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.
0 Comments
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. 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). 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 good to be a fan of Call of Cthulhu if you're also a fan of horror art. There are some seriously great pieces in the lineup of all the myriad supplements Chaosium has produced. Curious to learn my favorites? Read on...
Welp, it's time to be both biased and incredibly nerdy with my opinion again, and to also completely shirk the fact I have three more blog entries for the Thousand Masks Saga to write that I have not yet finished OH GOD SAVE ME CRAWLING CHAOS.
So, it's not often I get to be candid about Keeping recently, what with the MoNster keeping me busy, graduation season having run its course (B. S. in Cell and Molecular Biology/Applied Stats Minor, baby!), and assorted planning for upcoming campaigns. This is especially true when I look at my lined-up docket of work for SCHH and IRD, and then my brain decides to take a detour into Carcosa and plan about twenty slowly-shifting-in-design-but-not-quite Yellow Sign designs for RfC. Azathoth damn you, Hastur, why can't you ever leave me alone when I have more important shit to do? Yes, tiny shoulder muses, I know you want me to work on stuff, but I need a break. I deserve a break. I have been running all semester and I am tired as fuck. I think I have earned the right to sleep in all day, not write Thousand Masks Saga blog entries despite being woefully behind on them, and maybe get some Qdoba.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Hope yours is going, or goes, well.
Well, all good things must come to an end... and my campaign reviews for the piecemeal campaign Rise Of the Old Ones, must too. It's been a wild ride that has taught me a lot about different styles of campaigns and different kinds of horror stories. There's been laughter, there's been tears, there's been spills and chills galore, but now it's time for the final review - "The Plantation", from the supplement Mansions of Madness (do not confuse with the awesome Fantasy Flight board game of the same name). As always, spoilers abound, so tread lightly if you haven't played this one yet! Now, let's all curl up with everyone's favorite Papa Snek, Yig, and take a closer look, shall we? I hear he makes a killer hot cocoa! Penultimate review time already? :( I'm afraid so... but at least it's a long one! Today's selection is the oft sought-after (if Reddit is anything to go by) "Escape from Innsmouth" from the module of the same name (hereafter called EFI to save space).
So, I just recently, as in literally at 2 AM tonight, got back from running a hell of an experience for my players as a side-quest (I was once more missing one player). Specifically, I ran "Tatterdemalion", a quote-unquote "Experience in Fear" involving a fete worse than death, a strange figure with a rather pale countenance, and an impromptu trip to the stars in the worst way possible. "Tatterdemalion", as far as I can tell, was first created as a one-shot con game - short, sweet, and to the point, upping the terror level - in Australia. It was later apparently reprinted into Fatal Experiments and a few other sources that I'm not overly familiar with.
So, taking a break from all the RotOO shenanigans, I realized I had a lot of random terms I used with my CoC players to define meta-game stuff in general. I thought I'd share this Facebook cross-post of two different lists of terms, complied into one, in case you need a little jargon short-hand at the table. Hell, I guarantee you D&D has its own, why not us Keepers?
Another campaign review? Indeed... and this time, not even the 7e game manual is safe! Today we delve into "Amidst the Ancient Trees", a tale that proves that there's always something sinister lurking, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the woods... If you haven't played this campaign yet, or are playing through it right now, be warned - spoilers abound from here! Wait until you're done playing to read this.
|
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
January 2019
Categories
All
|