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. -Chaosium
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 DriveThruRPG through the Miskatonic Repository.
There are only five Platinum Best Sellers and a solitary Mithril Best Seller. To qualify for Platinum Best Seller status a title must sell between 1001 and 2000 copies; Mithril requires 2001 to 5000. Of these six titles, two are player-facing, Paul Bimler’s Mithril-selling Solo Investigator’s Handbook and Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation. The remaining four titles are scenarios, each for a different setting.
These six bestselling titles have spent an average of 3 years and 315 days on the Miskatonic Repository with a median of 3 years and 114 days. The Modern scenario Viral is the most recent Platinum Best Seller having been released over 800 days ago. Heinrich’s Guide to Character Creation is approaching the 900 day mark. Joe Trier’s Classic-era scenario, The Idol of Thoth, was one of the first Miskatonic Repository entries and was uploaded to DriveThru on Christmas Eve in 2017.
With his 1970s Grindhouse title, Carnival of Madness, and his collaboration with Bud’s RPG Review on Viral, Alex Guillotte has two Platinum achievers. The remaining authors, including Alex’s Grindhouse partner Ian Christiansen, have only one entry breaking the Platinum mark.
The average number of pages for these six best-selling titles is 91 with a median page number of 94. The shortest Platinum selling scenario is The Idol of Thoth at 22 pages. Full Fathom Five, Paul Fricker’s Moby Dick-inspired maritime adventure set in 1847, is nearly three times that at 60 pages, though the body of the scenario is 21 pages with an added 22 pages of pre-generated characters. Heinrich’s Guide to Character Creation is the longest with 153 pages.
The average cost of these best selling scenarios is $9.63 with a mean cost per page of 12 cents. Every single one of these scenarios is available for Print-on-Demand, and none have been converted for sale as a Roll20 Module.
Concerning handouts, The Idol of Thoth and two solo-play titles provide none. Full Fathom Five contains a single handout along with deck plans, a crew manifest, and a custom X-card plus lyrics to a sea shanty. The Carnival of Madness provides 12 handouts along with maps. Viral delivers a whopping 39 handouts.
Notably, Seth Skorkowsky has reviewed three of the four Platinum-selling scenarios. He first reviewed The Idol of Thoth within a year of its release in September 2018 with 112k views to date. He reviewed Viral within two months of its release in June 2022 (86k views). He turned to Carnival of Madness in January 2023 nearly a year and a half after its launch in October 2021 (45k views). To date, he has only reviewed two additional Miskatonic Repository titles, The Curse of Black Teeth Keetes and the recent Joe Trier-Rina Haenze collaboration, In Darkness We Wait.
The remaining fourth scenario, Full Fathom Five, is the work of the Call of Cthulhu, 7th edition co-author and features exceptional cover art by the talented John Sumrow, whose work has been featured in Chaosium publications, including Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine, Call of Cthulhu: Arkham, and Cults of Cthulhu. Paul has two additional Miskatonic Repository titles, the Gold-selling Dockside Dogs and Silver seller My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer.
To further compare Miskatonic Repository resumés, Alex has a total of 19 Miskatonic Repository titles, including his latest collaboration with Bud Baird, Inversion, the Ennie Nominated Los Hobos and the Wolves of Carcosa, and a number of bestselling Grindhouse titles. We will discuss his contribution to the four Cinematic Environs releases in our upcoming post on best selling Miskatonic Repository supplements. As mentioned, How We Roll’s Joe Trier has released two titles, and The Idol of Thoth bears the logo of Chaosium licensee Stygian Fox along with layout and art credit to owner Stephanie McAlea. Trier also contributed to Stygian Fox’s publication Fear’s Sharp Little Needles.
As a member of the Council of Shoggoths, Heinrich Moore helps organize the Miskatonic Repository Convention. He has released three Miskatonic Repository scenarios, including two Electrum Sellers (Little Torches, Unremembered) along with The Great Trap. He contributed to the Explorer to the Occupation Kits project, and from our review we know he produces great player-facing content. Though Paul Bimler has only released a single Miskatonic Repository title, his 5E Solo Gamebooks imprint has released four additional bestselling titles for D&D/system agnostic fantasy gaming. Like Moore’s most recent work, all of his projects are player-facing.
Reaching Platinum tier is a remarkable accomplishment—less than 2% (or 2514 out of 149,642 titles) of all DriveThruRPG products achieve this level of sales. The climb to Platinum is daunting enough, and Mithril is even more rarified air—just 549 titles (0.37%) reaching this mark. All of these best-selling creators worked hard for their success and brought unique resources and skills to bear on their individual projects.
Find our review for Full Fathom Five here.