Our Latest Publications

Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Of Hail Marys & Full-Court Shots

Posted on Keeper Doc

You can’t make the shots you don’t take. And you can’t land the crits you don’t roll. Keepers will hear this all the time, “my [fill in the blank skill] is only 5%, I’m not going to bother.” But wait, why not? Aren’t players supposed to love rolling dice? Sure, it’s unlikely to succeed, but when it does your entire table may remember it as a resounding success and a fun campaign moment. Trust me, even those clutch extreme Accounting rolls. You can facilitate this fun in several ways and might be something you want to bring up during Session Zero and remind your players about during your sessions. Instead of overtly asking your players

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, Peru

The Dark God’s Pawns: Larkin-Carlyle Parallels

Posted on Keeper Doc

We’ve already introduced the idea that the Peru Prologue can provide some excellent foreshadowing for your Main Campaign. Now we will expand upon that by touching on critical parallels that can result in chilling echoes in your player’s minds as they encounter similar situations and characters. In my opinion, one of the best such examples can be found in similarities between Peru’s Nyarlathotep pawn, Augustus Larkin, and the Main Campaign’s critical, but absent NPC, Roger Carlyle. Doing a little extra work to craft memorable similarities can help your Players develop a more nuanced depiction of Carlyle as they move further into their investigation. Both Carlyle and Larkin originate from wealthy backgrounds with the latter growing

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, Peru

Past Prologue (or Should I run Peru?)

Posted on Keeper Doc

Taking place in March 1921, the Peru Chapter offers an optional prologue to the MoN Campaign providing introductions to our titular Mythos villain and our doomed protagonist Jackson Elias. Easily contained within 3-4 sessions, your players will join an expedition with promises to plunder treasure from a remote temple, but instead find themselves fighting off fat-sucking vampire monsters (lipo-pires?), facing a low-level Crawling Chaos minion, and being lightly introduced (hopefully!) to Nyarlahotep’s Peruvian Mask. I can’t overstate how much I appreciate this new chapter in adding to the overall MoN experience. It adds a delightfully pulpy South American flavor to the campaign, which now excludes only Antarctica from the player’s travels. Does anyone smell a

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, MoN - Player, Peru

MoN Chapter Inspo – Peru

Posted on Keeper Doc

If you’re planning to run the Peru prologue, consider investing a little time familiarizing yourself with famed explorer Hiram Bingham, who “discovered” (or, rather, made public) Machu Picchu in 1911. The 1954 film, Secret of the Incas, drew from Bingham’s exploits and was filmed in Cuzco and Machu Picchu. This Paramount production stirred interest in South American tourism and is often cited as direct inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s got some fantastic pulp features. Indy’s franchise decided to return its roots in 2008 with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It may not be the best film in the pantheon, but it does feature Peru and high pulp content. 

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Cat Links Campaign Narrative, MoN - Keeper, MoN - Player

Introducing Our Investigators

Posted on Keeper Doc

As these player characters will be the first to make frequent appearances throughout our writings here, as well as our campaign narrative, we would like to take a moment to provide you with a brief introduction to them with linked character sheet PDFs should you wish to plunder them for ideas or backup characters.  John Edgar Sloane , dilettante: As a teenager, he lost his wealthy parents in the sinking of the Titanic. Went on to become a star football player at Yale before serving in the Great War. Now 26 years old and haunted by his childhood and trench experiences, John continues to live fully in the dark alleys of North Africa and brothels

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Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Failure is Fun!

Posted on Keeper Doc

Nothing satisfies like an extreme success, right? Players certainly get a thrill from that extra piercing damage pinning the looming cultist to the wall, but if you ask me, die for die, nothing gets everyone at the table roleplay mileage like a glorious failure.  Let me explain. We tabletop gamers often view our dice as binary win/loss generators. Sometimes they grace us with extra big wins. But when they “fail” us we tend to look at it as an emotional disappointment. We threaten to throw them away, grind them into dust or replace them with a new set. Alternatively, Keepers can encourage our players away from this mindset. A dice “failure” needn’t necessarily be a

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Cat Links Keeper Tips, MoN - Keeper

Assembling the Team

Posted on Keeper Doc

So, back to those players. Your first organizational task will be assembling your team of intrepid investigators. These folks need to be aware this isn’t a casual campaign. It’s a time commitment…that is if they intend to see it to completion. Due to the length of the campaign, it is not uncommon for players to drift in and out, which can work well with the range of international settings (we’ll discuss this in future content). When enlisting my current round of Investigators, we were upfront about the time commitment and depth of MoN. We made it clear they would not be held hostage by the campaign, and if they ever lost interest they were free

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper

So You Wanna Run Masks of Nyarlathotep?

Posted on Keeper Doc

Perhaps, you’re a veteran keeper with SAN in the low teens. Maybe you’re a brave CoC novice looking to get your feet wet with what’s been called the greatest adventure RPG campaign ever. Or you’re somewhere in between, staring at that gorgeous Masks of Nyarlathotep (MoN) slipcase sitting on your shelf gathering dust…calling to you…haunting your dreams. No matter, you have found yourself here. So you really want to run Masks of Nyarlathotep? A brilliant question. This globe-spanning campaign of epic proportions is exactly that. Just massive. And immensely rewarding. You will potentially cover six different locations (not counting Peru) with several optional side adventures. The adventure will require hours upon hours of insanely awesome

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