Miskatonic Repository Review – Gold Best Sellers

Are you a Keeper looking for new scenarios and story elements? A player looking for something mysterious to spark a character idea? Is your group looking for eerie ideas to use in your game? The Miskatonic Repository is where you can find —and create —self-published material for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. 

The Miskatonic Repository provides a trove of resources, scenarios, and, most importantly, a thriving creative community, for Call of Cthulhu enthusiasts. Since its launch in 2018, this partnership with DriveThruRPG allows independent creators to self-publish their materials for the classic investigative TTRPG. By 2024, the Miskatonic Repository hit a milestone of 150,000 titles sold. Thanks to information provided by Community Ambassador Nick Brooke about the English-language best-sellers, we are looking at the Miskatonic Repository’s current Electrum, Gold, Platinum, and Mithril scenarios in a series of posts. There are currently over 1,400 Call of Cthulhu community content titles (969 English-language) for sale on DriveThru RPG through the Miskatonic Repository. 

Of these English-language titles, only 33 are Gold Best Sellers. To qualify for Gold Best Seller status a title must sell between 501 and 1000 copies. From this pool of Gold Sellers, 26 titles are scenarios with the remainder being supplements, map packs, and handouts. We will return to a broader discussion of the non-scenario Miskatonic Repository titles at a later date. Once we complete the discussion, we will release our compiled data in a summary post. I know Heinrich Moore is hard at work on a more comprehensive list of Miskatonic Repository content. In the meantime, here’s something to chew on. 

Below, you will find an alphabetical list of the Gold scenarios and their authors with links to DriveThruRPG. What follows is a review of some of key statistics. 

• Branches of Bone – Michael Reid
• Cursed – Al Smith
• Dockside Dogs – Paul Fricker
• Field of Screams – Al Smith
• Flesh Wounds – Pete Burgess
• Good Vibes Only – Phaedra Florou
• Hand of Glory – Allan Carey
• Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa – Heinrich Moore
• Host and Hostility – SR Sellens
• Of Sorrow and Clay – Graeme Patrick
• Of Wrath and Blood – Jon Hook
• Overdue – Nathan Pidde
• Saturday the 14th – Rina Haenze
• Shepherd of Moths – Marek Golonka (Zgrozy)
• Signal to Noise – Colin Richards
• Sorrow in Tsavo – Bridgett Jeffries
• Swamp Song – Keeper Doc
• The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes – Perry Grosshans
• The Dragon of Wantley – SR Sellens
• The Grindhouse: Volume 1 –  Alex Guillotte & Ian Christensen
• The Grindhouse: Ultimate Collection : Vol. 1-3 –  Alex G. & Ian Christensen
• The Hammersmith Haunting – Kat Clay
• The Highway of Blood – Alex Guillotte & Ian Christensen
• The Mummy of Pemberley Grange – Allan Carey
• The Pharaoh’s Sacrifice – Keith D. Edinburgh
• The Pipeline – Alex Guillotte

These scenarios have spent an average of 962 days on the Miskatonic Repository with a median of 810 days. The current shortest dwell time is 211 days for Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa, while the longest-tenured scenario is Alex Guillotte’s The Pipeline, which was released in September 2018. 

The majority of scenarios (16) are written by an author with a single Gold-selling title. The most represented Gold-selling author is prolific Miskatonic Repository contributor Alex Guillotte of Critical Hit Publishing with four titles. Three of these are Grindhouse collaborations with his frequent partner Ian Christensen. Al Smith, SR Sellens, and Allan Carey each have two Gold best-selling scenarios. 

The average Gold-selling scenario cost is $5.80 with a median price of $4.99. The average number of pages is 62 with median page number of 40. The shortest Gold-selling scenario is Marek Golonka’s Shepherd of Moths with a mere 15 pages. Nathan Pidde’s Overdue is not far behind with 18 pages. Four scenarios break the 100-page mark, Host and Hostility (105), The Grindhouse: Ultimate Collection (volumes 1-3) (140), and The Highway of Blood (130) with Heinrich Moore’s 340-page Carcosa tome leading the page count with a cost per page running less than 4 cents. The average cost per page of a Gold scenario is 11 cents with a median of 9 cents and a high of 23 cents per page for The Mummy of Pemberley Grange. It’s worth noting that some of these prices have changed over time with various promotions and bundles. At present, Shepherd of Moths is Pay What You Want. 

All but five of the scenarios are Print-on-Demand. Only six of the scenarios offer a Roll20 VTT version, as this trend does not seem to have caught on yet. 

As for setting breakdown, there are nine Classic (1920s) era scenarios. Two Classic scenarios are set specifically at Miskatonic University (Flesh Wounds, Hand of Glory). The powerhouse combination of the 70s & 80s notches six scenarios with strong contributions from Alex and Ian’s Grindhouse series, Rina’s slasher flick-inspired Saturday the 14th, and Colin Richard’s Analog Horror Signal to Noise. Close behind are the five Modern-era scenarios (Cursed, Dockside Dogs, Good Vibes Only, Heinrich’s Guide to Carcosa, and Overdue). There are two scenarios each in the Pulp (The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes, Field of Screams) and Gaslight (Sorrow in Tsavo, The Hammersmith Haunting) eras. Both Regency (Host and Hostility) and Dark Ages (Branches of Bone) have a single Gold bestseller. While Down Darker Trails has Electrum representation, no entries for this setting have hit Gold. 

Most titles are one-shot experiences for multiple players. Heinrich’s Guide to Carcosa is geared for solo or one-to-one play. Host and Hostility offers three discrete one-to-one scenarios. The two Grindhouse offerings provide two (Vol. 1) and seven scenarios (Vol. 1-3). 

Handouts are considered by many to be a key component of engaging investigative scenarios. The average number of handouts is 7 with several providing no handouts, including Zgrozy’s terse, but effective Shepherd of Moths. Seven scenarios provide more than 10 handouts with The Highway of Blood clocking in at 24 total. Signal to Noise and The Pipeline are runners-up with each providing 19.

A quick assessment of cover art reveals that Alex Guillotte contributed to the design of eight total covers. Other notable Miskatonic Repository and Chaosium artists include John Sumrow (Cursed), Tom Brown (Swamp Song), and James Bunnell (Saturday the 14th). Most frequently, though, scenario authors handled the layout. 

Two titles (Hand of Glory, Host and Hostility) were Silver Ennie winners. Of the Gold scenarios, Seth Skorkowsky reviewed the The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes (a topic we will return during our discussion of Platinum scenarios). 

Many of these scenarios have appeared on actual play podcasts or streams, such as Graeme Patrick’s Of Sorrow and Clay, which was presented on Ain’t Slayed Nobody. I encourage authors, podcasters, and streamers to please drop links to additional actual plays of these scenarios in the comments. You can find many of these scenarios at the Miskatonic Playhouse which features a wonderful creative team including Gold-selling authors SR Sellens and Pete Burgess.