Two final notes (or questions): Having owned and played Pendragon
for three years, I am a subscriber to the Chaosium Digest, so I am
aware of some of the material on the 'net for CoC. Recently, there
has been little to no traffic for the Digest--what exactly is going
on--is the organizer on sabbatical, is the Digest officially dead or
are there just no articles in the queue?
Also, I've heard that the new version of "Masks of Nyarlathotep" is
rather bad compared to the first edition(s) of the campaign--can
anyone confirm or deny this and tell me why it is (or isn't) bad?
Dale Meier
>I recently bought a copy of Call of Cthulhu and I'm in the process of
>figuring out what supplements to buy. I'm not looking for much--I've
>already set my mind on Delta Green and the 1990s Handbook, but I'm
>also looking for other adventures and supplements for the game in the
>1900s era which I could use for X-Files/Cooper Division style
>campaigns.
I don't know how much use it would be to you for that style campaign,
but the "Dreamlands" supplement is awesome -- you could do entire
campaigns using nothing else. Check it out -- you won't be sorry.
--
================ http://weber.u.washington.edu/~teneyck/ ================
Ross TenEyck MS Mech Eng | The gulls circle, crying out to the sea,
ten...@u.washington.edu | and the sea calls back in a voice of wind.
Tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo! | What does she say, to make them so lonely?
There are two that I'll recommend: At Your Door, and The Stars are
Right. The first is a multi-part "epic" adventure. The other is a set
of independent scenarios.
Personally, I haven't seen the previous versions of Masks Of
Nyarlathotep, but I've been running it for my group, and we all pretty
much agree it's probably the best adventure we've done so far.
It's extremely detailed, with lots of handouts, and.. it's just
amazing, as far as I'm concerned. :)
So go buy it :)
-Doantam. Not Cuong, who is the person I'm borrowing this account from.
>Two final notes (or questions): Having owned and played Pendragon
>for three years, I am a subscriber to the Chaosium Digest, so I am
>aware of some of the material on the 'net for CoC. Recently, there
>has been little to no traffic for the Digest--what exactly is going
>on--is the organizer on sabbatical, is the Digest officially dead or
>are there just no articles in the queue?
The digest is alive and well. There have been 14 digests since the
beginning of this year. We're on 18.12 right now.
>Also, I've heard that the new version of "Masks of Nyarlathotep" is
>rather bad compared to the first edition(s) of the campaign--can
>anyone confirm or deny this and tell me why it is (or isn't) bad?
I don't have the current version, but a friend of mine does. It doesn't
look radically different from the original version except that they've
added the Australian chapter. I would consider that a GOOD thing. Unless
I'm missing something, I'd say that it was better than the original.
Allan Goodall agoo...@sympatico.ca
We come into the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That's the way that Lady Luck dances
Roll the bones - N. Peart
>I recently bought a copy of Call of Cthulhu and I'm in the process of
>figuring out what supplements to buy. I'm not looking for much--I've
>already set my mind on Delta Green and the 1990s Handbook, but I'm
>also looking for other adventures and supplements for the game in the
>1900s era which I could use for X-Files/Cooper Division style
>campaigns.
I'm glad you're planning to get our DELTA GREEN book! I think you'll find
it to your liking.
Chaosium has published three 1990s books besides the 1990s Handbook:
CTHULHU NOW
This was the original rulebook for 1990s Cthulhu. The core info--skills,
professions, and weapons--have all been incorporated into the fifth
edition CoC rulebook. You've got the basics of what you need as far as
this book goes, I think. The original edition (but not the reprint, don't
think) has several adventures in it for the 1990s. One of them, about a
space shuttle crash in the midwest, would work well as a Delta
Green/X-Files adventure, I think.
AT YOUR DOOR
A 1990s campaign dealing with biotechnology and environmental issues. Has
some really brilliant stuff in it, but also has some stuff that, as a
Keeper running it a few years back, I thought was a bit dubious. Still,
there is some darn good material in there.
THE STARS ARE RIGHT!
An anthology of unconnected 1990s adventures. A mixed bag, as all
anthologies are. Flip through it in a store (if you can find it!) and see
what appeals to you.
>Two final notes (or questions): Having owned and played Pendragon
>for three years, I am a subscriber to the Chaosium Digest, so I am
>aware of some of the material on the 'net for CoC. Recently, there
>has been little to no traffic for the Digest--what exactly is going
>on--is the organizer on sabbatical, is the Digest officially dead or
>are there just no articles in the queue?
Shannon Appel, editor of the Digest, now works for Chaosium as I recall.
He may have less time to manage the digest, but keep in mind that the
digest relies entirely on reader submissions--if in a given week no one
submits anything, then there's no digest. It's an excellent resource,
however, especially for notices of new releases.
--
John Tynes r...@tccorp.com [] "If he died in Memphis,
http://www.tccorp.com/rev/ [] wouldn't that be cool?"
Pagan Publishing [] -The Replacements,
& Commando Creative Services [] "Alex Chilton"
< \ - + freelance writing, editing, graphic design & HTML + - / >
Whoever told you that is waayy off. There are actually very few changes,
and as far as I'm concerned, they're all for the better. It is a
terrific module.
Actually, CoC has had some of the best game books I've ever seen published
for it. Besides Masks, I'd highly recommend Walker in the Wastes,
from Pagan Publishing, and Horror on the Orient Express. I'm not sure
of the availability of Horror (it's a few years old), but you should
have no trouble tracking down WitW.
I've always preferred the 1920s setting for my CoC campaigns, but if
you really want to go for the 1990s route, Masks would o probably be
the easiest to adapt. Walker and Horror would need a bit of work,
but it wouldn't be impossible (HotOE is based around cross-European
luxury train travel and has a lot of 1920s politics and culture;
WitW uses airships as a major plot device).
If you're looking for something shorter, you might want to check out
Cthulhu Classics, a book of early Cthulhu adventures. Some of them
show their age (there are a lot of caves and room-by-room searches),
but they are all good-to-excellent quality.
- Eric.
We've actually got two more nowadays.
UTATTI ASFET came out last year. It's a big-'ole globe-spanning
campaign. The keeper will need to take some time to get this all
integrated into his campaign, but you'll have many weeks of game play
when you're do.
Our most recent one is called A RESECTION OF TIME. It's an absolutely
terrific campaign that starts out in the SF Bay Area, moves on to
modern Arkham and then ends up in South American Mayan ruins. Great
writing, nice pictures, cool handouts.
And, on Monday I'm going to start layout on a little gem called
SECRETS. It's a 48-page book containing four tiny little 1990s
adventures. Ideally, they'll run in one night each. That one will
probably be in stores in a little more than two months.
And, as a side note on the ones John mentioned:
> CTHULHU NOW
Out of print, but replaced with the 1990s HANDBOOK.
> AT YOUR DOOR
Nearly out of print. I think Chaosium has about a dozen left if your
retail store is all sold out.
> THE STARS ARE RIGHT!
Out of print, though Chaosium may still have a few scuffed up copies.
>>Two final notes (or questions): Having owned and played Pendragon
>>for three years, I am a subscriber to the Chaosium Digest, so I am
>>aware of some of the material on the 'net for CoC. Recently, there
>>has been little to no traffic for the Digest--what exactly is going
>>on--is the organizer on sabbatical, is the Digest officially dead or
>>are there just no articles in the queue?
The Chaosium Digest is still very much alive and well, and going out
every single week. It's highly likely you got knocked off the Digest
due to bouncing email. Send me mail at ap...@erzo.org and I'll be
happy to look into it for you.
Shannon
PS: For anyone asking "What's the Chaosium Digest", here's my whole FAQ.
** The Chaosium Digest FAQ **
[version 1.35]
Compiled by Shannon Appel (ap...@erzo.org)
The Chaosium Digest is an email 'zine which covers all of Chaosium's
games. Most articles are on Call of Cthulhu, Mythos, Elric!, Nephilim
and Pendragon, but articles on older games including Hawkmoon,
Ringworld, Stormbringer, Superworld, Worlds of Wonder, Arkham Horror,
Perilous Encounters and Stomp! are all quite welcome. Articles
expanding Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system out to new worlds,
backgrounds or genres are also appropriate. The former Chaosium game,
RuneQuest, is not covered in the Digest, nor is Greg Stafford's world
of Glorantha. There is a very active Gloranthan ML, which is noted
below.
The content of the Chaosium Digest is a little bit different from the
average Internet mailing list. You won't find daily discussion here.
Instead, the Chaosium Digest is a weekly publication, usually sent out
late Sunday night, which includes "complete" gaming articles, things
that gamemasters and players can clip from the Digest and immediately
use.
In order to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Chaosium Digest, drop
a line to:
Digest subscription and unsubscription is not automated, but all
pending requests should always be processed before a new issue of the
Digest is sent out.
If you have any suggestions concerning the Chaosium Digest, I'd love
to hear them. Please drop me a line to help make the Chaosium Digest
the best that it can be. Even more importantly, please send articles
for inclusion in the digest. It's entirely dependent upon submissions
from the subscribers.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
---------------------
It's easy to submit articles to the Digest, and I dearly hope that
every single subscriber will at some time do so. All that's really
required is that articles be "complete" gaming articles, not
discussion. By that, I mean the type of supplemental article that a
gamemaster or player can clip out and use. Ultimately, I'd like to
produce a Digest that is useful for reference in the long term.
Articles that have been published in the Chaosium Digest in the past
include: complete adventures; ideas for adventures; ideas for
campaigns; background information; creatures; NPCs; rules variants;
gamemaster advice; player advice; and reviews. Don't consider this
list to be any type of limit though. If you've got something cool to
write up, do so.
There are no size requirements for submissions. Articles have been as
short as a few hundred words, and as long as 14,000. If you've got an
idea that will be useful to other gamemasters, send it in!
In order to submit articles to the Chaosium Digest, mail them to:
When I process articles for the Digest, I might do some editing and
reformatting. Nothing major: I usually just clean up typos and
grammar, and make everything look nicer.
CHAOSIUM DIGEST ARCHIVES
------------------------
You'll find the archives of the Chaosium Digest at:
ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/chaosium
The 'archives' directory contains all the old Digests. There's lots of
other interesting stuff scattered around as well.
Another FTP site of interest to Chaosium players is:
ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/runequest
Which contains lots of stuff on Glorantha.
CHAOSIUM WEB PAGES
------------------
There are so many Chaosium related home pages out there, that I can't
even hope to list them all, so I'll just mention one. Chaosium Inc.
maintains their own Home Page at:
http://www.sirius.com/~chaosium/chaosium.html
It has catalogs, new release information, and all kinds of other
interesting material. Even more useful is the "Nifty Stuff" button
which is located way down at the bottom of the page. It connects to a
page of links to lots of other Chaosium-related Home Pages. You'll
find Nephilim, Elric!, Pendragon and CoC web pages, all accessible
from that one place.
OTHER MAILING LISTS OF INTEREST
-------------------------------
There are a number of other Mailing Lists which may be of interest to
Chaosium Digest subscribers. Except for chaos-info, they're all
discussion lists, which will typically be higher volume, and have less
material that you can immediately use for your game. Still, they're a
lot of fun, and well worth signing on to if the game in question is of
interest to you.
The majority of these mailing lists are available in either normal or
digest forms. Normally, you will get every message to a mailing list
as soon as it arrives (this is sometimes called an "instant"
distribution). If a mailing list offers a Digest then you will get
messages from the list all bundled together in a single message either
every day, every week, or every time enough messages have accumulated,
depending on how the mailing list is configured. Although you won't
see messages quite as quickly if you choose a Digest option for a
mailing list, you also won't find your mailbox flooded with individual
pieces of mail.
GENERAL CHAOSIUM LISTS
The Chaosium Information List
The Chaosium Information List is a distribution point for press
releases, promotional mailings and other information. It is run by
Chaosium. To subscribe to the Chaosium information list, mail to:
And put the following command in the body (not the subject) of the
message:
subscribe chaos-info
On a monthly basis, The R'lyeh Report is posted to the chaos-info
mailing list. This is a regular newsletter, straight from Chaosium,
which gives info on the next few months of upcoming products, what
conventions they'll be attending, and other news.
CALL OF CTHULHU LISTS
Strange Aeons
This is a mailing list primarily about Call of Cthulhu, although
topics of more general Lovecraftian interest are sometimes discussed.
To subscribe to the Strange Aeons list, mail to:
strange...@lists.consensus.com
And put the following command in the subject (not the body; yes this
is the opposite of all the other lists discussed here) of the message:
SUBSCRIBE
If you would prefer to receive a Digest version of the list, instead
include the following command:
SUBSCRIBE DIGEST
ELRIC! LISTS
The Eternal Champion Mailing List
The Eternal Champion mailing list at Nochet is dedicated to the
discussion, appreciation and enjoyment of the role playing
possibilities in the works of Michael Moorcock. Role playing has been
massively influenced by the ideas and fantasies of this great British
author, such as the battle between Law and Chaos, multiverses, plane
hopping, demonic weapons and doomed heroes.
Discussion concentrates on the role playing games published by
Chaosium Inc: Elric!, Stormbringer and Hawkmoon. Having said that, any
role playing matters, or indeed not-very-role-playing matters
connected with Moorcock or the Eternal Champion are quite legitimate.
To subscribe send an email to:
with the message
subscribe eternal
in the body text (not the subject).
NEPHILIM LISTS
The Nephilim Mailing List
Quite simply, the Nephilim Mailing List is a forum for the discussion
of Chaosium's game of Occult Role-playing, Nephilim. To subscribe to
the Nephilim Mailing List, mail to:
And put the following command in the body (not the subject) of the
message:
subscribe nephilim
If you would prefer to receive a Digest version of the list, instead
include the following command:
subscribe nephilim-digest
PENDRAGON LISTS
The Pendragon Mailing List
To quote Pendragon-L's information file, 'Pendragon-L is a mailing
list dedicated to the discussion of the roleplaying game "King Arthur
Pendragon", written by Greg Stafford and published by Chaosium, Inc.
Game mechanics, the Arthurian mythos, specific campaigns, and
discussions of the history periods which Pendragon spans, and other
related topics are all permissible discussion.' To subscribe to the
Pendragon-L list, mail to:
And put the following command in the body (not the subject) of the
message:
subscribe pendragon-l Your Name
If you would prefer to receive a Digest version of the list, instead
include the following command:
subscribe pendragon-l-digest
GLORANTHA LISTS
The Glorantha Digest
The Glorantha Digest is all about the background and myths of the
world of Glorantha. You'll find next to no game mechanics within. To
subscribe to the Gloranthan Digest, mail to:
And put the following command in the body (not the subject) of the
message:
subscribe glorantha-digest
RELATED USENET GROUPS
---------------------
If you have access to the Usenet, you may also find the following
newsgroups of interest:
alt.books.moorcock ; a meandering discussion of things
; sometimes related to Elric!
alt.horror.cthulhu ; an excellent place to talk about
; Call of Cthulhu and the Mythos in
; general. Highly recommended.
rec.games.frp.misc ; general RPG info, with very
; infrequent discussions of Chaosium
; RPG games.
rec.games.trading-cards.misc ; General CCG info with occasional
; discussion of Mythos. Look for the
; MYTHOS keyword
>>figuring out what supplements to buy. I'm not looking for much--I've
>>already set my mind on Delta Green and the 1990s Handbook, but I'm
>>also looking for other adventures and supplements for the game in the
>>1900s era which I could use for X-Files/Cooper Division style
>>campaigns.
>
>I'm glad you're planning to get our DELTA GREEN book! I think you'll
find
>it to your liking.
>
>Chaosium has published three 1990s books besides the 1990s Handbook:
>
>CTHULHU NOW
<snip>
>AT YOUR DOOR
<snip>
>THE STARS ARE RIGHT!
<snip>
Gee, this is kind of embarrassing but John, Chaosium's done another two
supplements besides these. I'm not going to give the plots, because I
having finished reading them but they've also done A Brief Resection of
Time and Uatti Asfet: The Eye of Wicked Sight (which is set during the
Gulf War, for some reason).
>Gee, this is kind of embarrassing but John, Chaosium's done another two
>supplements besides these. I'm not going to give the plots, because I
>having finished reading them but they've also done A Brief Resection of
>Time and Uatti Asfet: The Eye of Wicked Sight (which is set during the
>Gulf War, for some reason).
Quite true! I haven't read those two books, though, so I didn't think of 'em.
I hope they're still in print...
-->Pete
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maranci pmar...@tiac.net / mar...@tiac.net Malden, MA
Editor, Interregnum RPG/Science Fiction APA/magazine -- email for info.
Interregnum WWW home page: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/index.html
FRP adventures, art and more: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/rq.htm
_Dreamlands_ is a few years out of print, but there's a new fourth
edition which is at the printers now, and will be in stores around the
start of May. We're also going to be following it up with a Dreamlands
adventure, _The Dreaming Stone_ (July or August).
_Creatures of the Dreamlands_ is pretty out-of-print too, but I think
there are a handful of copies left in the Chaosium warehouse. Quite
literally, in the low teens or less copies are left. You can order
direct from them.
Shannon