Anyone played Masks of Nyarlathotep?

MGibster said:

Call of Cthulhu's dirty little secret is that heavy firepower is fairly effective.

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"To kill the Cyberdemon, shoot it until it dies!"

MGibster said:

Call of Cthulhu's dirty little secret is that heavy firepower is fairly effective.

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Actually, no the secret is being deaf and never ever reading anything

MGibster said:

Call of Cthulhu's dirty little secret is that heavy firepower is fairly effective.

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Not only that, but for a game that supposedly discourages violence, it is the best solution to a number of published scenarios.

I am going to echo Celebrim's comments about firepower. And it's really strange since I think of the big three adventures it's the only one that this is true for. We had some intense experiences in the game, and yeah, we had a couple of WWI vets who had strong experience with machine guns.

We had one TPK, and another where we discovered the bad guy's plot and decided to live out the rest of our (short) lives knowing the world was coming to an end.

I do think there is a great adventure here and some background that's really amazing. I just think that the CoC system is not the best way to realize it.

We played through it a few years ago. I made the mistake of wearing the mask on my first character. My second character lasted until Egypt. She died because for some reason the other PCs thought it was a good idea to fight shotgun-wielding cultists. After I got shot, they continued fighting like it was D&D while I bled out. The third character made it all the way until the end, though we tried for a stupid TPK after we beat the bad guy.

That last fight was dumb. We’d stopped the ritual, but we decided to go back to Kenya to finish some business. We ended up in a big fight on top of the mountain there with a terribly executed plan where people fought like it was D&D. Just stood there and didn’t even take cover. I don’t think the GM expected us to be that stupid because once it started looking grim, he was like, “Guys,” and we agreed to flash forward to an epilogue.

Overall, I had fun. There are some weaknesses in the structure, and it helps to understand there’s an expected play loop (arrive in a location, visit newspapers, follow leads). I didn’t like when a certain NPC showed up out of nowhere with a plan to fight the cultists. What even was the point of looking for him if he’s scripted to show up regardless?

I’m a bit surprised by the talk of combat. We barely had any. There was a fight against zombies in NY, that pointless fight in Egypt, an island with cultists in Shanghai, the final confrontation, and the pointless fight in Kenya. I remember dealing with cultist stuff in Kenya on the way to the mountain, but I can’t recall whether we actually fought or just sabotaged things. In general, we tried to avoid things or GTFO when things started looking bad.

Celebrim said:

I was pretty shocked as well. I'm actually making a very moderate criticism of the campaign. It's worse that I'm describing it.

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You said it was terrible. If that’s moderate and it’s worse than terrible then you’re a harsh critic.

Retreater said:

I GMed it in its entirety about 6 years ago (before the expanded version was released.) Any specific questions, or do you just want to read my high praise for it?

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I’d say, what do you like most about it?

kenada said:

We played through it a few years ago. I made the mistake of wearing the mask on my first character. My second character lasted until Egypt. She died because for some reason the other PCs thought it was a good idea to fight shotgun-wielding cultists. After I got shot, they continued fighting like it was D&D while I bled out. The third character made it all the way until the end, though we tried for a stupid TPK after we beat the bad guy.

That last fight was dumb. We’d stopped the ritual, but we decided to go back to Kenya to finish some business. We ended up in a big fight on top of the mountain there with a terribly executed plan where people fought like it was D&D. Just stood there and didn’t even take cover. I don’t think the GM expected us to be that stupid because once it started looking grim, he was like, “Guys,” and we agreed to flash forward to an epilogue.

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I think this is my biggest concern with switching to any system. I’m not sure the best way to overcome it if you play a modern D&D experience.

We had a lot of fun playing it. Nobody can too close to dying / going insane. My character was a nightclub singer, with Sing 70%, so hardly a combat monster.

(I did use Sing at one point, and one of the other players said "Oh, you actually can sing. I thought 'singer' was a euphemism for an older profession.")

I don't know if that was because we were suitably cautious (we always tried to follow the least-dangerous looking of the available clues) or because we had a couple of elephant guns and characters who knew how to use them, or because the Keeper went easy on us - he says he removed a few bits he felt were outright unfair, but played the rest of it by the book; not sure if I believe him though.

TheSword said:

I’m finding it hard to square your feedback with the reputation. Not just the original but the remake as well.

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Well, if you're asking if his overall review is an outlier - yeah, it pretty much is.