham Gazette, which I hope will go some way to establishing credibility as someone who lives and breaths horror roleplaying and has a degree of expertise in it.
Here are some general rules for doing lovecraft in 5E D&D:
Abandon D&D's story structures and expectations.
5e is actually probably the most flexible version of D&D published since AD&D, at least in terms of tone. It manages that by being lighter weight, more hands off. While the default is still very definately heroic fantasy, you have the freedom to make it anything you want, and I suggest you do that. The reasons I say that is that this. Mythos monsters do not play well with heroic fantasy. If you can all up to Yog-sothoth and hit it with a holy avenger, and it dies, then you are not really fighting Yog-sothoth. It is the gate and the key, it is the pathway between worlds, it is time and space. It is not something you can kill in a punchup, even a superpowered one.
If you try to do heroic fantasy with lovecraftian monsters, all you get is a mess.
One that either steals away the monsters ability to scare, or which ignores the things that make the monster scary.
Use the flexibility of 5E, and adopt the story structure of games like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Such games focus on investigation and the slow uncovering of horrible truths, not direct confrontation with an enemy.
Use very slow level progression.
Powerlessness, vulnerability and limits of control of the narrative are important elements of a good horror scenario. These are not the natural state of highlevel PCs in D&D. You'll get better results in a horror scenario from lower level characters.
Lovecraftian storytelling is not about specific monsters.
Sure, there are some iconic titan and monsters, but you don't need to included them to make for a good lovecraftian story. One of the most successful lovecraftian scenarios of the last decade is "The Wives of March", which contains no specific lovecraftian monsters at all.
Any D&D monster can be lovecraftian if handled in correctly. This is even truer when we are willing to re-skin the monster as something strager still.
The Mythos laughs at your ideas of fairness and balance.
One of the core themes of lovecraftian horror is that universe is unfair, uncaring, and species such as humans, matter not in the least to gods and titans. Ideas such as encounter balance run directly contrary to these themes.
Second level PCs encountering CR20+ monsters in a lovecraftian campaign, and being crushed, is not unreasonable.
The reason that this lot grossly unfair within the context of the game, is that because of the nature of investigative play, the players should always make such an encounter as the result of their own poor decisions. We foreshadow the outcomes of their decisions.
This is a little late but as a newer DM to 5e and learning a ton this last year or so. I have to say this is the advice I have needed to actually bring in the fear I would enjoy bringing to the table. Thank you so much for posting this for us all aspiring Lovecraft loving DMs.
Cthulhu Mythos for 5e is something you might want to check out. I had picked it up and found it to have a wealth of information. It has the the gods and monsters related to the lore. There is a rather large selection of creatures. The book also contains details on cults, magic items, races, and a nice sized spell list. Thats just a small portion of what the book has in it. I highly recommend getting the book if you want to go all out Lovecraft with your game. I think it comes in digital format as well as hardback. Just trust me. Its well worth it. Amazing content within it.
I’m about to start DMing a Cthulhu style campaign for four 11th level PCs next week. Where can I find that book?
Also, I would love any advice anyone wants to throw my way. It’s a DM substitution to prevent DM burn out. I get to start at a fresh point with the campaign, but the party is inherited except for the substitution, that’s why they’re 11th level. I am already planning to use the optional Sanity system from the DMG, and have already coded the feat for it to work on DDB’s sheet, complete with rolls.
The first encounter I have planned will likely end in a TPK that, when over they will all snap out of the delirium and find themselves unharmed, that’s when I’ll spring the sanity on them and make them save to set the tone of the campaign. They won’t know what’s real or what’s delirium, when they’re fighting for their lives or when their fighting for their sanity until after each/any fights. I think that will really suit the Lovecraftian horror feel very well.
Anything anyone wants to throw my way as either advice or critique is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Just look up Cthulhu Mythos for 5e on amazon. Also you can get it from Peterson games. These are the guys who wrote the book.
Well this is timely. I just purchased a collection of H.P Lovecraft stories and as I'm reading I get all these ideas for a D&D campaign. In fact I just finished Polaris which I suggest IamSposta check out if you haven't already. It's right up the alley of "is this a dream or is this reality"
Thank you. I was heavily inspired by the video game. I shall have to check that story out, I haven’t read that one yet. I was also about to start my free HBO trial for their Lovecraft series. Trying to absorb as much as I can.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Other things that could be done to make a lovecraftian storyline is to take either mundane everyday things or standard horror tropes, and add something weird to it. For example:
If you haven't seen it, I can also recommend watching Critical Role's Call of Cthulhu special from halloween last year; Taleisin Jaffe does an excellent job of establishing the atmosphere and setting of a Lovecraftian session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhqZdJ8swQ
Thanks!!
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5e
https://petersengames.com/cthulhu-mythos/
One hell of a book to have if you want to Lovecraft the shit out of your 5e games.
Likely the best supplement I've bought for 5e.
...cryptographic randomness!
Thank you!
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I was very impressed when I got my copy. Amazing content within thats for sure. If im not mistaken Sandy one an award for the 5e version. Long story short. I had ordered mine pre-release. Waited about a month and a half for it. The day it was to arrive the UPS tracking showed that it was delivered to my door. It was not there. Made a phone call to UPS and the driver came back and checked around nearby houses. He had dropped it off across the street and 2 houses down. In the end I got it, but I was not a happy camper until then.