--- title: "House of Memphis from Mansions of Madness Vol. 1" subtitle: "Call of Cthulhu review" author: "Seth Kenlon" publish_date: 2026-11-10 00:01 date: 2026-11-10 00:01 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: book-cthulhu-mansions-of-madness-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: gaming tag: [ gaming, modules, gm, settings ] --- I've been reading through the **Call of Cthulhu** adventure collection **Mansions of Madness, Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors**, and this is my review of the fifth and final scenario, called **The Nineteenth Hole**. This review contains lots of spoilers, and is intended for game masters only. I've reviewed the other scenarios in this book, too: * [Mister Corbitt](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/blog_review-call-of-cthulhu-mansions-of-madness-1-mister-corbitt) * [The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/blog_review-call-of-cthulhu-mansions-of-madness-2-crackd-and-crookd-manse) * [The Code](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/blog_review-call-of-cthulhu-mansions-of-madness-3-the-code) * [House of Memphis](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/blog_review-call-of-cthulhu-mansions-of-madness-4-house-of-memphis) ## The story Spoilers! **The Nineteenth Hole** is about Arthur MacMillan, a wealthy publisher from Philadelphia who has recently relocated to Dundee, in Scotland. He's bought a golf course and a nearby mansion as fixer-upper projects for him and his wife, Crystal MacMillan. He's working on the golf course refurbishment, and she's working on the house. Things are going well until one day Arthur takes a walk on the golf course and is never seen again. That's where the investigators come in, tasked with figuring out what's happened to Arthur. _Then investigation happens_ And then in the third act, it's revealed that 2 mad scientists from the local university were squatting in a hidden basement under the clubhouse and accidentally got themselves and Arthur trapped in the fourth dimension (or the ethereal plane, or whatever.) This is my least favourite structure for a **Cthulhu** adventure, whether it's **Call of Cthulhu** or [Mansions of Madness](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/blog_review-mansions-of-madness) (the board game, I mean). The formula seems to be: * Problem * Investigation * Big surprise reveal that you could never have deduced or discovered The 2 mad scientists have no connection to the mystery, there's no indication that there is a local university or that anyone from the university would have picked the abandoned golf course as a good location for a place to set up a lab, and the lab is tucked away in hidden section of the basement, which is expressly not where Arthur was believed to have been anywhere near at the time of his disappearance. This kind of surprise reveals are present in the first 2 adventures of the book, and together these are my least favourite scenarios. But that's not to say they're bad. ## Investigative intrigue I actually like all of the scenarios in this book, and had a great time running or playing in them. I think sometimes it's OK for a mystery to serve exclusively as the MacGuffin that gets the investigators to encounter a Lovecraftian horror. And through rigorous play, I think even a scenario with no clue about the lurking horror sometimes ends up revealing hints and clues nevertheless. The game master (Keeper) has read the story, and can drop hints and references as personal amusement, and the players feel like they've done real detective work because even though they didn't know _which_ Lovecraftian horror it was, they at least knew there was something suspicious about those people over at Miskatonic University. In **The Nineteenth Hole**, most of the investigation happens at the golf course or at the mansion. The groundskeeper and staff are the prime witnesses and suspects, and Arthur's wife is the driving force. She wants to know what happened to her husband, and she's wealthy enough to ensure she gets answers. You'll know all along that your players are on a dead-end path from the start, but that just means you can introduce as much intrigue as you need. To be fair, the author of the adventure does provide material to add to the mystery, too. Because Arthur and the 2 mad scientists are trapped on the ethereal plane, they do reach out and make contact with people, usually in dreams. But if the investigators assume Arthur is dead, they'll get no rational answers from apparitions, because although he probably will be dead by the time they find him, he's actually just experiencing an out-of-body phenomenon. The old trick of "tell us how you were murdered" won't work, because he wasn't murdered. The author of the adventure also provides some total red herrings. Things to bring up or suggest that could mislead the investigators entirely. I don't know how much I like that idea, and I certainly didn't find it necessary. My players invented plenty of red herrings themselves, and besides the entire adventure is basically one big red herring. _Arthur is in the ether, because of a machine in the basement._ No, not that basement, the other one. ## Slight setting adjustment I couldn't bring myself to set the adventure in Scotland. First of all, I have no concept of Scotland in the late 1920s. Secondly, I have a lot of negative connotations with the game of golf. I'm sure it's very fun, but to me it's a silly old boring sport for the over-wealthy. I set my adventure in a tuberculosis sanatorium in upstate New York, the founder of which had died of, not coincidentally, tuberculosis. Arthur and his wife purchased it and the founder's mansion as restoration projects, in hopes of building a "modest" retirement estate for themselves. A nearby university used to send doctors out to the sanatorium, so it's established pretty early, and casually, that the university exists, so it's less of a surprise when investigators eventually discover that 2 disgraced scientists have camped out in a hidden basement and are accidentally flooding the grounds with eldritch energy. This worked well. My players spent a lot of time suspecting the staff, or the wife, or a life insurance scam, which is fair. Once they started looking elsewhere, though, they eventually visited the university, which revealed the disgraced (and, incidentally, missing) scientists. They didn't exactly predict that there would be a great salad spinner that propels people into the ethereal plane, but they weren't gobsmacked when that's what turned out to be the problem. ## Good adventure, good book Despite the structure of the written adventure not being entirely to my liking, I enjoyed the scenario and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that it's written without a second act. In a way, that's standard (and often the best) RPG adventure design: You pose a problem, and you let the players find there way to some final act. In fact, broadly that's a particular strength of **Mansions of Madness, Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors**. Every adventure is written following the same format. First, you're told about the historical events that have led up to the current problem. Then you get an overview of all major NPCs (in a section called **Dramatis Personae**), what they want, and how they generally feel about the investigators. Then you get some information about key locations. And finally you get the third act, or a series of ideas of what a third act might look like. They're really easy scenarios to run. You read it once (or twice, if you have a poor memory), and then you wing it. Players do what they do best, and you get to manipulate the setting in response. If you need adventures for **Call of Cthulhu**, **Mansions of Madness, Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors** is a great choice. You get a good variety of mysteries, and they can each be run as stand-alone games or, of course, you could string them together into a series of adventures. I love the running theme of a spooky mansion throughout, and I love that I can use my mansion tiles and miniatures from **Mansions of Madness** to serve as maps on the tabletop. Get the book and play it.