Category: New York

Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Masks and the Half Moon

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This post is brought to you by Steve Reynolds and Jose Manuel Caballero as an abridged excerpt from their ongoing herculean work The Unpleasant Complement to Masks: New York.  Warning: Contains Secrets of New York spoilers Secrets of New York (SoNY), a 6th Edition publication, provides an excellent supplementary resource for any Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the Big Apple. Being the world’s largest city in 1925, the thriving metropolis is well-served by having a wealth of period material to draw upon when the investigators venture far afield or wish to spend more time exploring the city. This sourcebook pairs quite nicely with Harlem Unbound in crafting a detailed depiction of 1920s New York.  

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Masks of Harlem Unbound – Part 2

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This post is brought to you by Steve Reynolds and Jose Manuel Caballero as an abridged excerpt from their ongoing herculean work The Unpleasant Complement to Masks: New York.  Warning: Contains Harlem Unbound Spoilers This is the second installment from the Unpleasant Complement to Masks: New York providing suggestions and options for incorporating Harlem Unbound’s scenarios into the New York Chapter. For an introduction and information about “The Contender” and “An Ode for the Lost” see Part 1.  YOUR NAME IN THE BOOK This historical scenario set in Dutch Haarlem brings the investigators into contact with the Black Man avatar of Nyarlathotep. This journey back to 1680 provides early direct contact with the campaign’s titular

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Masks of Harlem Unbound – Part 1

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This post is brought to you by Steve Reynolds and Jose Manuel Caballero as an abridged excerpt from their ongoing herculean work The Unpleasant Complement to Masks: New York.  Warning: Contains Harlem Unbound Spoilers Harlem Unbound is Chris Spivey’s wonderful supplement for Call of Cthulhu, currently in its second edition. In addition to incredible historical detail and game tools, this outstanding sourcebook contains brilliant and often heart-wrenching scenarios. If you have the time and inclination to include them in your MoN campaign, you can expect these adventures to enrich everyone’s experience and bring 1920s Harlem into the well-deserved spotlight. This is the first of several excerpts from the Unpleasant Complement to Masks: New York, in

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Another Dead Man in New York

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This is the first in a series of articles produced by the team of Steve Reynolds and Jose Manuel Caballero. They’ve paired painstaking research with their immense creativity to create an even more expansive and intriguing New York chapter. We will be sharing just a fraction of their efforts here at Prospero House for your consideration and use. In their first article, they will be helping Keepers integrate the classic Call of Cthulhu scenario, Dead Man Stomp. This is perfect timing as the latest version of this Harlem adventure is available in PDF for less than a dollar as part of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set.  Warning: Spoilers for Dead Man Stomp below! Building

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Cat Links China, Egypt, England, MoN - Keeper, New York

Eye of Light & Darkness – MoN MacGuffin?

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Even if you won’t be keeping score for your Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign, the Eye of Light and Darkness (EL&D) plays a critical role in disrupting the cultists’ efforts to open the Great Gate. This powerful warding spell relies upon clues scattered unevenly across the globe, and the impact of the spell in your campaign depends heavily upon your players’ destination choices. If your group travels to China initially they will rapidly uncover the entire truth about the ward; however, if they travel the conventional London-Egypt-Kenya route they will slowly uncover this end-stage element of the campaign all while lugging around a useless stone MacGuffin. We offer some suggestions and tweaks to make the broken

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Cat Links Egypt, England, New York

Mythos Monsters – Hunting Horror

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“Stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of gold, carmine, and purple, and still the dreamer fell. Cries rent the aether as ribbons of light beat back the fiends from outside. And hoary Nodens raised a howl of triumph when Nyarlathotep, close on his quarry, stopped baffled by a glare that seared his formless hunting-horrors to grey dust.” H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Originally mentioned in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, these ravening terrors serve  Nyarlathotep as flesh-tearing hunters and intimidating totems of his dark power. Numerous elements of the published campaign provide Keepers with opportunities to incorporate the hunting horror as a prominent, recurring menace throughout all chapters. While every Nyarlathotep avatar

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Cat Links New York

Tip’s Cocktail Hour – New York

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“Make your mark in New York, and you are a made man.”  -Mark Twain “Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.”  -Cab Calloway Have you ever taken a trip that started off so badly that you wanted to just turn around and go home, but you stuck with it out of principle or some other high-minded rationale — only to find that somehow the end of your trip was even worse?  I’m speaking today of our investigative cabal’s second journey: a fateful trip to Gotham that began with a brutal cultist murder and ended with a cascade of horrors and unspeakable mayhem, with property destroyed, sanity eroded, and countless lives lost.  But other than

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Cat Links Keeper Tips, New York

Planning Parties for Erica Carlyle

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The New York chapter allows the investigators to revel in the excitement of America’s Roaring Twenties, and the millionaire magnate Erica Carlyle offers some of the best opportunities to experience the decadence and splendor of this setting. You can use a party hosted by Erica Carlyle as a vivid set piece for your campaign. The Old Ways podcast crafted a glorious chapter climax set at Erica Carlyle’s eclipse party. We chose to present our social event as a mid-point diversion from the brewing danger in the New York chapter. You can use Erica Carlyle’s soirees as a venue for violence, a source of sordid Carlyle expedition rumors, a setting for a daring book heist, or

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Cat Links New York

Mythos Artifact – Mask of Hayama

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   A powerful mythos artifact, the Mask of Hayama, can be recovered from the basement of the Ju-Ju House amongst M’Dari’s trove of arcane devices. Investigators may interact with the Mask in several ways depending on their preferred investigative methods, and we will discuss a variety of potential play options for the Mask. Admittedly, in our current campaign, the ever-cautious Investigators chose to immediately store the item in a vault beneath the National City Bank of New York. In past campaigns, however, the Mask featured heavily in chapter-spanning hijinks. Investigating the Mask:  First, should your players choose to determine the origins of the mask, they may use an Anthropology roll or rely on an expert (or “local

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York, Tomes

Mythos Tomes – Life as a God

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Location: Roger Carlyle’s Library Physical Description: Poorly bound in scarred human skin over wood, numbering 150 pages in duodecimo format. No title on the cover, but the frontispiece features a low-quality faux-Egpytian styling opposite the handwritten title page. The content is handwritten in a brown-black scrawl that occasionally fades out.  Author:  Montgomery Crompton, an English soldier and amateur artist, who traveled to Egypt in 1805 and became a minor priest in the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. Originally from a prominent English family, he served in the military and became interested in Egyptian history and art. Research into Crompton while in London (Library Use) can be revealing. Originally born in 1780 and raised in Gloucester,

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