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%name%
Greatest Call of Cthulhu Adventure Modules of All Time
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This list is an attempt to identify the most highly-regarded Call of Cthulhu adventure modules of all time based on the ratings from both GeekDo and RPG.net.

These modules not only make excellent picks for players of Call of Cthulhu but also arguably are among the greatest of all time for any system. There are only perhaps a couple dozen non-D&D modules that can claim to have as many quality ratings across both sites; most of these are Call of Cthulhu modules.

In order to do an efficient incorporation of the two sites, I include only modules with at least twelve ratings on each site, counting a review on RPG.net as four ratings. I then took the upper third of such modules from each site, put them together into a single list of modules, created two rankings (one for each site), and finally averaged those rankings together to get the final order below.
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1. RPG Item: The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep [Average Rating:8.66 Overall Rank:4]
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#1-ranked on RPG.net
#1-ranked on RPGGeek

$22 on Amazon
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Jorge Ferrao
Portugal

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I GM this one and it was an amazing experience.
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  • Posted Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:16 pm
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Eric Dodd
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My choice for number one - so many other campaigns can be hung off it. Memorable countries and NPCs.
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  • Posted Sun Dec 20, 2009 6:37 am
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Johan Nordinge
Sweden
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I would say the best roleplaying campaign I have experienced. Strong character development, an amazing story and those hundreds of handouts!

Today it feels a little old but still the non-linear storyline, the progress through the chapters with the help of the handouts and the help for the GM in each chapter intro makes these I would say the best campaign ever made.
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  • Posted Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:09 am
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Colin Raitt
United Kingdom
Boston
Lincolnshire
We played this last year with English investigators. One character wanted to blast Nyarlathotep with a war surplus 75mm field gun. The repeated border crossings eventually stripped his money and credit rating. Bast helped them out a little then turned on them for trying to steal from her temple. Under the pyramid the investigator with the best mythos knowledge and a dismissal spell stepped throught the gate to pharonic egypt never to be seen again. In Nairobi they failed to recognise Kenyatta who anyway did not trust them. They "borrowed" the Rolls Royce and smashed it into a tree. Avoiding Australia they headed instead to Shanghai, relaxing beside well trimmed lawns in the foreign quarter. I had great fun reading up on 3rd world diseases and 1930s china. Finally they blundered onto the island. The rocket detonated and they fled from the shoggoth. Too scared to return for fuel they drifted out into the South China Sea on a 15 ft boat, exhausted yet victorius.

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  • Edited Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:47 pm
  • Posted Sun Oct 10, 2010 11:59 am
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Thomas Phinney
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This is my favorite campaign I've ever run, and of stuff I've read (most of what's been published for CoC), I think it ties for first with Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Some great storytelling angles and non-linear narrative.

I've run this three times:

- once to was just NYC and England. Most of the party and the campaign itself died on a side adventure (which was not actually even related to the main plot; there are a number of these, which is one of the cool things about this campaign).

- once went to four of the six locations. This try included a player who had been in the previous abortive campaign, and dealt with their vague recollections by declaring them psychic! Luckily they really had a bad memory, so it worked out pretty well... occasionally a little useful to the group, occasionally just dead wrong.

- final try did the whole nine yards. Took several years, and survived me moving from upstate New York to the SF Bay Area. I had moved with my wife, and later another couple who were also in the campaign moved to SF, so we restarted the campaign, and eventually finished it!

I also managed to get in on doing the clues for the "Complete" edition in 1996, just before I started that third campaign. That was fun. I should ping them about redoing the clues some day... I know a zillion times more about typography and fonts than I did back then.
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  • Edited Sat Apr 2, 2011 6:30 am
  • Posted Sat Apr 2, 2011 6:27 am
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2. RPG Item: Beyond the Mountains of Madness [Average Rating:8.44 Overall Rank:11]
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#2-ranked module on RPGGeek
#2-ranked module on RPG.net

$42 PDF from Chaosium
$100 on Amazon
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WAN CHIU
United States
SUNNYVALE
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Knowing I would never got a chance in my lifetime to play this so I went ahead and read through the whole thing. It is an amazing game. 1st half drags a little but it is worth it.
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  • Posted Mon May 3, 2010 2:42 am
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Colin Raitt
United Kingdom
Boston
Lincolnshire
My players now have a strict no poles rule.

In the beginning they were heroic, leaping through burning oil to protect the ship. Their mood darkened when the sled dogs were poisoned but recovered in Australia. The unremitting danger from cold and altitude dragged the teams spirits back down. Discovering the fate of the previous mission, the need for a sacrifice and silencing witnesses twisted minds of characters and players.

James (of the field gun in Masks) hauled a .3 inch browning all the way to the prison tower . There his sanity dissolved and he emptied a 200 round belt into his onetime friend. He feared being cut up and his face being put into the wall.

As I write this scientist have discovered an extinct species of giant penguin. Teke-lili teke-lili...
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  • Posted Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:40 pm
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3. RPG Item: Escape from Innsmouth (2nd Edition) [Average Rating:8.20 Overall Rank:70]
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#3-ranked on RPGGeek
#4-ranked on RPG.net

$36 on Amazon
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Kevin H.
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Crescent City
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Roughly 60% scenarios by page count, the rest is a description of Innsmouth.
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  • Posted Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:07 am
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Chris Flood
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dysjunct wrote:
Roughly 60% scenarios by page count, the rest is a description of Innsmouth.


RPG.net also has this one as a Background/Setting rather than an Adventure.
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  • Posted Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:25 am
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Balazs Varju
Hungary

This is a great Adventure, although the players might be familiar with the Story, if the've played CoC Dark Corners of the Earth computer game.
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  • Posted Fri Apr 8, 2011 3:11 pm
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Peter Schott
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It's enough to read HPL's "Shadow over Innsmouth", to be familiar with the content. It doesnt spoil playing the scenarios, though, as they are not a reenactment of this story.
Especially the Raid on Innsmouth is, well, rather special.
Would not call it one of the greatest CoC scenarios, though...
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  • Posted Fri Apr 8, 2011 5:02 pm
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4. RPG Item: Arkham: Unveiling the Legend-Haunted City [Average Rating:8.14 Overall Rank:104]
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#6-ranked on RPGGeek
#3-ranked on RPG.net

$22 on Amazon
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Kevin H.
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Only about 30% of the page count is scenarios. The rest is a detailed description of the town of Arkham. (Very well-done and enjoyable, but not strictly scenario.)
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  • Edited Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:06 am
  • Posted Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:05 am
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dysjunct wrote:
Only about 30% of the page count is scenarios. The rest is a detailed description of the town of Arkham. (Very well-done and enjoyable, but not strictly scenario.)


Yes, RPG.net has this as a Background/Setting rather than an Adventure.
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  • Posted Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:24 am
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Kevin H.
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MULRAH wrote:
Yes, RPG.net has this as a Background/Setting rather than an Adventure.


In many cases the distinction runs pretty fine. E.g. what about BTMOM? A good chunk of that is a detailed description of what it was like to be an Antarctic explorer in the 1920s (unsurprisingly, even more dangerous and complicated than it is now).

While this is also not strictly scenario, it's a prerequisite to running BTMOM well, in a way that knowledge of Arkham is not necessary to run the scenarios in this entry well. So maybe that's the answer?

I think both ways have advantages; one disadvantage of the "everything in this book is necessary to run the scenarios" approach is that often the scenarios will quite thoroughly exhaust all the book's possibilities in their quest to use everything. (While I haven't read it, I've heard this about Secrets of Morocco.) The background approach lends itself much better to repeated use, but then that requires that you write scenarios for your group.
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  • Posted Tue Dec 22, 2009 2:41 am
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Jordi B. V.
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I love this one!!!!
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  • Posted Sat Oct 8, 2011 5:23 pm
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5. RPG Item: The Golden Dawn [Average Rating:8.50 Overall Rank:132]
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#5-ranked on RPGGeek
#6-ranked on RPG.net

$100 on Amazon
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Jordi B. V.
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Mmmmm this one is in my wishlist. ninja
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  • Posted Sat Oct 8, 2011 5:24 pm
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6. RPG Item: Horror on the Orient Express [Average Rating:8.05 Overall Rank:75]
Chris Flood
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California
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#4-ranked on RPGGeek
#8-ranked on RPG.net

Unavailable on Amazon or Chaosium
$350 on eBay
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  • 12 comments [Hide]
Jaime Lawrence
Australia
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Probably ranked lower than it ought to be due to its obscurity and rarity. It's a brilliant module.
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  • Posted Sat Dec 19, 2009 9:28 am
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Alex C Eriks
Sweden

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It's overrated. Its rare, its cool and its good looking but its quite unplayable in my humble opinion. As a collector its great to have it in the book shelf, but for a player/keeper its not worth the amount you have to pay for it nowdays.
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  • Posted Mon May 24, 2010 12:25 pm
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Peter Schott
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I did play it as a GM, and I don't know why you rate it unplayable.
It was very playable
It may be a bit expensive nowadays, and I wouldn't buy it therefore, but again, the german (and italian?) edition are still freely available for anyone who can read these languages.
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  • Edited Sat Jun 12, 2010 9:50 pm
  • Posted Mon May 24, 2010 3:52 pm
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Peter Schott
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Now, only part 3 is still available in German, the rest is OOP.
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  • Posted Fri Apr 8, 2011 5:04 pm
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Jordi B. V.
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pethulhu wrote:
Do you speak German?


Noooo! cry
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  • Posted Sat Oct 8, 2011 5:27 pm
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7. RPG Item: Walker in the Wastes [Average Rating:8.07 Overall Rank:203]
Chris Flood
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Oakland
California
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#8-ranked on RPGGeek
#7-ranked on RPG.net

Unavailable on Amazon or Chaosium or eBay
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Bruce Jones
United States
Stuart
Florida
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Awesome.
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  • Posted Thu Jun 17, 2010 8:53 am
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8. RPG Item: Unseen Masters [Average Rating:7.92 Overall Rank:295]
Chris Flood
United States
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#5-ranked on RPG.net
#10-ranked on RPGGeek

$13 on Amazon
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9. RPG Item: Tatters of the King [Average Rating:8.13 Overall Rank:128]
Chris Flood
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#7-ranked on RPGGeek
#10-ranked on RPG.net

$18 on Amazon
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10. RPG Item: The Great Old Ones [Average Rating:7.58 Overall Rank:335]
Chris Flood
United States
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#12-ranked on RPGGeek
#9-ranked on RPG.net

$10 on Amazon
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11. RPG Item: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (1st Edition) [Average Rating:7.93 Overall Rank:578]
Chris Flood
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#13-ranked on RPGGeek
#13-ranked on RPG.net

$17 on Amazon
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Eric Dodd
New Zealand
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Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (1st Edition) should be in the list or close to it - this was the first world-spanning scenario book and the model for all future mega-modules from Chaosium.
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  • Posted Sun Dec 20, 2009 6:45 am
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Chris Flood
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Update April 2010

I updated this list based on recent ratings here on RPG Geek. There are essentially three tiers to this list. The top and bottom tiers remain unchanged, but the middle tier sees Unseen Masters, The Golden Dawn, and Horror on the Orient Express leapfrog Tatters of the King and Walker in the Wastes.

Removed: Mortal Coils and The Realm of Shadows have yet to receive 12 ratings on GeekDo and should not have been on the original list.

On the Cusp: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (1st Edition) needs more ratings here, and Mansions of Madness (1st Edition) needs more ratings on RPG.net in order to qualify.
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  • Posted Mon May 3, 2010 9:41 am
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Update October 2010

As ratings continue to come in here on RPG Geek, a few changes to this list have been made. The previous upward trajectory of Unseen Masters reverses itself, as it tumbles back down to about the same place it was when the list was first started.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth makes its entry into the list, having accumulated enough ratings here. Green and Pleasant Land and The Fungi from Yuggoth join the Mansions of Madness as on the cusp of making the list if they had more ratings or reviews on RPG.net.
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  • Posted Mon Oct 11, 2010 10:32 pm
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Update October 2011

Despite some very minor shifts in the rankings both here and at RPG.net, the overall aggregate ranking and composition of this list remains completely unchanged.

Most of the new stuff in this genre is coming out for Trail of Cthulhu, and some of it holds its own against these classics. The Armitage Files, for example, would actually break into the top ten on this list, given the love it's received here on RPGGeek.
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  • Posted Wed Oct 5, 2011 9:56 pm
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Peter Schott
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MULRAH wrote:
Update October 2011

Most of the new stuff in this genre is coming out for Trail of Cthulhu


At least for Germany, this is not true. Call of Cthulhu (2nd - 6th Edition) is much alive goo in German publishing, though starting next year, Pegasus Spiele will only publish half as much as before, mainly because of economic reasons, partly because of the parting of chief editor Frank Heller cry . Still, "standard" Cthulhu is the most favoured 2nd RPG in Germany, asfaik.
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  • Posted Fri Oct 7, 2011 12:37 pm
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