Happy Halloween!

To celebrate, I present to you Alone on Halloween, one of Pagan Publishing’s early Call of Cthulhu license publications.

The heir to Chaosium’s 1985 Call of Cthulhu solo adventures Alone Against the Dark and Alone Against the Wendigo, this scenario by Scott David Aniolowski and John Tynes puts you in the role of a Mistkatonic University student investigating a house filled with ghosts, monsters, mad scientists and more. It even has 666 entries, just to make it extra evil.

The cover art and the centerfold are by the excellent Blair Reynolds, who did realistic and graphically sophisticated illustrations for a number of Pagan Publishing and Chaosium titles in the early 90s before vanishing from the scene (more on that another day). His cover illustration here is one of my favorites. The interior illustration is a bit more typical of his work: horrific monster, graphic gore and a surprising sexual undercurrent.

In the early 90s, Pagan Publishing struck me as a bit more adult and experimental than contemporary Chaosium products, which seems a bit strange now, considering this scenario seems to skew toward the lighthearted. Thing is, I’ve never played it, so I can’t tell you for sure. If I didn’t have a newborn, today would have been the day!