The Inside Scoop on Gaming

This is one of the few times that I've ever seen Chasoium make a misstep.

At Your Door is a campaign for Call of Cthulhu, set in the 1990's, and it's definitely a mixed bag. The campaign itself is set in a fictional town, Samson, in California, with a brief sojourn to Canada, and features the investigators going through the Big One, encounters with at least two Great Old Ones, and - wait for it - a saintly little child whose teaching have inspired his own following.

Shudder, shudder, shudder. 1/1d3 SAN loss for that one.

The book gets off on a bad start in the creation of Samson alone; it seems like a replacement for Los Angeles, but I can't figure out why they didn't just make it LA and be done with it. One of the prime beauties of CoC was that it bounced a hyper-real setting - the 1920's - against a hyper-fantastic world, that of the Mythos. That contrast was a lot of fun to play around with. Samson, by contrast, seems to put CoC in an Earth-2 environment, where things are normal except for large cities placed where developers find them convenient. The loss of that realism shifts this book's tone from the very beginning.

It starts off with a hunt for Peter Tait, whose experiments have supposedly birthed a baby Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath; after that, though, the campaign feels like a runaway car. The investigators have the Young stolen by a biker gang, then investigate a biotech firm that has some link with Shub-Niggurath. That link feels tenuous at best, and the resulting exploration doesn't strike me as that interesting - wow, another building full of Mythos books and spooky stuff.

In between, there's the best CoC scenario that I've seen, in my own personal opinion. Entitled "Landscrapes", it finds the investigators on a farm where Tait stayed. Briefly. It catches the tone - city against nature, with neither as the good guy - perfectly, and I wasn't surprised to see that the author was basing his scenario on the works of T.E.D Klein.

The rest of the book doesn't hold up nearly as well. The investigators stumble into a scenario that's more comic and disquieting than the run-of-the-mill CoC adventure. I'm inclined to think that it's too long and too stretched out to engage players, but it's got some nice touches that make it worth at least looking at.

The rest of the book feels awfully formless. A trip to Canada to retrieve an item winds up with the investigators fighting a disguised Serpent Man and an obscure Great Old One with which little is done; then it's back to California for an earthquake, the Big One, something that the book handles well - there's a suggestion to actually physically simulate the earthquake, complete with tips.

The aftermath, though - therein lies the rub. Since the investigators are almost certainly confused, there's a meeting with some sated bad guys for a Q&A session, then a meeting with the saintly little kid - Alex, who's got a natural SAN of 99 and no role in the plot. He is awfully annoying, though, and his following is just...senseless.

After the investigators stumble around in the ruins for a while, witnessing a nice, chilling scene with some children, all of the Mythos baddies gather in a single spot for a Mythos Hoedown, giving the investigators a good opportunity to hose them down with heavy machine-gun fire. End scenario.

Huh?

There's actually very little that the investigators can do to stop the plans of the bad guys save the final gunfight, which seems to violate the CoC no-guns ethic. (It's satisfying, but it feels like the wrong way to stop the bad guys.)

I've been told that this campaign was supposedly to be a lot longer, and based on the excellent cover painting by Lee Gibbons, but as it stands now, At Your Door is a mess. Various elements are thrown together without much forethought - a slideshow of a bio-attack on a research firm, Rhan-Tegoth, Cthonians, a shoggoth named Mr. Shiny, a biotech firm, a cult that seems like a twisted cross between the Sierra Club and Robert Bly - and the result is ugly.

Normally, I wouldn't be so hard on this. It's just that any other Chaosium book is better by leaps and bounds, and compared, At Your Door just doesn't compare. There are nice touches here and there, but the overall framework is just too rough to support it.

I'm fairly sure that this book is out of print now; however, if you happen to see it for sale - cheap - buy it, and then cannibalize it for the good ideas, especially "Landscrapes".

The rest, leave behind.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

At Your Door
Author: L.N Isynwill, Mark Morrison, Barbara Manui, Chris Adams, Scott D. Aniolowski, Herbert Hike Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium Cost: $18.95 Page count: 147 pages appendix ISBN: 0-933635-64-8 Capsule Review by Darren MacLennan on 06/10/98. Genre tags: none	This is one of the few times that I've ever seen Chasoium make a misstep. At Your Door is a campaign for Call of Cthulhu, set in the 1990's, and it's definitely a mixed bag. The campaign itself is set in a fictional town, Samson, in California, with a brief sojourn to Canada, and features the investigators going through the Big One, encounters with at least two Great Old Ones, and - wait for it - a saintly little child whose teaching have inspired his own following. Shudder, shudder, shudder. 1/1d3 SAN loss for that one. The book gets off on a bad start in the creation of Samson alone; it seems like a replacement for Los Angeles, but I can't figure out why they didn't just make it LA and be done with it. One of the prime beauties of CoC was that it bounced a hyper-real setting - the 1920's - against a hyper-fantastic world, that of the Mythos. That contrast was a lot of fun to play around with. Samson, by contrast, seems to put CoC in an Earth-2 environment, where things are normal except for large cities placed where developers find them convenient. The loss of that realism shifts this book's tone from the very beginning. It starts off with a hunt for Peter Tait, whose experiments have supposedly birthed a baby Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath; after that, though, the campaign feels like a runaway car. The investigators have the Young stolen by a biker gang, then investigate a biotech firm that has some link with Shub-Niggurath. That link feels tenuous at best, and the resulting exploration doesn't strike me as that interesting - wow, another building full of Mythos books and spooky stuff. In between, there's the best CoC scenario that I've seen, in my own personal opinion. Entitled "Landscrapes", it finds the investigators on a farm where Tait stayed. Briefly. It catches the tone - city against nature, with neither as the good guy - perfectly, and I wasn't surprised to see that the author was basing his scenario on the works of T.E.D Klein. The rest of the book doesn't hold up nearly as well. The investigators stumble into a scenario that's more comic and disquieting than the run-of-the-mill CoC adventure. I'm inclined to think that it's too long and too stretched out to engage players, but it's got some nice touches that make it worth at least looking at. The rest of the book feels awfully formless. A trip to Canada to retrieve an item winds up with the investigators fighting a disguised Serpent Man and an obscure Great Old One with which little is done; then it's back to California for an earthquake, the Big One, something that the book handles well - there's a suggestion to actually physically simulate the earthquake, complete with tips. The aftermath, though - therein lies the rub. Since the investigators are almost certainly confused, there's a meeting with some sated bad guys for a Q&A session, then a meeting with the saintly little kid - Alex, who's got a natural SAN of 99 and no role in the plot. He is awfully annoying, though, and his following is just...senseless. After the investigators stumble around in the ruins for a while, witnessing a nice, chilling scene with some children, all of the Mythos baddies gather in a single spot for a Mythos Hoedown, giving the investigators a good opportunity to hose them down with heavy machine-gun fire. End scenario. Huh? There's actually very little that the investigators can do to stop the plans of the bad guys save the final gunfight, which seems to violate the CoC no-guns ethic. (It's satisfying, but it feels like the wrong way to stop the bad guys.) I've been told that this campaign was supposedly to be a lot longer, and based on the excellent cover painting by Lee Gibbons, but as it stands now, At Your Door is a mess. Various elements are thrown together without much forethought - a slideshow of a bio-attack on a research firm, Rhan-Tegoth, Cthonians, a shoggoth named Mr. Shiny, a biotech firm, a cult that seems like a twisted cross between the Sierra Club and Robert Bly - and the result is ugly. Normally, I wouldn't be so hard on this. It's just that any other Chaosium book is better by leaps and bounds, and compared, At Your Door just doesn't compare. There are nice touches here and there, but the overall framework is just too rough to support it. I'm fairly sure that this book is out of print now; however, if you happen to see it for sale - cheap - buy it, and then cannibalize it for the good ideas, especially "Landscrapes". The rest, leave behind. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 2 (Sparse)