Call of Cthulhu RPG: Doors to Darkness

Any book that offers 5 scenarios for keepers and players alike is definitely nothing to be sniffed at, but a book that is also affordable and brimming with great content is a masterclass; Doors to Darkness is close to being a great book, but struggles at times where such struggles shouldn't be evident.

In this book are 5 scenarios and 2 of them are absolutely fantastic! Genius Loci and Servants of the Lake are fantastic, worth running and likely to be easily inserted into ongoing games with mild tweaking. The darkness beneath the hill and none more black are good, but suffer from some pretty big issues, but those with experience in running CoC will be able to see the pitfalls and work their way around them; the big problem however, is "Ties that bind".

It doesn't take much looking up online to find that this is the black sheep of the book and after running all of the adventures, it shows as being easily the weakest; players have no motivation to do a majority of the tasks it tries to lead you to because investigative connections are paper thin, the solution to the whole scenario can actually be resolved within 30 minutes and to make matters worse, there is no pay off.

Ties that bind is difficult for experienced keepers to make enjoyable or functional, so imagine the difficulty for beginner keepers, who have never run a game of CoC before; this is made even worse if they've never run a TTRPG whatsoever. For the other scenarios, I'd love to give more information but I…