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.