So I've been working on how to portray cults in a good light as of late, and I gotta say, I need to study up on my Call of Cthulhu. Cults are fascinating, but I can't get them just right - either they wind up too much hoods-and-robes á la Indiana Jones, or they become too harmless to really seem like a threat.
The difficulty, I think, lies in trying to portray the Evil that Men Do, for after all, not every threat has to be supernatural. So I drop them into a creepy little place and have a sacrifice or two - and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "CTHULHU". Honestly. I have too much a pull towards portraying the supernatural, but I could use a healthy dose of just good old humans doing some good old evil. If anyone has suggestions for how tell a story about a cult (aside from Eyes Wide Shut), feel free to add in a comment.
Otherwise I'm working on stories for Mage, but I keep getting tangled. Somehow I'm not entirely pleased with myself. Mysteries are like ketchup - first it's simple, then it's simple, then suddenly you've lost track of the storyline yourself. And then in the process of cleaning it up, things go back to being simple again. Something tells me I should just improvise.
Spoiler alert: There will be cults in the Mage game too. Yeah. It was the best idea I could come up with, after having worked on cults all day.
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If you want to improvise, then improvise, it's not like you're not awesome at it.
The main point of a cult, methinks, is that it is supposed to be small, for a selected few. Thus the goals of the cult should also be adapted to only a selected few; and there is where evil enters the game. What I find most interesting is cults wherein everyone knows they're just pretending to worship this *whatever* but no one says it, even themselves, they all just make sure to do whatever it is their "god" is supposed to do. Um. Get it?
That's a really good point Da-Ryun! Well I have some course-literature on cults, but I dont' know if it's relevant. You could borrow it if you'd like, Rikard. In the end there is a section on developments of cults over time, why and how people enter and leave cults, and stuff like that.
Thanks to Eva's purchase of the "Antagonists" book, I've got a good track of cults as far as you need for narrative purposes. THanks for the offer, though, Sara - and thanks for the advice, Iceye.
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