Anyone played Masks of Nyarlathotep?

[General_Tangent]

Considering the original author of the campaign, I've always wanted to run it in the Babylon 5 universe.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I remember reading the original version of this back in the 80s, and thinking how outstandingly good it was. Never actually ran it though (never got a CoC game together, too busy playing Traveller).

I did notice a few places were the clues to the next step seemed a bit obtuse, I have a feeling that even with my current grown-up group they would hit investigative dead ends. However, it's been updated several times since then so I suspect any problems have been tidied up.

 

[amethal]

To be honest, I am generally unhappy with most Coc scenarios. They don't deal with the sort of horror that I would want CoC to deal with, which is cosmic and philosophical, and with few exceptions have the PCs as assassins rather than scholars. Indeed, quite a few CoC scenarios feel like they would be better run as D&D and seem to expect a sort of Monte Haul campaign were players abuse published spells with low SAN loss and have a lot of optimized firepower like 10-gauge shotguns and Tommy Guns and just sort of wade through the monsters like a D&D party of murder hobos. What I really want to avoid is game that feel like the later books of Charles Stross's "Laundry" series, where the alien is made into not only the familiar, but the vehicle for ego tripping about gaining super-powers. The best "Laundry" stories remain the early ones, such as when we're viewpoint character racing across a dead landscape to close a door before we let in monsters that will eat our entire universe with literally no hope of resisting except to close the dang door.

However, while this is true I acknowledge that I have a hard time inventing the sort of scenarios that I want to have.

The only "cosmic horror" scenario I'm familiar with is "Machine Tractor Station Kharkov - 37" which is almost "unwinnable" unless the Keeper beefs up the clues a lot. It's very bleak, only useful as a one-off, and the PCs have plenty of guns but mostly use them on each other. Hopefully I'll get to run it one day.

The Final Revelation collection for Trail of Cthulhu seems like they might be what you are looking for, but I'm not very familiar with it.

Final Revelation

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We had gone through 16 characters before even leaving NY.

Yeah we started it once and most of the players had lost a character before leaving NY (I think mine just got like horribly injured repeatedly) - we then got cut off by the DM leaving the country and didn't play it online like we thought we might. Definitely we hadn't made combat-centric characters, and things might have gone better if we had.

 

[payn]

Yeah we started it once and most of the players had lost a character before leaving NY (I think mine just got like horribly injured repeatedly) - we then got cut off by the DM leaving the country and didn't play it online like we thought we might. Definitely we hadn't made combat-centric characters, and things might have gone better if we had.

The lot of us were excited to not be playing a combat RPG for once. We had a doctor, a journalist, a teaching assistant, a farmer (I dont know why...), and then Randy the shell shocked WWI soldier. Yes the lot of us expected an investigation with moments of truly frightening proportions. What we got was just a never ending series of deadly buzzsaws thrown at us. Randy, of course, walked around with a B.A.R weapon, grenades, knives, T.N.T becasue, why not? It really hurt my immersion and I really hate saying things like that. Randy went up in a blaze finally by accident becasue he was carrying T.N.T while going out for tea...

Finally, we hung it up after suffering weeks of just pointless wandering around until the next death. The GM was like, "Randy! Randy is how you play CoC!" If Randy is how you play CoC, then I dont want to. /rant

 

[Wolfpack48]

Has anyone run it using the Pulp Cthulhu rules? Be curious if/how that changed the play.

 

[SteveC]

I think that Masks is an amazing read and would make a fantastic adaptation as a mini-series or something similar where everyone would pick up on all the clues and you could deal with the combats. If you are looking for a great campaign to run, I suggest Shadows. I ran through it with an author character who picked up combat skills over the course of the adventure.

I remember actually surviving seeing the best-known big bad at the end of the campaign, and the GM took out the sanity loss die and tossed it down in front of the group, since if I took enough sanity loss to go insane I wouldn't make it off the island we were on. It came up a "1". That allowed me to run and escape the adventure I had made it all the way through. I was the only survivor from scenario one.

To that note, I think that Masks has everything that sounds like it should be a better game, though. In practice, all the combat and some random deadly stuff makes it too difficult for my blood. As an example, there's one scene where you come across an art gallery with scary paintings. As you go through the gallery looking at things the GM is encouraged to not let you know about sanity loss. So every character who went in ... went insane and was lost. That sort of soured us on London.

 

[thullgrim]

I think that Masks is an amazing read and would make a fantastic adaptation as a mini-series or something similar where everyone would pick up on all the clues and you could deal with the combats. If you are looking for a great campaign to run, I suggest Shadows. I ran through it with an author character who picked up combat skills over the course of the adventure.

I remember actually surviving seeing the best-known big bad at the end of the campaign, and the GM took out the sanity loss die and tossed it down in front of the group, since if I took enough sanity loss to go insane I wouldn't make it off the island we were on. It came up a "1". That allowed me to run and escape the adventure I had made it all the way through. I was the only survivor from scenario one.

To that note, I think that Masks has everything that sounds like it should be a better game, though. In practice, all the combat and some random deadly stuff makes it too difficult for my blood. As an example, there's one scene where you come across an art gallery with scary paintings. As you go through the gallery looking at things the GM is encouraged to not let you know about sanity loss. So every character who went in ... went insane and was lost. That sort of soured us on London.

I had a character get sucked into a painting and transported back in time. The curious inventory then jumped in after him after he saw him in the painting. Ahhh London!

 

[TheSword]

How much of this stuff is heavy handed DMing?

I usually see published works as a coloring in book rather than a paint by numbers. They give the pattern and the complexity but if I want to paint something red Instead of blue then I do it.

It feels like a lot of the stuff that’s being described surely comes down to how the DM chooses to play it? For instance presumably if the DM accentuates the importance of the border customs then getting arrested for having a gun could be a problem. But if it is assumed the character knows the kind of places they could get their hands on a gun and does so as part of their prep for section then this is accepted. I find it hard to believe it would have been hard to get your hands on firearms in any of these countries in the 1920’s.

Simultaneously is the need for powerful combat characters not just the way the DM frames the encounters?

I’ve not used Sanity before, but surely it can’t wipe out an entire party with one set of rolls? Or is it that bad?

 

[Wolfpack48]

How much of this stuff is heavy handed DMing?

I usually see published works as a coloring in book rather than a paint by numbers. They give the pattern and the complexity but if I want to paint something red Instead of blue then I do it.

It feels like a lot of the stuff that’s being described surely comes down to how the DM chooses to play it? For instance presumably if the DM accentuates the importance of the border customs then getting arrested for having a gun could be a problem. But if it is assumed the character knows the kind of places they could get their hands on a gun and does so as part of their prep for section then this is accepted. I find it hard to believe it would have been hard to get your hands on firearms in any of these countries in the 1920’s.

Simultaneously is the need for powerful combat characters not just the way the DM frames the encounters?

I’ve not used Sanity before, but surely it can’t wipe out an entire party with one set of rolls? Or is it that bad?

Of course. The referee can surely play up/down the combat/sanity as they see fit. That said, there are some very fun and interesting combat encounters that won't necessarily end in the death/sanity of the party. The referee always has latitude in any published scenario. I always like to keep things challenging and scary, but the party would really need to work hard to result in a TPK. That said, it's always good to have a backup character in this campaign. I'd set expectations up front that things will be dangerous and deadly, but careful thought will help a great deal. I would NOT run this campaign with any expectation that combat can be completely avoided.