How mainstream is Lovecraft these days?

[richardthinks]

Really damn mainstream, it seems.

Exhibit A, from 2010, when st_rev pointed it out: Scooby-doo: Mystery Incorporated. Which, by the way, has shaped up into a bona fide Laws-n-Tynes Over The Edge sorta eldritch mystery campaign, almost exactly like the ones I used to play in the 90s.

Exhibit B, 2012: some British sketch comedy show. Not very funny, but

Comments

[richardthinks]

I don't think RPG playing is - as play - self-aware enough to be properly pomo. In a very pomo way, it hovers on the brink of not being observable, or it might just fall apart if you try to do it with too much self-regard.

ISTR a bit of self-conscious protest in Sandy Petersen's original rules, so playing CoC straight might always have been something of an uphill endeavour... it's always been "known" that HPL was a terrible writer (I put known in quotes because he clearly was a very good writer... with a few notable lapses, and some growing pains along the way and Ken Hite's already written about all that); you have to embrace the conventions to make the genre work

[muckefuck]

Exhibit Alpha, from 2005.

[richardthinks]

that's pretty definitive, I guess.

[muckefuck]

Canonical, even.