Part One: Ten Things To Know Before You Run MoN
- This is not a campaign for Beginners. If you haven't been Keeping for at least a couple years prior to running MoN, you're gonna have a bad time. In fact, stop planning for it right now. Run a few smaller bits and pieces first. I didn't even run MoN, which I had wanted to run for so long and what started me Keeping, until I had done at the least the following: enough one-shots to be familiar with the game's core rules and my style of Keeping, a couple long campaigns, a multi-scenario long campaign, a Nyarlathotep scenario, a scenario involving battle, a scenario involving magic, and a scenario heavy on action over investigation. I also did a few scenarios of my own design to get comfortable with the game, and I didn't do MoN until then. Even then, I probably should have run a few more campaigns first. This campaign is exhausting for player and Keeper both. It's not a good choice for new players, either. Players must be mature enough to handle the themes in the game as well as the length of the campaign. If your players aren't up to the challenge, do not run MoN for that group. Find more mature, willing players able to keep the game up, because as you'll quickly learn...
- You're going to be running this for at least a year. Yes, yes you are, you absolutely are. I didn't think I was gonna run it a whole year either when I began in January of this year, but here I am now, at almost the end of 2017, having just ended the game in October. Yes, I know there was a dude who ran it in six long sessions over the course of a single convention; he only managed that because he is a) a very experienced Keeper, b) meticulous in streamlining longer campaigns like this one, and c) a madman with a plan. You need a group of close friends willing and able to embark on a year-long, possibly a little more depending how often you meet, journey around the world. MoN is a pulp epic, and not suited for groups not seriously committed to the challenge of such a long campaign.
- You are going to kill/drive insane a lot of PCs. My group and I jokingly refer to MoN as "Mountains of Corpses", because the Investigator turnover rate is just so high in it compared to almost every other campaign I or anyone else there has ever done or been in. I normally kill or drive permanently mad about 1-3 PCs a campaign, if the game is not a oneshot or not specifically designed to cause massive Investigator damage. MoN has tripled that. Just take a look at the stats on the Thousand Masks Saga page. There are just so many crippled, insane, and dead Investigators that everyone in my group was on their second or third character, and some even on their fourth, by the end of the game. One player, Kat, accepted this challenge by specifically making her characters death fodder. She intended to kill each and every one by the end of that chapter, just so she could play them all, and all of them got slaughtered. The Investigator casualty rate is so high in MoN, I actually recommended that my players each make at least one character per continent. Levi, another player, made as many as fifteen characters and only used about six of them - but he at least had options when it came right down to it.
- You're going to make so goddamned many props. This campaign probably has more props than you would ever think you've ever had to make, and we're not just talking about newspaper articles here. Let's be fair, the prop handouts in the back of the Complete MoN are... pitiful to put it nicely. The Companion does a better job, but even then, it's just not the same and you're going to want to create your own props. Make the big important stuff - the cracked Eye of Light and Darkness, the tome excerpts, the newspaper articles, the stuff found in Elias' hotel room, telegrams, journals, everything. Having maps of the countries they're going to on hand is lovely, but not strictly necessary. Learn how to make aged paper, do a basic bookbinding stitch for journals, and how to paint props. Learn alternate methods of prop-making too, so you're not breaking the bank... unless you really want to. You will hate yourself for making so many props. And then you will make more props, because you want this campaign to be the best you can, don't you?
- At some point, you will become fatigued. This is just inevitable in a campaign as long as MoN. For my group, the fatigue came in Shanghai, about 3/4ths of the way through the campaign. We spent so long there and did so many things that were so different from the other chapters thus far that we all got sick of it, and people - including myself - turned to frustration, impatience, and snapping. Kat, who happens to have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, took it especially hard at some points because of her sensitivity to others' emotional output. My little brother Chance then snapped at her way too much because of reactions she couldn't help, and Rob ended up complaining about how sick of Shanghai he was (though later he said he loved Shanghai; Rob is fickle like that). My little sister Aidyn was too exhausted to do anything but sleep during game time at one point, and Levi was too cowed to say anything and went back to his default of being silent. I got impatient to end it because of all this, and pushed my players way too hard, which just made it worse. This will, and I mean will, happen to you and your group at some point. Know when to take breaks, and know when not to run a game that night. Eventually, you'll be able to push through and move on with the game, hopefully with 100% less fatigue.
- This campaign is very flexible. It's in fact more flexible than a contortionist prostitute at a bondage convention. You decide basically everything about the game, because it's your campaign and your call on how things function. You can add and remove whatever sidequests you want. You can string other campaigns, like The Sense of the Sleight-Of-Hand Man or even Horror on the Orient Express (!) into an absolutely epic multi-year-long campaign with MoN if you like. The entire Australia chapter is 100% skippable if you don't mind never knowing what became of Dr. Huston. You don't need to use Jackson Elias if you don't want, he could even live if you begin elsewhere. Genderbend whatever characters you choose, within reason for the time period you set the game of course. MoN is a big ol' sandbox. Mold it to whatever you want, and have fun. Whatever you do though, make sure you plan well and make good notes about it. This includes the main campaign, of course, but also for sidequests and other material. And remember, just because you plan for something doesn't mean you have to do it - your players may not be interested, or you may decide to skip something. I planned for A Serpent in Soho to go longer, but my players weren't biting. I planned to have The Game Lodge occur, but nobody wanted to do it including me. Similarly, you should decide precisely what feel you want to go for early on. Want to see action, nail-biting escapes, and thrilling adventure? Verge into pulp, or even use the Pulp Cthulhu rules if you like. Want a cat-and-mouse chase with conspiracy as the main draw? Use Delta Green. Want to make it Victorian Steampunk? Cthulhu by Gaslight. Want a normal, Lovecraftian, basic Call of Cthulhu experience? Increase Investigation and save the lethality for the Final Horror at the end. It's your call, your game. Create the game you want to run, and that your players want to play. It's their call, too! If they don't like the cut of your gibe, maybe consider deferring to them a bit on what they want to see in a game with the genre you chose.
- You need to be an expert on Nyarlathotep. Not familiar with him? Don't know your Bloody Tongue God from your Black Man? Not sure how to portray a polymorphic chaos messenger-god? Don't worry, you will be plenty familiar with this deity by the end of your pre-planning. You will pretty much become the Crawling Chaos for at least a year and a half. If you haven't yet, read Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep (which I happen to love as a story by the way) and everything you can about the deity. Read the Dream Cycle, read the poetry about him, all of it. When you're done with Lovecraft's stuff, move on to other authors - Bloch, Derleth, Lumley, etc. Read Wikipedia. Read the HPL Wiki entry on him. Look up every little jot and tittle of information you can about the Crawling Chaos. You're going to want to eat, sleep, and breathe Nyarlathotep for weeks in order to get into his head space (at least a bit, who can know the mind of a god?) so you can portray him right. Oh, and every one of his Masks behaves a little differently. The Bloody Tongue God isn't anything like the Black Pharaoh, who is absolutely different from the Bloated Woman, who is nothing at all similar to whatever you think a human Mask would act like. You should be able to hear his voice, understand how he might think, act as devious as he can be, and channel him as needed. Adopt him as your patron deity and embrace the Tao of Chaos, essentially, and I promise your players will never know what the hell to expect from him or from you. But first, if you haven't, at least don't fail to read Nyarlathotep. Here it is, for free, online through DagonBytes. Go. Do it now. I'm waiting, and so is he.
- You need to give Nyarlathotep, and his cults, a reason for his plan. Why the fuck is anyone in the campaign even bothering with the Great Gate anyway if Nyarlathotep's cults are the ones actually doing the ceremony? The Cult of the Bloody Tongue is not in any way similar to the Sand Bat Cult, and neither of them act the same as the Order of the Bloated Woman. Decide how your cults act, what their relationships with other Nyarlathotep cults are, and what their individual goals are as well. This goes double for Nyarlathotep himself, and involves knowing him as if he were standing in the room with you. For example, mine just as often helps as he does harm, but yours may be different. Scratch that, yours will be different. And that's okay. All Nyarlathoteps matter, and all Nyarlathoteps are valid interpretations. That's the beauty of using the God of a Thousand Masks - he's so beautifully, incredibly flexible and complex. He can be whatever you want, and is a perfect personification of the Keeper's devious tricks if I ever saw one. He has many facets. Which facet speaks to you?
- Decide on feasible goals. The game can flow however the players want, so I would recommend planning out around this. I personally made a flowchart of clues, but even this got complicated, so choose a method that works for you and feed the clues relevant to the players at the time. Don't overwhelm with leads too soon, pace things out and work around them and your players. There are three major points you can end things - Shanghai, Kenya, and Australia. You can also end in Cairo, I've seen at least one blog do that in their run. Gently try to guide players to one of the three mentioned before, though. As mentioned before, Australia is skippable and you can rearrange the third point in the gateway to be in Cairo if you like - it still makes total sense for the geography, anyway. You also don't have to begin in NYC, you can begin anywhere you find feasible, though I'd strongly caution against beginning in Shanghai or Kenya. Starting as Arabic Investigators in Cairo could be great fun, as could finding a bunch of Aussies stuck in a terrifying race after uncovering some weird plot they initially believe has to do with the Great Race of Yith rather than Nyarlathotep. Whatever you do, make sure it's a feasible approach to it, and don't bite off more than you can chew. It's all too easy to over-inflate this already massive campaign, and very tempting to just add that little bit more when you don't need to.
- Think ahead of the players. As I've said before, Keeping a campaign where the players drive most of the story can be as bad as herding cats sometimes. This is where two crucial Keeping tools are essential in the game. The first is knowing how to improvise on the fly. You should be able to give dialogue offhand, know the NPCs well enough to have them react reasonably, and understand players may not do things that make sense to you or anyone else. I had my players choose to ransack Faraz Najir's house in Cairo after they found his Hunting Horror protection amulet, and had to call a break to think up something feasible because I was surprised they even did that. Some characters, especially Warren Besart (in his drug-addled state) and Nyarlathotep pretty much always (but especially as the Black Pharaoh in the Sanctum), will need this improvisational skill, and no matter how well you plan, there's just no telling how players may react to things. Sometimes you won't have all your players, either, so always have a backup plan. I had multiple seeds for mini-adventures in and around every continent, and even made some small adventures whole cloth for MoN specifically. It's important to keep a few short one-shots on the "in case of player absence" pile, as well as have some miniature interludes just for a break from the unceasing terror that is Nyarlathotep and his cults. Sometimes, it's good to have an Elder Thing show up in a random Shanghai warehouse if it means a break from the Order of the Bloated Woman trying to slit your players' throats with sickles.
Part Two: Tips for Pre-Planning and Prop-Making in MoN
- Make a flowchart. If you do this, your flowchart will probably be messy. Doesn't matter, so long as it makes sense to you and helps you lay the clues out. It's just there to wrap your head around the scope of the campaign, and trust me, it is not an easy campaign to wrap one's head around...
- Take good notes. I make all my notes for campaigns in Microsoft Word, but you can use any word-processing software of your choice. I recommend this over hand-writing the notes because it's easier to get more thoughts out on the page this way. Of course, hand-written notes have the advantage of memorizing through repeating the information down, so it's your call what to do here. Whatever you choose, just be sure they are good, solid notes you can understand well.
- Make a set of note cards of all NPC encounters. I haven't personally ever done this because it doesn't really help me, but it may help you. Some Keepers have had good luck writing down all the NPCs, one per note card, and giving relevant info about them on the card. What they know, what their name is, a description of what they look like or a photo, their stats and skills, and whether or not they're good or bad. Some Keepers do this for all important monster encounters, too, which I just find tedious and pointless. I also find these cards way too easy to lose, so again, I don't do this, but if flashcards are your thing they are an excellent tool.
- Organize all the character/monster stats and your notes. I had two binders - one I used for my game notes and materials/maps, and one I used for generic stats and notes. Together, these became my Keeper screen for MoN and I even had rotating background images onto which I put character portraits and a map showing where the group had been. Not only is using binders a practical method of having a Keeper Screen, it's also highly portable and rugged, plus they can be customized. I organized as many stats on single pages as possible, printed them, and put them in the binders for later reference.
- Mark up your books/PDFs. If you have a hard-copy book of the Companion or MoN proper, you probably just went pale in horror there a second, but trust me. Sticky notes, pencil marks, highlighters, these help you find relevant information faster when looking it up. I personally do this for any hard-copy books I own; my copy of Curse of the Yellow Sign is all marked up to hell with little yellow sticky flags and enough yellow highlighter to make Cassilda blush. If they're PDFs, which I prefer for portability, accessibility, and flexibility, just use Foxit (which I highly recommend, seriously, ditch Acrobat yesterday) and highlight the document, plus add comments with that tool to correlate your thoughts.
- Consume media that helps with the tone. For me, this meant The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), and the Indiana Jones films, but it may mean other things for you. Of course, read Lovecraft as pointed out above, and definitely at least read Nyarlathotep to give you an idea of how he acts. Or, you could watch this absolutely excellent filmed rendition of the story below - pay especially close attention to Nyarlathotep's mannerisms in it! The actor playing him does an absolutely lovely job speaking without words, using only body language. It really helped me nail down his persona, how he carries himself, and how his reactions are when I first watched it.
- Multitask. Start doing notes, any notes, at the same time as making the props for the chapter. You should probably do all the stuff for one chapter at once, or else set aside dedicated time for writing and dedicated time for propstorming. I did all my props in one go, and all the notes later, one chapter a week.
- Get into Nyarlathotep's head. Devious, clever, never at a loss, always amused, always planning something, cool customer, manipulative, magnificent bastard, sadistic, trickster. All these are descriptive of the Crawling Chaos. Think about famous media tricksters and schemers you like - Loki, Bugs Bunny, various folklore heroes, the Joker, even trollface. What makes them oh so devious and Machiavellian? What makes them likeable? Why do these characters endure, and why do we love them? Because they are masterminds, because they are always one step ahead. Nyarlathotep is no different. He's a charming trickster, one you can make as good or evil as you want. He's always up to something... kind of like a Keeper, really. Putting a little of yourself into him always ends up helping. Dwell on what makes your favorite unpredictable or devious characters your favorites, and combine aspects of them with a hell of a lot of sarcasm and confidence to make your Nyarlathotep shine.
- Learn how to use image editing tools. The GIMP is excellent but has a rough learning curve, and Photoshop is even tougher to grok, but learning how to use these or another image editing tool will help you tremendously in creating authentic, awesome props when you're working with MoN. It can also help you organize materials. I used it to make my flowchart, create prop tomes, alter my Stumbling Tiger Bar matchbox, and even make a page from the Necronomicon! And speaking of that...
- Learn new artistic/prop-making techniques. Nothing says dusty old Necronomicon fragment like an edited image printed on crinkled and softened coffee-stained paper with lacunae torn into it. Learn how to do this. Learn also other techniques that help make things more authentic like painting, sculpting, papercraft, anything really. Experiment with new materials - I've had great results using nail polish as paint, believe it or not, on some props. For example, I have a Cthulhu idol I made of Model Magic, a wooden block, some fake gems and glass marbles, and painted with metallic green nail polish. When it dried, it gave the idol a very slick, almost unpleasantly greasy feel that seemed very alien and unnatural... which is exactly what I was going for!
- Fonts, fonts, fonts! Avail yourself also of the myriad of different font choices available for each country. Finding a sort of Arabic-looking font to put the Cairo tome excerpts in adds a lot of character, and having every character write in a different font also helps. Having multiple different kinds of fonts helps, especially with typewriter fonts. The HPLHS has some free fonts available for download, as well as several other useful props and resources.
- Relax! Don't take yourself too seriously. It's just a game, after all, and your players will not know anything you don't tell them. So what if you forget to tell them about the other two treasures of Nitocris? The Girdle is the only important part. So what if you mispronounce a name? Nobody's going to care. Your players only know what you tell them, and nothing more.
Part Three: How I Learned to Stop Panicking and Love the MoN
So, that's what I did after reading the campaign through. I sat down and made a quick flowchart of all the areas of the game, as well as all the clues for it. It was messy and crude, but that's okay, because the only point of it was to get my ideas clarified and wrap my head around the non-linear nature of the game. Once I had that figured out, I turned my attention to the two most important driving factors of the game - Nyarlathotep and his cults.
Nyarlathotep happens to be my favorite Cthulhu Mythos deity, so getting into his shoes was not hard - I was already an expert, and had no trouble fitting myself into his head space. I had run a Nyarlathotep campaign of my own design previously, and a few others with other groups, so I knew precisely how he would act and what he would sound like, what his mannerisms were, etc. As stated before, my Nyarlathotep has a very specific style to him. He plays games with sentient life forms. He likes to manipulate and use mind games to amuse himself, because he is just so unbelievably bored with immortality. That is his Netflix, it's what he does for fun. It's not any part of any grand plan for humanity, and it's nothing personal - he's just looking for amusement, and it just so happens humans can provide a good source of it...
My Nyarlathotep is more trickster god than malicious horror trying to undo humanity, because humanity often does a good job of undoing itself. All he has to do is feed us rope to hang ourselves with. Mine speaks in a baritone, mine is always amused, more troll than evil - but definitely has an air of malevolence to him. He dazzles when he enters a room, and commands immediate respect. He is trusted on sight despite people's gut feelings going off, because he is beautiful and because he is pragmatic. He gets what he wants, he knows he gets what he wants, and he's pretty smug about that. Being near-omnipotent, he is incredibly tough for mere mortals to offend or annoy, but when they do... well, they're not surviving with their minds intact much longer, let's just say. My Nyarlathotep is dangerous and frighting not because of what he does to us, but because of what he is to us - a mocking reflection of humanity's foibles and appearances, a mind-hacker that glitches into our system by assuming our own form. Why? Who the hell knows. He's certainly not telling, now is he?
In my run of Masks of Nyarlathotep, I decided that the only reason Nyar didn't smoosh the PCs outright was because he actually wanted them to succeed. You see, he greatly disliked how Holier Than Thou his cults had become - they all insisted their way was the right way to worship, and it had become a distraction to their goals of doing his will. In addition, the cult leaders were all more interested in their own goals than his, which further irritated him. So, he tried sending the Carlyle Expedition group as new allies and prophets. That failed miserably because most if not all of them became just as big-headed as the cult leaders were. So, Nyarlathotep had another plan ready: he would use a single man - Jackson Elias - to investigate the cults. As a warning, you see. Besides... Jackson was never the punishing scourge he wanted. The Investigators were. The Investigators and the myriad of new PCs and NPCs they met, their deaths, their madness, their suffering and victory... everything - that was always his plan. To punish his insolent cults by sending these five randoms to ruin their year. Of course, should the gate succeed, he wins too... so he really has no downside. All he has to do is watch the show, and occasionally play his part when he needs to in order to push things in the right direction... In other words, Nyarlathotep was playing both sides.
That left me with the cults and how Nyarlathotep felt about them. As established, Nyar dislikes his cults, so that leaves determining the cults and how they act. I settled on the following for each cult:
- The Bloody Tongue is aggressive and brutal, and takes immediate action without sneaking around. The NYC branch is inexperienced, as it is lead by M'Weru's less-competent brother, Mukunga. The two do not see eye to eye. The Bloody Tongue fights with the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, often bringing the fight to them, but will ally with other cults.
- The Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh considers itself prim, proper, and the "one true cult" of Nyarlathotep. They are holier-than-thou and paternalistic, sticking to sneak attacks and the shadows. The London Branch in particular likes mind games; the Cairo Branch also tends to do so but prefers sneak attacks. Omar Shakti and Edward Gavigan hate each other; they are both racists (Omar to white men and Gavigan to men of color). Torture is not out of the option for either branch. They feud with the Bloody Tongue but will help any other cult.
- The Order of the Bloated Woman is a cult of contradictions and two sides. On one side of the fan, they keep good "face" in Chinese society, and are very proper and polite traditionalists that say they worship "a Goddess of Peace and Prosperity". On the other side, they are vicious, perverted, sleazy, awful people that torture, defile, rape, and abuse their victims. They swap these sides on a dime, and are very much the sneaky types. They like traps, puzzles, tricks, and poisons. They disappear people, who end up with no arms and dead in the Yangtze for their trouble. They are monsters with painted smiles. Ho Fong and his ilk will help most other cults, but he does not trust any of the Small Crawler cultists and really only supports whatever side is winning the Bloody-Brotherhood feud.
- The Sand Bat Cult is a revival cult, and run by someone wholly incompetent and insane, so this cult flounders. Recent trouble for the Aboriginal members involving racism, colonialism, and their place in society has fractured the group from within between white and native cult members. They are small, inexperienced, bumbling, and really just struggle to do their jobs because their leader gives such insane and contradicting orders. They have no issues with the other cults, but the Order despises their weakness and the other cults merely tolerate them.
- The Small Crawler Cult is kind of the weasel who sneaks in and doesn't do anything but steal your eggs for themselves. Ho Fong does not trust Tandoor Singh, the representative for this cult, so will have no business with him. Ironically, this cult is the most like Nyarlathotep, because they play both sides of the Bloody-Brotherhood feud, though this is dangerous - if caught, both sides will retaliate full force. Tandoor himself is currently allied with the Bloody Tongue Cult. They do what they must, because they can, and because it's just fun being Chaotic Evil really. The Small Crawler Cult is restricted to India, so they don't really give any mind to the Sand Bat Cult, but gratefully accept the help of, and give help to, the others - if there's something in it for them.
This decided, I went about designing cult sigils, choosing cult colors, and generally designing how they'd react when faced with different Investigator nuisances. This took a bit, but the more I read about them in the Companion and designed them the more life they took on and the more easily I was able to work them out. Here were my cult sigils I designed (I particularly like my Brotherhood ankh and Small Crawler cult sigil), along with a concept for the Eye of Light and Darkness and some possible designs for M'weru's ritualistic scarification:
A note on the design for the Small Crawler cult sigil, too - I spent hours looking up henna designs, Indian religious symbology, and common designs in Indian artwork. I also brought in some connections with the all-seeing eye symbol and the cultish, creepy conspiracy images that brought with it. My players definitely noticed those influences in the design! I came up with the three-point design because Nyarlathotep commonly is associated with threes of things for whatever reason. The Bloody Tongue God has three legs in most depictions, the Haunter of the Dark has a three-lobed burning eye, etc. There's also three points in the gateway ceremony, forming a triangle over the Indian Ocean in the game. In fact, just all my designs for the cults' symbols have stuff occurring in threes or multiples of threes. It echoes and mocks the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, apt for Nyarlathotep. I often use concepts like numerology and sacred geometry in sigil design in CoC, because it is so cross-cultural. The number 3 or multiples of it in numerology is considered divine, and triangles show strength, wisdom, and balance, so it makes an apt choice for Nyarlathotep's cults and hints at his divine nature in a subtle way. According to this source, there are other meanings for a triangle too, as quoted below:
"The triangle can represent different forms of a trinity. It can symbolize the body-mind-spirit connection. [...] It can symbolize time as Past-Present-Future. It can symbolize the phases of the moon when it waxes, wanes, or is full. [...] It can represent Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. It could symbolize Creation, Destruction, and Preservation. The triangle can also symbolize how working together can unite people. [...] It can represent the process of development and getting to the highest point of a change that is spiritual. It can symbolize achieving dreams and ambitions."
Ironic, then, how all these cults use the triangle or groups of threes in their sigils, yet can't even work together!
I also tweaked minor things - Jack Brady became Jacqueline Brady solely because I thought pulling a Samus Is A Girl on my players would be fun, I changed a few names, and I cut out a few scenarios I didn't like while adding or substituting in ones I did, but more on this in the actual chapter entries later on. I shifted the game's date from 1924-1925 to 1928-1929 because I wanted to coincide the threat of Nyarlathotep with the Great Depression, WWII, and all the abject horror that came with it. And that was the good ending! The bad ending, as I always planned it, was to have the apocalypse occur and the Investigators stuck witnessing how things have changed and become nothing like what they thought. There would have basically been the rise of hedonism and the abject complete psychotic breakdown of humanity, becoming as the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones are... jaded, apathetic, and uncaring. And those, of course, are the free ones - most humans would of course be enslaved by some horrible god or another. I'd say a second world war, the rise of fascism, and the Great Depression and Dust Bowl were all infinitely more preferable to a world under the dark rule of the Black Pharaoh...
I quickly decided on a Pulp theme for the game, because I love a good Pulp adventure film. I grew up watching my mom's Indiana Jones collection over and fucking over, so I love Indy. God damn, Harrison Ford was hot back then. I also love The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) for all their cheesiness; the Fraisier Mummy films came out when I was in elementary school, and I loved them even though they terrified me. So of course, I patterned my run of MoN off that, with a Mythosy twist and a few more aspects of other pulpy things: some old serials, various actiony comic books, a little classic James Bond, etc. I shamelessly stole bits of all these for my run of MoN. I wish I would have rewatched The Mummy sooner actually (I was home sick one day and rewatched it about a month ago I wanna say), so I could have used more. There's tons there I didn't even get to use - for example, the plagues occurring was something I forgot until I rewatched the film, and it would have been a perfect thing to have happen. I also wanted to have a Bennie-type character and a whole boat fight with cultists in Cairo at night, with the boat eventually ending up on fire like in the film. I had even planned just such a scene, but my group never got to do it. They got on a plane and went to Shanghai instead. Ah well, the best laid plans of mice and men, after all...
All this set up and background things prepared for the game to come, I set to annotating the Companion and the Complete MoN. I go through every single campaign I run, all bits of it, skimming first to see if I like the material. If I like it, I download the PDF and save it. Then I read through it to familiarize myself with it, and put it down for a bit. I come back to annotate and read through again, then set it back down. Then, later, I take the stuff I annotated and highlighted and make proper Word notes out of it. This is a long process that can take months. Annotating the actual campaign went smoothly because it was shorter than you'd think at 200+ pages, but the Companion? Oh boy. Oh fucking boy, did I have a ride with that one, and you might remember me even posting about the issues I had with it last year.
For those who missed my initial post, I was almost done annotating the Companion, and it was the start of my second to last semester. I had time between classes so I was annotating. I was almost done with the Shanghai part, which is often the last bit of the campaign (in mine it turned out not to be though) and is the last bit in both the Complete MoN and the Companion, to show you just how far I got. I guess I didn't save it properly, or Foxit messed up while saving, because the file corrupted beyond repair. I tried to retrieve it, I tried to fix it, to no avail. I thought for damned sure that I had lost the entire Companion, until I found an unannotated version on my Dropbox, and thank the Thousand Masks I did think to put it there earlier. Long story short, I ended up having to re-annotate the whole Companion. I was so angry and disgusted with the whole thing, I didn't come back to annotate it for a whole semester. Then, I ended up annotating the whole Companion over a weekend and started notes and props during Christmas break, about 3 weeks before I was supposed to start. I hand-made all the important props, all of them, over Christmas break. Jammed printers, paper props, coffee-staining, all of it. I made all of them in about a week and a half, while doing notes. Because I am a madwoman, and because I was channeling Nyarlathotep. It was very tedious and hard work, but I got it the fuck done.
The result? Well, I think the blog speaks for itself, and as for the props, those are on Imgur over here. I think they came out damned well. For prop-editing, I used Word, actual physical techniques, some PDF files from HPLHS along with some of their fonts, and the GIMP for image-editing. Text was clipped or shamelessly copied from the Companion or from MoN proper. For organizing materials, I used a couple three-ring binders which I customized with a changeable background for PC photos on one, and a big 1920's era map of the world showing where everyone has been and will go on the other. This was a callback to an idea that Rob (also a Keeper) and I had floated, involving the use of a specific Powerpoint animation to show us traveling to different parts of the world a la Indiana Jones - for technical reasons, this never happened. I used the binders, and this is a common Keeping trick of mine, as a Keeper screen and to store player character sheets, backup characters, notes, props (in hole-punched manila envelopes trimmed to size), maps, stats, etc. I also organized by chapter and by type of note. The result was a very useful, portable, and flexible way to keep all my campaign material in one spot, something I highly recommend.
By the start of January, I was ready to roll, and my players were anxious to begin. All that was left was to get characters and begin the game, and I began with a real bang - a short interlude from the Companion, which I will elaborate on in the next entry...