Customer Reviews

At Your Door (Call of Cthulhu Horror Roleplaying, Modern Era, #2326)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wait, this is Cthulhu. Sorry, wrong game. I was confused; you see, in AT YOUR DOOR you play investogators who travel the country, meet a wide array of monsters and chum up with guest stars (like Mr. Shiny, before he was famous). All that's missing is Don Knotts making a cameo. Actually, I'm sorely tempted to try the idea...

I have heard many people complain that AT YOUR DOOR suffers from "monster-of-the-week" syndrome. In a sense that's true; there are dark young, serpent people, a shoggoth lord, mutated humans, tcho-tcho people, and chthonians, and it's hard to grasp why the investigators would be encountering this much weirdness. You can always sweep it under the End Times rug, when anything can happen and usually does. Alternatively the GM can play up the Shub Niggurath connection. All of the disparate adventures have some connection to that Mythos deity and some minor tweaking would allow this aspect to come to the forefront. Alternatively, the campaign could be played as a series of independent adventures. The weirdness doesn't have to be connected in some subtle conspiracy; if you look hard enough, the sane world falls away and you discover what is happening beneath the surface. If the PCs feel that there is some terrible conspiracy to uncover, let them run with that.

As a series of loosely connected adventures (MANSIONS OF MADNESS is like this), I think AT YOUR DOOR is outstanding. As an actual campaign, it feels disjointed. Most of the adventures are interesting and, as mentioned by the previous reviewer, have become classic bits of Mythos lore. If you don't know about Mr. Shiny, bak bon dzshow, or the Milk of Shub Niggurath, this is the place to find it. AT YOUR DOOR seems to have strongly influenced the unofficial Delta Green mythos, and I would particularly recommend that it be converted to Delta green scenarios.

As a bonus, the cover art is outstanding.

This is one of the classic modern campaign supplements for Call of Cthulhu, and I'm surprised to see it still available 13 years later. There's a lot of good ideas to mine here, but I've never known anyone to run it without major modifications. It seems like everyone hates different sections. The root problem is, it's too all-over-the-place: Too many widely divergent scenarios, themes, and creatures, haphazardly slapped together. Even so, there are a lot of parts that I love, and some bits--such as Mr. Shiny, Tcho-tcho restaurants, Dawn Biozyme, and the City of Samson--have become enduring parts of CoC canon.

What I'd really like to see is a total makeover of this supplement, along the lines of the redone Day of the Beast and Masks of Nyarlathotep. The scenarios could be made more consistent, the monsters more logically related (I mean, really, why would shoggoths and cthonians work together in a vast consipracy? Gimme a break.). And it's a perfect opportunity to add a chapter on how to turn the whole thing into a Delta Green mission.

I bought this scenario in hope I could use it as a challenge for a Modern campaign. After all, there is a wonderfully evocative, creepy cover, and covers don't lie? Or can they...?

While the campaign does introduce an intriguing opponent in "Mr. Shiny," it fails to live up to its promise due to the contrived way each scenario seems to lead to the next one. You have to practically railroad the players to go forward as they puzzle over how the last scenario had anything to do with the one they are embarking on. Any player taking notes would be baffled after a few sessions of this campaign, which incidentally introduces us to a giant canine and a B-movie style giantess, which begs the question, "Is this just an extended "Blood Brothers" scenario?" I like camp, but the tone in this campaign just never settles down enough to play it as "Call of Cthulhu" or even as "Attack of the Giant Woman." (Did I mention it features a giant dog? I am not kidding.)

The completely random assortment of opponents keeps the pace moving, but really most of the threat is having one or more of the players raise their hand and ask, "What that heck was that about?" Like the other reviewers, I had to significantly revise it to make it flow, but if you are spending money on a complete campaign, there is no excuse for having to fix a botched attempt.

If somebody sold me a bicycle with two bent rims that caught fire periodically, I wouldn't give it four stars and kindly suggest that "its a flawed classic" or needs revision to make it work. No, I would be mad as hell that the bike I paid for makes me look like a drunk, Special Ed version of the Ghost Rider riding to school on a banana saddle.

But I digress...

"At Your Door" is very bad science-fiction excruciatingly pounded into a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign. Lacking atmosphere and cohesiveness from the get-go, "At Your Door" is badly written, and graced with awful interior art that succeeds only in showing us in pictures that yes, "At Your Door" really does belong "In A Landfill."