You're seeking ancient secrets -
The Black Fan flutters.
A thousand clues masked
By lies and innuendo -
It's not as it seems.
Know this, those seeking
The truth: it lies in madness.
The Black Fan, fallen.
Anything goes when
You're seeking ancient secrets - The Black Fan flutters. A thousand clues masked By lies and innuendo - It's not as it seems. Know this, those seeking The truth: it lies in madness. The Black Fan, fallen.
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"Arabian Nights, like Arabian days,
More often than not are hotter than hot In a lot of good ways." - "Arabian Nights", Disney's Aladdin Forget about God Saving the Queen, He'll need to save the Investigators from the mad machinations of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh!
There's no place like Broadway - the sights, the sounds... the scares. Who ever said starting a campaign of MoN's scope was hard?
I probably have some of the best players in the world as a Keeper, and I'm damned fortunate for that. I also have some of the most intelligent, outside the box thinkers in the world, and that means that I'm always having to stay just one step ahead of them.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is such a complex campaign with so many moving parts, the biggest question is often where to begin. My answer, as well as the Companion's answer, to that? Pre-planning out the ass.
This has been one hell of a ride.
When I started running this campaign, I had no idea how incredibly tough a game it was going to end up being, or how rewarding it would be. The Companion said the game would last a whole year or more, but foolishly, I didn't believe it. Starting in the beginning of January 2017 and ending at the end of October 2017, I didn't believe it would go so far or be so long. I should have known better, for the amount of content in it. Let me reiterate. I ran a single four-hour-long session almost every week, including a few multi-week sessions, and it still took me a year to run Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's a monster. It's massive. And I made it more massive by including even more material to it as supplementary stuff, including my own homebrew content, because I knew at some point some people would be missing. As a newly minted veteran Masks Keeper, I think I can say it has been something special for me and my group. A culmination and ultimate goal, a feather in my cap. I was so worried at the start, so worried it wouldn't come off. And yeah, sometimes it didn't come off. But when it did, oh Lord. Oh, Sweet Thousand Masks of Nyarlathotep, did it ever come off. Masks was my dream campaign, and it was not easy, but it was fun. I think my Thousand Masks Saga entries have proven that well enough. What I want to do with this next mini-segment is discuss each chapter of MoN, in detail, as well as my thoughts as a Keeper on how I ran it, how my players went through it, where things got tough or derailed, and other such things. Prop-making, cult action decisions, etc. will be in their own separate pre-planning entry. This mini-segment will function a lot like a behind-the-scenes and will be linked on the Thousand Masks Saga page. It will be tagged with the "Horror's Art" tag and functions as a means of giving some feedback to other Keepers planning to run the MoNster for the first time. I hope you will find it as useful as I found the journals of other Keepers/players who ran this game, the Companion, and others' input and feedback. In retrospect, I don't know if I'll do a blog of the same scope as the Thousand Masks Saga again. It was a lot of extra work, and while it was fun to keep people up to date with my group's run and useful for keeping my players on track, it's just too much with my crazy schedule due to my job. For shorter campaigns, I certainly won't be doing it again, but for longer ones I may. If something epic in length happens that calls for an IC blog, I will do it, otherwise things around here will return to the standard "Horror's Art" style review posts and Keeping tips. Hope that makes sense, and I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes series on MoN, as played by the Miskatonic Valley Players and run by myself. Thanks again to everyone who supported me in this project, especially my players - I put you guys through Hell, and for that I'm not sorry. My only regret is that I took myself too seriously, and this game too hard. Without you, I wouldn't have had a game or a means of creative outlet for all this energy inside me waiting to explode in vivid detail and description. Your characters were, are, and always will be awesome, funny, charming, lovable, tragic, and all around heroes of the highest caliber for facing down the threats of the Mythos, and even laying their lives down to stop them. What greater heroes could there be than that? You're like my second family (and some of you are actual blood family), and I don't know where I'd be without you. See you 'round the globe for the first true Unmasking Nyarlathotep entry - pre-planning and props, wherein I'll explain my thought process for creating the props for the game, my thinking behind the tweaks I made to the storyline, and how I chose various other aspects of the game for my players', and my own, pleasure. Sick and Twisted: The Most Disturbing Call of Cthulhu Scenarios Chaosium Has Ever Licensed11/1/2017 FAIR WARNING WHERE IT IS DUE: This blog entry discusses truly disturbing scenarios for CoC. The details within get pretty disturbing, downright gross, and more than a little potentially distressing to certain people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Grotesque, gruesome, gory, gooey, glistening, gross. These are all lovely G words that can describe a certain type of horror. Not just body horror, but the kind of horror that sits in your stomach and turns it in knots. The kind of horror that gels in you and makes you shudder at the same time that it makes you want to vomit. It's disgust in its purest and most vile of all forms, and I don't just mean of death, slimy and squamous rugose terrors, or things with too many eyes and teeth and tentacles, either. |
About The Blog
Welcome to Musings 2.0, my personal blog here on WordFlow! Here, you can find out what I'm doing now and where I'm going next, as well as get my thoughts on the Cthulhu Mythos, assorted sundry writing topics, and various scientific topics. Archives
January 2019
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