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.

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 love your stuff and I really like Jack

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the CoC reviews. Keep it up!

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

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!

Excellent review. Very much enjoyed it as always. I've not yet run this one. I especially loved Jack's seizure. Well done.

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.

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.

Great stuff as always, sir!

I have the Cthulhu Casebook (1990), and it is full of adventures you have reviewed. More CoC reviews, please!!

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

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.

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

Currently learning how to dm cthulhu and your vids help a ton. Thanks so much man.

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."

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... :)

This is a nice list of ideas that could help someone run that scenario,

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

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 love the idea of nyarlathotep sounding like Jaffar from Aladdin

Brilliant as always.

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.

Knowing my players they'd find out how the dagger affects the ghouls by throwing it at one of them...

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.

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.

Have you ever done a video on your book collection? It looks beautiful and some books that seem unique!

This video was fantastic, thank you!

"It's the third side of the pyramid" - The Mummy 3

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

That's one of the best modules out there. 10/10 for me.

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.

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

21:35 You just described Oblivion's ending

I might have to convert this for Conan.

If it's heavy on combat use pulp cathulu

I played that campain, and my character was cursed and actually made or through !

So, can you keep the dagger after removing the curse, or does it still take the soul of whoever grabs it?

I wonder how well this adventure would run in Cthulhu d20.

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.

Could you run this as a low level D&D adventure? How would you convert it? I am specifically playing Pathfinder.

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.

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?

Can't find this anywhere (no longer on drivethru rpg)

Quite late to the party but does anybody know if players have to roll to stab Nyarlathotep while it's transforming?

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.

Please run the sequel Seth

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?

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.

Does this not exist anymore?

I totally share your crush on Evie from The Mummy! :)

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.

Heavy sanding. I see what you did there.

Huh. I've always pronounced it "NYAR-la-THO-tep." But that's just me.

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.

How can the daily visions put the PC into indefinite insanity if it's only happening once per day...?

Anyone by chance how or where to purchase a pdf of this adventure?

Let the NPC try to kill the big bad. But don't actually let them succeed.

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.

Looks like this adventure is no longer available.

10:20 indefinite sanity is for within a day iirc This is over the course of weeks

Egyptian priest to scribe: "Please write down a note to my friend: zigzag, duck, praying hands, snake. Sun, hand, zigzack, eye. Kind regards, Hilariothep".

So you can't do anything to stop the guy to get the dagger....got it.

Every book on ancient Egyptian mythology I've ever read says it's pronounced Tot.

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.

With all thoese monsters it would make a great pulp cthulu game

All you need to do to defeat an Elder God is to just stab it with a knife? Seems too easy!