This is Trail of the Loathsome Slime (1985). What a bizarre little Call of Cthulhu scenario, produced by Games Workshop for the UK market.

Let’s start with the plot. The British Bird Preservation Society (of all things) loses its annual expedition to an island near the Falklands in 1981. They go again in 1982. The players are on this boat because an occultist learned something about the situation, but then was murdered, which bears investigating. The secret is that a defunct cult hid their cult artifacts there and set two shoggoths as guardians. A non-believing descendant of the cult thinks they hid treasure there and is prepared to really fuck everyone’s trip up to get it. On top of all this, the night before arriving on the island, everyone on the boat eats ergot laced bread and basically starts going crazy. All of this is described in the sequence of events as if the investigators aren’t present and doing things, which will naturally derail the timeline, for which some guidance is given. It’s a lot of reading, but it isn’t a bad arrangement for a scenario. Even if it is kinda weird.

Oh, so, also, set in the ’80s, which makes this the first “modern era” Call of Cthulhu scenario to see publication. There are several new skills in the front of the adventure (most of them utterly useless for a boat expedition) like Nuclear Physics, Drive Motorcycle and, my favorite, Phone Phreaking. Oh, and there is an NPC named Hans Gruber, who is a retired mercenary, and it is my head canon now that the Die Hard character was inspired by a truly bizarre playthrough of this scenario.

Brian William does all the art, inside and out, and it is good. I don’t understand the quality gap between this and Nightmare in Norway. It’s so wide!