Our Latest Publications

Cat Links MoN - Keeper, Peru

Killing Time – Between Peru & NYC

Posted on Keeper Doc

With the Father of Maggots returned to his putrid quiescence and friendship blossoming with Jackson Elias, your Players may be ready to return to their own lives and personal adventures. At this juncture, Keepers will be confronted with the question of how to pass the time between Prologue and the New York Chapter. You will find a number of opportunities to consider here.  First and easiest, you can simply fast forward to the Jackson Elias telegram and New York, which will probably leave Keeper and players feeling unsatisfied. Instead, you can simply ask your players to provide an explanation of what they have been up to over the intervening years. You could even elicit this

Read on…Killing Time – Between Peru & NYC

Cat Links Keeper Tips, Peru

Random Events – Peru

Posted on Keeper Doc

  Unlike the rest of the campaign, the Peru Prologue follows a linear track moving from Lima to Puno to the Ruins. Depending on how things develop in Lima, your players may choose to bypass events in Puno entirely. Some random events may serve to punctuate some of the travel time between locations or add some Peruvian spice in the populated locales. As mentioned in our general random encounters discussion, you need not roll on the table, but can simply select your favorite or best-fit event. Instead of using the specific encounter, you could just opt for something similar out of the category, such as a bit of Local Color like some native Quechua-speaking craftsmen

Read on…Random Events – Peru

Cat Links New York, Tomes

Mythos Tomes – Africa’s Dark Sects

Posted on Keeper Doc

Physical Description: Very poor condition with a cracked spine, blue pasteboard covers with marbled endpapers and tattered blue-stained page edge, multiple dark stains around the edges of dog-eared pages. Multiple marginal notes in two different hands. The bookplate inside the cover states the work belongs to Harvard University’s Widener Library Author: Nigel Blackwell, a descendant of British East India Company merchants, an amateur explorer with various assets throughout Africa. Reported to have died during an expedition to the Belgian Congo. Publication History: Immediately banned after a limited print run in 1920. Only 13 copies remained following the work’s seizure and destruction per the dictates of the Obscene Publications Act. The posthumously published book and its

Read on…Mythos Tomes – Africa’s Dark Sects

Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

The Whammy

Posted on Keeper Doc

“Evil-Eye Fleegle is th’ name, an’ th’ ‘whammy’ is my game. Mudder Nature endowed me wit’ eyes which can putrefy citizens t’ th’ spot!. There is th’ ‘single whammy’! That, friend, is th’ full, pure power o’ one o’ my evil eyes! It’s dynamite, friend, an’ I do not t’row it around lightly!” Quoted from Lil’ Abner, July 1951 In speaking with some MoN players deep into their campaigns, we have heard that despite how much they love the experience, a sense of rote tedium emerges through the almost mechanical process of collecting clues and interviewing NPCs. You may hear this yourself, particularly when playing a deeply investigative version of MoN.  This does not reflect

Read on…The Whammy

Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

A Fond Farewell – Jackson’s Funeral

Posted on Keeper Doc

He said really I just want to dance. Good and evil match perfect, it’s a great romance. And I can deal with some psychic pain. If it’ll slow down my higher brain. Veins full of disappearing ink…disconnecting from the missing link.  -Elliot Smith, “A Fond Farewell” After the brutal murder at the Hotel Chelsea on January 15, your Investigators should have a fistful of clues to direct them around New York. In the meantime, someone begins arranging Jackson’s affairs and organizing his funeral. The campaign book sets the date for January 17, a mere two days later, and offers a brief, open-ended description of the event. The full details of the somber arrangements fall upon

Read on…A Fond Farewell – Jackson’s Funeral

Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Getting to Room 410

Posted on Keeper Doc

After receiving the Telegram from Jackson Elias, your Investigators will likely be eager to meet with him and get the action underway. Following the campaign book, they will reunite with him at Hotel Chelsea, Room 410 at 8 pm, as per Jackson’s “cryptic and anxious” directions over the telephone. This pivotal movement at the beginning of your campaign will ratchet up player tension and excitement about meeting their friend. As Keeper, you face the decision of how and when to deliver this telephone message, which will deliver your players to the iconic, campaign-launching hotel room scene.  Most simply, you could deliver the telephone call and immediately fast-forward directly to the PCs walking down the Hotel

Read on…Getting to Room 410

Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Campaign Time Keeping & Tracking

Posted on Keeper Doc

On April 19th, 1919, The Carlyle Expedition departed London for Cairo. On Friday, March 18, 1921, the Investigators first met daring author Jackson Elias. By December 16, 1924, Jackson wired Jonah Kensington from London before returning the following day to New York. Finally, on Thursday, January 15, 1925, your Investigators took that one small step into Jackson’s Chelsea Hotel room and a giant leap forward into a dizzying world of clues and conspiracy.  Your players’ foray into the main campaign happens nearly six years after the ill-fated Carlyle Expedition formally gets underway. And the dates listed above? Just a small sample of those in the MoN timeline. To effectively guide our players through the intricacies

Read on…Campaign Time Keeping & Tracking

Cat Links MoN - Keeper

More on Pulp versus Classic – Setting the Tone

Posted on Keeper Doc

While Prospero House Publishing likes to consider itself a refined institution steeped in painstaking research, we cannot deny that we enjoy some juicy, heart-stopping adventure tales, as would any friend of Jackson. This legendary continent-hopping campaign has leaned heavily towards the pulp genre since its initial debut. Your players are trying to thwart a worldwide cult, including an adversary code-named the Pale Viper, from using a nuclear warhead to unleash the Dark Forces of the Elder Gods…I mean, come on.  As far as how you would care to frame this at your table remains entirely up to you and your players. The revised edition of MoN contains optional Pulp Cthulhu content and Pulp Considerations distributed

Read on…More on Pulp versus Classic – Setting the Tone

Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Should I Be Using the Masks Companion?

Posted on Keeper Doc

Prospective MoN Keepers scouring the Internet for advice on how to run their first campaign will come upon extensive praise for the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. This richly detailed, fan-produced 763-page guide drew from the extensive collective experience of Yog-Sothoth.com (YSDC) members and deserves all the accolades and recommendations you will find across forums and social media; however, the physical book arrived in 2017, just a year before the release of MoN 5th edition, as well as CoC 7th edition. The authors of this latest MoN edition revised and expanded a good deal of the content published for the campaign. Due to their attentive and detailed work, the 5th edition team supplanted some of the

Read on…Should I Be Using the Masks Companion?

Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Getting Organized – Suggested Keeper Tools

Posted on Keeper Doc

Now, if you saw my desk right now at the Prospero offices you would immediately discount any opinion I might hold on the topic of organization, but I beseech you for a bit of leeway here. Maybe I should just put it this way: if I can organize and run MoN amid these piles of papers, typewriter ribbons, and ink stains, so can you.  After your initial pass through the campaign books, you can begin your preparation in earnest, which will naturally include reviewing and preparing the first chapter or scenario you will be running for the campaign. Playing TTRPGs in our digital age offers a wide variety of tools to facilitate organization. While Keepers

Read on…Getting Organized – Suggested Keeper Tools