Countdown to Masks of Nyarlathotep
This Saturday starts the beginning of running the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign with my home group. We’ve been running single-shots for awhile now, and I live practically on an island so when a scenario runs past ‘s time to catch the last ferry back to Seattle for folks, it means then next month’s game time gets taken up with completing that. Sure, it’s not like we’re not going to drink and hang out in that time, but I like keep it to one game fitting one night. This isn’t always possible, so I’m taking the extreme route to a practical solution; it doesn’t matter if the game is finished in one night when the game could take years to play out.
I didn’t say it was sane. I said it was practical.
At any rate, got five people on board. I’ve had them make two investigators, and to be ready to make another one in downtime if one of them dies. This fulfills two purposes:
Makes sure that they can get back and in the game as soon as narratively possible when one of their investigators bites it. This way no one just has to sit around and watch after they die.
It manages expectations regarding how often their investigators could bite the big one during the course of the campaign.
This blog will be used in part as a journal for the ongoing campaign. It’ll act as my own personal journal of how the campaign unfolds, and hopefully as an entertaining read for all of you.
We start in the prologue in Lima, Peru. Resources being used are:
Reference materials
Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook
Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook
Masks of Nyarlathotep Campaign
Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion
For handouts and the like I’ve invested in the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set. This was a birthday present to myself this year. I’ve talked with friends who have it and they raved about it, and I thought it would add some interesting and fun levels to the campaign. I’m going to write a review of it at some point, but suffice it to say I’m really looking forward to using this. The Peru section of the prop set is not particular ly wow-worthy, but that’s not the fault of the HPLHS. There’s not a whole lot of handouts and visual aids in the Peru section of the game overall. The New York prop section, however, is downright formidable. The same can be said for the other prop sections. More about that as the game unfolds.
For background, I’m using Syrinscape which has come up with Mask of Nyarlathotep sound packs for each chapter of the game. There are elements of the Syrinscape user interface when putting together sound packs for a campaign that I find counterintuitive to the point of frustration, but the quality and control you have over the sound packs is downright formidable.
As the game night is also considered a long-ass dinner party, there will be Peruvian food for dinner as well as Pisco Sours served at the start of the game. We ran a New Orleans scenario a few months back where I got the idea to serve dinner indigenous to the area the scenario took place in. It gave some depth to the game, plus gave me the opportunity to learn some new recipes. Expect to see recipes for food and drinks in the MoN posts to come.
Come back here Sunday to find out how the first night went down.