The Horrors We Almost Remember: Masks of Nyarlathotep and Berlin: The Wicked City

The most haunting Call of Cthulhu campaigns (Masks of Nyarlathotep and Berlin: The Wicked City) don’t invent worlds. They reveal the dark corners of the ones we thought we knew.

Real History as the Heart of Masks of Nyarlathotep and Berlin: The Wicked City

Time leaves gaps. Places vanish from maps. Names fade from memory. Call of Cthulhu doesn’t need to invent worlds; it just brushes the dust off the ones we forgot to look at. Where many games use fantasy to escape the past, Call of Cthulhu draws you back into it. Its most haunting campaigns are grounded in real history, not despite it, but because of it.

Let’s examine two of Chaosium’s most gripping historical campaigns, Berlin: The Wicked City and Masks of Nyarlathotep, and why they hold onto players long after the last session ends.

If you’ve never played Masks, you can explore its globe-spanning conspiracy in our deep dive: Why Masks of Nyarlathotep Is the Ultimate Call of Cthulhu Campaign.

The Uneasy Power of Real Places in Call of Cthulhu

These campaigns don’t work because of monsters alone. They work because of the setting. They ask questions that sit too close to the truth:

• What if that vanished expedition found something they weren’t meant to?

• What if that decadent cabaret housed a cult no one dared name?

They don’t rewrite history. They reveal the cracks already there.

Berlin: The Wicked City

Weimar Berlin: beauty, freedom, and decay

The Berlin of the 1920s is not a fantasy. It’s a place of contrast and collapse: opulence beside poverty, creative freedom alongside political violence. The Berlin campaign drops investigators into this chaotic space with surgical precision.

You might encounter:

• Cabarets where encoded choreography spreads ancient messages

• Disgraced doctors holding séances in anatomical lecture halls

• Real extremist groups like the Freikorps, their motives shaded by something inhuman

Magnus Hirschfeld’s real-life Institute for Sexual Science appears in the book, reimagined not as a fantasy artifact but as a place holding knowledge that reaches beyond medical science if players dare to look.

Throughout the campaign, investigators face historical realities (anti-Semitism, censorship, moral panic, etc) and must decide whether they’re fighting something supernatural or merely human. Often, it's both. This is horror that doesn’t feel distant. It’s grounded and personal, and that makes it harder to shake.

Get Berlin: The Wicked City now on the Quest Portal Marketplace.

Masks of Nyarlathotep

A globe-trotting descent into coordinated madness

Where Berlin: The Wicked City focuses tightly on a single city, Masks of Nyarlathotep casts its net across continents. The investigators follow a vast conspiracy that spans the globe from New York to Cairo, Kenya, London, Shanghai, and even Western Australia.

Each stop is rendered with historical depth:

• In Harlem, players cross paths with figures inspired by real Harlem Renaissance writers and performers

• In Kenya, colonial tensions hide older fears rooted in the land

• In Shanghai, revolution and imperialism hide something worse—something older

The campaign doesn’t just show players famous places. It pushes them into the undercurrent of those cities, where culture and colonialism crash against ancient myth. And then, without warning, the horror slips in as something that could have happened.

If you’re wondering whether to face it in Classic slow-burn horror mode or Pulp high-action style, our Classic vs. Pulp: Setting the Tone in Masks of Nyarlathotep guide breaks down the differences.

Get Masks of Nyarlathotep now on the Quest Portal Marketplace.

The Past Isn’t Past in Call of Cthulhu

Why does this approach work? Because these campaigns don't aim for cheap scares. They treat horror as something systemic. Something that hides behind real history. You’re not playing to save the world. You’re trying to understand how it fell apart.

You’re the archivist, the reluctant witness, the one person left asking questions. In most RPGs, players are heroes. In Call of Cthulhu, they’ll likely be the last ones holding the candle when the lights go out.

The Mythos is terrifying because it’s unknowable. But what lands hardest in Masks of Nyarlathotep and Berlin: The Wicked City is how closely the horror hugs what we know:

• Soldiers returning from war with “shell shock” that might not be psychological

• Fringe movements turning fascist, backed by something more than ideology

• Artists depicting visions they swear came from outside time

Playing with History on Quest Portal

These are not simple campaigns. Their richness deserves a platform that can keep up.

With Quest Portal, groups can:

• Annotate scanned letters, clippings, and mythos fragments

• Track tangled NPC relationships using notes shared sheets

• Keep timelines, maps, and artifacts in one place, ready for when the next clue drops

• Run sessions with immersive handouts, audio, and scene framing tools tailored for historical depth

Whether you're dancing through Berlin’s underground or chasing cults across colonial outposts, the platform gives Keepers and players everything they need to keep the fiction feeling real.

In the End, Call of Cthulhu Feels Too Close

The best Call of Cthulhu stories don’t invent horror. They reveal it.

When a campaign makes you doubt a real event, or sends you Googling a name to check whether it actually existed, it’s done its job. These aren’t ghost stories. They’re reminders.

What scares us most isn’t what’s impossible. It’s what could have happened (or what might still be happening) in the forgotten corners of our past. So open the case file. Light the lantern. Walk down the alley. And listen.

TL;DR

• Masks of Nyarlathotep and Berlin: The Wicked City are two of the most immersive, unsettling Call of Cthulhu campaigns because they root their horror in real historical events and places.

• Berlin: The Wicked City traps investigators in the chaos and contradictions of Weimar Germany, blending political unrest with occult intrigue.

• Masks of Nyarlathotep sends players across continents in a globe-spanning conspiracy that feels disturbingly plausible.

• These stories are designed to make you question the past you thought you knew.

Next Steps

• Add the CoC 7e Quick-Start Rules to your Quest Portal library

• Get Berlin: The Wicked City now on the Quest Portal Marketplace

• Get Masks of Nyarlathotep now on the Quest Portal Marketplace

• Join our Discord to talk CoC in #chaosium

• Learn how to create a character in Call of Cthulhu

• Build a character in our no-code template