If you pop over my friend Dale's blog, you will see he has written up his account of our recently finished Call of Cthulhu campaign 'Masks of Nyarlathotep' (Pulp Edition). Dale ran a great campaign and I had a heap of fun. The characters were fleshed out and interesting; the story equal parts hilarious and horrific. It is something I will remember fondly for a long time.
Seeing as Dale has provided the GM point of view, I thought I might give some thoughts from a player's perspective. Masks has a reputation as being one of the most popular Cthulhu campaigns, but also for being a bit of a 'meat grinder' in terms of characters. As a result, I was a little cautious going in as I didn't like the idea of blowing through a bunch of characters that were only tenuously connected.
However looking back, Dale's introduction of fate and fortune points was a great idea. It meant - in my case at least - that the tension was maintained through the points slowly building up and quickly dwindling down, while allowing for meaningful character development to occur (I think I burned through six of them in the end). I really enjoyed playing Armand Fazeal's descent from an eccentric orientalist to a mythos fighting, zealous Islamist. The major wound table also helped to add to the tension as it provided another decision about to use a fate point or not.
In terms of chapters, my favourite was Cairo. It combined the right amount of sandbox style choices and plot 'reveal', while having a really detailed and described setting. I think it also helped that there was a lot of investigative action, which was a niche Fazeal helped fill. In contrast I was less enamored by Kenya, mostly due to the linear plotting of the story, but as Dale explained it is important story wise, and really it was still really fun.
All in all it was a huge amount of fun and a big thanks goes out to Dale. It has certainly given me a whole bunch of idea for me to steal and use one day when I run it.
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