By James Gildard

If you look in the world encyclopedia for “rambling shitpost” you should find a link to this article. 

So, y’know, buckle up.

I’ve tossed and turned and waffled around about how to start this post for long enough. It just has too many branches and facets and any one of them could be the rightful entrance point. Today’s post is another look at the zeitgeist as a viable monster for ttrpgs. It’s also about finally finding a use case for the best idea I’ve ever had (at least my favorite one). It’s also about cosmic horror? Whatever dude, the whole point of having a blog is so you can get ideas out and not worry too much about structure or proper writing.

So we’ve talked a couple times about this desire I have to run an encounter in a metaphysical setting, or at least an encounter with an enemy that is manifested primarily metaphysically. I used the example of classic cosmic horror to illustrate what I don’t want to do. When the character is supposed to be driven mad by seeing or understanding this incomprehensible thing, and then we the audience get to take a peek inside pandora’s box too and it turns out the incomprehensible mind-melting idea is something like “puny humans are insignificant and the universe is vast!” like… that’s what drove you mad? How underwhelming. 

The struggle, as I see it, is that we want to share with the audience an ineffable internal experience, which is by definition impossible. Trying to divulge the critical information necessarily leaves the audience totally disappointed. “This isn’t ineffable at all, you just ‘effed it, and might we say, it’s pretty effing mundane in the end isn’t it?” 

Nevertheless I feel drawn to the genre, and this lovely little article from cave girl got exactly the right gears turning. The dots are connecting. 

Getting over my Cosmic Horror problem

You’ll find that she has a pretty elegant theory about cosmic horror which offers a perfect explanation for that disappointment I have, but allows enough slack for us to succeed where I had previously called the task impossible. James for gods sake be specific for once, what the hell are you talking about? Alright, alright, fine, geez. Cave girl posits that the core of cosmic horror is subversion of the audience’s deep assumptions about the world in a way that is tragic and troubling. Huh. Humans being puny and insignificant hit hard back in H.P. Lovecraft’s day when the triumphs of humanity over the earth were cultural bedrock. Nowadays that insignificance in the vastness of time and space is a much more common concept, so it’s no wonder I’m underwhelmed. The key is to understand the assumptions your audience has about the world and twist them. The more commonplace the assumption, and the more fundamental, the better. We don’t have to transcribe something beyond language, we just need to be a little ahead of the curve, and that’s much more manageable.

I have a little theory of my own to stack on here as well. The reason cavegirl theory works is because you’ve taken away what the audience previously assumed was solid foundation, leaving only the unknown and unfamiliar in place, and everyone knows the unknown is our greatest fear. That’s why after a while the stories might grow stale over time and frighten us less, because the implications of these new subverted assumptions have been explored and mapped out. 100 years later and the territory is well trod. 

That doesn’t mean there aren’t unknowns within the very same topic, however. Usually when we study something about the world closely we end up with more questions than answers. The more you know, the more you know how much you don’t know. So why are we not in a state of constant increasing fear in correspondence with the growing number of unknowns? I have a two part answer. For every person and every topic, there is a threshold of exploration past which our interest begins to decline. If we want to maximize creepyness, we must continue divulging information only up until we estimate we’ve achieved maximum audience curiosity, and then leave the rest to speculation. It’s the classic “never show the audience the whole monster” movie tactic. It’s a game of guessing what amount of exposition sparks the most questions. Zero exposition might be boring, but so is 100%. We show the character being driven mad by some epiphany, some encounter with unfathomable countenance. Naturally the audience tries to imagine what the character could have seen that would cause such a reaction, and they can’t imagine it (because if they could, they’d go mad too). Then we give them a little hint of it. Maybe the maddened character describes pieces of their vision in fleeting moments of clarity, but you only get a little bit of an idea. Enough to make you wonder, nothing more.

Secondly I think proximity must be a factor. I have zero clue and a million questions about what the universe could have looked like before the hot dense singularity that sparked the big bang. There’s not an ounce of fear about it though, because that topic has almost nothing to do with me sitting here typing on my laptop right now (alright obviously that’s not true, but you can see what I mean). It’s very far away. Take cavegirl theory in contrast, use a subject the audience holds so close, treading on it in their thoughts and actions everyday, maybe without even realizing. Switch it with something unfamiliar and call their attention to it. Now you’ve made something scary. A big question mark right under my feet. What IS that?!?! 

So if we want to use cavegirl theory most effectively, we need to pick something as close to home as possible, transform it into something as alien and opposite as possible, and then reveal and codify only enough about the new anomaly to spark maximal curiosity, then leave the rest to be mystery forever.

Well that’s kinda funny, I accidentally got halfway there with the Zeitgeist a few weeks back. (**NOTE: In common parlance “zeitgeist” means something a little different. When I use the word here I’m talking about a fictional monster I’ve made up that’s sorta based on that word. Maybe I shoulda picked a better name, but it’s too late now and I don’t care to spend any more thought on it.**) Now we can kill a couple of birds with one stone. We can practice some of this new design strategy as it pertains to cosmic horror, satisfy the itch I’ve been having to flesh out the zeitgeist a little more, and generally we get to wade further into the waters of roleplay with metaphysical objects. Sick! So let’s do it 

Zeitgeist as a cosmic horror monster (with adopted cave girl strategy)

Common human presumption: the ideas I have are my own. I’m in control of my thoughts.

Subversion: Your thoughts and ideas are actually higher order beings that have arrived into the world through your mind but from somewhere else entirely. They are non-native invaders with their own agendas, and they do not take your best interests into account. You are a lowly pawn and a vehicle. A puppet, and the puppeteers have arrived from within you.

Here’s what I feel like I need in order to actually incorporate this into a campaign:

– I need to have a better understanding of the thing itself than I ever intend to reveal. I think we more or less covered that in the last post about Zeitgeists. 

– I need to have several strategies prepared, ways in which the thing influences the world and reveals parts of itself to the party. I need to actually be able to run these tactics in a session.

– I need a way that the party can effectively deal with the enemy. **

-Lastly, all of the above needs to be interesting and fun to play, simply being coherent isn’t enough.

Implementation

In the last post I went through one example of how to introduce the enemy into a game world. Basically we take an idea or ideal one of the players already has, and we use NPC interactions and reactions with the party as a stage to show that idea contorting the behavior of the public into something horrible. The players get to witness something they assumed was harmless – a little mantra they scribbled onto their character sheet for flavor maybe – spread like wildfire and drown the countryside in fleas and dirty laundry. At the time it was the only present idea that I liked, but I’ve got a couple more now.

One comes from the Goblinpunch article that helped inspire all this. Basically the party find themselves in a populated area and hear one coherent line of speech directed at them, but its source is dispersed among unknowing npcs. They hear the first half of a sentence from one person, and immediately the train of thought is picked up by someone within earshot across the street, and so on. Each of these individuals are just minding their own business, and the words they utter are completely sensible in the context of their own situations, but the party notices them all together and discerns that someone is having direct dialogue with them through these people. It kinda ends up sounding like bumblebee’s am/fm radio voice from Transformers. Same idea basically. 

I have 2 more ways the beast can rear its head that are pretty easy and self explanatory. Firstly is the tried and true “you are having a crazy dream!” method where we describe a dream to them steeped in metaphor. Although heavy handed and a little clunky, it’s a great tool for handling otherwise difficult exposition, and can be used here to clue players in to what’s going on. It’s especially relevant here because the whole idea is that the monster is made of thoughts themselves, so of course it would try to infect you in your dreams. It’s software trying to gain asylum in (and then control of) your hardware. 

We can also feed thoughts to the PC’s directly. It’s something that happens pretty naturally in my games at least: the players are in need of a little guidance here, or bouncing an idea off of the GM there, and are taking some of the GM’s thoughts and plugging it into their character. All we have to do is take some of these opportunities to feed them things that our particular zeitgeist would prefer, and then slowly make that tendency more and more obvious.

Resolutions… or not?

So I said I need a way for the party to effectively deal with the monster. That’s always the case, you write a monster or a problem and you come up with at least a couple potential solutions just to prove that surely your players can too (even if they don’t find the same solution). Classic OSR shit, or so I’m told. Well every rule has an exception and this is the one that it is the that for this one. Y’know? 

The reason this situation is different is because we want to preserve the monster’s mystery. You do not get to kill the thing and loot the body this time. What we should do instead is allow the players to see that the monster is beyond them, and offer alternative solutions that don’t involve bashing it to bits. The specifics will vary, but I can see a couple of general categories.

Acceptance and adaptation. The monster is beyond slaying, but is that really necessary? What’s the direct problem you’re having, you’re having unwanted thoughts and they’re burning witches in town? Okay well just get a thought shield and be wary whenever you travel in this zeigeist’s territory. Whatever the chosen gimmick is, present the players with tools and methods to cope with the hurdles that the zeitgeist presents. The best implementations of this tactic are going to be things that allow the party to continue adventuring as normal, but will always require just a little bit of continued attention lest they fall victim. Like adapting to a new environment, yes you can just use an oxygen tank, but you do still have to suit up every day before going out, and if you don’t keep track of your O2 levels you’ll suffocate. This is the most Cosmic-horror-ey solution in my opinion. You cannot defeat Cthulu, you must adapt to his presence or just avoid it.

Enlist an equal or greater force. You can’t kill a zeitgeist, but a competing one might be able to. The party will need to seek out another zeitgeist. They climb the foothills and lower mountains to reach the Yawning Monastery. Awakened song monks will happily guide you in your meditative quest, though they may not understand exactly what you described frantically at the front door. You’ll sit quietly in a circle, and an old man with a silly hat will walk around and thwap you on the tummy when he can tell your thoughts are drifting astray. Or perhaps they went for a more direct method and sought out the illegal cognition spell dealers in the streets of Haban. Maybe the party is higher level and in good standing with the church. They went to the capital and petitioned the Creator himself to lift them up to a higher plane in order to seek out an appropriate warrior against their zeitgeist problem. In any case, the party finds a way to give you – the GM – permission to narrate their experience as they ascend to a higher level, or travel far into the interior of their mind or soul or whatever. 

“Brain-blast!”
… its jimmy neutron guys… cmon.

Though the exercise may have started with a focus on the present environment, on a quieting of the mind, the momentum now shifts and their surroundings begin to fade. Each of the characters are alone, at peace. Slowly, then all at once, a new space is thrust upon them, where color and light and shape and form are one and the same with meaning and thought. The dream is full of information, made of it, and they are pushed through it as a sponge is pushed through soap water, to emerge permeated and invested with it. As they travel deeper inward, upward, and outward, they feel a new presence. A personality, a being. The knowledge comes to them through senses which they are not accustomed to, as if experiencing smell or touch for the first time. Yes, a presence. Their creator? Are they…merging? Is this death? It seems the being is reaching out to greet them too… 

Then you hit your players with something like this “They sense the being is much like them, but from a higher place, and they have a name too… ‘(player’s name)’, and they live in a place called ‘(wherever you live)’. Guys , say hello to your characters, they have travelled very far to meet you. As of a few minutes ago, they were puppets and playthings you had made in your mind. Little ants with no knowledge of their creator. Now they have ascended through planes of thought to meet you, and ask for your help directly. So, take a minute, close your eyes and say hi to your character in your head, and have a little conversation. A few things for you to know: You have made them and control them entirely. They’re made of you and are one with you, as much as they are their own thing. So if you want to send them back with their memory wiped of everything except the critical data, that’s totally up to you, but I recommend we all agree on how to treat them generally before some of them return as gods and others as maddened amnesiacs.”

You’ve set up a date between your players and your characters. It’ll require proper planning. You’ll want to share with them something relevant to the problem that’ll satisfy, but remember the key is not to reveal the whole monster. They want to find a competing zeitgeist to help destroy the one giving them trouble? Well the players sure don’t know how, but they know a guy who does (the GM). They’ll put the characters in contact. Then with their feet on solid fictional ground again, the party is confronted by a new zeitgeist. First of all, it’ll take credit for everything. “You think the idea to summon a competing zeitgeist was yours? Wait a second, you think your own higher self gave you that idea? Oh okay sure, where’d they get that idea from? It’s me numbnuts, I’ve had my thumbs up your gullets the whole time. You’re my aces in the hole against (incomprehensible gurgling). Yeah, yeah, don’t worry we’re gonna put an end to that guy, but it can’t be done by a metaphysical being alone. You guys need to go kill the pope. Behead the snake first” 

‘Really, cut the head off the snake? Isn’t that like, the classic way that killing an idea doesn’t work?’ 

“Well yeah, but usually you aren’t acting as the hand and scalpel of a competing higher being” *flexes invisible intangible muscles*

“Go kill the pope, and I’ll handle the rest… Oh but uh.. Before you do… I need ya to convince him to abandon everything he believes in. Sincerely. And he has to say so out loud. Then you kill him. Okay good luck!” 

Maybe that gives a little too much personality to the monster and kills the mystery. Maybe instead the next time the party finds themselves in a crowd, the stream of dialogue the presents itself from the cacophony of murmurs tells them to “the pope must renounce his ideals, and die… then will the beast be vanquished”
I’ve been sitting on that ‘Character meets player’ gimmick for years, it’s my baby.

I figured it’d be easier to show you by example what I mean first, then explain. The point here is that we’re taking the destruction of the beast out of the player’s hands. We give them a means to interact with parts of it in a way that seems totally world shattering, but even still we preserve a full exposition behind the curtain. No, not even your higher self has access to this thing, in fact it kinda runs through them too. Sure you gained a method to hail the beast, but no vision or clarity on the thing itself, its origins, or anything about its nature other than “it’s made of thoughts”. Now arguably the most important part of all this came at the very end. Actually giving the players something useful to do. It’s a search and destroy quest, but also with some fun social game tied on which rhymes with the theme of the monster. I’m sure someone will come up with far better implementation, but the point is that although the monster is inaccessible, the party can still play a meaningful role and make important decisions.