Spent a good chunk of the day printing and cutting out handouts for the first adventure I’ve DMed since 2012. Feels good.
DMing update:
So the first session is scheduled for this Sunday evening, which means there’s no gameplay stuff to report. However, I can talk a bit about the prep work I’ve done to get everything ready to go for my doomed team of investigators.
So Masks of Nyarlathotep is a beloved adventure; despite the fact that it was published in 1984, it still wins polls taken today for “best RPG adventure ever.” So what makes this adventure stand out? To me, there are several main things that this adventure does really well:
It does a great job of balancing mystery and investigation, adventure, combat, horror, all the things that people want from a game set in H.P Lovecraft’s universe. Not coincidentally, it also delivers a lot of different playtypes for people with different tastes – if you like combat, you’re going to get combat, if you like solving mysteries, there’s lots of that, if you like roleplaying in the Jazz Age, there’s lots of that.
It is a genuine sandbox game in ways that a lot of RPGs have never quite managed to pull off – after the initial chapter in New York, players can decide where in the world they want to go, whether it’s London, Shanghai, Cairo, Kenya, or Australia, and do the adventure in any order they want to. As a result, no two games of Masks are the same.
Despite being a sandbox game, there is a really engaging overarching plot that connects all the different points in the map, engages the players and makes them want to solve the mystery, and has some really amazing setpieces that (if you as the DM can successfully guide the party a bit) will blow your players’ minds.
Because Masks is so beloved, it also means that creators and fans have been improving it for almost as long as I’ve been alive. The game has gone through four editions, the most recent one from 2010. There is an amazing fan-made Companion that offers a whole bunch of supplemental content that you can use to smooth over a few rough patches or throw experienced players a curveball.
So if the DM is willing to put in the prep work, you can make this adventure really special. So what have I done?
(Rest is below the cut so that my players DO NOT READ THIS. Looking at you @elanabrooklyn and my other friends…)
Well, the first thing I’ve done is get the handouts ready.
Masks has no less than 45 official handouts, so that rather than just listen to the DM read a bunch of boxed text, the players have the actual clues in their own hands (just like their characters do) to try to solve the mystery. The Companion adds a bunch more optional handouts, so that when investigators are reading through occult manuscripts of forbidden lore, they actually have something to read as opposed to just being told what they’ve read. So I spent a good bit of yesterday and today printing and cutting out handouts:
The second thing I did was to re-familiarize myself with the game system (it’s been a while since I played Call of Cthulhu and the “Keeper of the Secrets” needs to know how people do skill rolls, combat encounters, going insane, and doing magic) and the adventure itself. There’s a lot of NPCs to keep in your head, and since you’re the one who needs to answer your players’ questions and spending time at the table leafing through books slows down play, you want to know what’s going on. I also consulted the fan-made Companion for some useful additional material that will make the adventure run more smoothly and more colorfully – more description of the hotel the adventure starts, backgrounds for murder victims in case the investigators decide to follow up that angle, a bonus scene set at a funeral where the players can meet some useful NPCs they might otherwise not think to contact…
The third thing I did was to develop the atmosphere. Since the game starts on New Years’ Day 1925, I did some research on major events that happened in 1924 to give the players a sense of historical context. I’ve found a Spotify playlist of music from the 1920s to put on in the background to get people in the right mindset to roleplay as well as rollplay.
Now all I need are my players to torment entertain.
Oh, man, there are tons of them. Off the top of my head?
Richard Attenborough (Gandhi, Bridge Too Far, Chaplin) and David Lean (Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge over the River Kwai) have a great gift for managing both the scope and color of history with real characters and dialogue that puts the ideas of the period up-front in a way that is exciting rather than leadenly serious.
Ken Loach (Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses, the Wind that Shakes the Barley) and Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, Murder of Stephen Lawrence) are great for social history films from a left-wing perspective, telling stories that get overlooked by mainstream cinema and history texts without being didactic or losing sight of the human story.
It’s that time of the week again, folks! Work begins on ASOS again (I’ve got outlines for the next five chapters and quotes plugged in to Dany I and Bran I, so I can start writing those up this weekend), but in the mean-time, what do we have on the Tumblrs? What is a Tyroshi trading cartel? Dany and Xaro’s arguments on slavery: Part I Part II Ironborn vs. Vikings as rulers? Why did Harren build a…
Ultimately, what these royal judicial reforms are all about is trying to create direct connections between the individual subject and the monarch, cutting through the various layers of subinfeudation.
So going to the Great Houses to ask for their help is kind of counter-productive, because it at least implicitly establishes the precedent that the Great Houses have a say in what royal policies will be in their realm. Instead, you want to assert that the Great Houses have an obligation as Lords Paramount holding their titles from the King, to uphold the King’s Justice.
As for the younger sons, you’d probably want to encourage some formal training, whether that’s by being sent to the Citadel or having them be tutored by a maester. Depends on what’s more practical.
The Faith Militant is a pretty close Expy for the monastic orders, with some differences. For one thing, the Poor Fellows are more reminiscent of the Peasant’s Crusade, with a strong dash of the peasant revolts of the 14th century.
The Warrior’s Sons are a lot closer to the literary imagination’s version of the monastic knightly orders – they’re knights, they protect pilgrims and holy sites, etc. The main difference, I would argue, is that (compared to the Warrior’s Sons who seem to answer directly to the High Sparrow) the historical orders were a bit more loosely affiliated with the church and more responsive to their own elected leadership, although there are some substantial exceptions where popes got more directly involved in their activity.
A veritable historical badass. For the uninitiated, Gotz was a mercenary who had fought for Frederick of Brandenburg, the Emperor Maximilian I, Albert IV of Bavaria, and a bunch of other Early Modern notables. Famously, Gotz lost his right arm during a siege when, in an incredibly unlikely turn of events, an enemy cannon ball hit the edge of his sword, forcing it down onto his hand and cutting it off.
So, there I think we see an element of Jaime’s mutilation. Unlike the Lannisters, however, Berlichingen was a practical man, if somewhat hot-tempered (Gotz was known for a number of feuds and duels, occasionally capturing various counts or raiding Nuremberg merchants), and he built himself a prosthetic that wasn’t made of a single piece of gold and thus completely useless. Gotz’ prosthetic used a system of hinges and straps to allow the hand to grasp objects. And so Gotz kept on keeping on.
Gotz was also a significant player in the German Peasants’ War of 1524-5, and although he ended up fighting on both sides, was one of the few professional soldiers who fought for the rebels. As a result, Goethe wrote a play about his life, in which Gotz is portrayed as a heroic individualist and national hero. Famously, during the third act, Gotz is put under siege by the imperial army, and when asked to surrender, says:
Mich ergeben! Auf Gnad und Ungnad! Mit wem redet Ihr! Bin ich ein Räuber! Sag deinem Hauptmann: Vor Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät hab ich, wie immer, schuldigen Respekt. Er aber, sag’s ihm, er kann mich im Arsche lecken!
(Me, surrender! At mercy! Whom do you speak with? Am I a robber! Tell your captain that for His Imperial Majesty, I have, as always, due respect. But he, tell him that, he can lick me in the arse!)
In your Summerhall theory that Egg intended to sacrifice his great-grandson, Rhaegar to give life to his dragon eggs.
Knowing Dunk, he would never have gone along with this. Do you think he could have been the one who ignited the wildfire to allow Rhaella and an infant Rhaegar to escape, dooming both him and Egg?
No, that’s not how I see it doing down, for one thing I don’t think Dunk would risk burning down an entire castle filled with people. I think the wildfire was always supposed to be part of the ritual, and Dunk’s role was in rescuing Rhaella and Rhaegar, and then going back in to rescue Egg.
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