Masks of Nyarlathotep by Larry DiTillio and Lynn Willis is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror role playing game based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This book is an extensive campaign that sends players around the planet trying to combat the plots of cultists of Nyarlathotep and is set in the 1920s.
The version reviewed is one of the editions of the printed book, which can still be found on Amazon; the fourth edition of the supplement is available as a watermarked PDF from RPGNow and Masks of Nyarlathotep is also available for Fantasy Grounds. The printed book is a softcover with 160 pages, with 4 pages being the front matter, one page the Contents and five pages the Introduction, although there is very little text on one of these pages and 2 pages are an Investigator Sheet.
The Introduction gives an overview of the events that have led up to where things currently stand, how the Keeper can handle things if players succeed or fail, the location of the five major principles from an expedition which the players end up following up on, some suggestions for how the keeper can be prepared beforehand for the various places visited, and a wild card band of cultists who can be thrown into various locations as needed. The rest of the book is divided into the five major locations visited.
New York, where the campaign actually starts, is mostly related to players finding out about an expedition that supposedly was killed in Kenya. They also tangle with the local Nyarlathotep cult, which itself originates in Kenya too.
London sees players investigating the foundation which organised the expedition, and confronting the major cultist in the area. Not all the action takes place in London either. There are several, irrelevant but dangerous, side adventures, one of which takes players to Derbyshire to confront a werewolf. The climax to this chapter also happens outside London, on the Essex coast.
Cairo has most of the events happen in and around that city, including at the Giza plateau and a complex underneath it, which owes a lot of inspiration to “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”, ghost-written for Harry Houdini by H. P. Lovecraft. In this complex a major ritual to Nyarlathotep is held. There is a minor diversion up the Nile as well.
Kenya is more spread out in its locations. It starts off in Mombasa before heading off to Nairobi (where players can meet the future Jomo Kenyatta) before heading off to the wilds where the expedition met his supposed fate, and where they can witness another major ritual to Nyarlathotep.
Shanghai is to some degree the climax of the campaign, with a major event happening here from a collaboration between Great Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep. Players could do this prior to some of the other chapters, but they may be hampered if this is the case. As well as visiting Shanghai itself, the ritual is happening on an island off the coast.
At the back of the book are 20 pages of Player Handouts, some of which are double sided. Many, but not all, of these replicate information found throughout the book in a convenient form for handing to players.
Masks of Nyarlathotep in Review
The Contents for this supplement are some of the most extensive seen in a Call of Cthulhu supplement, and are far more comprehensive – and, therefore, useful – that is normally the case. As well as the primary contents table for the various major sections and subsections, there are also contents tables for new spells and new skills, artefacts and items and interesting entities.
The book has full colour front and back covers and, quite unusually for the period in which this edition was published, there are eight full colour plates in the printed book. Everything else is in black and white. These are maps, some of which are specific to the supplement and appear hand drawn, whilst others are reproductions of genuine maps from the period, and a handful of illustrations relevant to the associated text, most a portion of a page but one that is full page. There are also a couple of black and white photographs. Unusually, the supplement lacks the non-player character portraits seen in many Call of Cthulhu supplements. This book is probably even more text heavy than the majority of the supplements for the game. At the bottom of some pages are various quotes from Lovecraft’s work.
There are some errors where the book refers the reader to another page, but the wrong page number is given. These are utterly wrong, not just a page or two out. There is also a section where a chunk of text is missing between one page and the next; whilst, probably, not a huge amount of text, it is noticeable.
As an aside, there is a character from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (which campaign was later incorporated into Cthulhu Classics) who apparently didn’t die, if that campaign has been run. Or, if the order of play is reversed, the character doesn’t die in this one, even if it appears that they have. There is also quite a lot of supplementary period information given on the various locations visited, which provides useful background.
This is not strictly speaking a purely linear campaign either. Players have to start in New York, but after that it is up to them which places they visit in which order. It is generally assumed that they will follow the chapter order, if only because this is the logical order to visit them in an era when international travel means travelling by ship; the locations are arranged from the closest to the furthest away from New York. Doing the chapters in this order is not absolutely essential, and suggestions are made for drawing players back to areas they may have missed. Even within the chapters, many of the events do not have to be done in a specific order; there is a useful section at the beginning of each giving a summary of the different leads that can be found, where they can be found, and what they lead to.
One thing that does strike as being slightly odd is the collaboration between the Great Old One Great Cthulhu and the Outer God Nyarlathotep in the last chapter. This alliance doesn’t seem that much in accord with the Cthulhu Mythos in general. It is quite a minor part of the book, and a minor niggle though.
The overview of the climactic action at the end of each chapter tends to give the impression that the investigators have failed to stop it from happening – which in call of Cthulhu is actually quite possible. As usual, many characters are likely to end up dead or insane by the end of the campaign; some suggestions for how they can be prepared for this are given in the Introduction.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is a complex and dangerous campaign to run, but there is a wealth of information provided and some useful cross-references and this is an excellent, if typically lethal, Call of Cthulhu campaign that will take a long time to play out to its conclusion.
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