Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is the Cthulhu part of the DND universe?

I ask because one of the patrons for the Warlock is "The Great Old Ones", and one of default spells is making a creature go mad...sounds pretty Cthulhu.

Not in name.

But yes the reference and "inspiration" for the Cthulhu mythos equivalents are evident. Iirc they even use the names of some of the less well known beings of the mythos.

Literally, not since 1980 due to a lawsuit.

https://www.cbr.com/dungeons-dragons-cthulu-tabletop-game/

I don't care, what lawsuits say. My Tiefling warlock has her powers from Cthulhu in my headcanon.
Tbh I know D&d groups that play Cthulhu crossover with homebrew rules.
I guess the problem here is, that you aren't really supposed to kill a GOO or an Elder God, so it might end very deadly for your characters. And as a rule (at least in our groups) you put much more time and effort into making a D&D- character than one for Call of Cthulhu, because you just know, that the latter one will eventually go mad and/or die.

Sure. The good question is rather : is there any part of history, mythology or popular culture that does not have an adaptation in the Forgotten Realms ?

By history I imply things that happened in our world between 400 and 1700. There's probably no way to play a WW1-type war of trenches with the existing Forgotten Realms lore.

Are the illithids not a reference to ctulu?
How many tentacle things with mental powers do you need?

Good point. I think they've become so mainstream in the FR that it's easier to forget. Also, they're perhaps more "inspired from", and less copy-pasted Cthulhu as the Great Old One.

From <https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/were-illithids-inspired-by-cthulhu >:

Gary Gygax tells us that "the mind flayer I made up out of whole cloth using my imagination, but inspired by the cover of Brian Lumley's novel in paperback edition, The Burrowers Beneath." Said novel was firmly rooted in the Cthulhu mythos; in fact, Lovecraft's character Robert Harrison Blake wrote a short story titled "The Burrower Beneath."

I think, a lot of creatures and some of the more dark gods in D&D are influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos. Don't you meet fishpeople in BG 3 (I'm not there yet, but saw pictures)? The look a lot like the Deep Ones.
The Mindflayers are obvious too. I have to go through the monster manual again, but I'm sure, I will find a lot of other similarities.

cthulhu is part of the pathfinder universe.
somehow.

DnD mereley references the mythos with the far realm stuff

Great old one patron is very muhc a nod towards lovecraft, but it deosnt name any of his characters

The mindflayers IIRC arent meant to be a nod to lovecraft.
They are most simmilar to the Mi Go but in that they arent very similar at all.

The Yuan Ti and Sarrukh are pretty close to the Serpent men, but they probably aproximate closer through Robert E Howard than Lovecraft.

i made a custom ranger class(modded) that uses cthulu mythos as its background. instead of the standard ranger spells, I get dissonant whispers, detect thoughts, arms of hadar, charm, etc. scaling off wisdom. super fun.

Actually, I was just having a look at Warlocks again. In the PHB, in the description of the Great Old One patron/subclass, they give examples of patrons : Ghaunadaur, Tharizdun, Dendar, Zargon and ... Great Cthulhu. So whatever happened between TSR and Chaosium back in the days, WotC does seem to have the right to explicitly use Cthulhu.

its a choice , no need to get the rights.
Lovecrafts stuff is part of public domain IIRC.

Pathfinder uses a lot of different lovecraftean creatures and ideas fo example, and cites them by name

The problem is that in Lovecraft's universe whoever got mixed in the web of the Ancients ones will at the end loss his sanity and if that doesn't happen the one involved will be emotionally crippled and scarred for all their life. Something in stark constrast with a set that revolves around adventurers able to succesfully complete a complex principal quest.

Nice a thread about Lovecraft. I like when it is HORROR theme in movies, TV series, books and games. I do not like Horror in real life though I am no coward and I have done my country:s more or less mandatory military service.

I do not like that this game does not run stable on my laptop with 8 GB RAM but on my desktop down below it runs stable:

My desktop runs this game fine. Please note since my display maximum supports FULL HD resolution. I ran this game everything maxed out in graphic settings with FULL HD resolution 1920x1080. You should however use the native resolution of what your display supports.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Processor in TURBO mode 4.2 Ghz
Socket-AM4, 6-Cores, 12-Threads

Motherboard: MSI X470 GAMING PLUS, Socket-AM4 Motherboard, ATX, X470, DDR4, 3xPCIe-x16,
CFX, 2x M.2, USB 3.1, Mystic Light RGB

GPU: Nvidia 1700 Titanium 8GB DDR5

RAM: 16 GB to be more exact:
G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 16GB KIT 3200Mhz
2x8GB, PC25600/3200Mhz, 16GVBK, CL 16

SSD: Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB, 2,5

HDD:Separately have none SSD hardrives one of them new:
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5'' HDD

Power: Seasonic Focus+ 650W 80+ GOLD PSU ATX 12V, 80 Plus Gold, Modular

OS: Windows 10

I did like the CRYPT area in this Early Access as Horror fan:

You just did repeat, what I said basically in the post, you quoted - or did I miss something? I'm sorry, if I didn't make myself clrea (English is nor my first language), but what I wanted to say was, that both roleplaying systems (Call of Cthulhu and DnD) are totally different, because you will loose against a Great Old One (GOO - as we Lovecraftians mostly call them) or an Elder God - life, sanity or both. And that is totally different from the heroic adventures, you mostly have in a DnD game.
That doesn't keep me from headcanon, that my warlock has her power from Cthulhu - because I can.