The Red Death and the Cthulhu Mythos

[Quinn]

Can these two concepts coexist in the same campaign? How would you go about merging The Red Death and the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones?

I'm currently running a Masque campaign and started out using a CoC module that I've adapted. The concept of the Red Death hasn't come up for the characters, and actually may never be revealed to them, but I'd like to think about how these two distinct powers would interact. My approach right now is to treat the Red Death as an external threat that is very active in Gothic Earth, while the Old Ones have long been dormant and may rise again. The Red Death uses the cults that venerate the old ones to its own ends, but at the same time seeks to avoid anything that could possibly bring about their reawakening.

Thoughts?

[Joël of the FoS]

The most pure way to play the game has been to separate both as two different settings.

This said, if you want to mix it, why not ?

My approach right now is to treat the Red Death as an external threat that is very active in Gothic Earth, while the Old Ones have long been dormant and may rise again. The Red Death uses the cults that venerate the old ones to its own ends, but at the same time seeks to avoid anything that could possibly bring about their reawakening.

Sounds good to me You mix both without changing too much the basics of each. I like this manipulation by the RD.

Joël

[William Blackmoor]

The great Old Ones could be some of the overlords "serving" the Red Death just like it is said about the demons of Gothic Earth.

Some ideas i had some time ago:

Atlloth-Nachal
A Spider-Goddess revered in antedeluvian Hyperborea (Greenland and the north of Norway). One of her avatars was trapped on Earth when the Red Death disconnected it from the planes. She now spins a mystic web that is supposed to bridge to the planes (the Abyss to be specifc). She has lured some of the dark elves of Norway into her service.

B’moth*
The Demonlord of the “Deep Ones” (Sahuagin and Kuo-Taos) and his original children the Illithid (Mindflayers) sleeps bleow the ocean surface (some say below Bimini), waiting for the right conjunction of stars to be reawakend.
(*B’moth is one of Cthulhu’s names)

The Sphinx
An Abysall Lady, and it was her likeness was carved into the original Sphinx of Gisa. She is still trapped below this likeness. She has enthralled the catpeople know as the paka, who once revered Bastet, but were severed from her by the Red Death’s intrusion into the world. The paka now blame the humans and especially magic-users for their loss. The paka sometimes capture those they deem a threat an sacrifice them to their patron in the halls below the sphinx.

Other entries like Lilith, Baal, Ishtar, Atlantis, Hyperborea and Mu are still incomplete but maybe I'll post them later

[sabbattack]

Actually, I used the book of MotRD to create a game of Cthulhu d20 for some friends who wanted to see the setting.

Since the book is great (at least in details, info on the era etc, because the rules have serious problems) I decided to use it as a guide. In between play, I ended up with something like Quinn's theme, the RD being the "lesser of two evils", a force the players had to contact (with every bad aspect of course to their damnation, corruption and sanity) in order to battle the Old Ones.