I demand a cRPG based on Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

[Ulysa]

The other day a friend set us in a Call of Cthulhu campaign based on the Dreamlands, you know, all those Lovecraft oniric tales like Randolph Carter. It's like a mix with normal Lovecraft, high fantasy stuff with lots of spells and The King in Yellow, to mention some. Also Ulthar kitties.

In top of that you have this "dream" ability that lets you do crazy shit like materialize imagined items, similar to being in Inception.

 

[catfood]

Dreamlands has no elves or dwarves and is generally too wacky and out there for your average normie target audience. Not gonna happen.

 

[Falksi]

Yes. This is a good demand.

 

[ghostdog]

Yeah, it's like tophat planescape, I'd really like a crpg with this setting. And since it's lovecraft, it's free, I presume.

 

[V_K]

Wasn't Numenera supposed to be a kind of that?

Spoiler

 

[Morblot]

Be careful what you wish for. It's 2021, I'm sure an indie game studio populated by trannies and enrichers would be happy to decolonize the Dreamlands for you, if only to spite you and piss on Lovecraft's grave yet again.

 

[DraQ]

The other day a friend set us in a Call of Cthulhu campaign based on the Dreamlands, you know, all those Lovecraft oniric tales like Randolph Carter. It's like a mix with normal Lovecraft, high fantasy stuff with lots of spells and The King in Yellow, to mention some. Also Ulthar kitties.

In top of that you have this "dream" ability that lets you do crazy shit like materialize imagined items, similar to being in Inception.

Could be intredasting.

 

[Sotomonte]

Well, we still haven't managed to get a good CRPG based on Lovecraft's best known works (the Cthulhu Mythos) so don't be too hopeful.

 

[Reader]

Owlcat could pull it off but sadly Mishulin hates this setting for some reason.

 

[Hag]

Always thought Dreamlands stories were the best written by Lovecraft.

 

[ChaDargo]

The other day a friend set us in a Call of Cthulhu campaign based on the Dreamlands, you know, all those Lovecraft oniric tales like Randolph Carter. It's like a mix with normal Lovecraft, high fantasy stuff with lots of spells and The King in Yellow, to mention some. Also Ulthar kitties.

In top of that you have this "dream" ability that lets you do crazy shit like materialize imagined items, similar to being in Inception.

I'd be surprised to see a game that even has a world map that interesting and well-made, let alone a game that can live up to such a unique world.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I actually put some thought into how a game set in the Dreamcycle (or the Dreamlands as OP calls them) would work, although I was going to make it a walking simulator. In most of the works that describe his Dreamcycle, Lovecraft talks about really tall towers. You can't do it in 2D, because you'll fail to convey the scale of what Lovecraft was describing properly. So, its going to take a lot of work in 3D, because those towers are visible long in the distance. Which runs into a problem, its going to take a lot of work to get 3D like that working in Unity without causing the player's PC to explode like an atomic bomb. And, a walking simulator on the scale of say, Daggerfall, is probably not going to appeal to anyone. Although I could be wrong there.
Also, I'm curious how much of what OP describes is directly in Lovecraft's works. I remember that Nyartholep is on the moon, but I have yet to read the longer Dreamcycle works, so I'm not sure if it has actual magic. Another problem that could happen is that the Call of Cthulhu guys are usually desperate to screw over anything they can, since Lovecraft's prose works are all in the public domain. Use anything that sounds like it came from them or the other original authors in the Cthulhu Mythos and they'll sue you so fast the Earth will start rotating in the other direction.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Dreamlands has no elves or dwarves and is generally too wacky and out there for your average normie target audience. Not gonna happen.

There's a lot of successful wacky movies, Adam's Family, Mars Attack, Twin Peaks, Dr Who (didn't watch but it looks wacky), and dozens more but i'm too lazy to find some titles translations.
I don't see why it wouldn't work, nobody asked for those but they were successful nonetheless, all that's needed is money and talent.

Spoiler

Oh well, you're right, it's doomed...[/spoiler

 

[buffalo bill]

Well, we still haven't managed to get a good CRPG based on Lovecraft's best known works (the Cthulhu Mythos) so don't be too hopeful.

Infra Arcana

 

[Eisen]

As long they don't go "i saw horrible thing, now i am mad, the end"

 

[lightbane]

Seeing that Randolph Carter behaved more like the average Conan expy than the standard detective of Lovecraft stories, that shouldn't be an issue. Shame that this game is unlikely to happen, and even if it did, it would urge the devs to add countless walls of text ala Numanuma due the nature of Lovecraft's stories.

 

[Nikanuur]

You've uncovered 3rd part of Pnacotic manuscripts. 360EXP awarded. New sub-quest: "Interview Lin Carter about finding a shard of the Silver Key"

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich

 

[NotSerious]

Wasn't Numenera supposed to be a kind of that?

Spoiler

Not sure exactly what was wrong with Numenera but fuck it sucked.

Ended up being philosophical spaghetti with a bunch of shitty NPC companions.

 

[V_K]

Not sure exactly what was wrong with Numenera

It's quite apparent I think. Too much text and not enough gameplay. Particularly, too much flavor text that doesn't lead anywhere.
And then the setting is just weird for the sake of weird, without any consistency or internal logic. Good for PnP (I guess?), but not for a plot-heavy video game.

 

[Lovecraft's Ghost]

As long they don't go "i saw horrible thing, now i am mad, the end"

That's the usual pastiche of Lovecraft from people who despise the man and haven't read many of his works. Which is one of the problems with adapting his works to computer games, only Lovecraft can do Lovecraft.

Always thought Dreamlands stories were the best written by Lovecraft.

That's the commonly received opinion among the educated and well-read and an objective fact. Roses are red, oceans are blue, Lovecraft's dream cycle is his best work and this is true.

Well, we still haven't managed to get a good CRPG based on Lovecraft's best known works (the Cthulhu Mythos) so don't be too hopeful.

It might not be good, but the latest game with the Call of Cthulhu title did make use of Chaosium's ruleset. Something along the lines of World of Horror would be much preferable but we will never get that.

Dreamlands has no elves or dwarves and is generally too wacky and out there for your average normie target audience. Not gonna happen.

This has to be the biggest hurdle for developers to get over, other than their creative bankruptcy and inability to shift tone and style to an appropriate one. CRPG audiences expect gnomes and goblins in their games, games without them don't sell.

Be careful what you wish for. It's 2021, I'm sure an indie game studio populated by trannies and enrichers would be happy to decolonize the Dreamlands for you, if only to spite you and piss on Lovecraft's grave yet again.

The final nail in the coffin, in the current year a good Lovecraftian game simply cannot be made and if it was it would run contrary to the source material.

I see your demand for a Dreamlands CRPG and raise you, I want an CRPG set in CAS' Zothique setting.

 

[Lovecraft's Ghost]

Not sure exactly what was wrong with Numenera

It's quite apparent I think. Too much text and not enough gameplay. Particularly, too much flavor text that doesn't lead anywhere.
And then the setting is just weird for the sake of weird, without any consistency or internal logic. Good for PnP (I guess?), but not for a plot-heavy video game.

There is no such thing as too much text, but there is such a thing as flawed, faulty or pointless text. Numenera was a cargo cult recreation of Torment but without the impetus and focused ideas which made it work. The worst thing you can do with text in a game is to use it without delivering something with it. If it is written in the service to a central idea and reinforces that idea then no plenitude of verbiage is too much. In this regard Numenera and Pillars had similar foundational problems. There is no way to force passion and making a sequel to a popular game merely for the sake of it can never hope to capture what made the original work great. Because the driving force behind everything that was great is simply not there.

A developer or a team of them passionate about an idea could make it work within the confines of the Numenera setting, just as MCA could use the Star Wars setting as a vehicle for his own creativity and express his notions with in KOTOR 2. There's nothing stopping a developer from telling a story as arresting as M. John Harrison did in his very own Viriconium setting. The setting may be a constriction but Numenera in particular barely puts any limits on what stories writers can tell with it. It could be argued that it lends little support and that you might as well come up with your own setting since it is so pliable, but that is another issue entirely. The point is that inXile was not boxed in by the setting and it cannot be blamed for the lackluster game they produced with it. Much like Planescape it is a setting that is as banal or interesting as the writers make it.

 

[luj1]

As long they don't go "i saw horrible thing, now i am mad, the end"

Stygian and all the similar cartoony parodies of Lovecraft...

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

N.... N... NI...

tries hard to fight the urge but loses the war

NIGGERMAN.