As I’ve been consuming more cosmic horror, I find that my relationship with games set in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos mirrors my relationship with licensed games. I think there is so much room for them to be great, and then I’m inevitably disappointed nearly every time I read one. In the case of licensed games, this is often because they’re pretty bad; the relationship between licensed games and money is inextricable, and the best licensed games borne out of love and fandom are often from a time in the hobby’s history that’s long gone. In the case of H.P. Lovecraft, it’s a bit more complicated. Lovecraft is a divisive figure, both having essentially invented cosmic horror and changed science fiction forever while also being a known racist, even beyond the conventions of his time. The biggest problem I have with the Cthulhu Mythos in pop culture is twofold: First, the xenophobic roots of Lovecraft’s works are rarely examined or critiqued in games, an omission made even more galling by designers’ desires to hew to a 1920s setting for their games without asking more serious questions about it. Second, the continued sanitization of Lovecraft creations in pop culture (the ‘Cthulhu plushie’ phenomenon) makes it that much more difficult to have conversations about xenophobia, cosmicism, and even New England folklore and dissect how these factors all influenced Lovecraft and his work.