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Masks of Nyarlathotep is a gaming monument in its historical significance as well as its sheer size. As per Mike Mason's foreword, "First released over 30 years ago in 1984, Masks of Nyarlathotep was among the first epic campaigns for Call of Cthulhu, and is now considered a classic of the roleplaying genre. This newly revised and updated edition brings the campaign up to date with Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, as well as adding comprehensive guidance to make running and playing Masks of Nyarlathotep the easiest it has ever been."
With Chaosium's supremely timely and accomplished shift to 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rules, an update of Masks was a pretty much inevitable follow-on, and it's happened in style. The core gamebook alone is now roughly three times as long as some of the earlier editions. The artwork, design and physical quality of the materials, in print or in PDF, is superlative, up to the very best standards of modern game manufacture. Lavish hardly even begins to describe it, especially with all the add-ons - Keeper's screen and handy reference booklet, handouts, NPC portraits, etc. In those respects, buyers are definitely getting their money's worth. Anyone who plays this, whether they made it through the original version or not, won't be disappointed.
For the Keeper, this is going to be a massive management job, just as it always has been, but the new edition does all it can to smooth the process, and as a backup, Keepers can always refer to the brilliant Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion, also available from Chaosium, which combines every tip, resource, play aid and background material ever gathered to help run Masks better. Masks is still about the best example of a multiple-path campaign going, and I haven't noticed a single point where the updating to the 7th edition CoC rules is likely to cause a snag. Pushed rolls, one of the major innovations in the 7th edition rules, are there, complete with suggested consequences for failure. One area where the older editions may win out in playability is that the character stats for each NPC and monster were previously listed next to their first appearance, while now they're at the end of the relevant chapter, which could mean a lot of riffling or scrolling, though the Keeper's reference booklet is a big help with this. Still, that's a minor quibble and unlikely to hinder the campaign.
I do have some bigger quibbles, though. A lot of them are pure questions of style and personal preference, but I do think they help show how gaming has moved on since Masks was first published. The Call of Cthulhu franchise and Lovecraftian fandom has mushroomed since Masks' debut, and along the way a lot of issues and questions got raised that weren't tackled back in 1984. Masks needs to be considered in that light, and it doesn't always stand up well under the glare.
For one thing, Masks remains very detail-lite on its settings and background compared to the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion, or many other more recent sourcebooks and campaign guides. The Companion runs to some 22 pages of period detail on Kenya, 17 on London, 20 on Cairo, 44 on Shanghai, and over 50 pages on Australia (okay, that last one is overkill, but still...) Masks 5th edition has 6 pages each on Cairo and Shanghai. Perhaps the writers and editors of the Masks 5th edition decided, understandably, that there was no sense duplicating all the effort that went into the Companion. But the difference in the depth of setting flavour and sheer research man-hours between the two is palpable. And with all the resources and expense put into luscious production values and extra graphics for Masks 5th edition, couldn't some have been diverted into fleshing out the settings? If a product is positioned to be the classic scenario par excellence for a particular location, it could at least take the trouble to get it right. The Companion isn't perfect that way either, but it does make a strong effort - and in the process, brings on board a huge amount of source material for fun side-quests.
That issue touches on the intrinsic pulpiness of Masks that shows its age, and that the updating exercise hasn't fundamentally altered. "The campaign can now be played in whatever style you prefer, whether it be the slow creepy and gritty horror of classic Call of Cthulhu or the fast-paced, full-throttle action of Pulp Cthulhu," states the Introduction. And later, "the original campaign has always been considered to be closer to the pulp end of the spectrum." At least now cult leaders don't send their acolytes mimeographed memos any more, headed "To: All Acolytes" and reading: "A test of your Shrivelling abilities takes place two weeks from today." Spells have also been rejigged since previous editions to suit individual NPCs closer, but said NPCs are still able to shoot off Cthulhu Mythos spells like Fourth of July fireworks.
As one retrospective review of Masks has said, "it doesn't feel particularly Lovecraftian. Sure, the bad guys serve Nyarlathotep and there are lots of Mythos-related tomes and creatures to be encountered, but the whole things feels more like a pulp serial or an Indiana Jones movie than an exercise in cosmic horror." The fifth edition hasn't changed that issue. Perhaps no more could have been done while staying faithful to the original, but that's what has been done - and no more. You could argue that that's a problem intrinsic to Call of Cthulhu itself, but I don't think so. Delta Green, scenario books like The Things We Leave Behind, or campaigns like At Your Door, or even the "Bloody Botany" section of the Companion, do show that you can have all the derring-do of adventure gaming and still keep a dark tone of cosmic horror. I reckon there's a reason that Delta Green: Countdown and Delta Green sit at respectively #1 and #2 on RPGNet's index of the best-rated RPGs ever, and CoC itself is down at #7 - and that reason is that Delta Green brought true cosmic horror and paranoia back into Cthulhu Mythos gaming, while CoC itself got sidetracked down the pulp Raiders route. Plus, Delta Green has a maturity and adult tone that's conspicuously lacking from Masks, old or new.
In a telling passage from the backstory that hasn't been updated since the original, "even Nyarlathotep is not so powerful that he can change human will - he must choose from among those who are susceptible to his gifts." Meanwhile, there's Jack Brady, ex-Marine and all-round all-American: "despite the unnatural will of Nyarlathotep, Brady proved extraordinarily intractable to the Outer God's dream commands, as well as immune to the wiles of M'Weru." Bummer, eh? I mean, you're the echt Crawling Chaos, Mighty Messenger, omnipotent father of a million lies, great, obscure, unutterable soul of the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods, but you run into just one specimen of prime upstanding American manhood, and all your plans go to shit. Better hop back to the Court of Azathoth and twirl your waxed moustache some more.
That pulpy tendency in Masks also brings in other legacies of the Thirties pulp era that haven't worn well with time, to put it mildly. At least there isn't the text from earlier editions of Masks, proclaiming that the Kenyan, Egyptian, Australian and Chinese cults of Nyarlathotep are "uniformly... primitive and degenerate, controlled by intelligent and sophisticated priests." Some of the most embarrassing names - notably Tandoor Singh - have been removed, but Omar al-Shakti is still there, blithely mixing Arab and Hindu. And there's still been only broad-brush changes to the underlying stereotype of hordes of fanatical black, brown and yellow people attacking white defenders of civilization. Even if that is true to the 1980s edition, couldn't more have been done to qualify or offset it?
Yes, Jackson Elias is now African American. Yes, we do have much more detail in 1920s Harlem. But we still have "Horror at Ju-Ju House," in Harlem, in a game published in 2018 - and no, we're not talking about Juju the reality TV star, hip-hop artist, businesswoman and celebrity author. Some ethnic diversification of the earlier passages and balancing of the cultists doesn't change the underlying white saviour narrative and Temple of Doom-era succession of funny races doing funny things in funny temples in funny places which don't even get the respect of decent setting detail. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom already got enough stick for this back in the day - and that was back in 1984.
The relaunch of Call of Cthulhu in its 7th edition, and the associated changes at Chaosium, amount in my mind to a reboot of the whole franchise - one that's needed and timely. Masks, also to my mind, shows why that reboot was necessary. Yes, it's been made fully compatible with Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. Yes, it's still monumental, supremely playable, and with enough material to keep campaigns and players going for years. But it's more like a lovingly refurbished and re-engined antique roadster than a nitro-boosted street racer, never mind a Tesla. And its styling is not dark and sinister and threatening, but bright and shiny and glitzy. On that basis, you can take it or leave it. Personally, with a respectful nod towards all the hard work that went into updating Masks, I'll be riffing off the voluminous material in the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion to build my own scenarios.
Style: The absolute best in modern RPG design and production values, as well as the compendious supplements,
Substance: The terrific updating job done on the original content and its enduring architectural strength isn't enough to outweigh its historic flaws and get it a 5 - 4 is a balanced rating between 5 for new content/updating, and 3 for legacy issues.
