Since 1993 The Dark Door has been running horror based live role-playing events drawing influence from the Cthulhu Mythos as depicted in the stories of H P Lovecraft and others, where we have continued the tradition of borrowing from Lovecraft's Mythos genre while reworking and expanding it to fit our own purposes, a practice adopted by all Mythos writers and supported by the author himself while alive. The Cthulhu Mythos, while initially the creation of H P Lovecraft, is a series of allusions drawn from the works of many hundreds of authors and over the years writers have borrowed from each other and adapted ideas for their own purposes, creating a suitably ambiguous mythology.

Although we acknowledge Lovecraft's stories as the origins of the Cthulhu Mythos, we do not intend to perpetuate the racism and xenophobia that are so entwined with those stories. The good news is that Lovecraft’s work is not the last word on cosmic horror, and many artists, writers, game designers and fans have contributed to the Mythos over the years, challenging racist tropes and ideas contained in those early stories. We continue these efforts through our own games.

The tales are a mix of fantasy, science fiction, and cosmic horror. They tell of an alternative version of history and of the universe as we think we know it, where alien beings known as the Great Old Ones came from the far reaches of the universe and colonized the Earth before the dawn of mankind.

The Dark Door evolved from a series of Lovecraft-influenced games run in the early 1990's by a LARP group called Hack and Slaughter. A few participants at these events then went on to set up a group specifically to specialize in games set in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and so The Dark Door was born. The first Dark Door game "The Ghost Hunt" took place in April 1993 in a hotel, which provided a rather unusual stay for the regular guests, and was then followed in August 1993 by "Mr Dudley Disappears", set this time in an isolated and very ramshackle cottage in a Welsh forest, and from here many more games were to come. Many of the original founders of The Dark Door have since retired from LARP gaming, but we continue to uphold the original vision of the group and, as from the earliest days, our aim is to scare and entertain participants while they uncover arcane secrets and do battle with the undead and inhuman.

The Dark Door is run by its members, but our events are open to all, and it is a "not for profit" organization with no members benefiting financially from our events. The events are run by individuals or groups of members co-operating together and there is no single “design team” and so the organisers and crew change for each event. We generally run three games a year which are held at various locations around the United Kingdom and will range in length from one day to whole weekends. The cost of attending a game will vary, all depending on the cost of hiring venues and buying props etc. Any surplus money that may be left over after a game is ploughed back into The Dark Door. The games are all fully catered, but the facilities available at the venues we use will dictate what can be offered.