Pulp Masks of Nyarlathotep

[Grimmshade]

Has anyone run Masks of Nyarlathotep using Pulp Cthulhu? I'm wondering if it remains great with pulp, and what pulp level is recommended. 

I just started Two-Headed Serpent, but I'm thinking about grabbing Masks for later while it's easily available. It's something I've always wanted to own anyway.  I'm just not sure how my group would take a long campaign in classic Cthulhu with high PC body counts. 

[DreadDomain]

I haven't but MoN has a great pulp feel to it and there boxes discussiong adapting scenes to Pulp throughout the book so I suspect it woul run quite well.

[alter]

I was running MON with Pulp Rules for one player. It was only solution for not having new character each and every new location on the road.

[stadi]

15 hours ago, alter said:

I was running MON with Pulp Rules for one player. It was only solution for not having new character each and every new location on the road.

How well did it work? What kind of player character did you use? According to the normal rules, or did you give more skill points? Did you play with NPC or was tha character alone? How much did you have to change the fights so that the one character could win them? Even with Pulp rules that would not be obvious.

[Grimmshade]

I went ahead and ordered Masks today. Everything I read about it sounded amazing. Looking forward to running it after Two-Headed Serpent. 

I've read some articles saying it runs even better as a pulp campaign than purist. 

[alter]

23 hours ago, stadi said:

How well did it work? What kind of player character did you use? According to the normal rules, or did you give more skill points? Did you play with NPC or was tha character alone? How much did you have to change the fights so that the one character could win them? Even with Pulp rules that would not be obvious.

I've run MoN for my wife. She played a criminal character with two pulp talents. I had to use Pulp Rules and with her, there were two NPCs, You can call them Mooks. So some of the Sanity blasting encounters were first shown to those two. I didn't change many fights, but you should know that I run it based on the first Polish Edition from the 90s, so there were many places in this text that I as a Keeper need to fill. So it was easier to do that.  

[tendentious]

Spoilers.

I ran MON using Pulp rules. I souped it up, giving the investigators one pulp talent at the start, and letting them gain another at the end of each chapter until they had 4 talents each. I also allowed them to swap out one talent between chapters, as we discovered which talents work and which ones don't.

There were only a couple of times where people had to spend all Luck to avoid certain death - like being engulfed by a shoggoth. Everyone finished the campaign with the same characters that they started with, and I didn't feel the need to hold back or to "play nice." I even souped up some climactic encounters. For example, I figured that if there was a chakota in the pit in NY, then there should be an even bigger chakota in the Mountain of the Black Wind. And this chakota could emerge from the pit and attack the investigators.

I think by the end that almost everyone had taken the talent that grants more LUCK at the start of each session, and a lot had taken the talent that allowed SAN loss to be bought off point-for-point with LUCK. These are easily the most powerful talents. By the time one of the investigator's SAN was lower than his Cthulhu Mythos he basically didn't have to worry about SAN loss anymore. 10 points of SAN loss becomes 5 because of high Cthulhu Mythos, and 5 points of LUCK takes that to 0.

I felt that the Pulp rules we used made the game highly enjoyable, as MON is a combat-heavy, pulp adventure style campaign as written. From my experience I would recommend giving the Pulp rules a try.

[Grimmshade]

22 minutes ago, tendentious said:

Spoilers.

I ran MON using Pulp rules. I souped it up, giving the investigators one pulp talent at the start, and letting them gain another at the end of each chapter until they had 4 talents each. I also allowed them to swap out one talent between chapters, as we discovered which talents work and which ones don't.

There were only a couple of times where people had to spend all Luck to avoid certain death - like being engulfed by a shoggoth. Everyone finished the campaign with the same characters that they started with, and I didn't feel the need to hold back or to "play nice." I even souped up some climactic encounters. For example, I figured that if there was a chakota in the pit in NY, then there should be an even bigger chakota in the Mountain of the Black Wind. And this chakota could emerge from the pit and attack the investigators.

I think by the end that almost everyone had taken the talent that grants more LUCK at the start of each session, and a lot had taken the talent that allowed SAN loss to be bought off point-for-point with LUCK. These are easily the most powerful talents. By the time one of the investigator's SAN was lower than his Cthulhu Mythos he basically didn't have to worry about SAN loss anymore. 10 points of SAN loss becomes 5 because of high Cthulhu Mythos, and 5 points of LUCK takes that to 0.

I felt that the Pulp rules we used made the game highly enjoyable, as MON is a combat-heavy, pulp adventure style campaign as written. From my experience I would recommend giving the Pulp rules a try.

That's super helpful! Thanks! I'll definitely run it with Pulp Cthulhu. 

I'm running Two-Headed Serpent now, and I have one PC with both of the Talents you listed. He gets more Luck each session, and has used it to buy off all San loss so far. I was worried this would diminish the game, but in the end he's still susceptible to combat, etc., and can't do some of the cool stuff the other PC's can (with their Talents.)

[tendentious]

Just to add that although the investigators had 4 Pulp Talents by the end, I did limit them to one talent from each of the 4 categories: physical, mental, combat, miscellaneous. 

[Grimmshade]

That's a cool idea!