"Is Cthulhu scary anymore" Topic

Does anyone else thing that Cthulhu doesn't have the scare factor that he once did?
Looking over the current use of Cthulhu he has become more of a common monster, plushy and meme.
"In my day" the Lovecraft stories were horrifying and I still find the original stories somewhat disturbing but I cannot game Cthulhu with the same tension that I used to have.
Anyone else disappointed in the state of the Cthulhu mythos?

Yep.

But personally I'm sort of tired of the Mythos in general. In my gaming group it remains popular, and a common trope is pulp adventures mixed with Mythos. I keep advocating for something else, but for some reason I just can't shake it.

Damon.

I have only recently tackled the Cthulhu mythos in gaming. I am developing the world in which the D&D game I play with my daughters takes place. The grand cosmology has boiled down to Celtic mythos (in the good, civilized areas) vs. the Cthulhu mythos (as subversive cults within the good, civilized areas and possibly right out in the open amongst certain momads or evil kingdoms.) My younger daughter is a big horror fan, so I am hoping I can make it suitably scary.

Ken Hite lecture
Keeping Cthulhu Scary:
link

from the CelestiCon archives:
celesticon.com/seminars.php

an article in Different Worlds magazine from the early 80s
mentioned that if people today saw group of eldritch abominations walking down main street
instead of fleeing in terror
they would be looking for the hidden movie cameras

also
with the world having been more explored since Lovecraft's day
will Pluto become the new Antarctica?

I do not know. Rats in the Walls is still one of the scariest things I have read. And when I try to visualize what it would be for R'lyeh to arise, and for such a massive creature to exist I am terrified.

I used to have nightmares of being in an office building, the world outside burning and trying to hide from the windows where a massive eye would be searching, while my ears bled hearing a alien voice sing alien songs.

To put it simply, Cthulthu can be very scary and you just need the proper media presentation to make it scary.

It all depends on how its used. If he is just a big Kaiju, then No longer scary.

if you add the other stuff, such as the body mutation/corruption, the messed up physics, psionics, etc… and done correctly… really scary.

I agree with KTravlos, "Rats in the Wall" is a creepy, scary story. As to the mythos as a whole, I think it is more under the skin disturbing than truly scary.

Funny, I was thinking about his on the drive in this morning.

I think with the seeping of the Mythos into popular culture we have turned Cthulhu into a Godzilla or just another Universal Monster (I do like the classic universal monsters, but they do not inspire cosmic dread!)

I don't think it is that we are so sophiticated, I think it is that we have become used to not thinking about how vast and uncaring the universe is and our own petty insignificance. We are actually MORE afraid of cosmic horror than in HPL's day, but try to disarm it by trivializing it. I doubt if a real Shoggoth rolled down the street people would not run screaming.

I find the best way to muster cosmic horror is to look through a telescope or ponder how vast the universe is.

Clear your mind, make a cup of tea, and settle down with the original material and maybe you can recapture the initial dread you felt when you first read HPL. Good gaming!

…mentioned that if people today saw group of eldritch abominations walking down main street instead of fleeing in terror they would be looking for the hidden movie cameras…

…if a real Shoggoth rolled down the street people would not run screaming.

If an "eldritch abomination" was walking down the street people would pull out their phones and start making youtube videos.

Does anyone else thing that Cthulhu doesn't have the scare factor that he once did?

Darn! You've stumbled upon the PLAN! It's simple, really -- a long-term dedicated PR plan to change the public perception of Cthulhu and pave the way for…

YouTube link

Cutethulhu

I think I would rather be disturbed. Maybe I am jaded but just about the only things that scare me are bills and possible harm to a loved one.

That said I feel the Mythos is alive and well. However I do read a lot of Chaosium's new literature compilations. Regular games of Elder Sign and Mansions of Madness help too.

I agree with the Godzilla analogy above--the Mythos is about far, far more than Cthulhu or another Big Bad. It is more about the alien that implies humanity is little or inconsequential to the universe. For the Mythos to be "scary" or effective in games you need to de emphasize the Big Monster and turn up the bizarre, alien, and mystery aspects of the literature.

Personally, I didn't find it particularly scary, but I can see how in the 1920s, it would have been seen as being scary.

Short answer…Yes

There is a great source of material out there for making some very scary movies…but right now the popular culture is stuck in a zombie phase

Maybe someday there will be a film inspired by "Rats in the Walls" or even a pulpy innsmouth detective story made for TV

You know, in that glorious first season of True Detective, the mythos references made everything creepier. The human monsters was all that there was, but the tackling of the mythos gave it a even more sinister character. So its scary.

And then Rusty looks at the ceiling, and glimpses what I can only think of as Azazoth. Glorious.

By the way I find Azazoth much scarier than either Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep. It challenges directly our deeply held feelings of at least a universe that has a plan, a logic, and at its most our concept of caring higher beings(I am religious). And the thing is, its not evil. Evil-good are meaningless for Azazoth. It just is. And all that needs to happen it is for it to wake up.

Think about it. One night you are talking a stroll in the night looking at the night sky, enjoying the stars and then a moment later a giant alien eye has replaced the sky.

An intereesting YouTube video about this here (more about video games, but still applies): YouTube link

This is about that:
link

I'll try the image link:

andy

Everyone should listen to the Ken Hite talk.

A key point: saying Cthulhu can't be scary now that there are plashes is the same as saying vampires can't be scary after Count Chocula. That's not even bringing up The Munsters.

The modern citizen is so exposed through the media (movies, videogames, etc.. news) to both real world horror (terrorism, etc..in a very ghraphic way), and to fiction horror (with modern cgi is nearly looking like the real thing, no more strings or mans in rubber costumes like those 70s, 80s movies) that he is inmunized at least, to the sensorial shock (sorry about my english).
As it has been said in this thread, things that looked scary nearly one century ago, dont look scary anymore

I'll listen to the Ken Hite talk, but for now I say yes. For that matter, I don't find vampires scary any more either. Both vampires and Cthulhu are too much out in the public now and 'common.' Of course, after Aliens 2, I found the Giger alien to be far less scary. So maybe it is just a matter of being too familiar with them.

I do not know. I think that it all up to presentation. Try playing Fiend, a simple 2d game that does such a good job in presentation that it spooked me.

Kids today just walk past his house calling out "Hi, Mr Cthulhu!"
Sometimes he tries to keep their baseballs and chase them off his lawn, but they know he's just a big softy.

I am not so sure people are as immunized to visual shock by TV and movies as people claim. They still tend to freeze when in an actual life or death situation, shooting, etc.

But the charm of HPL is the mental horror of the meaninglessness of humanity, and I think modern society just tries to suppress that under a pile of reality TV shows and video games.

Of course, I am a curmudgeon who chooses to hide under a pile of miniature wargaming…

Someone should pose this question to Robet M. Price over at "The Lovecraft Geek" podcast.

Cthulhu was NEVER scary, he was mostly asleep and even when awoken, only ate a few sailors before being run down by a steam-yacht. But Lovecraft's vision [which he termed "Yog-Sothothry"] IMO was, and is, "scary", if by that we mean seeing humanity as a mere insignificant dot in time and space, neither an end nor a means to an end, but only a Resource to be Harvested by unfathomably-different entities.

In the end, I suspect it's because Cthulhu is just silly. An octopus head? Bat wings? A giant human body? How cornball can you get? And the thing where he goes around eating people-- what kind of lame-o god is this? Why not just chomp on a nice steak? Even vampires are more frightening, not because they will suck your blood, but because they will turn you into one of them-- made evil without your choice. That's the real scary part of classic horror-- that the evil will get you and alter the essence of who you are, and you will become the monster.

As for modern horror, too much of is about horror (the gruesome, grotesque or appalling) over the truly scary (that which is unknown and unseen, the danger in the dark). We've been jaded and misserved by a Hollywood (and fiction community) that have to show us everything, in gory detail.
Gore can be frightening, yes. But frankly the faint cry in the dark, a low whisper, and then silence, is far more unnerving.

What needs to be done to return the mythos to it's unnerving core (which IMHO the grotesquerie even in the original weakens) is to essentially take away the Monster Manual, as it were. If the readers and the players know all the facts, what to do and how to win, the unnerving fear is gone. So never let them know the facts. Change the facts, horribly, and inflict that horror on the Character Who Knows How To Win, exposing to all that he actually knows nothing… and neither do they. And then never let them find out what's really going on. Ever. Even if they defeat the evil, they should always wonder if the victory is complete… or even a victory at all.

All Monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein's creature, the Xenomorph, Freddy Krueger start off as scary, then they are thrown about in popular culture long enough to lose that edge and become familiar to the point of becoming cuddly.

I'd say that one of the points we do miss about the Mythos is that the beings are made of weird alien stuff we can't quite comprehend as human beings. We represent Cthulhu as this bloated monster with a squid head and wings, but the idea is that if you saw it for real the "alien weird scary factor" we can't reproduce in art or movie would be blatantly obvious and send you screaming no matter how cuddly you think all of his representations are.

The Mythos was unique because it did away with any form of personality or personal relationship with the protagonists. Anything from Vampires and Werewolves to Bodysnatching aliens and Xenomorphs is that they kill you on a personal level. The many things that should not be in the Mythos are so alien they kill us or render us completely mad by simply being, and when they do act they don't even notice us, the are like the atomic bomb scare during the cold war.

Some excellent points have been made above. What hasn't been said (unless I missed it) is that horror, like humour, can be extremely subjective: what scares one person witless may have no effect whatsoever on another. I remember one friend in his early twenties saying he found the first Paranormal Experience film incredibly scary, enough so that he had to sleep with the lights on for several days afterwards. Another friend thought the whole thing was ridiculous and almost verging on the humourous. I haven't seen the film, and so couldn't comment, but their reactions were interesting to compare.

The same phenomena probably happens with the Cthulhu mythos as well.

He never was. I never ever found Lovecraft's work to be horror at all. Telling me it's so frightening I'd go mad if you told me exactly HOW it was scary isn't scary in any way.

Horror is what you make of it, KTravlos points are spot on.
So puny humans.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn (0)

I'm with Nazrat on this. I remember the first "really scary" Mythos story I read (who knows what it was, it was recommended to me … and totally forgettable) and I thought "Is that it?"
So I tried another. And another. I still wonder what the fuss was.

Personally I don't think Cthulhu is as Main Street as many of you think. I bet if I asked ten random people on main street it would be hard to find one who knows what Cthulhu is. Now are people immune to horror, that is a different story,

Duane

Cthulhu isn't scary just like no one is afraid in the dark anymore.

a most excellent discussion.
I see many valid points and maybe a few who missed the point.
I suppose "scary" maybe to specific.
What may have been a better way of phrasing the idea was, as stated by others, the insurmountable evil that pointed out the complete helplessness of man in a vast and uncaring universe.
But a lot of what I was getting at has been covered.
Cthulhu and the Lovecraft mythos may not be as relevant in todays world as in the past but can still hold water in the right situation.
The video from Extra Credit posted by Deltapax hits a nail on the head.
The main stream view of Cthulhu boils it down to a singular thing, Cthulhu out of context.
Also, when I was first introduced to the mythos I was pretty religious and believed that evil could be fought by a more powerful force of good, god is love and man was the center of that love.
So stories about a universe that was cold and full of Elder things that neither cared or even noticed the fragile being that currently inhabited a small insignificant planet or worse they only thought of man as a nuisance to be exterminated to make way for something more horrible than could be imagine really struck harder then it does now that I am older and more jaded. As some of you have pointed out above.
So thank you for the comments.
Oh, and happy Halloween ;)

+1 Parzival

Most of the gamers I know including myself are jaded on roleplaying so the Cthulu stuff just comes across as more dumb monsters to be slain or run away from. In real life to meet something like that would blow our minds but not in games anymore.

The horror that really gets you is the mental stuff like Devils Advocate or Angel Heart where you realize you are doomed from your own choices.

If Cthulu is an unkillable demon who drives everyone who looks at him instantly insane, then yes, still a bit scary.

If he is just a flobby Dragon with extra legs, then no.

The stories are still pretty disturbing, and degenerate hence things provide plenty of cannon fodder for gamers.

Absolutely. Two things have contributed to this. First is the spin-off "Achtung Cthulhu" with it's cartoony style miniatures (more Sergeant Rock than anything) and the designers so wanting the game to be a mash up of Lovecraft and trashy Nazi zombie fiction.

The second is a growing trend in RPG games where killing characters is considered unacceptable. It's harder to scare players when they're confident they'll get through a game with no casualties. I've locked horns with a lot of gamers on forums and in person about whether it is still OK for characters to die in RPGs, with a lot of gamers who have stared in the last 10-15 years saying "we've put a lot of effort in those characters, killing them is a waste and you'll lose players' interest".

Cthulhu and the mythos can still be scary: Just put a character in a genuinely spooky and isolated situation with the threat powerful enough to wipe them out…..and don't fudge the dice!

I do agree with lots of the extra-credit video points, and by others. Key to the scare factors in the Cthulhu mythos is that sense of loss of control and self-worth. And indeed the slow loss of sanity is very important. But I think the malevolence needs to be there.

What I mean by that word is a bit hard to describe. Its the feeling I always get from reading the From Hell letter of the Jack the Ripper case. No matter how many times I read it, it still disturbs me. This is the case also with the photo of Mary Kelly's body. I feel something seeping out of these artifacts, something I can only call malevolent. Very disturbing. And I think the Cthulhu Mythos works best when you feel the traces of the malevolence rather than seeing the cause of it. The feeling rise of dread as you see more and more indicators of something malevolent at work.

Also brain damage. Maybe because of my job there is nothing I fear more than any kind of brain damage. Images of it disturb me greatly, and while I love the new television, the scenes which show what happens when you bash a person in the head or shoot them there, the uncontrollable spasming, disturbs me greatly.When I think of that I am just unwilling to hurt another human being whatever the cause. It looks so wrong, so malevolent.

I first read HPL when I lived by myself in a cottage, way out in the country, with few neighbors and few signs of the outside world. Nary a light outside but the moon and stars. The only sounds were crickets, frogs, and the occasional distant sound from a far away truck's diesel brake or a dog's bark. With all the lights out except for a reading lamp, I thought HPL was about as scary as it came (far worse than the modern Horror I also read from Straub or King). Re-reading it now in my secure den, surrounded by family, with plenty of lights and sounds from the modern world it feels pretty tame. But to my delight, to fix that I all I have to do is wander back into the woods with some HPL and all the horror and it's joys come back. I am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving in my remote mountain cabin with my HPL as I contemplate sanity itself. ;-)

If you treat Cthulhu like a monster form the monster manual, which in your own games you are free to do, then no not really scary.

If you treat him as Lovecraft did as a kind of coda for a utterly indifferent universe in which you and all of humanity are nothing, all art ,science,religion and military might are so insignificant as to not even rate as high as a joke in the real scheme of things and our belief to the contrary is just a lie to keep us going, then you are approaching scary.

To me, the whole "humanity is insignificant" thing isn't scary at all. It's just kind of pathetic, and rather pointless. It's just "let's give up" nihilism masquerading as something intellectual rather than sad, unattractive hopelessness. It doesn't scare me; at best it bores me, at worst it annoys me. When I read it, I think, "Really? This is how you view the world? How pitiful." And that's all.

Now, of you want scary, read John Bellairs. The Face in the Frost remains one of the scariest books I ever read. No jumps, no mock, half-baked over-philosophizing, just a sense of growing foreboding and "wrongness" as the unknown danger creeps slowly, inexorably forward. Brrrr…

> What needs to be done to return the mythos to it's unnerving core (which IMHO the grotesquerie even in the original weakens) is to essentially take away the Monster Manual, as it were.

That's pretty much it. Chaosium's published some of the best scenarios I've read -- and pretty much none of them rely upon the game stats in the base game book! The GM in Andy's strip is making the mistake of "saying not showing". I usually give a series of descriptions, starting with sound, and *ending* with sight. It helps, of course, if you have players who *want* to experience the game. Sure, my players loaded up on shotguns and dynamite, but they still went along with my rulings. Players also did survive, until the last five minutes where all heck broke loose and half of them were incapacitated before the round started…

If I want to be Cthulhu scared I don't want to see it……. I find the books on the subject much more scary ….as that is what's in my mind rather than what my eyes see…. I think that's what makes lovecraft scary it's meant for the imagination…not a plushy