My Pulp Cthulhu group used this book for the first time recently, and everyone loved it. My players are very happy with their new investigators, and I'm excited about having tons of background information to tailor our new campaign around. Using the Guide provided more multi-dimensional characters than just picking an archetype and occupation and assigning stats and skills. The randomness was mostly fun, though we did lean heavily into the author's advice to re-roll or straight-up cheat when one player's rolls were extremely disappointing for her. My group is packed with seasoned role-players who spend lots of time on backstory, yet all of them had at least one "I never would have thought of that" moment. In the end, everyone was satisfied.

As the Keeper, I didn't use the Guide as adeptly as I wish I had. Bookmarks didn't work in my PDF viewer for some reason, so I was constantly scrolling up and down in a massive document trying to find the next table. I wanted to avoid printing out a 150 page booklet, but that might have been a bad decision, as post-its or tape flags could have helped us navigate better. My players found the backstory handout a bit confusing; they weren't sure where to write each thing and none of them saw the pre-generated characteristic and skill values. I probably should have spent some time introducing them to the document before we dived in.

The other awkwardness came in when one player wanted to stop before middle age while the rest of the group continued on. The handoff from exploring backstory to calculating the crunchy bits for skills was janky for us - having only one potential occupation identified for every investigator brought things to a grinding halt, and sent us scrolling slowly through the guide looking for where we'd gone wrong. My group used the Guide all at the same time during our scheduled session, which is basically how we do 'round here, but it would be less chaotic as a player and a keeper one-on-one.

I didn't use the handouts correctly; upon my initial read of the Guide I somehow missed that those needed to be physically present and handed out during the process because they're used in later steps. Instead, well, the investigators have some strange artifacts available to them, and at some point I'm sure I'll figure out what to do with them.

Operator error aside, I heartily recommend this Guide to any Call of Cthulhu or Pulp Cthulhu group that wants to create investigators that feel lived-in. If you're the Keeper and you want to avoid too much downtime and confusion, set aside a few hours to prepare and go through the process at least once alone.