Fans have wanted this forever, even with some of the current controversy. Some are concerned about the $60 price tag for the PDF. Others are a little confused by some of the changes, and still others are unimpressed with the final result. Does MoN for 7e hold up now, and more importantly, are the changes justified? Is it truly all that Chaosium said it would be, or is it a flop? To quote the ineffable Dan Bell, "I really do want to find out", so let's dive in and see how things have changed, shall we? Along the way, I'll be giving my own opinions on the changes per chapter, and how well or poorly I feel they fit. Plus, I'll give insights on the new Peru prologue, bringing things full circle. We'll take this piece by piece, first with an overview and then some pointers on each individual chapter. Let's get started with the overview right below the jump.
I swear to God I might just need to get a restraining order on Nyarlathotep if this keeps up, because this campaign just will not leave me alone. Of course I couldn't resist signing up for the prerelease list, slamming down my $60 on July 1st, 2018, and reading through the re-imagined re-release of Chaosium's perennial classic, Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's been almost exactly two years since I ended my first run of the game, and with the advent of this updated version of the campaign I've once more been drawn back into the Strange Dark One's black web of intrigue and conspiracy. It's a siren's song that is hard for any Keeper to resist, and a classic of roleplaying gaming.
Fans have wanted this forever, even with some of the current controversy. Some are concerned about the $60 price tag for the PDF. Others are a little confused by some of the changes, and still others are unimpressed with the final result. Does MoN for 7e hold up now, and more importantly, are the changes justified? Is it truly all that Chaosium said it would be, or is it a flop? To quote the ineffable Dan Bell, "I really do want to find out", so let's dive in and see how things have changed, shall we? Along the way, I'll be giving my own opinions on the changes per chapter, and how well or poorly I feel they fit. Plus, I'll give insights on the new Peru prologue, bringing things full circle. We'll take this piece by piece, first with an overview and then some pointers on each individual chapter. Let's get started with the overview right below the jump.
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Okay, that title's a bit of a stretch, but I really wanted the alliterative title. The W is silent. Do not dwell upon its presence, for doing so will bring forth an unholy W-based form of the Unspeakable One. The W is silent, silent as the grave...
Today's reviews are a little different in that you're getting three - these scenarios all come from White Dwarf Magazine and their Call of Cthulhu Omnibus. While most of this Omnibus is helpful articles, some are scenarios, and it's from two article sources, Trio of Terror and Ghost Jackal Kill, that I draw the reviews here. Think of them as rapid-fire mini-reviews, meant to showcase what I thought was some interesting creativity from the CoC community long before the Miskatonic Repository was a gleam in Chaosium's eye. Join me after the jump, won't you? Welcome to another entry in the Dark Thoughts series, my Call of Cthulhu review series where I look at supplements great and small for the RPG. This time, boy do I have a doozy for you guys, because my God, never has a game given me nightmares like the one I have for you today... You know what I don't like? Things preying on me without my knowledge. You know what I really don't like? Unremitting horror that is something out of a nightmare. Guess what my Keeper friend Rob decided to do to everyone in Miskatonic Valley at one point, and how many nightmares I had from it?
If you guessed "He ran Stygian Fox's Forget Me Not from their recent The Things We Leave Behind", you're either actually a Yithian and come from the future, or you have played this ungodly hell-spawn of a scenario before. In any case, if any game can give you the shivers, if any scenario can make you want to bathe in bleach, this is it. Those of you who've played it know why. Those of you that aren't familiar with it, but wanna run it... well, read on, but know that I warned you... Welcome to a new segment on my blog, a review series I'm calling Dark Thoughts. In this segment, I will be reviewing Call of Cthulhu scenarios I have played in or run for my immediate group of IRL friends, Miskatonic Valley. This is intended to be an extension of RotOO Review, and as a result chronicles my experiences with various scenarios for the game. Because all of these are opinion-based, it basically is gonna be subjective. Also, it may have spoilers for people who have not played the scenario yet, which is why I'm using the jump. That way, nobody gets spoiled, even if the scenario is some 20-30 years old now and really has no reason for it. Better safe than sorry, after all...
Each one of these I do is going to cover mostly supplements that are traditional publications. That means no 'zine scenarios like Fear of Flying, nothing that is from the Miskatonic Repository, and nothing that isn't otherwise put out by a well-known publisher, new or otherwise. If the publisher's defunct or not prominent, they're also not getting reviewed due to scenario rarity. So that means stuff like the Games Workshop or Stygian Fox are game, but stuff like scenarios from The Unspeakable Oath or those published by T.O.M.E are generally not allowed. Only if it came out as a book or PDF is it viable, otherwise we'd be here all eternity. The only exception here is if the scenario itself really is worth some decent merit to warrant its own review. If I have a strong opinion about a scenario, it's gonna be heard regardless of the publishing format, so for all I know a MULA supplement may be reviewed here. It just depends what I'm feeling. To kick this off, here's a review of Mister Corbitt, one of the first scenarios I actually got the chance to play, a well known and beloved scenario by many from Chaosium's Mansions of Madness publication. I've already reviewed a scenario, The Plantation, in that supplement once before, however this is the first time I've gotten to review a scenario from the other side of the Keeper screen. So, here's what I thought about Mister Corbitt and its take on a Hitchcock classic. Does it hold up today? Read on to find out more. Or, "Gen started playing Pokemon again and remembered how awesome Pokemon Platinum's story was before the Fifth Generation games complicated everything."
Recently, I began watching a bunch of the Pokemon-related channels on Youtube solely out of interest in the myriad of glitches in the Pokemon games. Because my god, are there so many damned glitches, especially in Generation One. Just so many. It was on one of these channels I saw a video where every single Pokemon was evaluated for what the channel creator thought of their designs. So, I thought about it myself and decided to list my thoughts on every single one of these little critters you can fit in your pocket. Yes, all 800+ of them. Now, this will include games I haven't played before or played yet, so some of my list may be biased towards Generations I-IV because those are the ones I love the most as the "Classic" Pokemon games before the shift towards animated battles in Generation V. If my opinion has changed, I'll say what I used to think about them. Some notes will be based on childhood memories, and some will be short entries. I'll try to be giving my first impression of each Pokemon as I go, unless I don't remember them, in which case I'll give my main impression. I'm working my way slowly through the NationalDex as presented on Bulbapedia. If the Pokemon has a special form or two, I'll give my impression of each form, or of all the forms as a whole. If the Pokemon has a Mega-Evolution or a regional variant, I'll explain how it made me feel to see older Pokemon get updated. To start things off, follow me after the jump. As any good Keeper knows, it's important to have an idea of how to start your game before the mystery thickens and the terror happens. To get there can be hard work, so what is a beleaguered Keeper to do?
What it says on the tin, ladies and gents. To celebrate the updated re-release of Masks of Nyarlathotep, I thought it might be fun to explore some drinking game rules for the campaign. Surely, you can't save the world and expect to thwart the cults of the Crawling Chaos sober, can you? There's way too much sanity loss, death, and terror for that. Proper Investigators carry a gun, ammo, books, health supplies, and a flask of their finest spirits everywhere they go, and yours should be no exception. If you're up to the challenge, you can always follow these rules as you go through the game. :)
Now, for those who haven't read through or played this classic epic yet, all the spoilers follow beyond the jump mark. Yes, Peru is involved, and yes, some of these rules are optional or hint at legacy jokes, but it's all in good fun. Now follow me past the jump and see how many of Nyarlathotep's forms you can drink under the table (Spoilers, it's probably none of them. Don't get involved in drinking games with gods). Yeah, I know I sort of did this already for MoN, but this version of it is for every large campaign a person can run in just about any system. It's not a retrospective, more of just a brief look at stuff I personally discovered while a large, epic-length, long-term campaign in general. Intrigued? Read on.
Closing Time - every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end. - "Closing Time", Semisonic All good things must come to an end, sadly. Then again, since we were all exhausted by the end of Masks of Nyarlathotep, perhaps that's a good thing after all...
Insert only marginally clever joke about Australian accents, shrimp on the barbie, and dingoes eating babies here. Australia was a bit strange for me to work with, mostly because I didn't at all intend to run it at first... but hey, that's the way it goes sometimes. The sky is blue, Nyarlathotep has at least 1000 forms, and sometimes you do scenarios you didn't expect to do all because a friend heard "Yithian mind-swapping" in your description of it and demanded you had to do it. I love you too, Kat.
Anything goes when
You're seeking ancient secrets - The Black Fan flutters. A thousand clues masked By lies and innuendo - It's not as it seems. Know this, those seeking The truth: it lies in madness. The Black Fan, fallen. "Arabian Nights, like Arabian days,
More often than not are hotter than hot In a lot of good ways." - "Arabian Nights", Disney's Aladdin Forget about God Saving the Queen, He'll need to save the Investigators from the mad machinations of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh!
There's no place like Broadway - the sights, the sounds... the scares. Who ever said starting a campaign of MoN's scope was hard?
I probably have some of the best players in the world as a Keeper, and I'm damned fortunate for that. I also have some of the most intelligent, outside the box thinkers in the world, and that means that I'm always having to stay just one step ahead of them.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is such a complex campaign with so many moving parts, the biggest question is often where to begin. My answer, as well as the Companion's answer, to that? Pre-planning out the ass.
This has been one hell of a ride.
When I started running this campaign, I had no idea how incredibly tough a game it was going to end up being, or how rewarding it would be. The Companion said the game would last a whole year or more, but foolishly, I didn't believe it. Starting in the beginning of January 2017 and ending at the end of October 2017, I didn't believe it would go so far or be so long. I should have known better, for the amount of content in it. Let me reiterate. I ran a single four-hour-long session almost every week, including a few multi-week sessions, and it still took me a year to run Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's a monster. It's massive. And I made it more massive by including even more material to it as supplementary stuff, including my own homebrew content, because I knew at some point some people would be missing. As a newly minted veteran Masks Keeper, I think I can say it has been something special for me and my group. A culmination and ultimate goal, a feather in my cap. I was so worried at the start, so worried it wouldn't come off. And yeah, sometimes it didn't come off. But when it did, oh Lord. Oh, Sweet Thousand Masks of Nyarlathotep, did it ever come off. Masks was my dream campaign, and it was not easy, but it was fun. I think my Thousand Masks Saga entries have proven that well enough. What I want to do with this next mini-segment is discuss each chapter of MoN, in detail, as well as my thoughts as a Keeper on how I ran it, how my players went through it, where things got tough or derailed, and other such things. Prop-making, cult action decisions, etc. will be in their own separate pre-planning entry. This mini-segment will function a lot like a behind-the-scenes and will be linked on the Thousand Masks Saga page. It will be tagged with the "Horror's Art" tag and functions as a means of giving some feedback to other Keepers planning to run the MoNster for the first time. I hope you will find it as useful as I found the journals of other Keepers/players who ran this game, the Companion, and others' input and feedback. In retrospect, I don't know if I'll do a blog of the same scope as the Thousand Masks Saga again. It was a lot of extra work, and while it was fun to keep people up to date with my group's run and useful for keeping my players on track, it's just too much with my crazy schedule due to my job. For shorter campaigns, I certainly won't be doing it again, but for longer ones I may. If something epic in length happens that calls for an IC blog, I will do it, otherwise things around here will return to the standard "Horror's Art" style review posts and Keeping tips. Hope that makes sense, and I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes series on MoN, as played by the Miskatonic Valley Players and run by myself. Thanks again to everyone who supported me in this project, especially my players - I put you guys through Hell, and for that I'm not sorry. My only regret is that I took myself too seriously, and this game too hard. Without you, I wouldn't have had a game or a means of creative outlet for all this energy inside me waiting to explode in vivid detail and description. Your characters were, are, and always will be awesome, funny, charming, lovable, tragic, and all around heroes of the highest caliber for facing down the threats of the Mythos, and even laying their lives down to stop them. What greater heroes could there be than that? You're like my second family (and some of you are actual blood family), and I don't know where I'd be without you. See you 'round the globe for the first true Unmasking Nyarlathotep entry - pre-planning and props, wherein I'll explain my thought process for creating the props for the game, my thinking behind the tweaks I made to the storyline, and how I chose various other aspects of the game for my players', and my own, pleasure. Sick and Twisted: The Most Disturbing Call of Cthulhu Scenarios Chaosium Has Ever Licensed11/1/2017 FAIR WARNING WHERE IT IS DUE: This blog entry discusses truly disturbing scenarios for CoC. The details within get pretty disturbing, downright gross, and more than a little potentially distressing to certain people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Grotesque, gruesome, gory, gooey, glistening, gross. These are all lovely G words that can describe a certain type of horror. Not just body horror, but the kind of horror that sits in your stomach and turns it in knots. The kind of horror that gels in you and makes you shudder at the same time that it makes you want to vomit. It's disgust in its purest and most vile of all forms, and I don't just mean of death, slimy and squamous rugose terrors, or things with too many eyes and teeth and tentacles, either. It's been twenty years since the day of the eclipse.
I told you when I started writing this whole thing that I didn't know any better, that none of us did. I still don't think we know anything about anything else, better than anyone else, but I can tell you that some of that previous statement was a lie. We didn't know better at the start, but when we did, when we learned... we should have ended. And we didn't. Maybe we're all fools for that, or maybe we're heroes for that. I don't think we're both, or either, really. All I think we ultimately were, were pieces in a puzzle greater than ourselves. Pieces that knew we fit into that puzzle. Pieces that Nyarlathotep knew fit into his puzzle. Pieces with nothing left to show for it, other than several of us dead and insane, and a world that keeps turning, a world that doesn't really understand how close it came to death. A world that was shattered by another Great War, the stock market crashing, fascist dictatorships, and desolation. Was it worth saving, I wonder, if all this is the price? The war is over now - they say that Hitler killed himself in his bunker just last year, a small price to pay for the Nazis raiding London. They say that this past summer, the army boys took out Japan with a bomb capable of leveling cities, all because of atomic fission. They say now that radiation is the future, and I wonder who might have told them such a thing to make them believe it. They say, they say, they say... Do any of us ever learn? It's been twenty years since the eclipse, and I'm older now, and wiser. An established professor of archaeology, having taken over the former Penhew Foundation. Nobody remembers it used to be called that anymore, nobody knows the hell that almost was and that I helped end. I'm just one more old man, perhaps with shell shock from the Great War. I hear they call it the First World War now, or that's what they're teaching children these days. It's strange - you think you know the world, and then something comes along that changes it all. Order becomes chaos, things fall apart, and the center fails to hold. I honestly wonder if letting Nyarlathotep succeed would have been better, but in my heart, I know the truth. It would have been worse. So very, very much worse. Sometimes, Enala writes me. She's in her last days now, but she tells me she has built up a sizable following of younger Aboriginals, taught them the magics she has studied. She's a hero to those young men and women, but I pray to God she uses it for good. She seemed the most mentally stable of us all. Then again, so did Dr. Hildebrand when I last saw him, before he lost his mind. I hear he is doing better now, but isn't as well as he was. When the Nazis began to close out the state madhouses and ship their patients out, some brave soul managed to smuggle him out of Germany. I don't know how, but apparently they convinced him they were his dead wife, and he's in a mental facility in Yorkshire now. I haven't gotten the chance to see him, but from what I understand he's at least stopped screaming. Last I know, he was about to undergo a lobotomy, hopefully to fix his shattered mind. Maybe someday, he'll be alright again. Somehow, I doubt he will ever be the man he once was, and it pains me to know he lives such a broken life. Sometimes, I look out at the stars, and I shudder. The same stars that I know Francis and Muuzaji still fly under, together, somewhere on earth. They never got rid of the wanderlust. They write to me sometimes, send me things they uncover on their travels. When they find things stranger and more dangerous, I hide them. Nobody knows what I've done with Gavigan's hidden room, how it stores the artifacts I've found on my travels, how it holds knowledge of things greater than ourselves. It's my duty to protect it now, my duty to serve the public behind the scenes as leader of the Byrd Foundation for Archaeological Preservation, of Tottenham Court in London. Nobody should have that knowledge, and nobody should be able to use it. It's worse than the atom bomb. It's worse than anything a human could ever do to another... and yet, is it? It's been twenty years since the eclipse, and sometimes, I miss that year of adventure. That year of living dangerously. I wouldn't have given it up for the world, despite the hell it put me through. I met people, I changed lives, and I made a difference. Nobody will ever credit me for that, but I know, and the few who read this journal will know, and that's enough for me. I doubt those who find it after my death will believe it, but at least the story was told. The real story, the Apocalypse That Almost Was. Maybe it will help others caught in Nyarlathotep's twisted web, those who took his offer without knowing, accepted his game. Maybe even now, there are another five people chasing across the world in vengeance for a man they're convinced they're friends with, a man named Jackson Elias, a man who was never really a man at all. If they find me, I will tell them. Part of me hopes they do not. But then, part of me... hopes that they do. I miss the excitement, and the adrenaline, because I was never one to settle down. I think Nyarlathotep knows that as well, because last night, I had a very strange and troubling dream. A dark dream, a dream the likes of which I haven't had in twenty years. I was in the chess room, with Francis, and Muuzaji, and Enala and Dr. Hildebrand. As we once were, back then, when we didn't know any better. The board was set, the pieces ready to begin. The white pawns were not chosen yet, they were nothing. But the black pawns, they looked like us. And betwixt those statues of onyx strode Nyarlathotep, His guise that of Jackson Elias, His eyes gleaming like twin obsidian jewels of malice, His mouth turned upward into a capricious smirk. He brought with Him Sarah, and she was dressed as a queen of the Nile. Beautiful. Radiant. Her hand rested on her belly, a slight look of contentment as she did so. None of us spoke for a very long time, until finally, He did. "Hello again," He murmured in that silver-tinged sable voice of His, as if speaking to old friends. "Would you like to play a game?" None of us spoke. I woke from that dream in a cold sweat, terrified it was about to begin again before realizing... adventure is in my blood. Adventure is what I want. But like this? I don't know. I'm not sure I want to. I don't want to be His pawn again, this time on the side of wickedness. I don't want to be used... do I? I'm not sure if He will offer again. I'm afraid He will, and I'm afraid He will not. Would you like to play a game? Such a simple question, and yet it's not, is it? It's not simple. It's not even a question. I think this will be my final entry into this journal, before I leave it in the hidden room for good. Before I leave it, and let my future actions speak for themselves. I already know my answer to Nyarlathotep's final query. I've always known. And as ever, the question remains, haunting and final. Would you like to play a game? -- Professor Clayton Byrd, Archeologist (January 16, 1949) Two minutes to Midnight - the hands that threaten Doom Two minutes to Midnight, to kill the Unborn in the womb. - Iron Maiden, Two Minutes to Midnight The prophecies, the dreams, the nightmares, the trials, the predictions... all true. All so horribly, horribly true... My mind reels to recall that night, to recall anything after that horrid God-thing howled, but I will do my utmost. I must. I must be the one to tell the audient void, because only I can tell the story, the story of mankind's brush with death.
What did I see? Can I believe that what I saw that night was real and not just fantasy? Just what I saw in my old dreams Were they reflections of my warped mind staring back at me? 'Cause in my dreams it's always there The evil face that twists my mind and brings me to despair... - Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast I'd love to say we finished this without trouble. I'd love to say it was all too easy to deal with the cult at the Mountain, to end all this.
I'd love to say that, but I'd be wrong, because things are never that simple, are they? We have good news, and we have bad news. The good news is, we're at the mountain and we've wrapped up a few loose ends on the way. We also finally know where the "baobab trees" keep coming from. The bad news is, the game has drastically changed - and not for the better.
When we saw the village in the jungle, peaceful though situated beneath the shadow of the Mountain of the Black Wind, we thought for sure we had found respite. We thought these friendly faces that only Muuzaji could speak to, acting as a translator between us and them, would help us gladly on our way for once, a safe haven of smiles and laughter like we had found with the Maasai tribesmen before.
We couldn't have been more wrong, and we should have known that yet more danger and despair lurked there. The jungles of darkest Africa certainly have a lot of dangers, including some we would never have expected - and two of our number have dealt with them before!
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About The Blog
Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
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