The Darkness Is Real

I know I am not alone in thinking that most things Cthulhu these days are Lovecraft twice removed. Cosmic horror just is not the same when you can conquer it with a shotgun blast to the non-euclidean face. And for some reason that bugs me. Perhaps more than it should. But then again, I have always preferred my distances not to be ironic.

I remember going to the library as a kid with a long list of all the forbidden tomes from the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The only title that the librarian was able to find was The Golden Bough by James George Frazer. Twelve imposing volumes stood before me promising a 5% increase in Cthulhu Mythos and a 1d2 Sanity loss. I never made it all the way through, but I spent countless hours wondering about what might be contained within certain other books on my list that would sent you straight to the Arkham Sanitarium on a poor roll of the dice.

The point I am trying to make is that I thought it was all real. That I wanted it to be real. And that some part of me still does. Not because I cannot distinguish fact from fiction. But because I like the idea that we are able to express the dread and suffering at the core of human existence without resorting to irony.

Games are generally terrible at this. They always have to crack jokes or make cute faces. As if they were somehow afraid to take themselves seriously. There are exceptions, of course. The indie RPG Black Sun Deathcrawl being the example that springs to mind most immediately. An intensely unapologetic meditation on the human condition at its very darkest.

Here at Hopeless Games we refuse to back away from the cosmic horror that surrounds us. We do not pretend that it can be overcome. Or that any of our games can be won. Instead we encourage players to contemplate the hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. And not necessarily just inside the game.

This does not mean that you cannot or should not enjoy our games. We always laugh like mad when we play them ourselves. A demoralized gravedigger sitting in the alehouse or a senile prophet getting lost in the shadows are great fun. But they are also metaphors for something deeper. Something that cannot be dispelled by a clever line or a cartoony illustration of a corpse. Something as real as the twelve volumes of The Golden Bough.