What's your favourite horror subgenre?

[Lmns Crn]

Alas, all the punctuation skill he had had had had no improving effect upon his legibility.

[Xeviat]

Mine has to be Cosmic Horror, if I'm reading that correctly: things from beyond.

[Steerpike]

That sums it up.  Cosmic horror is horror of the unfathomable, the unknowable, the unkennable; things are certainly central to it.

[SA]

I don't think "unknowable, unfathomable, unkennable" is the whole of it. For me, cosmic horror works best when the threat is tremendously remote (or unapproachably massive) but potentially comprehensible. When the entity is genuinely "unknowable", I find it difficult to differentiate them from forces of nature, like extinction-level comets or the slow decline of our Sun. Such inevitabilities are a little depressing, but not particularly frightening.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, those words aren't perfect... what I mean is, cosmic horror tends to be about things that exceed our understanding in some way.  A comet or a dwindling sun are perfectly understandable even if they're motiveless.  The Great Old Ones are in some sense "beyond" us, at a metaphysical and epistemological level.  They're mysterious - maybe "potentially comprehensible" at times, although usually understanding them brings its own dangers.

[LD]

The game did have its own amusing interval... when the UN soldier went mad, he latched onto a simple garden toad that had freaked everyone out because I kept describing the **** thing every few minutes as it hopped around. The soldier kept insisting that the toad had special powers. This got him gutted because he was in the words of one player: "beyond redemption" after he started licking the toad and carrying it around on his head.

Could you let his player know that they're my hero. This is amazing (you too for successfully instilling toad-driven chaos into your group).

The player very much appreciated hearing that from you!

And thank you to for the other comments.

The toad has become a bit of a running gag in our Cthulhu games. I think it's been in about  5 sessions and it has only actually been magical in one, though I switch up its roles from time to time. Toads have been magical, natural, familiars of witches, and statues; so, the players never know what to expect--that keeps them 'concerned', if not afraid. Never knowing what to expect (the unknown) is a good tool to have when creating a work of horror.

For example, we did a 1902(?) post-Boxer-Rebellion Mummy/Indiana Jones-esque session in Xi'an, China (home to the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi and the terracotta warriors).  In that game, the players had some intel from farmers and they headed off to excavate the tomb. The players were a Diplomat/Supervisor from Great Britain who was looking to make a grand discovery, an insufferable anti-monarchist Russian Professor/Archaeologist who was brought along for his historical expertise,  a sham/cheat Missionary/Guide who knew the area and who could 'deal' with the locals, a Mercenary from Texas for protection "Tex", and an Arab Merchant/Fence who funded the Diplomat's mission because the Diplomat, in the wake of the boxer rebellion, had been specifically forbidden from this type of exploration. After making it past the tomb's defenses, some later-built Buddhist sutras hidden in man-made caves above the structure and crawling down into it, they came across the statues of two massive stone toads (there are statues of this sort in parts of China), which had gems pried out of their eyes. (The gems, and skeletons of the thieves, were found later)... After falling through rotten wood, the players came across the river of jade and the river of oil, which led to the tomb. The players eventually dodged the rare Chinese wildman, the Mongolian death worm, Terracotta warriors, and other thematic nastiness, but the toads loomed large in the players' minds.

Maybe I should start a thread where people talk about one-off settings for Cthulhu. Is that something that would interest people? I've always found that the historical one-off format has been good for Cthulhu.

>>Also, was that player Coyote Camouflage by any chance?

Good guess; but no--it was someone else.

>>Interesting, Light Dragon.  It sounds like for that game political-military concerns were almost more important than the Lovecraftian horror elements - is that a fair assessment?

I can see how you came to that conclusion from what I wrote; but, I'd say they were balanced. To some extent, people have control over their politics and how they react, but to a greater extent, Lovecraftian cosmic forces and determinism comes into effect- the players have a difficult time working together and therefore they become truly alone. The house was haunted, bats flew, people were hypnotized (by the vile professor), and there really was an ancient alien artifact hidden in the castle that distorted time/space dimensions and acted as a portal of 'weirdness', changing the subatomic interactions in the area and allowing animals to pass through walls, allowing cats in boxes to be both alive and dead and stinking profusely of rot, allowing the executed massacrees screams to be transposed several km distant and echo in the players' ears.

[LD]

On the subject of Lovecraft-
I will admit, I did find one of his works borderline frightening, but part of that was I set up an excellent tone setting in which to read it.
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/dreamswitchhouse.htm

Dreams in the Witch House.

Classic scary story of a haunted house.

I read it in a log cabin at 2 in the morning in the middle of nowhere by a lake. I couldn't sleep. I got up from bed, cracked open a jacketless book that was musty and was printed in the 70s. Its color was red. Its paper smelled like rot. And it had only been checked out twice before, according to smudged stamps on the library card that was inexpertly glued to the back cover and which was peeling off. The mustiness of the book and the squeaking of actual rodents and the raging thunderstorm outside made that experience quite savory.
-
The first Lovecraft novel I read is one that most people would hate- the Dream Cycle. I wouldn't really recommend people to start with it unless they are fans of old school 1E DnD. Reading that and seeing the ghouls transported me back to old DnD gameplay, where you go through the dungeon, interact with weird ghuls and other creatures in a Gothic-Dunsanian-landscape.

My least favorite Lovecraft piece- Call of Cthulhu... there's nothing too special in it. Music of Erich Zann does some things better thematically with its calling attention to the madness of artists and their connection to the unknown. And for scale- at the Mountains of Madness, which is like a pulp John Carpenter's The Thing- does scale so much better. At the mountains of madness is one of my absolute favorite tales... and the RPG supplement Return to the Mountains of Madness is likewise excellent. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, is my other favorite. Lovecraft had range in style. My three favorite of his works are very different types of literature. One is ghost story horror, another, a sci-fi mystery adventure-horror, and the third is more classic Americana Hawthorneian horror (If I recall properly).

[Steerpike]

Dreams in the Witch House is pretty great, and I can see why it might keep someone up (is that just the cat, or is that Brown Jenkins at the foot of the bed, scuttling around in the darkness?)

I read it in a log cabin at 2 in the morning in the middle of nowhere by a lake. I couldn't sleep. I got up from bed, cracked open a jacketless book that was musty and was printed in the 70s. Its color was red. Its paper smelled like rot. And it had only been checked out twice before, according to smudged stamps on the library card that was inexpertly glued to the back cover and which was peeling off. The mustiness of the book and the squeaking of actual rodents and the raging thunderstorm outside made that experience quite savory.

Goddamn, that is like the best possible way to read Lovecraft.  That or like a creepy attic or an abandoned building in Providence somewhere.

Have you read "The Lurking Fear"?  It's an early one but I quite like it.

I tend to concur that The Mountains of Madness is a high point.  I still like "The Call of Cthulhu," particularly some of creepy investigation scenes with the artist and in Louisiana (racist/anti-miscegenist undertones aside, though they're kind of hard to miss, those scenes are quite evocative) - but I agree it's not his best.