At Your Door is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror role playing game based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This is a full length campaign for Cthulhu Now which is set in the 1990s (as that was the modern era when the book was published), rather than the more common 1920s setting, mostly in and around the fictional California city of Samson.
This supplement was originally available as a perfect bound softcover book, although it does not currently appear to be available new in any format. Copies of the original printed edition are still available from sites such as Amazon. The book has 176 pages. Of these, three pages are the front matter, two pages are more front matter, Contents and Expanded Contents. One page is Contents of the Handout Section (which has page numbers listed, even though the section itself lacks numbers on the pages), two pages are a character sheet, with one blank side, and twenty six pages are copies of various player handouts from throughout the text that are single sided, making there be thirteen actual pages.
The short Introduction gives some advice on running the campaign, including doing it as separate adventures, gives an overview of each scenario as well as some important and useful non-player characters and the addresses of various locations in Samson.
Full Wilderness is the definite first scenario in which the characters are hired by the founder and president of the titular environmental group to investigate a local biotech firm which he suspects of doing dangerous and illegal experiments. The person who informed him of this left him some convincing evidence before going missing.
In Landscrapes the characters investigate the farm owned by the missing scientist, as well as the farm’s former owner, who also has a connection to the biotech firm.
Dawn Biozyme sees the characters investigate the biotech firm itself, where they can discover that the experiments being carried out are not simply connected to experimental biotechnology.
No Pain, No Gain can take the characters out of action for months, and quite possibly permanently, as they investigate the former girlfriend of the missing scientist.
Where A God Shall Tread is set in Toronto, where the characters investigate another firm which has been name dropped several times in the other chapters, featuring plots of Shoggoths, serpent people and a Great Old One which featured in The Horror in the Museum, a short story ghost-written by H. P. Lovecraft for Hazel Heald.
After The Big One is the definite final chapter, where the characters return to the city of Samson following a devastating earthquake for the end game in which they try to stop the culmination of the plots they have encountered along the way.
At Your Door in Review
The supplement has an extensive index, not just the simple Contents that is so common to Call of Cthulhu supplements. The Expanded Contents lists the major chapters naturally, but also indexes illustrations, handouts in the text, maps and other details, making navigation rather superior to the norm. The book has full colour front and rear covers – the image on the front cover is relevant to After the Big One, rather than being completely irrelevant – and a number of black and white illustrations throughout. These range from simple portraits of non-player characters (quite common in these supplements) to maps with a hand drawn appearance and full page illustrations, all of which are relevant to the associated text. The text itself is in a two column layout and, like many supplements in the range, there is a lot of (mostly error-free) writing, making the book text-heavy.
This isn’t a purely linear campaign, although there is a definite first chapter and a definite last. The first chapter needs doing first, because that’s how the campaign starts, and the final chapter provides a very definite end. Those in between may be done in a different order, and areas that haven’t been done in a particular chapter may be still done at a later date, making this campaign rather more sandbox than linear. The majority of the campaign is set in and around the fictional California city of Samson, barring a trip to Toronto. This is a bit of a contrast to many 1920s campaigns which, although set during a period when international travel was far less convenient and took far longer than the 1990s, had characters trotting all over the globe.
There are a number of references throughout the campaign to a company called New World Industries, a modern company that is descended from New World Incorporated, the company from the classic 1920s Call of Cthulhu supplement The Fungi from Yuggoth (which was later included in Curse of Cthulhu, but does not appear to be currently available new). Players familiar with the original company may therefore distrust (rightfully so) its modern descendent. The modern NWI is connected to several of the firms they investigate.
There are, as is fairly typical, some new minor Mythos books, new monsters, including a new Great Old One and new spells as well as some new, military, weapons, which may or may not be as effective as hoped. The campaign can be more than a little dangerous – No Pain, No Gain in particular is a situation that is hard to escape intact from – with death or insanity being real possibilities. Such a situation is fairly typical for a Call of Cthulhu scenario of course, and players are recommended to roll up two characters before starting, so that if their primary character is incapacitated or killed, they have another who can come into play, presumably informed of the situation by the now unavailable character.
The campaign may be set in the 1990s, but it probably only needs some minor changes to bring it up to date for a modern campaign. There are a few references which would be more connected to the 1990s than the modern era, such as dial-up modems and VHS tapes, but these can be replaced by appropriate modern technology. Definitely modern items such as smartphones will not make a noticeable difference to the outcome – and may, in fact, prove very vulnerable to damage by some of the beings encountered. At Your Door is probably the pinnacle of the original Cthulhu Now adventures, and is still just as deadly today.
Leave a Reply