Last Sunday we finished the Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's been the 3rd time I run the campaign in my life (the first I run the complete version, though), and also for the first time we've played all the chapters. My previous groups always skipped Kenya and Australia, and one of them even skipped Egypt.
33 sessions, almost a year (from May 2010 to last week). 11 investigators made the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good of the world. The property damage cannot be assessed. Lots of cultists killed. 2 nuclear explosions. One Mask of Nyarlathotep sent back to Hell with grenades. All the mysteries solved, the Dark God's plan totally thwarted (one of the focal points of the Great Portal became a nuclear crater, which is a better way of preventing it from being used than engraving an Eye of Light and Darkness on it). The lost city of Pnakotus explored.
It's been fucking glorious. Few things may compete with the joy of a finished campaign, but...
... the problem with such a sandboxy campaign as this is that it may trail off. I will explain.
In MoN you can go to several locations (you start and NY, with clues pointing to Shanghai, London, Egypt, Kenya and Australia), and fuck up the shit of the cultists, in any order you want. Thing is, certain locations are more decisive than others to the Plan. So, you may kill everyone and his dog in location X, but the Plan goes on. You break a certain artifact in location B, and the cultists are fucked.
My players did that before the last chapter (right before it, actually), so the last part trailed off a bit because the palyers felt that the game was over and they were investigating just because of sheer hate and as a cautionary measure (if we kill them they won't come after us for messing their plans). But anyway, the last sessions were not as brilliant as I would have wanted them to be.
Anyone has had similar experiences, finding that the most climactic part of a campaign has happened before the actual end?
Wow, that sounds brilliant (despite the slightly anti-climatic ending)! I'm horribly envious.
I would really love to run MoN someday. My current CoC campaign is too sporadic for something like that (we've had three sessions over the past three months). Consequently, I've focused on distinct, separate adventures so far (one from the core book, two from 'Mansions of Madness').
One day, though, one day I'll run Masks...
Quote from: Akrasia;452485Wow, that sounds brilliant (despite the slightly anti-climatic ending)! I'm horribly envious.
I would really love to run MoN someday. My current CoC campaign is too sporadic for something like that (we've had three sessions over the past three months). Consequently, I've focused on distinct, separate adventures so far (one from the core book, two from 'Mansions of Madness').
One day, though, one day I'll run Masks...
I think every CoC Keeper should run these beast at least once. Heck, I think every GM should run this beauty at least once.
I am also envious. I've owned MoN for years and years but have never run it, save for a very brief and abortive opening -- the less said, the better.
Awesome!
I salute you and Mask of Nyarlathotep. Very cool.
I must get this campaign up and running soon - the pretty new black/gold edition is just sitting there, screaming to be played.
Congrats, Imperator. Anti-climactic ending or no, it sounds like you and your group had an awesome time with Masks. I, too, am very jealous of you.
Epic campaign. Glad it was a blast. :)
Its a spectacular campaign, alright. We ran it a few years back. Had no problem with the climax, it happened on the rocket island like it should...
RPGPundit
I wish the forum had a Like button. I have nothing to add except way to go, Ramon. That's awesome!
Excellent! Masks of Nyarlathotep had a huge impact on how I design and run my adventures and campaigns.
Over the years I've come up with some techniques to deal with (or at least mitigate) the "premature conclusion" problem in open-ended structures like this. Check out Part 5 of this series (http://thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/node-design/node-design.html).
I have never gotten to play in a CoC premade. But have heard nothing but awesome things about MoN....kudos and huzza sir.
Thank you all for the kind words :) Amd a very interesting link, Justin, I''ll check it out.
Actually, the ending of the campaign has caused a bit of an argument between my group. Some of my players wanted to keep playing Cthulhu as they had several options for new campaigns (they had clues hinting at
QuoteThe Shadows of Yog-Sothoth
,
QuoteInnsmouth
and
QuoteThe Day of the Beast
), and also they were starting an involvement with the P section of the US Navy (the forefathers of Delta Green). But some of the players wanted a bit of a change after almost one year, so after some discussion and some voting we settled for Mutants in Shadows, an Spanish game about... well, Jason Bourne meets the X-Men. So, for the moment, we're set, though we will probably come back to CoC pretty soon.
Anyway, I'd like to get some answers to the question: have someone similar happened to you? Can you remember any campaign where the ending session was not the most climactic event?
Quote from: Imperator;452806Can you remember any campaign where the ending session was not the most climactic event?
Certainly. Often the PCs will have essentially defeated the main villain/threat in one session, but there remain a few loose ends to tie up, and/or they didn't even realise that was the
main villain/threat. This is why rpgs aren't like movies, they're messy like real life.
If you mean in general, and not just Masks or CoC, yes. My Pendragon campaign had its climax-session in the penultimate game session, with the battle of Camlann; I offered the players the chance to stop there but they all wanted to play through the last post-mort-d'arthur session where Lancelot shows up and kicks everyone's ass and then England is abandoned to the saxons. In fact, it turned out to have been quite worth it, as the denouement really tied things up nicely.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Imperator;452806Anyway, I'd like to get some answers to the question: have someone similar happened to you? Can you remember any campaign where the ending session was not the most climactic event?
Yep, twice recently...
In our Earthdawn game we'd been tracking down a big bad nethermancer for over a year of RL time. We'd had a few close calls but had yet to meet him face to face.
When we finally caught up to him we were caught off guard, my PC was woefully unprepared and when the fight broke out he got knocked unconscious by the first blow. Another PC started fighting the wrong guys. The GM fudged it by having some supernatural NPCs do most of the work.
We'd had MUCH shinier moments earlier on.
Also, just as the PCs were entering the room... now knowing the big moment was at hand... the GM completely fucked up the mood (he even had music playing) by dropping out of 'GM voice' to tell us some Buffy anecdote.
I yelled at him and he went back to the game.
In our Deadlands campaign we had a big showdown battle with a besieged town vs. and army of undead we'd had an ongoing issue with... they'd been dogging us for months.
Our PCs went after the leader and his guard... but every one of the bad guys got taken out by NPCs... the PCs didn't land more than a few shots that had no effect.
Also, the GM made no attempt to portray the larger battle going on around us... so it didn't feel very big.
There'd been a lead-in battle a month before that was much more interesting/exciting.
I don't want it to sound like our GM's suck... they don't.
Very cool. I've run MoN twice, once in CoC, and once as part of a DnD campaign where for a fun excursion (half a year or so out of a decade-plus campaign) the characters were transported to 1920s Earth. It is up there with I6 Ravenloft as my favorite published adventure/campaign/setting.
On the other topic: yes, I've had an anti-climactic end to a campaign on a couple of occasions. In my case, it happened because the campaign was winding down only as a result of me moving away, and caught up in all the business of moving, I didn't have the time to give the campaign a proper send-off. :(
Quote from: YcoreRixle;452987Very cool. I've run MoN twice, once in CoC, and once as part of a DnD campaign where for a fun excursion (half a year or so out of a decade-plus campaign) the characters were transported to 1920s Earth.
Interesting. Makes me want to actually translate the Masks into a magical medieval first edition AD&D campaign, keeping the settings and circumstances and all, but basically translating it to a medieval fantasy logic and milieu. The challenge would be to keep the "mystique" of the Carlyle expedition and make it shine in a different way than the 1920s archeological expedition it is in the original. It's worth some thought on my part, anyway.
Quote from: Benoist;452997Interesting. Makes me want to actually translate to Masks into a magical medieval first edition AD&D campaign, keeping the settings and circumstances and all, but basically translating it to a medieval fantasy logic and setting. The challenge would be to keep the "mystique" of the Carlyle expedition and make it shine in a different way than the 1920s archeological expedition it is in the original. It's worth some thought on my part, anyway.
My first instinct would have them be something like the leaders of a lost crusade, or a round-table style doomed knightly order.
Quote from: Cole;452998My first instinct would have them be something like the leaders of a lost crusade, or a round-table style doomed knightly order.
Or a group of adventurers that simply vanished? Occam's razor, you know. Or a combination of one or several of these at the same time. Like the Templar Knights pillaging the Holy Land, you know?