Masks of Nyarlathotep Prop Set for the Call of Cthulhu RPG
The props looked great but I think the creator got overwhelmed with the number of hackers and how much they needed to create. I got one part and then they disappeared.
Back in 2014, I went in big on this -- "A film-quality set of redesigned handouts and props for Masks of Nyarlathotep, a campaign for the Call of Cthulhu RPG."
Masks of Nyarlathotep is an absoluteluy fantastic campaign, with a lot of globe-trotting and flexibility for the GM to insert his own scenarios. I'd been planning to run it, so I wrestled with my inner cheapskate, and pledged at the $325 level -- extraordinarily extravagant for me, but I was thinking that MoN can easily last a couple of years of consistent play, and having a fantastic prop set would definitely add a lot to the experience. And I had high confidence, since many of the props had been previously available as free downloads, so I'd had a chance to check them out!
The campaign was 1481% funded on December 15, 2014. All that was left was to do some of the big props (like the Mask of Hayama that came with my pledge) and to tweak the paper props and print them out on high-quality paper.
Then, came a string of minor progress updates, each coupled with an excuse. Fewer than 200 units (out of 507 backers) were eventually fulfilled -- all of them (as far as I can tell) people who had pledged for better-quality prints of the paper props that already existed. Within a year and a half, the creator declared the project mostly dead (the date on the update is January 26, 2016). Any remaining hope any of the other backers might have had evaporated when the Chaosium license expired that same year.
It's been almost exactly ten years since that update, and I'm still salty about this. I never ended up running the game for the people I wanted to run it for. Several are no longer in the state, so I'll never run it for them in a way I intended to. It's kind of put me off props in general. It took years before I was willing to take similar risks with high-cost levels in Kickstarters, and I don't think I'll ever back at that high a level again.
One of the things that really annoys me about it is that the free downloads that had been previously available were removed for the Kickstarter, and have never been made available again. I can't even get the downloads of what was previously there for everyone! I'm just SOL, I guess!
docs.google.com
