I recently started my group on Masks of Nyarlathotep, using Call of Cthulhu (CoC) 7th edition rules. It has been a while since I played or run any games for the CoC system and not much has changed for 7th edition. Most notably all characteristics are now percentile based to mirror up to the skill system this game uses, overall this makes things much cleaner and user friendly.
None of my players had previously played CoC and are genuinely unfamiliar with the rule system and the lore as a whole, this is probably a good thing since it makes the fear and surprises in-game that much meaningful. I decided to do a session zero to walk through character creation as a group and go over rules briefly, I needed the refresher as well to be completely honest. My players had fun getting into the role of their 1920's investigators and with that, we set off for adventure.
The 7th edition remake of Masks has a prologue chapter to get the players better associated with Jackson Elias, the Peru chapter. With some brief introductions and character fluff out of the way, the group was introduced to Jackson and the main antagonist of this chapter of the campaign, Augustus Larkin, a man under the influence of Nyarlathotep. His hidden agenda is to free the Father of Maggots, a primal mask / avatar of Nyarlathotep that is imprisoned in Peru. Luis de Mendoza is Larkin's accomplish and peruvian vampire of sorts, these creatures will turn out to be primary combative encounters throughout this chapter.
The players were hired on to help excavate the site wherein the Father of Maggots was contained under the guise of "let's get some gold". Some good roleplay exchanges led to some immediate trust issues with Larkin which were further amplified based on information that Jackson provided to the group away from Larkin and de Mendoza. The group had a couple of days before the expedition set out for highlands of Southern Peru, with some nudging from Jackson Elias, they decided to visit the local university and a friend of Jackson, Professor Sanchez, lead on Peruvian history and archaeology, to do some research. My players were all coming from and RPG background of "kill the monster, get the treasure" so a lot of this investigative type style of play was new to them, so having Jackson tag along with the group for those prompts and hints helped out in this section of the campaign.
During this visit, the party had their first run with the horrors of CoC. While on errand for the professor, they discover Sanchez's assistant Riza drained of all fat in the basement archive area, some creature had torn open her chest, sucking the literal life out of her. Some of the group rushed back to the Professor, while one of my players who happened to be playing a doctor, performed a quick autopsy on the corpse of Riza. This particular player did a great job with the role play interaction and for the most part sanity rolls had been made at this point.
The primary mechanic that grinds down and likely defeats the investigators in CoC is the sanity check. All investigators have a starting sanity score and through play and encounters with the mythos of the game, that number slowly depletes, with major losses prompting bouts of temporary and indefinite madness which further fuel the role playing for this game. I've always been a fan of normal people in abnormal situations for my games, even in D&D, so to see an actual mechanic account for this is great.
Back to the action...those checking in on the professor arrive just in time to find that some man had "kissed" him. The Peruvian vampire nemesis in this scenario, de Mendoza, is able to feed larvae to a host that in turn transforms the unwilling victim into a vampire themselves. The group gives chase, but are unable to catch up with the man before he disappears into the busy streets of Lima. The same doctor discovers a moving mass beneath the skin of professor, the larvae, but decides to not take action to remove it...guess that won't come back to trouble him later...the group is strongly suspecting the man was in fact de Mendoza, the accomplice of Larkin, they decided some direct questions with the expedition leader were in order.
Larkin and de Mendoza had separate rooms in a close proximity hotel to that of the group, but their need for privacy would soon be evident to the players upon their visit. The players find Larkin in his room, shades drawn in darkness, in a heroine induced sleep...wakening as they stumble into the room he pleads innocence and plays the dumb card in regards to de Mendoza's true nature...the investigators continued to press which prompt Nyarlathotep to take over Larkin. Eyes turning an fully black, something almost alien, his posture and demeanor growing as his voice deepens to a commanding tone. I had one of the players make a sanity roll upon seeing his true visage, to which he annoyingly asked if there was a saving throw....too bad junior, welcome to Call of Cthulhu...to be continued....
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