countering my last post

[subplotkudzu]

About how Gmail makes me see way more gaming in the world than there is, I found myself rather perturbed by a recent Newseek article on the evolution of Vampire portrayals in modern culture (culminating with Edward the vamp who is so chaste and good that he even insists his virginal human girlfriend wear buckle up her seat belt - no 1970's LeStat hedonist he!). While it had some interesting points it managed to completely skip the entire 1990's Vampire the Masquerade Goth-Punk scene, the existence of which surely had an impact on the current Vamp portrayals. Apparently gaming is still way too under the radar (or history is easily forgotten, take your pick).

On a similar note, we've been having a few discussion threads in A&E regarding genre tropes, specifically around Horror, and how games need to break away from the cliches now in order to engage the players - Dead Man Stop, the C0C5E sample adventure is apparently a yawner because it's just a run of the mill, Nyarlythotep backed animated dead horror. When exactly did that become run of the mill (not that I doubt that it is)? And is it still run of the mill in the larger culture? Would people who never played an RPG or COC before have the same response it it, or is it because gamers have gotten bored with the "same old thing". (As a counter, Dig To Victory, a COC scenario set in the trenches of WWI, is apparently creepy as all hell, likely because it's not the sort of thing you see every day.)

Comments

[daftnewt.livejournal.com]

Well, it's no surprise that familiarity leads to reduced emotional impact. I agree that Nyarly has been sadly overworked, poor fellow. One of the reasons CoC was/is so cool is that most other "horror" tended to be about vampires and werewolves and ghosts and such, and CoC was weird and unfamiliar. It's still great because the underlying themes of Lovecraft's work can work in so many different situations - such as digging trenches in WWI, a submarine descending to the sea bottom, a group of escaped mental patients...

What's interesting to me is how, once vampires and werewolves become so familiar to us that they aren't so scary, we start getting interested in them as protagonists and even heroes. Anyone want to play a Deep One private eye? :)

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Nyarly can still work, but the plot has to feel worthy of him, I think. If I remember correctly, the issue was that this was just the walking dead running around, and... okay, we're oversaturated on zombie movies. Not thzt zombies can't work, but... it's brute force, and I tend to think of Nyarlathotep as more into sadistic chess.

A Deep One PI could certainly work. Think of all the prejudice the poor guy would have to face (I am presuming guy here). Everyone knows the Deep Ones want to steal human women for unspeakable rites!

In the Plus 20 game I ran, I made one of Laura's band mates a halfbreed Deep One, which was interesting. She wasn't up to anything more evil than once competing with Laura over who got to sleep with Gary (Honggong won). And, she really just wanted to ignore her Deep One-ness and hope it would go away, and -- sigh, she loved her folks, but they could be embarrassing, you know?