"Little by little they rose grimly into the western sky; allowing us
to witness various bare, bleak and blackened summits... I could not help feeling that they were evil things - mountains of madness whose farther shores looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss."
What is contained Herein ...
These pages detail the nearly year-long campaign "Beyond the Mountains of Madness". If you read this, be warned that you learn much that will completely ruin your experience of it as a player. The team that played it had little experience of Call of Cthulhu, except for a few one-offs, and so it was a novel experience for us. We were:
Graham Wills: Keeper
I have GM'd pretty continuously from 1985 - present, mainly with a realistic fantasy bent, including an alternative setting based on Lord of the Rings and some more original work. I bought the book at GenCon, based on reviews by Chaosium staff who plugged it heavily (and accurately!) at the Cthulhu Master's competition. I loved it, chose three suitable people and invited them to play. We played every 2-3 weeks with occasional long gaps, and I was runnign an Alternity space campaign simultaneously. Talk about contrasts!
Suzanne Wills: Professor Carlisle McKeowan
My wife has merely a decade of gaming experience, but this was her first in a 'realistic' setting. She tends to play quieter, professional persons (or hobbits) and so McKeowan was a good character for her, not to mention being the only one to finish alive and sane-ish. She also obliged us with cups of tea at regular intervals as the evening wore on. Thanks, Suz!
Jim 'Zack' Barton: Dr. Jakob Weiss
Zack has played an eclectic mix of characters, all of whom seem to have a personal crisis in the middle of a campaign. Whether it's a priest going against his beliefs or an explosive expert sacrificing himself for the team, or what happened to him in this campaign, there's always something. We appreciated your German accent, really, despite the jokes.
Tedford Armistead: Mr. Marcus Anderson
Tedford hadn't gamed in years, but did such a nice job in a previous CoC one-nighter (No Man's Land -- a long one-nighter) that I had to invite him for this one. If I had realized how often he'd roll impaling attacks with a gun -- any gun -- I'd not have let him get that elephant gun; he nearly killed an Elder Thing with it, for instance. Thanks for the whiskey, Tedford. I still can't believe we nearly finished a bottle between the three of us the last session.
I've broken down the story into several sections. You can read linearly or use the navigation frame to the left.