Seth Skorkowsky has reviewed a lot of Call of Cthulhu adventures over the years, but in this video he finally gives a brief run down of what he considers to be the best published adventures for new players and/or referees, plus a couple runner-ups. That is, these are not necessarily the best Call of Cthulhu adventures overall, but are ones that he considers good ones for introducing players to the game and setting. As you might expect, a few of these have shown up as introductory adventures in the rule books or starter sets over the years.
As a spoiler, though, his #1 pick is an adventure entitled "The Dare" which uses a rules-lite system apparently intended for kids (which rules are included in the adventure booklet). The adventure, itself, is set in the 1980s, with the players taking on the roles of kids that are dared to stay overnight in a haunted house. The adventure was first published in 1996--and that appears to be the version that Skorkowsky discusses--but there is an updated version based on the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu (the 7th edition) available on Drive-Thru RPG either as a PDF or print-on-demand (which you can currently purchase as a bundle with the PDF for no extra cost over just buying the physical copy). I also see that there is a similar adventure set in the same series entitled "The Horror" which takes place at a kid's summer camp. "The Horror" is available individually as a PDF through Drive-Thru RPG or as a PDF bundle with "The Dare".
The main advantage to these is likely the simpler character creation and limited skills--the characters are just kids so it's not like they are going to have a detailed background or huge list of available skills--which will make it easier for the players to figure out what to do without being overwhelmed with all the options in the full rule set. My oldest son runs a gaming group and, as a change from the normal D&D, had tried a Call of Cthulhu adventure; and he commented to me that the players seemed to struggle with the busy character sheet and all the options they needed to track on top of it being a different game system. Thus, it seems to make sense to have one or two adventures using a rules-lite system as an introduction to both the genre and the rules.
That said, the core rule books (for whatever edition) generally include one or two very short, but simple adventures, and the starter set generally includes a longer introductory adventure.
VIDEO: "Top 5 Beginner-Friendly Adventures - Call of Cthulhu"
Seth Skorkowsky (19 min.)
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