How would you run a game that combines the themes of "cosmic existential horror" and "comfy"?
>>44554379
Simple, really. You become so severely mentally disturbed that cosmic horror IS your comfy.
>>44554379
Vore.
>>44554413
Or you become so wise that it is.
>>44554379
When did comfy become a thing? I feel like I missed a memo a few months back or something.
>>44554379
The answer is waifus.
>>44554413
>>44554431
>>44554379
Maybe a game set inside of a safe, comfortable house, but the landscape outside of the house is some kind of bleak, hellish abyss like something out of Silent Hill. The PC's have to defend their home and occasionally run out for supplies.
Plot twist: The house is actually inside of Cthulhu's stomach.
>>44554379
Literally everything Elite Dangerous is.
You do nothing but space trucking, it's boring as fuck, and after a long day of sitting in a space ship you ask yourself: if this is life is it worth it?
And the answer is yes. Because it's comfy.
>>44554465
Yeah me too. It seems like it's been getting worse in the last month.
A comfy game of village life with slice of life stories involving keeping a little boy happy. The players must make all attempts to have a peaceful, happy life of comfiness.
The village of Derry has been completely cut off from the rest of the world. Or maybe it's been destroyed.
Don't anger the kid. Don't think bad thoughts. Or he'll send you into the cornfield.
>>44554499
It's the season. People don't want to be out in the snow. Even if it has been an unusually balmy winter this year.
>>44554379
All your characters suffer from a depression and nihilist obsession so extreme they can't leave their beds.
>>44554505
Somebody say DyE fantasy? Because I think I heard someone say DyE Fantasy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QFwo57WKwg
>>44554505
AND THEN A SKELETON COMES OUT
>>44554379
some kind of safe warm library tucked within a small pastoral country town
books from the library periodically transform the town into strange, horrific, unsettling distortions without the characters realizing at first--they wake up to realize that all the townspeople have no faces, or that language has suddenly become distorted, or all the televisions loop and display an image of a dancing smiling man followed by static bursts
>>44554557
The skeletons inside are just cheerful doot doot skeletons. You can trust the skeletons inside. Especially the skeletal butler.
But don't let the skeletons outside catch you!
>>44554557
And we're all really supportive of it for doing so. Love whoever you want, Mr. Skellybones.
OK, pulling ideas together:
The PC's are inside of a big, comfortable house.
The house has an extensive library full of books.
The PC's share the house with some NPC's, including their wives, and a happy child who just wants to be cheerful, and doesn't want anybody to have any uncheerful thoughts.
There's also a butler. He kindly reminds everyone not to open the curtains or try to look outside.
It is important, however, that the men venture out occasionally to retrieve supplies from town...
>>44554379
Everyone is slowly going insane, but their okay with it and take it in stride.
>>44554379
Nightvale. Or the Merlin Township.
A sinkhole collapses the local Bed Bath & Beyond.
The wreckage lies like a colossal pillow fort, bounded by a sea of blankets and cushions.
Where did all the staff go?
Where have the cleanup crew vanished to?
Are you a bad enough dude to investigate this memory foam nightmare?
In the deep, a cavern of mattresses lies waiting.
Between each mattress can be seen a space, just the right size for a person to enter.
Dark but strangely inviting.
It looks... cosy.
This is it.
This is mine.
This is my hole.
Drr, drr, drr.
...
.....
Zzzzzzz...
>>44554379
A slice of life where things inexplicably and subtly go wrong.
Also there are friendly aliens and while they seem cute and nice at first they are actually aliens and their sense of morality and meaning of life is completely different than humanity, leading them to doing bizzarre and scary shit thinking humans are totally cool with it. But the aliens are genuinely nice, if only you could get them to understand they will actually stop doing all their weird shit.
>>44554710
Sounds like Silent Hill: The Room: The Dungeon Crawler.
Make it take place in Europe, one of their nice family hostels. PCs come in late at night. The big European city is quiet at this time of night for some reason, but Google got them there safe enough. They check in, but the Butler/Inn Keeper is behind a thick panel of obscured glass, but speaks English well enough and explains where to go. PCs and family go to bed.
They wake up. All the doors and Windows are boarded up and chained down, on both sides. Try as they might, nothing gets through. There's a single tremor, but the place is fine. Some food and supplies from the car are used. A day goes by.
The next day, the Inn Keeper gives them a fetch quest. He'll ignore any other questions except stuff relating to where to go. A key will he slipped through and they can go out through some obscure pathway. They wind up in *location* and do their thing, then come back. They have to turn in the key to be allowed to see their family.
Meanwhile, their family has started to make the best of a bad situation.Laundry is being done, food is being prepared, etc. Something is wrong, but you don't have to be smelly too, ya know?
>>44555025
Pillow time, come on grab your friends,
We'll go to a comfy land
With Cthulu the jz;iocen and Phil the shoggoth,
the fun will never end, it's Pillow Time!
>>44554379
So, /r9k/ the game?
>>44554751
I'm waiting for a good sale on this.
>>44554379
Twin Peaks
>>44555096
Neat!
Could make for a fun Call of Cthulhu campaign.
Or maybe Unknown Armies, even?
i consider this spoopypasta oddly comfy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HURzsrZjTm8
>>44554379
The party works for a very connected individual, and you've come to visit the fairies. Your host is very kind, but there is a bunch of very important politicking going on in the great hall, and there are representatives from everywhere. While there is no direct threat, the power of those around you is immense, their forms maddening, and you soon realize you will not return unchanged
>>44554379
Something with transcendent might and mind has come to live in your little midcentury town. It looks like a person, but everyone knows it isn't, not in any way that counts. It acts like a person, its almost believable, but its real nature just shimmers through. Still, the something hasn't done anything wrong, that anyone's aware of, its friendly, as strange as it is, and its rather insightful at town meetings. It lives in a room it rents from Mrs. Abendtot, and says its sister is coming to visit.
>>44554379
This is the avenue that the new Delta Green is taking with the King in Yellow and Carcosa.
The threat is a deeply psychological one, a mental infection that exists to draw more and more people, ideas, and cities into Carcosa. Except if the agents do manage to escape and find their way back into the real world, unlike the entire rest of the game where your memories of experience are horrific and traumatic, slowly destroying you over time, finding the lost moments of Carcosa around you are actually comforting, feeling more and more like home, until eventually you feel lost and afraid anywhere else.
It's a nice touch to drastically counterpoint the physical/magical superscary threats of the rest of the game.
Dinner party guests are snowed in at a mansion and the power has gone out, leaving candles and fireplaces the only sources of light and warmth. Using an eldritch grimoire found in the library, one of the players, a secret cultist, unleashes a host of otherworldly creatures that lurk in the darkness and fear the light. The players must work together to plunder the manor's labyrinthine library for information on how to banish the creatures, fix the power (even if it means venturing out into the blizzard), deal with monsters and supernatural phenomena, and figure out which one of them is the cultist before something even bigger and badder bleeds into reality from the eldritch realm.
>>44554530
I'm living that. Not sure why anyone would seek it.
>>44557679
I'm stealing this all the way to the bank.
Also adding in a murder mystery as a misdirect to the otherworldly horror
Okay, so here's an idea for an adventure:
Each player stats up two characters: a man, and his waifu (or they can be gay and do man + husbando, or a pair of waifus. It's all good.)
If the players are cool with it, you may have each of them trade one of their characters with another player so that everybody is playing as somebody else's partner.
The PC's check into a hotel, just like here:
>>44555096
It's snowing outside though, just like here:
>>44557679
At some point, the PC's will have to brave a blizzard to get the power switched on.
There are a couple of NPC's. One of them is the crazy innkeeper behind the window.
The other NPC is the creature from this post:
>>44557586
It was supposed to meet with its sister at the hotel. It might, at some point, ask the PC's to go out and look for her.
Having the players stat up two PC's each means that half of the party can go out and do stuff while the other half can stay behind, and you can switch back and forth. Conditions permitting maybe the phones are even still working so you can have some line of communication between the two groups.
The men can go out into the ice and cold and do adventuring things while the waifus stay behind and do investigative stuff in the library and the basement.
>>44554465
Its been around for years
Absurdism. Take comfort and positive acceptance that life is a horrible shitfest and just roll with it
Something like Kino's journey meets Call of Cthulhu
>>44554431
>Implying living in a chamber full of acid is comfy
okay.
>>44554379
The players each live in a small cozy town in the middle of nowhere. The weather's just right and the other townsfolks are okay, but Ol' Farmer Higgs is trapped in a groundhog day-esque time loop, some of the dogs in town starts losing eyes and gets fluffier each time you meet them, and even when it's raining lightning and tornadoes all you feel is the warm, soft autumn breeze, with birds singing hymns to the Old Ones in a pleasant tone. Maybe the Hayden Twins became the Hayden Triplets became the Hayden Quartet each full moon. Or that Grandma Lewis' famous pie has a reality glitch built in, so it's always warm and complete, even when you've taken a bite.
Let me just say, that I'm running a game of KULT tomorrow and this thread is a godsend since I've been fresh-out of ideas.
>>44554379
>existentialism
>1. a philosophical attitude associated especially with Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Sartre, and opposed to rationalism and empiricism, that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices.
Too easy. Just run a game on the topic of loss of uniqueness, or loss as a self determining agent, and putting forth the idea that you're better off fort it.
>>44554379
>there's no point to anything
>there's no plan for any of us
>there are no higher goals to strive for
>we can all die at any moment for any reason
>we're all gonna do so alone and unloved
>there's only nothingness in death
>no one and no thing is waiting for you
>our actions will never be rewarded or punished
>we're less than specks of dust in the grand scheme of things
>no matter what we do or accomplish nothing can ever change that
>we're just living meaningless lives on this rock full of dead things
>endlessly flying through a silent and uncaring darkness
>and also that's why farts smell
>>44554379
Set the game in Twin Peaks.
>>44557417
I really like this idea. Its lacking on the comfy side, but it really shiws how, by virtue of simply being without any sort of evil intent, cosmic entities can warp the minds of mortals beyond repair.
>>44561631Too real, AnonI think this is what being triggered feels like;~;
>>44561631
Fuck you, I didn't come here to get depressed you asshole.
>>44561631
While this is true, it doesn't take away from the fact that, even if we're less specks of dust, we can at least strive to be comfy less-than-specks-of-dust. That's why even though I know I'm worthless on the cosmic scale of things, I still find happiness from warm blankets and video games.
>>44559111
I really dig this idea, and may have to steal it.
>>44562285
>>44562313
>>44562419
I actually find it comforting to know that nothing I ever do will amount to anything of importance in the universe.
>>44554379
Aliens appear, they rewire the whole of human society so everyone can be happy and comfy; you want that job, you can have it. Not happy with your wife, children or family, they'll get you a new set and you'll never remember having anything different.
They want you to be happy, truely, sincerely.
>>44562466
That, I've come to terms with
I'm just scared to shit of non-existence
Literally just Twin Peaks with greater focus on cultists etc.
By day you're chilling in comfy diners eating pie, and at night you're in the woods back to back with your gun pointed at every writhing shadow.
>>44554483
What is this? Is this like some kind of pokemon thing where you give birth to a cosmic horror and compete in an underground ring during a psuedo-victorian time period to see which one will dominate the stars or some shit?
>>44562540
It's lolis holding creatures from bloodborne.
>>44562488
Don't worry, matrix soon. We'll make our own afterlife.
>>44562560
Well that's certainly a lot more lame than what I was envisioning.
Something like this >>44554486 in a retirement home.
Senile residents don't realize how much the outside world is falling apart.
Risotto is a bunch of maggots? Silly me, I must be daydreaming.
The doctor is speaking in tongues? Poor girl, she must be overworked.
The sky is covered in bloody ultraviolet eyes? Oh my, going blind really causes hallucinations.
The other residents are strong willed senior citizens, they saw some shit during their life and now they are trying their best to maintain a "everything is perfectly normal" façade for the sake of their weak-minded friends.
>>44562573
Yeah, yours was alot better.
>>44562488
I won't say that the throught comforts me, because that would be a lie, but it doesn't frighten me either. I figure there'd be no real difference between that and the time before I was born. Just complete nothingness. The whole world ending at the exact moment that I do.
Maybe a world where everyone got what their wishes granted but its too comfy.
>>44554379
Yume nikki with otherworldly creaturesin space
>>44562540
Fuck, I wish!
>>44554465
It's been around since the frozen general on /co/, at the very least.
Like MIB, but your organization knows they won't save earth or the universe, nor can they delay the death of everything.
Everything is going to go up in flames and nothing you do can prevent it.
Your job is to keep the general population from learning this truth so that they may live out the rest of their days in peace.
And live a little. Learn to take joy in your job, or you will go insane.
>>44563817
Jesus fuck that sounds depressing.
And still oddly intriguing.
Could you give us a sample?
>>44561631
>2016
>Not being a theist
>Not believing in a mind-bendingly terrifying and powerful cosmic entity
>Not believing this entity actually does have a benevolent plan and is cool enough to tone down the sanity-crushing incomprehensibility and offer a free nice afterlife
God is the comfiest incomprehensible being of raw power and terror there is!
>>44563916
I hadn't thought much about it.
I just took MIB to it's logical conclusion: the universe you know is much smaller, fragile and insignificant than you realize.
Maybe it's all inside a marble that can easily be crushed or chipped away. Maybe we all live in a giant's locker like insects or mold, and we will be wiped out for health and hygiene purposes.
Some things are better left unknown and there are people out there that will wipe your mind of such notions. Not because they are conspiring against you, but because they just don't want you to be upset.
These are ideas taken from the movie. The movie took a comedic approach but I could see it work as a cosmic horror story. The way the agents cast away their personal lives to protect that sense of security and the niceties of day-to-day life has a lot of bittersweet potential.
>>44554379
At the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the narrator accepts his lot and goes full fishman. He was pretty comfy about it.
>>44562706
No, fuck that, I remember that fucking ending.
I would say that by being subtle. Throw your players into a setting “normal” enough, a trouble that can happen to anyone. Maybe their car left them stranded on the road and it’s tolled into the nearest little town, or the main highway is closed for whatever reason and they have to travel a country road for a while, or they/someone else just moved into an apartment building/town. The people can be inviting, the scenery even pretty and their lives can continue without too much of a hassle. Then you start to throw them clues that not everything is as comfy as it seems. Little by little you give them scraps of information that they can investigate, not the kind of “suddenly you find a fucking room full of cultist sacrificing a virgin” but small things that seem strange but not strange enough to directly perturb them. The town priest invites them a cup of coffee and ask them questions about their religious beliefs, too many questions and maybe a little personal. The town has no children. The mechanic gives them too many excuses as to why their car is not being worked on. There is one person that doesn’t quite fit with the other inhabitants. There is an eerie house/place. They start having strange dreams. There is always someone following them in town. One of their travel companions disappear one night and reappear the next day but seems somewhat different.
cont.
>>44568980
The players can investigate these clues, find and try to fight whatever horror lies under the normal facade and get to know about the forces moving just out of sight. Maybe this knowledge and their experiences will drive them to madness or a constant paranoia.
They could do nothing, become slowly accustomed to these things and accept them as natural as they slowly and unknowingly get entangled into something they don’t even start to comprehend. Then you slap them in the face with something they cannot ignore anymore, the PC having to fight for their lives/souls/minds as they try to escape or play the heroes.
In either case they could realize the insignificant role they play in the cosmic power struggle and come to terms with it, knowing that they survived by pure chance and the best they can do is try to stay as far away from the crossfire as they can and continue living knowing that these situations are not the norm and if they don’t plunge into the darkness the darkness seldom irrupt into their world. Or that it was all part of the plan and they don’t have any say in it, leaving only some lukewarm acceptance of their fate.
Bliss Stage
>>44554483
>a few monsters take a liking to the PCs
>make a show of appearing human, but never quite get the details right
>go full abomination if the party is threatened
>which happens often - on their own, the PCs can't do much to threaten a monster
>players don't really know why some of the monsters are helping them survive
>they do know any one of them could eat the party alive if it wanted, so perhaps it's best not to question too much
>>44557116
I don't really see the comfy. Good Cosmic Horror though.
>>44554751
So much this
>>44562598
>Arkham Retirement Home for Former Investigators
>Across the street is Miskatonic Kindergarten
>>44567941
I want to include H.P. Lovecraft himself as an NPC, except that he has become a lich, and he has learned to make peace not only with his own transformation, but with the transformation of the world around him.
Becoming an undead abomination has taught H.P. Lovecraft to be more accepting of jews, orientals, and negros.
