Madness at Miskatonic UPDATED!

Despite best efforts to find the time to update Madness at Miskatonic, I have only just gotten around to this task. With this latest version there are a few continuity fixes and some more editorial/clarity changes. Thanks must go to Peter Cruise for his thorough eye and very helpful edits. The campaign notes are greatly improved because of his input. Thanks too to G. Roby picking up on some key timeline and linguistic issues. Both these fine individuals volunteered their time via the Yog-Sothoth forums and are fine examples of the collaborative community that resides there.

Without further ado:

Madness at Miskatonic: US Letter Version 3 (8.1MB)

Madness at Miskatonic with A4 cover Version 3 (8.3MB)

Madness at Miskatonic v 3.0…

A few kind folks over at Yog Sothoth forums  have pointed out some further issues/inconsistencies with Madness at Miskatonic. As a community of fellow Call of Cthulhu players, YSDC is great for this sort of thing. There are a few minor date issues, some German that needs fixing and one or two typos outstanding. I expect to have the update done within a week or so. All the existing links will be seamlessly updated once it’s done and the new version reposted on the home page.

In other exciting news the Madness at Miskatonic campaign PDF has been downloaded 283 times (just shy of 300 downloads). If only 10% of downloads actually end up being run that will still be around 30 roleplaying groups playing my campaign. Not too shabby at all 🙂

Madness at Miskatonic: Revised and updated!

Thanks to the kind work of Joe Adams, Madness and Miskatonic has been proofed by a fresh set of eyes. I have updated it accordingly:

Madness at Miskatonic: US Letter (Revised) 11.2 MB PDF

Madness at Miskatonic: US letter with A4 Cover (Revised) 11.2 MB PDF

Madness at Miskatonic: US Letter Version 3 (8.1MB)

Madness at Miskatonic with A4 cover Version 3 (8.3MB)

Joe was kind enough to contact me about a few continuity issues via the Yog-Sothoth forums which then evolved into his offering to proof the whole document. Thanks Joe! It never ceases to amaze me the sense of community out there particularly when it comes to Call of Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft in general. Yog-Sothoth is particularly active in fostering this camaraderie. Thanks to the Yoggie forums over 12o copies of the Madness at Miskatonic PDF have already been downloaded in the past week alone!

Madness at Miskatonic: a Call of Cthulhu mini-campaign

Well this one got away from me. I had hoped putting together my notes and handouts from a mini-campaign I recently ran would be a straightforward exercise. Turns out I’d seriously underestimated the amount of work involved. Never-the-less, it’s finally complete!

In this four-part Call of Cthulhu campaign the investigators enrol in an esoteric subject taught by a radical academic at Miskatonic University. Meanwhile strange dealings align for the worse as fellow classmates commit suicide, a madman escapes Arkham Sanatorium and a curious exhibit of Egyptian artifacts goes on display in the University library. These dire events culminate in the Investigator’s growing realisation of man’s fragile role in the universe as they do battle with unseen powers that seek to seize control of their minds. If they cannot prevail they will be slain, driven mad or worse!

Madness at Miskatonic is 49 pages long with over 24 handouts/play aids. It comes in two formats:

Madness at Miskatonic: US Letter Version 3 (8.1MB)

Madness at Miskatonic with A4 cover Version 3 (8.3MB)

*(After typesetting to US Letter I didn’t have the strength to go back in and completely re-typeset in A4. This A4 Cover version will print out fine, the separately scaled cover is provided to avoid any strange cropping that would arise on A4 paper with the US Letter format).

Madness at Miskatonic Teaser

Of course I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Putting together this mini-campaign for public consumption is taking a little longer than expected (no surprises there, I guess). What has been an important part of the process for me is balancing my desire to produce a user-friendly document with avoiding lengthy tracts of text that ramble on and on about the minutiae of each session. I want something that is part tool kit part “colouring book” providing just enough scope for Keepers to fill in the details based around their own idiosyncrasies. But enough of the griping.

For the time being here are some sample PDF pages from the final Madness at Miskatonic document:

Campaign Introduction example PDF

Non-player characters example PDF

Session One flow chart example PDF

Documenting the Madness

I’ve commenced putting together a PDF for Madness at Miskatonic, a short Call of Cthulhu campaign where the investigators play freshmen students at Miskatonic University. Rather than put it out in dribs and drabs (but very tempting in terms of keeping the blogging regular), I’ve decided to put it up in one shot when it’s ready to go. I’m probably a bit over optimistic in that I’ll have it done in within the next fortnight. Starting next week I’ll do a but of promotion on this blog to generate a bit of interest before going live.

(Oh, and the site passed 10,000 visitors earlier this week. Probably small by most RPG blog standards, but an occasion worth noting none-the-less).

Hiatus and assessment

I guess it’s the nature of blogs that they can slip away from you. Various events have conspired against this blog recently, pushing it to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list. A poor excuse, of course. Cracking open my analytics today I cast an eye over which pages have been getting all the hits. Which has lead me to reassess what I’m trying to achieve with this site. But I’ll get to that a little later. Let’s look at those stats.