Chaosium never wanted for ambition and they have historically excelled at a specific sort of epic campaign. Beyond the Mountains of Madness (1999) is at home among them.

The campaign takes place three years after the events of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” with the players being invited on the Starkweather-Moore Antarctic expedition, which aims to continue the work of the doomed Dyer-Lake party. (The campaign also draws heavily on Poe’s “The Narrative of Henry Gordon Pym,” which served as a primary inspiration for Lovecraft)

The campaign is merciless in staying true to what it is at its core: a simulation of an Antarctic expedition. The first portion is given over to planning and the purchasing of supplies, both critical tasks, as well as travel from NY to the edge of the world, which is a bit dull. Once they team arrives, they must struggle as much against the environment as they do the supernatural and political (two other expeditions are in the area, for their own purposes). Further, once they go beyond the mountains, there is no retreat. Cruel as Call of Cthulhu campaigns are, they usually provide brief respite in a library or university office. Not so at the south of the world, surrounded by ice and horror.

And there is something beautiful about a campaign as massive as this with an ending so damn bleak.

The bad: it is massive (440 pages), probably runs north of 40-50 sessions and is maybe the pinnacle of the Masks-style campaign, requiring the Keeper to manage dozen of NPCs and events. A common criticism is that is railroady, which I don’t mind that so much in the context of the expedition theme. Constraints and isolation is the point.

I’d be keen to see this get a 7E revision, though, for sure. Oh, there was a deluxe handout pack published at the time, which is meh, except for the sweet embroidered expedition patch!