Propping up Nyarlathotep

Call of Cthulhu is a literary roleplaying game. Its play is predicated on the ability of the Player characters—or rather the Investigators—to be literate and so be able to read the array of clues to be found as part of the enquiries into the unknown. Newspaper reports, diary entries, letters, notes and marginalia, books and scrolls, and of course, the much-feared Mythos tomes such as the dread Necronomicon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten. Just as the Investigators—or at least some of them—are expected to be able to read them, then so are their players. Thus, we have clues and handouts, especially if the roleplaying game of our choice involves a mystery—mundane or Mythos related. There had been clues and handouts before, for example, U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the 1981 scenario for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition from TSR (UK), included a clue showing the pattern of signals needed to contact a smuggling ship, but Call of Cthulhu took the role of the clue and the handout to new heights as they became more and more integral to game play. And since newspaper reports, diary entries, letters, notes and marginalia, books and scrolls, and more are all modern, the Keeper can create her own—such as soaking paper in tea and then drying it to age it—and easily copy those provided in particular scenarios or campaigns. Which is what the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has done, and not just for its own campaigns, but your campaigns.

The Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is a big box of handouts and clues designed to be used with Masks of Nyarlathotep, the classic campaign for Call of Cthulhu, often regarded as one of the greatest ever produced by the hobby. This no mere set of tea-soaked, faux-aged handouts and whatnot, for just as Call of Cthulhu took the role of the clue and the handout to new heights, the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set takes the clues and handouts for Call of Cthulhu to new heights. There are over one hundred props in the box—telegrams, letters, a match box—just like in the original boxed set for Masks of Nyarlathotep, maps, charts, diary and ledger entries, business cards, photographs, memos, and newspaper clippings, oh so many newspaper clippings. Then there are bonus props. 

Open up the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set and the first thing that you see is a scroll, from the Shanghai chapter. It is not simply presented as a scroll on heavy paper, but done on cloth with actual wooden rollers so that it can be unfurled with ease. Of course, few of the players are going to be able to read the Chinese script, though some of their Investigators might (so there is a translation), but putting that down on the table gives it an immediacy that no mere sheet of paper would. And once given to the players it is going sit there, a constant reminder of both just how brilliant the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is and the fact that their Investigators really, really want to get it translated.

Alongside the scroll is an ‘Ediphone Wax Cylinder Case’ containing not a wax cylinder—as after all, who owns a device capable of playing one of those these days outside of a museum?—but a USB drive with eight MP3 audio recordings which can be played at the appropriate points in the campaign. And these are not done by anyone, but professional actors, so instead of having the Keeper portray Jack Brady telling the players and their Investigators what is going on once they eventually find him, the Keeper can play the recording and so pull them both into his story.

 

Below that are a set of six Nansen Passports, issued by the League of Nations and recognised around the globe plus a set of passport stamps. What this means is as a group begins the campaign, each player can record the details of his Investigator in the Nansen Passport and as he travels around the world as the part of the campaign, from Peru to New York to England to Cairo to Kenya to Australia to Shanghai and back again, the Keeper can affix the right stamps—which come on sheets designed to be peeled off and stuck in the passports—to indicate the Investigator’s entry and exit from each country. It is a fantastic physical record of an imagined travel and achievement, one that does not actually directly relate to the campaign itself, but it is a lovely bit of verisimilitude. As is the fact that the stamps include options for ‘Cancelled’, ‘Expelled’, ‘Deported’, ‘Return Forbidden’, ‘Code 1644 Psych. Hold’, and more is just a delight. Of course, six passports are not going to be enough unless the players and their Investigators are very lucky because Masks of Nyarlathotep is a notoriously deadly campaign and Investigator deaths, and retirements are highly likely. So, replacements are probably going to be needed.

Below that there is a double-sided sheet of paper detailing everything in the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set. This lists everything folder by folder, according to which chapter each handout appears in. Now unlike the props included in the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign itself, none of the props are numbered. Thus, they are more realistic and both Keeper and her players will need to keep track of which props their Investigators have discovered so far and which ones they have. Open up the first folder, for the new Peru chapter in the most recent edition of Masks of Nyarlathotep. A clipping has been torn from a newspaper, but it is no single article, there are others surrounding it as well as on the reverse. None of them have any bearing on the campaign, but they impart a sense of the wider world in 1925 and they are simply fun to read. The clipping is also on the right paper, so it has a flimsiness just as it should. Below that, there is a letter in Spanish, clearly torn from a notebook, then copies of period maps and of the scenario maps. The Peru chapter is quite short, but it sets up expectations for the rest of the campaign. The players will be wanting to see what is next and find out just how good each handout feels.

After Peru, the chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep get progressively more complex and so each corresponding folder in the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is thicker, the New York one notoriously so. The original start of the campaign in previous versions of Masks of Nyarlathotep, the discovery of Jackson Elias’ body in his Chelsea Hotel room is combined with a welter of clues and a corresponding torrent of handouts. So what the Investigators know about Jackson Elias, almost all of the front of a newspaper—with articles front and back, numerous other clippings, a business card or two, several slightly crumpled letters (one of which includes the letter it came in), a telegram, one photograph of Jackson Elias dead on his bed and another of the Dark Mistress in Shanghai (infamously poorly portrayed in previous versions of the campaign), a submission from Jackson Elias to his publisher, Prospero House, an excerpt torn from Nigel Blackwell’s Africa’s Dark Sects—complete with book stamp, maps of New York and Harlem, and even the book cover to Jackson Elias’ own work, ‘The Hungry Dead’. It all culminates in a folder containing the patient records for Roger Carlyle and the folder is sealed. That is just the one folder. There are seven folders, one for each chapter in the campaign, and they are all like that.

Physically, Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is a superlative presentation of the clues and handouts to the campaign. The right paper, a letter slightly crumpled as if pulled from an envelope (plus the envelope torn open itself), papers ripped from a diary, but held together by a paper clip. Perhaps the plainest of handouts are the ones that provide written copies of the audio files and details of things that the Investigators already know. They are the simplest and they do break the in-game feeling of the campaign, but they are all necessary. 

The Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is definitely not needed to run the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. It is entirely optional. Yet the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is a physical reflection of the effort which Chaosium, Inc. put into upgrading the previous version of the campaign to Masks of Nyarlathotep, Fifth Edition. It would seem almost like an oversight for the Keeper to keep the campaign’s improvements in terms of its presentation and support to herself and not share them with her players through the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set. Then there is the fact that Masks of Nyarlathotep is likely to provide somewhere between sixty and seventy hours of gameplay, so why not match that investment in terms of time with the physical investment of the Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set?

There is, of course, precedent for all of this. When Masks of Nyarlathotep was first published in 1984, it was a box set which famously included a matchbook from the Sleeping Tiger bar in Shanghai as amongst its first set of clues. It was an oddly physical thing to include, but it showed how clues and handouts could be presented and from that matchbook, H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has taken the idea and run and run with it… The resulting Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Prop Set is a magnificent presentation of the clues and handouts Masks of Nyarlathotep, bringing the investigation in the greatest roleplaying campaign ever published into a physical reality barely even imagined when it was first published in 1984.