As for how Nyarlathotep chooses his victim, have everyone at the table make a Luck roll. Whoever rolls the lowest accidentally cuts themselves on the dagger, becoming the cursed PC.
I matched it up with another module, The Auction, and had both occur in Vienna. The auction house, after being robbed a few months back, brought everybody back, with the new additions, to view the unsold items, and the new Egyptian pieces. Then the second robbery occurs.
Man, listening to you describe these CoC adventures makes me want to get into this with my D&D group - gonna have to try that sometime. Love your vids and love Jack!
Thanks. If you ever decide to give it a spin as a 1-shot or the like, check out the 7e Quickguide. It comes with The Haunting and is cheap as free for the PDF. www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128304/Call-of-Cthulhu-7th-Edition-QuickStart-Rules?src=hottest_filtered&coverSizeTestPhase2=true&word-variants=true&affiliate_id=1017650
Hey i hooe you eventually did it. I did a session for my usual group because our dm was getting burnt out. Did the first session tonight actually, and it went amazing. My group is currently dealing with the Speedbumps of moving here from DnD 4e.
@@ladybuzzkillington2072 Wow, people still play 4e? I suppose I don't have room to talking I saw the rules changes in 4e and I ran straight into Paizo's arms.
@@skillganon606 lol we have made the move to 5th and are running Curse of Strahd which is mind fucking all the players. Cause im usually the grim dark horror dm and he is the epic fantasy heroes dm.
Give the player inflicted with the curse a rare and and limited potion that blocks the mind crushing daily effects of the blight. This will give a sense of urgency, and yet limit the curses effect. Once in Thoth's complex there should be a depiction on a wall that can be spotted with a notice roll that shows ghouls being cowed by Thoth's Dagger. Best to have this after at least one ghoul attack. Like a lot of early CoC modules this one is a player killer.
Ya know, I don't play CoC, and tbh nor do I plan to any time soon (starting as a 5e D&D DM is already being quite a challenge) but boy oh boy, do I love your videos; These CoC adventures have such interesting and fun stories, it's a joy to listen your experiences with them. Also, "The Mummy" is one heck of an entertaining movie, love it to bits.
Man you took the words right out of my mouth. I stumbled upon Seth by accident and ate up his DnD content quickly. Got hooked on his style and now I look forward to any video, no matter what the system is.
You can always pick up a CoC module and adapt it for DnD. A lot of eldritch stuff can be found in D&D and anything that can't be found can be a reskinned monster from D&D, like using a gelatinous cube as a shoggoth
@David I don't agree with you. 5e combat is hard to finetune, the swinginess of the 5e combat rules (which is d20+(5~9)) make it either a cakewalk for the party or a TPK while you try aiming for something in between. That said, I DM'd 5e and Keepered CoC7th and I prefer CoC, it's really easy and preps a lot easier then DnD, especially when the players experience more, since a bit of the world has already been built.
I'm getting ready to run Knave and I've been watching these videos for adventure ideas. They're great for getting ideas and inspiration for adventures!
Just saying, having been to Egypt, the easiest way to get a gun into country would be to bribe customs. Bakshish is, or was, ten years ago, endemic. This is more so if you were an obvious Westerner. You could bribe anyone for absolutely anything.
I’d say just rent a machine shop in even the strictest countries and you’ve got a machine gun pretty quick and easy. You’re not wrong about western looking people able to bribe though between me and my clean English, close to glow in the dark bright white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes combined with my best friend who was dark curly hair, brown eyes and just as white threw folk off enough to get our foot in the door most places, even more so when they figure out he was Muslim and I was educated Catholic and he spoke Russian, Arabic, English and Spanish. I had always been the smooth talker between the two of us but his ability to be fluid combined with that made us unbeatable. Depending where we were sometimes we’d pretend that he was Jewish or Christian or I was Muslim or Jewish if need be. I know a little Yiddish and Muslim nomenclature. He was Eastern European but I always looked “more” Eastern European which was even funnier that I had the right accent when I spoke Russian to sound like I was local. If I had to figure out how to get guns while in Egypt I’d prob go through the local cops and/or military, talk them up with some cash an they’d most likely be game if you are about to talk up that you’re not going to do anything bad with them. In places like Eastern Europe for Pennies on the dollar you’d get aks and grenades like nothing as long as you go through the right referrals.
To skip the boat ride, have the auction in Egypt or adjacent to it. This would also help start the characters off balance as they could be vacationing.
Alternately, you could have a dangerous potion or ceremony that staves off or reduces the dagger's effect temporarily, but requires something from the other characters (blood, pow, sanity) or runs the risk of attracting or releasing other dangerous creatures or effects on this around them.
I'm a big fan of this adventure (at least with some heavy editing). Used it successfully as a prologue for the massive Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. It is a great way to show the general themes of the overarching story and makes it easy to see whether your players will like the rest. In addition you can seed some interesting plot points, items, locals and NPCs (Hey there Jackson Elias at the auction) for use during the campaign. Spoilers ahead. For anyone loving props as much as i do: get a book copy of the Egyptian book of the Dead and give it out as a representation for the original which is also sold at the aucion (with some relevant additions). I made sure to let that text seem as interesting as the dagger ;). Makes for some fun reading and discussion material on the journey to Egypt. And while at it, I gave them conflicting informations about Egyptian gods that showed many of them as potential threats without directly pointing towards one of them and only hinted subtly at Thoth being the betrayer who poisoned the people. I personally used Nyarlathotep himself much sooner, coming to their help as another "friendly" NPC after all the fake and real coptic priests sowed immense distrust and quarells with cultits have basically destroyed the village towards the end. With the clues from the Kairo museum it is possible to realize who he is - and my players did - but they chose to go along with his "guidance" to the temple anyway. I simply made it clear that they can only properly stop the curse at the temple itself and so they chose not to risk a fight with the elder being out in the open. But if they did - you can just say that he was an illusion (I prefer "illusion drapped over an unwilling victim turned into a puppet" - nice little murder your players just comitted) ... with his Thoth persona currently shackled inside the temple. This way, I was able to skip most of the dungeon crawling and way too dangerous random encounters via Thoth guiding them down most of the way before he vanished into the tunnels not far from the final part. He obviously made sure to guide them in a really creepy and menacing way, hinting at the things outside of the flame's flickering lights, walking by remnants of disturbing sights. Also: Best moment was when one of the PCs went insane after they won the big battle and almost killed a cultist on the altar using the dagger while Thoth's "corpse" just smoldered into non-euclidian space right next to it ... yeah that wouldn't have gone wrong at all.
I can't understand why but I'm always drawn back at your reviews , even after a long dm burnout two module reviews and I'm ready to run again. Thank you
Great videos! I'd love to sit in on a session with you at the helm. I would love to see a video of one of your games or even a podcast! Regardless, as an amateur DM, your video's have been invaluable and I can't wait for your next one. Fingers crossed for "Masks of Nyarlathotep." I plan on getting that right after I finish running my PC's through "Curse of Strahd."
So wait... This adventure has one of the party members getting cursed, and they have to travel to Egypt to remove the curse and defeat the villain responsible for it? This is basically Stardust Crusaders from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure!
You know, I was actually thinking about that one day and wondered if I would be able to completely blindsight players with that sudden revelation. Like, make Thot's Dagger a Stand-arrow, effectively. Instead of the thief at the auction just getting away only to be pulled in by the cops, have the guy stab one of the party-members, who goes out cold for a period. The moment he wakes up though, he is suddenly followed along by this unseen, humanoid specter with otherworldly powers. Suddenly, the party finds themselves pursued by others that share this power, desperate to claim that dagger. As the party awaken to stands one by one, they eventually find out more about this power and of a man in Egypt looking to awaken to an even higher level of power, the requiem, and needs that dagger in order to complete the job. A nice way of extending the campaign to standalone-length and just to fuck with people by the time they realize what you are doing.
I've run this adventure 5 years ago. One of my players never forgot how he tried tho shoot the horror abducting Burtus and how he subsequently was accused of killing and throwing his body overboard. Great times!
I haven't had the opportunity of playing Call of Cthulhu in many decades, be it as keeper or investigator, but this adventure scenario is the one that has stuck with me. One reason is it's good. Arguably more so in concept than (all I know is the DW-published version) presentation. The other reason it has stuck was the amount of work I had to put in after the first disastrous as-is run if I was ever going to use it again. I must have run it as many times as years between it's publication and my university studies (including post and post-postgrad) becoming a greater threat to sanity than anything the mythos could ever throw my way will. I have an alternate suggestion for who gets cursed: have it be an NPC in whom the investigators are emotionally and/or professionally invested. Make it abundantly clear to your players that should they fail to save the cursed one, the next time you play, they (your players) will be moving to their backup characters, regardless. The blow of the loss was just all too much for your mains and they've decided to retire - Technical TPK.
After all your modifications sounds like a heck of a adventure Seth! and The Cairo Guidebook also looks really cool. Great review Seth love all your videos! :)
I have a video to pitch for your GM video series: Managing Sanity. I don't get to GM the game very often and one of the toughest things I've had to learn is not just causing players to go indefinitely insane and ending a game. You always give suggestions for managing sanity in your module reviews, but I think it would be great to hear your "axioms" that you use in making those decisions. Do you track your players sanity scores independently? Insanity is a huge narrative component of the game, but I often fear BRAIN TPKs in this game. Would you ever just "fast forward" insanity recovery and asylum stays mid game? I also fear one player going indefinitely insane and having their motivation taken out of an adventure. You can always hand a player a "temp", but what if that temp isn't as interesting to them? I could see: "Your character has gone insane. It will take careful treatment to bring them back. You have unlocked some solo play with your GM via email between now and a future session!" Play it off as a narrative bonus? This is related to managing a player's engagement with a game and keeping it high.
Sanity has always confused me, because I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to represent in terms of character development. My big question is "Can an AI have sanity and do they lose sanity when exposed to Mythos?"
Thank you, Seth. Just ordered Curse of the Chthonians for Thoth’s Dagger & will run this as a prequel to MoN. In addition will implement all your suggestions. You should get a job with Chaosium rewriting CoC classic adventurers & campaigns such as Shadows & Mountains. Much appreciated, sir.
my call of cthulhu keeper screen arrives today, and im really excited to run my first game of The Haunting on Friday. Thanks for your tips and suggestions as to what changes to make and what scenarios to go for first. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you. :D
Malleus Monstorum and Blood Brothers has mummy stats. And...Blood Brothers has another adventure with mummies to do in Egypt! One I'd wish you'd review btw.
Great insight as always! I absolutely love your videos, and these have made me very excited about starting up my own CoC game in the near future. This module sounds like a ton of fun, even if it is rough. That dungeon crawl in the tombs strikes me as a really good way to convince my D&D loving players that this game might be loads of fun... :)
Butrus al-Qusi looks like John Reyes Davis. Of suggesting that folks portray him as such, but if I ever run this adventure you can bet that I’m gonna do just that.
I've run this adventure 5 years ago, my player never forgot how he tried to shot the horror abducting Burtus and how he was subsequently accused of killing him and throwing he out of the ship.
Yeah, my players got the hell out of there the moment they realized Butrus was dead and one got caught lying when the crew started doing the head-count because other passengers reported the scream and then discovered the blood all over the deck. One PC was their prime suspect. He managed to play off his lie as "I was embarrassed to admit I was having a seizure when my friend was killed outside my room," since the crew saw him have 2 of the visions while he was detained. But then the failed robbery a couple days later shifted the blame onto the robbers.
That was a great way to get out of truble! I don't acctually remember how my players got out of this situation, but they definitely finished the scenario, the final confrontation with Nyarlothotep was epic! Thanks for your videos Seth, not only the content is rich but also the format is great to watch!
Another way to counteract the problem of the dagger is to have it be a beloved NPC who touches it, someone the group loves and trusts, invests them into wanting to save them and it makes the party want to help them. It's just a thought for a long running campaign.
Gun laws were based on classes in Egypt and influenced by British gun laws. If you owned a certain amount of land you didn't have to worry about the gun laws too. The government PDF FIREARMS- REGULATIONS . IN VARIOUS FOREIGN COUNTRIES is really handy for modern rpgs.
A cool idea would be to hide the insanity level from the players. Don't let them know the starting level (if it's not too late). That way they'll constantly be thinking about going insane and also more deterred by monsters and encounters. If a player could keep track, then write a special algorithym to keep them guessing.
It gets destroyed when they jam it into the altar with an elder sign. Otherwise Nyarlathotep comes back and the dagger bonds to someone else and the cycle continues.
Crocodiles have armor in CoC ... héhé. Really, my players got wiped because bullets would just bounce off the crocs. That and not having the good sense to stay away from melee range.
I really enjoy all of your reviews and as a new keeper for a Pulp Coc campaign, I find this incredibly useful. I wonder though if you would link your notes or a pdf of the alterations you make?
Sadly, it seems it's no longer available on PDF. Old print copies are still available here and there, but prices are all over the place. Hopefully it'll be among the old adventures they're updating to the current edition. I know Chaosium has quite a few of the classics scenarios they're re-tooling for 7e.
Hi Seth, great video first of all, if you don't mind me asking, what is your opinion on the loss of Pow from casting the Elder Sign, do you feel the permanent loss is acceptable or would it be good to have a way to recover lost pow? This is a point of discussion among my players of what the right way to interpret this ruling as
Egyptian priest to scribe: "Please write down a note to my friend: zigzag, duck, praying hands, snake. Sun, hand, zigzack, eye. Kind regards, Hilariothep".
HI Seth, love that image of Thoth that graces this You Tube, review. Could you tell me where you acquired it ? I have searched via Google with no luck. Love to use it for creating my Facebook event for this scenario. Thank you, sir.
One of our main villains in our campaign is Nyarlathotep. I feel like this adventure would be a good way to end our campaign but I can't help but feel that I'm doing something wrong by having the players effectively win - especially against an Old One like Nyarlathotep. Any advice?
It's not a permanent win. It's only until the next full moon and the ceremony destroys the dagger, so the PCs won't have it when he's able to return again.
Nyarlathotep is beyond human understanding. Destroying one of his avatars simply annoys him. "Annoy" can mean anything from "gone for a century" to "just one month", and the ramifications can be anything from "characters will be hunted by unspeakable horrors until they die" to "Nyarlathotep takes a playful and morbid interest in them and screws with their lives in very 'funny' ways".
I don't know how you feel about the game but I would enjoy it if you could review some pathfinder modules. I both play and GM so it would be cool to know if any are good. Thanks. I enjoy your content.
And oddly, this adventure doesn't really fit well into the masks of N campaign. As far as a suggestion I have for the dungeon portion is to build the encounters and stats beforehand so that the keeper isn't stuck trying to improvise in the middle of the crawl (ex. stat out that mummy). Further, the Keeper should limit the danger before finding N's temple to 2 or 3 carefully crafted encounters, rather than a dozen random ones. And unless the Keeper intends to make the dagger's power over the ghouls very very obvious, then limit the number of ghouls they encounter at any given time to equal the number of player characters or less, otherwise, they wont live to see the climax of the adventure. P.S. I tend to prefer "Nameless City, Nameless Terrors" From House of R'lyeh over "The City Without a Name" because of the latter's inclusion of convoluted Kabbalistic astrology as a main component of the scenario, so beware of that if you run it.
I wonder. why not have the last few visions the cursed PC has contain them holding the dagger and having other humans who were to be ghouled in bandages cower in fear, staring at the dagger. have it repeat. then when meeting the first ghoul group, the ghouls would attack, grab & rip at the CPCS clothes, have tthashe daggers fall off or show it to the ghouls, that then jolt back in fear.. A COPTIC MONK SUMMONING A FUCKING MYTHOS MONSTER! like which twit thought this at all, the coptic church exists stil.
Alternate option: have the friendly NPC grab the dagger just before the PC was about to, or something like that, so a player character isn't butchered by the curse. If it's a favourite PC, at least.
Oh sure. Just not CoC mythology. I think they're along with djin, ifrits, ghouls, and other desert spirits. Just... odd that they're using the HPL ghouls as Nyarlathotep's minions here. I think that's more why the writer added them in, rather than understanding HPL's use of ghouls. Dreamquest sees them rise up with the protagonist against the black pharoh. It's not that it's impossible this group would go along with him, but it's directly contradicting their largest use in HPL: underground dwellers who eat fresh corpses and live in the dreamland. Not saying the module doesn't work, or that most players would even notice; maybe there's some Derleth or Clark Ashton Smith material that's being referenced. Personally, and this is me, I'd go with mummies and serpent folk. Heh, and a cameo by Harry Houdini, from the story HPL ghost wrote for him about being trapped under the sphinx in Egypt.
It's pronounced several ways, depending on which academic circles you ask. Thoth, Taut, Thoath. They're all generally accepted. Ultimately no one knows how it was pronounced.
So you can't do anything to stop the guy to get the dagger....got it.
5 років тому
One of my friends committed suicide after playing this. We failed in removing the curse and he was really in to the Kthullu mythos, he bought the Necronomicon and he discovered that this is for real, Kthullu is real. So when we failed to remove the curse from his character he knew he was really cursed and hung himself in his dorm room. J.K. ;)
As for how Nyarlathotep chooses his victim, have everyone at the table make a Luck roll. Whoever rolls the lowest accidentally cuts themselves on the dagger, becoming the cursed PC.
I matched it up with another module, The Auction, and had both occur in Vienna. The auction house, after being robbed a few months back, brought everybody back, with the new additions, to view the unsold items, and the new Egyptian pieces. Then the second robbery occurs.
I assume after the second adventure the Party went back to the Auction house to burn it down just to be safe?
Man, listening to you describe these CoC adventures makes me want to get into this with my D&D group - gonna have to try that sometime. Love your vids and love Jack!
Thanks. If you ever decide to give it a spin as a 1-shot or the like, check out the 7e Quickguide. It comes with The Haunting and is cheap as free for the PDF.
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128304/Call-of-Cthulhu-7th-Edition-QuickStart-Rules?src=hottest_filtered&coverSizeTestPhase2=true&word-variants=true&affiliate_id=1017650
Hey i hooe you eventually did it. I did a session for my usual group because our dm was getting burnt out. Did the first session tonight actually, and it went amazing. My group is currently dealing with the Speedbumps of moving here from DnD 4e.
@@ladybuzzkillington2072 I did! Run several different CoC games over the years and have really loved it!
@@ladybuzzkillington2072 Wow, people still play 4e? I suppose I don't have room to talking I saw the rules changes in 4e and I ran straight into Paizo's arms.
@@skillganon606 lol we have made the move to 5th and are running Curse of Strahd which is mind fucking all the players. Cause im usually the grim dark horror dm and he is the epic fantasy heroes dm.
Give the player inflicted with the curse a rare and and limited potion that blocks the mind crushing daily effects of the blight. This will give a sense of urgency, and yet limit the curses effect. Once in Thoth's complex there should be a depiction on a wall that can be spotted with a notice roll that shows ghouls being cowed by Thoth's Dagger. Best to have this after at least one ghoul attack. Like a lot of early CoC modules this one is a player killer.
Ya know, I don't play CoC, and tbh nor do I plan to any time soon (starting as a 5e D&D DM is already being quite a challenge) but boy oh boy, do I love your videos; These CoC adventures have such interesting and fun stories, it's a joy to listen your experiences with them.
Also, "The Mummy" is one heck of an entertaining movie, love it to bits.
Man you took the words right out of my mouth. I stumbled upon Seth by accident and ate up his DnD content quickly. Got hooked on his style and now I look forward to any video, no matter what the system is.
You can always pick up a CoC module and adapt it for DnD. A lot of eldritch stuff can be found in D&D and anything that can't be found can be a reskinned monster from D&D, like using a gelatinous cube as a shoggoth
@David I don't agree with you. 5e combat is hard to finetune, the swinginess of the 5e combat rules (which is d20+(5~9)) make it either a cakewalk for the party or a TPK while you try aiming for something in between.
That said, I DM'd 5e and Keepered CoC7th and I prefer CoC, it's really easy and preps a lot easier then DnD, especially when the players experience more, since a bit of the world has already been built.
If you find 5th edition to be a challenge then don't even think about call of Cthulhu
I'm getting ready to run Knave and I've been watching these videos for adventure ideas.
They're great for getting ideas and inspiration for adventures!
Just saying, having been to Egypt, the easiest way to get a gun into country would be to bribe customs. Bakshish is, or was, ten years ago, endemic. This is more so if you were an obvious Westerner. You could bribe anyone for absolutely anything.
I’d say just rent a machine shop in even the strictest countries and you’ve got a machine gun pretty quick and easy.
You’re not wrong about western looking people able to bribe though between me and my clean English, close to glow in the dark bright white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes combined with my best friend who was dark curly hair, brown eyes and just as white threw folk off enough to get our foot in the door most places, even more so when they figure out he was Muslim and I was educated Catholic and he spoke Russian, Arabic, English and Spanish. I had always been the smooth talker between the two of us but his ability to be fluid combined with that made us unbeatable. Depending where we were sometimes we’d pretend that he was Jewish or Christian or I was Muslim or Jewish if need be. I know a little Yiddish and Muslim nomenclature. He was Eastern European but I always looked “more” Eastern European which was even funnier that I had the right accent when I spoke Russian to sound like I was local.
If I had to figure out how to get guns while in Egypt I’d prob go through the local cops and/or military, talk them up with some cash an they’d most likely be game if you are about to talk up that you’re not going to do anything bad with them.
In places like Eastern Europe for Pennies on the dollar you’d get aks and grenades like nothing as long as you go through the right referrals.
Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the CoC reviews.
Keep it up!
To skip the boat ride, have the auction in Egypt or adjacent to it. This would also help start the characters off balance as they could be vacationing.
Alternately, you could have a dangerous potion or ceremony that staves off or reduces the dagger's effect temporarily, but requires something from the other characters (blood, pow, sanity) or runs the risk of attracting or releasing other dangerous creatures or effects on this around them.
I'm a big fan of this adventure (at least with some heavy editing). Used it successfully as a prologue for the massive Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign.
It is a great way to show the general themes of the overarching story and makes it easy to see whether your players will like the rest. In addition you can seed some interesting plot points, items, locals and NPCs (Hey there Jackson Elias at the auction) for use during the campaign.
Spoilers ahead.
For anyone loving props as much as i do: get a book copy of the Egyptian book of the Dead and give it out as a representation for the original which is also sold at the aucion (with some relevant additions). I made sure to let that text seem as interesting as the dagger ;).
Makes for some fun reading and discussion material on the journey to Egypt.
And while at it, I gave them conflicting informations about Egyptian gods that showed many of them as potential threats without directly pointing towards one of them and only hinted subtly at Thoth being the betrayer who poisoned the people.
I personally used Nyarlathotep himself much sooner, coming to their help as another "friendly" NPC after all the fake and real coptic priests sowed immense distrust and quarells with cultits have basically destroyed the village towards the end. With the clues from the Kairo museum it is possible to realize who he is - and my players did - but they chose to go along with his "guidance" to the temple anyway. I simply made it clear that they can only properly stop the curse at the temple itself and so they chose not to risk a fight with the elder being out in the open.
But if they did - you can just say that he was an illusion (I prefer "illusion drapped over an unwilling victim turned into a puppet" - nice little murder your players just comitted) ... with his Thoth persona currently shackled inside the temple.
This way, I was able to skip most of the dungeon crawling and way too dangerous random encounters via Thoth guiding them down most of the way before he vanished into the tunnels not far from the final part.
He obviously made sure to guide them in a really creepy and menacing way, hinting at the things outside of the flame's flickering lights, walking by remnants of disturbing sights.
Also: Best moment was when one of the PCs went insane after they won the big battle and almost killed a cultist on the altar using the dagger while Thoth's "corpse" just smoldered into non-euclidian space right next to it ... yeah that wouldn't have gone wrong at all.
Excellent review. Very much enjoyed it as always. I've not yet run this one. I especially loved Jack's seizure. Well done.
Thanks, man. It's been one of those scenarios that just kept drawing me back until I finally decided to throw in the towel and give it a spin.
You know guys i think we have enough time to UUUUUUUOHHH MY GOOOD
This actually seems to be a good transition into Masks of Nyarlothotep if handled properly. And in Pulp Cthulhu, MoN is a pretty fun adventure
I can't understand why but I'm always drawn back at your reviews , even after a long dm burnout two module reviews and I'm ready to run again. Thank you
If you find them inspiring enough to get you through burnout, then I call that a win. Happy to help.
Great videos! I'd love to sit in on a session with you at the helm. I would love to see a video of one of your games or even a podcast! Regardless, as an amateur DM, your video's have been invaluable and I can't wait for your next one. Fingers crossed for "Masks of Nyarlathotep." I plan on getting that right after I finish running my PC's through "Curse of Strahd."
So wait...
This adventure has one of the party members getting cursed, and they have to travel to Egypt to remove the curse and defeat the villain responsible for it?
This is basically Stardust Crusaders from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure!
Stand User: [Nyarlathotep]
Stand Name: [The World]
You know, I was actually thinking about that one day and wondered if I would be able to completely blindsight players with that sudden revelation. Like, make Thot's Dagger a Stand-arrow, effectively. Instead of the thief at the auction just getting away only to be pulled in by the cops, have the guy stab one of the party-members, who goes out cold for a period. The moment he wakes up though, he is suddenly followed along by this unseen, humanoid specter with otherworldly powers. Suddenly, the party finds themselves pursued by others that share this power, desperate to claim that dagger. As the party awaken to stands one by one, they eventually find out more about this power and of a man in Egypt looking to awaken to an even higher level of power, the requiem, and needs that dagger in order to complete the job.
A nice way of extending the campaign to standalone-length and just to fuck with people by the time they realize what you are doing.
@@AlluMan96 im running this next week.
Im doing it.
@@AlluMan96 gonna have the NPC Companion be the first one stabbed and be like "OH HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK!"
@@ladybuzzkillington2072
I wish you good luck. Maybe someday I can get around to it as well.
I've run this adventure 5 years ago. One of my players never forgot how he tried tho shoot the horror abducting Burtus and how he subsequently was accused of killing and throwing his body overboard. Great times!
Have you ever done a video on your book collection? It looks beautiful and some books that seem unique!
Can't find this anywhere (no longer on drivethru rpg)
You've earned my sub great video as always, have you ever thought of making a beginner guide or a top 10 books for call of cthulhu
I haven't had the opportunity of playing Call of Cthulhu in many decades, be it as keeper or investigator, but this adventure scenario is the one that has stuck with me. One reason is it's good. Arguably more so in concept than (all I know is the DW-published version) presentation. The other reason it has stuck was the amount of work I had to put in after the first disastrous as-is run if I was ever going to use it again. I must have run it as many times as years between it's publication and my university studies (including post and post-postgrad) becoming a greater threat to sanity than anything the mythos could ever throw my way will.
I have an alternate suggestion for who gets cursed: have it be an NPC in whom the investigators are emotionally and/or professionally invested. Make it abundantly clear to your players that should they fail to save the cursed one, the next time you play, they (your players) will be moving to their backup characters, regardless. The blow of the loss was just all too much for your mains and they've decided to retire - Technical TPK.
Currently learning how to dm cthulhu and your vids help a ton. Thanks so much man.
I love the idea of nyarlathotep sounding like Jaffar from Aladdin
I have the Cthulhu Casebook (1990), and it is full of adventures you have reviewed. More CoC reviews, please!!
After all your modifications sounds like a heck of a adventure Seth! and The Cairo Guidebook also looks really cool. Great review Seth love all your videos! :)
Thanks. It's a neat book. Just lurk on eBay and you'll find it. I wish Chaosium would release a PDF like they have for some of their older books.
This is a nice list of ideas that could help someone run that scenario,
I have a video to pitch for your GM video series: Managing Sanity. I don't get to GM the game very often and one of the toughest things I've had to learn is not just causing players to go indefinitely insane and ending a game. You always give suggestions for managing sanity in your module reviews, but I think it would be great to hear your "axioms" that you use in making those decisions. Do you track your players sanity scores independently? Insanity is a huge narrative component of the game, but I often fear BRAIN TPKs in this game. Would you ever just "fast forward" insanity recovery and asylum stays mid game? I also fear one player going indefinitely insane and having their motivation taken out of an adventure. You can always hand a player a "temp", but what if that temp isn't as interesting to them? I could see: "Your character has gone insane. It will take careful treatment to bring them back. You have unlocked some solo play with your GM via email between now and a future session!" Play it off as a narrative bonus? This is related to managing a player's engagement with a game and keeping it high.
Sanity has always confused me, because I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to represent in terms of character development. My big question is "Can an AI have sanity and do they lose sanity when exposed to Mythos?"
Yes Draco, they can.
If it's heavy on combat use pulp cathulu
Im trying to run this with only some minor tweaks. Making sure they havethe elder sign, tweaking the end, and that's it. Wish me luck.
Thank you, Seth. Just ordered Curse of the Chthonians for Thoth’s Dagger & will run this as a prequel to MoN. In addition will implement all your suggestions. You should get a job with Chaosium rewriting CoC classic adventurers & campaigns such as Shadows & Mountains. Much appreciated, sir.
my call of cthulhu keeper screen arrives today, and im really excited to run my first game of The Haunting on Friday. Thanks for your tips and suggestions as to what changes to make and what scenarios to go for first. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you. :D
Great stuff as always, sir!
Malleus Monstorum and Blood Brothers has mummy stats. And...Blood Brothers has another adventure with mummies to do in Egypt! One I'd wish you'd review btw.
Great insight as always! I absolutely love your videos, and these have made me very excited about starting up my own CoC game in the near future. This module sounds like a ton of fun, even if it is rough. That dungeon crawl in the tombs strikes me as a really good way to convince my D&D loving players that this game might be loads of fun... :)
Butrus al-Qusi looks like John Reyes Davis. Of suggesting that folks portray him as such, but if I ever run this adventure you can bet that I’m gonna do just that.
Holy crap, I missed a perfect opportunity to portray him with my Sallah impersonation.
Dude, I looked up your "Art Thou Jelly" T, and I just looked up your "Miskatonic" T. Christmas is coming. Keep up the good work.
Does this not exist anymore?
I've run this adventure 5 years ago, my player never forgot how he tried to shot the horror abducting Burtus and how he was subsequently accused of killing him and throwing he out of the ship.
Yeah, my players got the hell out of there the moment they realized Butrus was dead and one got caught lying when the crew started doing the head-count because other passengers reported the scream and then discovered the blood all over the deck. One PC was their prime suspect. He managed to play off his lie as "I was embarrassed to admit I was having a seizure when my friend was killed outside my room," since the crew saw him have 2 of the visions while he was detained. But then the failed robbery a couple days later shifted the blame onto the robbers.
That was a great way to get out of truble! I don't acctually remember how my players got out of this situation, but they definitely finished the scenario, the final confrontation with Nyarlothotep was epic! Thanks for your videos Seth, not only the content is rich but also the format is great to watch!
Another way to counteract the problem of the dagger is to have it be a beloved NPC who touches it, someone the group loves and trusts, invests them into wanting to save them and it makes the party want to help them. It's just a thought for a long running campaign.
Gun laws were based on classes in Egypt and influenced by British gun laws. If you owned a certain amount of land you didn't have to worry about the gun laws too.
The government PDF FIREARMS- REGULATIONS . IN VARIOUS FOREIGN COUNTRIES
is really handy for modern rpgs.
By any chance did this dagger belong to Thoth-Amon from Conan? He was a Stygian and Stygia was the Hyborian Age version of Egypt.
Quite late to the party but does anybody know if players have to roll to stab Nyarlathotep while it's transforming?
A cool idea would be to hide the insanity level from the players. Don't let them know the starting level (if it's not too late). That way they'll constantly be thinking about going insane and also more deterred by monsters and encounters. If a player could keep track, then write a special algorithym to keep them guessing.
one question: what happens to Thoths dagger? Is it destroyed when they stab the Eldar god or do they get to keep a weapon of such awesome power?
It gets destroyed when they jam it into the altar with an elder sign. Otherwise Nyarlathotep comes back and the dagger bonds to someone else and the cycle continues.
Crocodiles have armor in CoC ... héhé. Really, my players got wiped because bullets would just bounce off the crocs. That and not having the good sense to stay away from melee range.
Knowing my players they'd find out how the dagger affects the ghouls by throwing it at one of them...
Brilliant as always.
Wait, we *did* play this as a Pathfinder game. We even had a ship ride to a desert Port city. This works as a Pathfinder game.
21:20 The only way an NPC should kill the big bad. Is if its apart of a plan the PCs came up with to get him there and "Cast it into the fire!"
21:35 You just described Oblivion's ending
I really enjoy all of your reviews and as a new keeper for a Pulp Coc campaign, I find this incredibly useful. I wonder though if you would link your notes or a pdf of the alterations you make?
"It's the third side of the pyramid" - The Mummy 3
It was the second mummy movie.
Anyone by chance how or where to purchase a pdf of this adventure?
Sadly, it seems it's no longer available on PDF. Old print copies are still available here and there, but prices are all over the place. Hopefully it'll be among the old adventures they're updating to the current edition. I know Chaosium has quite a few of the classics scenarios they're re-tooling for 7e.
This video was fantastic, thank you!
That's one of the best modules out there. 10/10 for me.
So, can you keep the dagger after removing the curse, or does it still take the soul of whoever grabs it?
Could you run this as a low level D&D adventure? How would you convert it? I am specifically playing Pathfinder.
Yeah. Just take the sand dudes and turn into dnd skeletons and make the Nyarlatothep into a necromancer
I wonder how well this adventure would run in Cthulhu d20.
Hi Seth, great video first of all, if you don't mind me asking, what is your opinion on the loss of Pow from casting the Elder Sign, do you feel the permanent loss is acceptable or would it be good to have a way to recover lost pow? This is a point of discussion among my players of what the right way to interpret this ruling as
Egyptian priest to scribe: "Please write down a note to my friend: zigzag, duck, praying hands, snake. Sun, hand, zigzack, eye. Kind regards, Hilariothep".
I played that campain, and my character was cursed and actually made or through !
Please run the sequel Seth
Is it just me or with some minor editing could this work great as a hollow earth adventure? Just change thoth to seth or apophis.
HI Seth, love that image of Thoth that graces this You Tube, review. Could you tell me where you acquired it ? I have searched via Google with no luck. Love to use it for creating my Facebook event for this scenario. Thank you, sir.
Sure. It's in the Cthulhu Casebook. In the back of the book there are a bunch of color images for the adventures. That's where I got it.
Thanks Seth, much appreciated, sir.
One of our main villains in our campaign is Nyarlathotep. I feel like this adventure would be a good way to end our campaign but I can't help but feel that I'm doing something wrong by having the players effectively win - especially against an Old One like Nyarlathotep. Any advice?
It's not a permanent win. It's only until the next full moon and the ceremony destroys the dagger, so the PCs won't have it when he's able to return again.
Seth Skorkowsky Oh that makes sense. Thank you!
Nyarlathotep is beyond human understanding. Destroying one of his avatars simply annoys him.
"Annoy" can mean anything from "gone for a century" to "just one month", and the ramifications can be anything from "characters will be hunted by unspeakable horrors until they die" to "Nyarlathotep takes a playful and morbid interest in them and screws with their lives in very 'funny' ways".
I don't know how you feel about the game but I would enjoy it if you could review some pathfinder modules. I both play and GM so it would be cool to know if any are good. Thanks. I enjoy your content.
Sorry. Never tried Pathfinder.
Oh. That's ok. You should try it sometime. It's one of my favorite systems. Lots of options for character building and settings.
And oddly, this adventure doesn't really fit well into the masks of N campaign.
As far as a suggestion I have for the dungeon portion is to build the encounters and stats beforehand so that the keeper isn't stuck trying to improvise in the middle of the crawl (ex. stat out that mummy). Further, the Keeper should limit the danger before finding N's temple to 2 or 3 carefully crafted encounters, rather than a dozen random ones. And unless the Keeper intends to make the dagger's power over the ghouls very very obvious, then limit the number of ghouls they encounter at any given time to equal the number of player characters or less, otherwise, they wont live to see the climax of the adventure.
P.S. I tend to prefer "Nameless City, Nameless Terrors" From House of R'lyeh over "The City Without a Name" because of the latter's inclusion of convoluted Kabbalistic astrology as a main component of the scenario, so beware of that if you run it.
It's great as a prologue set a few years before the main story.
I might have to convert this for Conan.
10:20 indefinite sanity is for within a day iirc
This is over the course of weeks
Just have an npc with a high sanity that gets that vision then if he dies transfer it to a party member as punishment for not protecting him.
Looks like this adventure is no longer available.
Huh. I've always pronounced it "NYAR-la-THO-tep." But that's just me.
Penultimate. At one point my pronunciation of Thoth was corrected. I was told it's pronounced like "though the" or "dtho-dth."
Most sources go with nyar-la-THO-tep but Seth's from Texas after all
Let the NPC try to kill the big bad.
But don't actually let them succeed.
Heavy sanding. I see what you did there.
I totally share your crush on Evie from The Mummy! :)
I wonder. why not have the last few visions the cursed PC has contain them holding the dagger and having other humans who were to be ghouled in bandages cower in fear, staring at the dagger.
have it repeat. then when meeting the first ghoul group, the ghouls would attack, grab & rip at the CPCS clothes, have tthashe daggers fall off or show it to the ghouls, that then jolt back in fear..
A COPTIC MONK SUMMONING A FUCKING MYTHOS MONSTER! like which twit thought this at all, the coptic church exists stil.
Alternate option: have the friendly NPC grab the dagger just before the PC was about to, or something like that, so a player character isn't butchered by the curse. If it's a favourite PC, at least.
Wait... Why the heck are Ghouls in Egypt? They're not D&D ghouls.
Not undead D&D ghouls. Ghoul mythology originated in the Mid East, so it works.
Oh sure. Just not CoC mythology. I think they're along with djin, ifrits, ghouls, and other desert spirits. Just... odd that they're using the HPL ghouls as Nyarlathotep's minions here. I think that's more why the writer added them in, rather than understanding HPL's use of ghouls. Dreamquest sees them rise up with the protagonist against the black pharoh. It's not that it's impossible this group would go along with him, but it's directly contradicting their largest use in HPL: underground dwellers who eat fresh corpses and live in the dreamland. Not saying the module doesn't work, or that most players would even notice; maybe there's some Derleth or Clark Ashton Smith material that's being referenced. Personally, and this is me, I'd go with mummies and serpent folk. Heh, and a cameo by Harry Houdini, from the story HPL ghost wrote for him about being trapped under the sphinx in Egypt.
Oh, and before I forget: you are 100% right about the movie The Mummy. One of my all time top films, and really gets pulp right.
I loved that Houdini story.
With all thoese monsters it would make a great pulp cthulu game
Every book on ancient Egyptian mythology I've ever read says it's pronounced Tot.
It's pronounced several ways, depending on which academic circles you ask. Thoth, Taut, Thoath. They're all generally accepted. Ultimately no one knows how it was pronounced.
@@SSkorkowsky crash course mythology pronounces that God tote and he’s kind of the cohost of the series; they made merch for him, a tote bag.
All you need to do to defeat an Elder God is to just stab it with a knife? Seems too easy!
So you can't do anything to stop the guy to get the dagger....got it.
One of my friends committed suicide after playing this. We failed in removing the curse and he was really in to the Kthullu mythos, he bought the Necronomicon and he discovered that this is for real, Kthullu is real. So when we failed to remove the curse from his character he knew he was really cursed and hung himself in his dorm room. J.K. ;)