der_kluge
Adventurer
(FYI, there are more reviews on page 11, 14, 16 and 18 of this thread)
Feast of Goblyns
Feast of Goblyns is interesting, but it's like a train wreck piled upon a train wreck. I stopped reading it after around 30 pages, because it was just a mess. In my mind, I'm like, "well, I can ignore this", and "I can skip all this", and I was left with like 1 out of 30 pages of usable content. That's not even an exaggeration.
The jail scene at the beginning defies logic. Like, ok, a prisoner escapes, and the PCs are enlisted (rather, drafted) to aid the warden, and then after he locks them in the prison just... forgets about them??? WTF? The next section works whether the party is in jail or not, so the whole jail thing is completely unnecessary. You can skip it and it has no effect on the game whatsoever. It makes more sense to run "The Alley" section by having the PCs hear a commotion outside their room at an inn.
Which brings us the next glaring problem. Firstly, this scene could very easily trigger any female players in my game that have been abused or assaulted. So, I could very easily see someone raising an X-card on this entire scene, which would immediately derail this railroad. Assuming that doesn't happen, this entire thing doesn't make any sense. She's putting on an act on the sole presumption that someone - anyone just happens to be nearby who can hear her sobbing? In the middle of the night? In Ravenloft? Smart PCs will just peace-out at this point and go back to sleep.
Assuming that doesn't happen, she tells them that to be free from her forced marriage that... wait for it... she needs a magical crown that was lost by her ancestors, and she knows this because the Vistani told her. OMG. Any normal player at this point is going to be like "wut?". An actual reasonable response to this situation might be "Please escort me to Gundarak, so that I can be with my true love!", or something reasonable like that. Not, "Oh yea, I need this mystical, artifact-level crown." Hoo boy.
A more sensible plot would be summarized as follows: "Akriel finds the PCs at the tavern, recognizes them as outsiders, and mercenaries, and offers them a ridiculous sum of money to go find this thing for her." Do that, and you have a realistic plot, and you can skip like a bunch of nonsensical stuff.
Next is basically a random encounter with a farmhouse on the way from Harmonia to Skald. This, too, can be completely ignored as it adds nothing to this plot.
Next up is Skald, where we get a lot of detail on the layout of an inn that's apparently infested with wolfweres that the PCs have no reason to explore room-by-room. Also, as a side note, I just don't understand the math of Ravenloft sometimes. So, this is a town of like 2,000 people, and a huge percentage of them (apparently) are wolfweres, who like to kill people for fun. So, let's say the murder rate is 1-2 people per day, which by the description of this tavern, seems to be accurate, you're at 500 deaths per year? That means that in 4-5 years’ time, this town will be completely devoid of people. Unless they only attack visitors? In which case every merchant that enters the town is slain, and how long before every surrounding domain just says, "F that place, no one go there", and now suddenly Kartakass is completely isolated from every other domain, and trade grinds to a halt, and when that happens, this place will make the Dark Ages look like a paradise. So yea, the Inn description is completely ridiculous and over-the-top and makes no logical sense, whatsoever. And it can be completely ignored. And even in the module it indicates that Akriel suggests that the PCs head BACK to Harmonia to start their journey in finding this crown. Right, so Skald is an absolute waste of time. I'm starting to think this entire module is just a dumping ground for stuff that was maybe culled from other modules and found a home here. Ok, so now I've basically ignored more than 1/3rd of this book...
I basically stopped reading at this point. Skimming the next section, it looks equally stupid. Seriously, if you're thinking about running this module, look elsewhere. This one is atrocious. The only useful parts of this are the details you get about Harmonia and Skald, in case your party is interested in exploring those areas. That's about it.
Chilling Tales – Through Darkened Eyes
This module starts off bad – the group is riding in a carriage with Dr. Van Richten. (all the modules in this book involve Van Richten in some way) There’s a man sobbing near a burning farm. Van Richten is supposed to go and talk to him, assuming the PCs are all heartless SOBs that wouldn’t also do that. But let’s continue, pretending like I haven’t shoehorned this Mary Sue NPC into my campaign.
The villain here is a darkling who goes by the name Brissell. He sets up an elaborate scheme to rescue his son, Kinar from a nearby tribe of Vistani. Clever GMS could work with this and maybe, just maybe convince the PCs to go along with this ruse, but that’s a decent-sized “maybe”. But here’s the rub – the Vistani tribe is large, with 35 members, including several children, dancing bears, and high level spellcasters. Brissell spots his son, and in a combat that is absolutely, positively not going to go sideways somehow, takes his son from the tribe. Incidentally, this module doesn’t mention Kinar again. Apparently, he was an illusion this entire time, and is just completely removed from the story. Also, “Brissell” is wearing some seriously powerful magic items. So, if the PCs get the upper hand on him and kill him, they’re rewarded with some ridiculously over-powered things. Also, at least one of the PCs is supposed to be captured by the Vistani, because if there’s anything I love more than a railroad, it’s removing player agency.
Next, the PCs catch up to “Brissell” in the graveyard after they fight through some spiders, where he performs a dark ritual to summon a grave elemental... for reasons that are mostly unclear. And yes, more combat ensues. At one point, Brissell jumps into an open sarcophagus to escape, and to follow him the PCs must work together to lift the lid on the … open(?) sarcophagus to follow him. What? Here’s the best part – Brissell could do all of this without even rescuing his son (who apparently disappears after he’s taken anyway). The entire adventure could be thus shortened into “Lomar, the darkling wakes up one day and decides to summon a grave elemental for no reason whatsoever.” That’s it. Oh, and the Vistani knows where he hides, because they have the divination magic available to them in order to find him. Blech! This mess isn’t salvageable.
Chilling Tales – Undying Justice
The adventure starts at a dinner party, because why not. The module indicates that Van Richten can tell a story and gives options from “Van Richten’s Guide to Ghosts”, but if you don’t own that book, shame on you – Van Richten tells no stories! Seriously? At the party, a nobleman asks Van Richten for help in ridding his home of a “malicious spirit”. Fortunately, Van Richten agrees not to meddle, which leaves the PCs to take on this quest. Or, you know, just remove Van Richten, and have the nobleman reach out to the PCs directly, which makes more sense anyway.
The home is haunted by the spirit of a servant of the nobleman’s, who was murdered in a fire because the nobleman believed the servant (Tommas), was making moves on his wife, and possibly his daughter. In a rage, the nobleman burns down his house with the servant chained to a bedpost. The servant came back as a ghost and is seeking revenge against the nobleman and his family but will settle for an apology. Over the course of the investigation, PCs could follow up on a whole host of possible leads, but they are mostly dead ends (and could take a fair amount of game time, actually).
The NPCs are fairly one-dimensional, but certainly can be made a little more interesting with a little work on the GM’s part. I think it could be fun to place a few more red herrings in here, personally. In the end though, this kind of works. The ending seems a bit underwhelming, however. Personally, I’d let killing the nobleman be enough to satisfy the ghost. The module indicates that only an apology will suffice. Although, in my opinion, murdering the nobleman would be on-brand with Ravenloft. You could justify that if you made the nobleman’s business something unsavory, too. As it is, it says he made his fortune in the cooking oil business, which frankly sounds a bit implausible.
This module also wins points for having a great map to a nobleman’s estate and making logical sense. Additionally, there’s no combat here (unless the PCs pick a fight with something), so it could be scaled up and down however you want it to be. This module calls for level 3-5, but it could work easily for about anything between 1-6. Although higher level PCs are certainly going to cast speak with dead to short-circuit a lot of this. Lastly, most PCs are going to beeline it to the study, which the nobleman says is off-limits. Of course, that’s going to just ask for it to be investigated first. You could also play this up with a business finding out that his competitor has people in his house. Perhaps he’s willing to pay for trade secrets. Lots of ways you could mold this into interesting ways. Honestly, you could change it such that Tommas was actively having an affair with the wife. And maybe while investigating it, they uncover a plot from the wife to murder her husband. That alone makes this like twice as compelling!
Chilling Tales – Gazing into the Abyss
Just skimmed through this, it’s obvious there’s nothing redeeming about this “module”. It’s basically just a story about a vassalich (a weaker form of lich) having a grudge against Dr. Van Richten. The story unfolds as the vassalich tricks Van Richten into killing innocent people because illusions make them appear to be vampires. There’s not much for the PCs to do here except watch some character development unfold for Van Richten, and maybe introduce a very powerful recurring villain that, because its phylactery is in Azalain’s lair in Darkon, they can never really remove. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.
Chilling Tales – Family Feud
Clocking in at a massive 2 pages, this “adventure” is really a short side-quest involving some werewolves trying to kill a weretiger. Although, somehow, it’s not terrible? Mercifully, Van Richten could be removed easily. Basically, the party encounters a group of werewolves posing as Vistani. They tell a story about how they were attacked by some werewolves and would appreciate aid in eliminating them. The Vistani are the real werewolves, and their target is a weretiger mother with her young cubs. When the PCs visit the weretiger, they easily, and quickly learn that she’s not what the werewolves claimed she was, and then out of nowhere, the werewolves attack! It’s not really clear what purpose the PCs serve in this encounter, since the ruse is so wafer thin, only blind PCs would actually attack the weretiger. I would argue that what might make this somewhat more interesting is to make the werewolves actual teenagers, who have learned about the weretiger and try to convince the PCs to kill her, or perhaps they manage to kidnap one of her cubs, which causes her to hunt them relentlessly. That sounds like a far more compelling story.
Chilling Tales – The Surgeon’s Blade
I’d like to find something redeeming here, but unfortunately, I can’t. The premise is that a mad scientist kidnaps Van Richten because he wants to use his superior intellect for a super golem he’s creating in a secret lab in some ruins. A bunch of rogues with artificial limbs kidnap Van Richten, and why they continue to work for the mad scientist after he’s removed various limbs from them is quite the mystery, but that doesn’t stop the module from going into an excessive amount of detail describing them all. Oh, and the kidnapping can’t be prevented. It must happen. After that, the module makes no mention of these rogues again, and instead you fight a group of flesh golems. Also, the mad scientist has psionics, and it’s a requirement since it’s a plot device here. The scientist transfers his intellect accidentally into a bear golem type thing with carrion crawler tentacles for arms. Yes, it’s all as stupid as it sounds. Next!
Chilling Tales – The Scarlett Kiss
A young female vampire, posing a holy sister in a hospice, attempts to turn Van Richten into a vampire to stop him from finding out the truth about her. Incidentally, a hospice is where people go to die, not to be healed. But that’s a semantic problem. The PCs find Van Richten after a failed ambush against the vampire – a scene which largely makes little sense. The recovering Van Richten implores the party to find the vampire amongst the sisters at the hospice and destroy her. The PCs must navigate the politics of the hospice and find enough clues to root out their suspect.
Despite a bit of a bumpy start, and of course the forced inclusion of Van Richten, this module is solid. I really like the idea that a hospice (ok, I’m going to call it a hospital, since that’s what it is), was built on top of a site which once housed some catacombs and that is where the vampire secret lives. Coming up into the hospital, she has learned some actual healing, and learned how to resist a lot of the obvious tells that a vampire might have – garlic, crosses, all the usual things. Now she’s just trying to keep a low profile and go about her existence as low-key as she can. That’s a solid premise.
The inclusion of Van Richten is slightly annoying, though the added time-pressure does add a sense of urgency to the adventure. With a bit of work, this could be an excellent module. Change Van Richten into a visiting priest – perhaps from a different town. The priest visits to see what he might do to build such an establishment in his city. The young vampire falls for this young, handsome priest, and despite her attempts to maintain a low profile, can’t resist her desire to have him for herself. After all, she’s shuttered in a building with a bunch of women, and sick patients. She attempts to convert the priest, and he, in turn, has a crisis of faith and falls for the beautiful young woman, even though he doesn’t realize she’s a vampire. This could set up an interesting role-play situation where the PCs must figure out if it’s even necessary to kill the vampire, or if they think she can be redeemed in some way.
Chilling Tales – Ancient Dead
I’ve always legitimately wondered if anyone has ever ran any of these Egyption-themed Ravenloft modules. These really have two major issues – the flavor is super strange for Ravenloft. I know there was a huge fascination with all things Egyption during the Victorian era – it’s inclusion here as a setting just seems out of place. And secondly, there just don’t seem to be enough of these modules to build a campaign around that domain specifically. So, at best, you’re including them as minor one-shots, or just short excursions. But I digress.
This module isn’t terrible, but it is sort of one-dimensional. It hinges on the party following Van Richten to Har’Akir to receive a treasure for help he’d given them in the past. There, he hears about slaves coming up missing, and the noble there offers the PCs a fortune in carpets to bring him back his slaves. Most PCs aren’t going to be keen to do this, but Van Richten suggests that they can maybe find the slaves and help them continue their path to freedom, and perhaps the others as well. What unfolds from here is a straight line to a dungeon crawl, with a fight against a mummy lord. There isn’t a real conclusion to this quest, and very little regarding the slaves is even mentioned.
Chilling Tales – The Taskmaster’s Leash
This entire scenario reads like some sort of wicked DM power trip. The PCs arrive in a town to find their dear friend, Van Richten. There, they learn that the entire town is under the oppressive thumb of the “black watch” – a thug police force that lashes citizens for even the lowliest of infractions. The leaders of the town are fiends in disguise and are ruling the town with an iron fist. The PCs are tasked with releasing their friend from the jail (and possibly themselves) and freeing the town of its oppressive masters.
While there’s technically nothing terribly askew with this module it also isn’t overly interesting. It’s doesn’t really have a Gothic horror feel to it at all and honestly could be ran in just about any setting. It might make for a decent one-shot, though with all the potential combat, it would take way more than 4 hours to complete.
Book of Crypts – Bride of Mordenheim
The first module in this book takes place in Lamordia. There, the PCs meet Katrina on a sandy beach. After telling them that’s she’s searching for her aunt, the PCs can agree, and all seems OK so far. By mid-afternoon the following day, the PCs, with Katrina, find the house. Inside, the PCs hear a noise, and head upstairs. There, they find a door with a chair against the doorknob (which is super weird since it’s on the PCs’ side of the door). Inside the door, they find Victor Mordenheim, and he seems pleasant enough. Although, most reasonable PCs will probably just kill him since the creep factor here is off the scale. That’s probably the smart play, to be honest. Victor offers the PCs a room for the night (did I mention it’s mid-afternoon?), and then through deus ex machina, kidnaps Katrina in the middle of the night. Nothing the PCs do will stop this. The plot must move forward! Anyway, they find Victor with Katrina in an operating room where he plans to transfer the soul of his wife into Katrina’s body. A fight ensues, and all ends happily! Unless the PCs can’t cast neutralize poison to save Katrina. I guess she dies, otherwise. Or something. Also, I like how the cover says “levels 3 and up” and this module is literally 2-4. Oops.
Book of Crypts – Blood in Moondale
This module is a railroaded, ham-fisted mess. Long story short, the PCs are members of a militia, complete with a captain and two other NPC guards who get caught in a snowstorm and are forced to wait it out by finding an inn for the night. Thereafter, several vicious murders happen all at the obvious hands of a werewolf. And the captain is suspiciously absent. Of course, it would take an absolute moron not to realize that the captain is behind these murders. But assuming for even one second that’s not the case, why are the PCs in a militia group with a captain? It’s almost like the writer doesn’t know how this game works. Also, the innkeeper is a vampire.
Book of Crypts – The Dark Minstrel
The PCs are randomly summoned by a minstrel to a feast at his mansion where he traps you in his place for 100 years. Spoiler alert: any creepy dude that invites you back to his place to “listen to music” is always up to no good. If the PCs refuse this invitation, they are forced to comply through heavy-handed phobias. Because of no particular reason. After the mansion is whisked away to the void, the PCs can explore and destroy everything impunity. It doesn’t seem like it would take long to zero in on the harpsichord to end this quest. Also, for a supposedly morally good bard, forcing random strangers to spend 100 years with you just because you grow lonely is pretty evil. Even his statblock says “NE (but believes himself to be LG)”, like how?? This module might be workable if you don’t just thrust them into the scenario completely randomly as the module does. If the entire setup felt more natural, like maybe the minstrel meets the PCs somewhere, and they express a liking in his music, then he could invite them to his place for more music. At least then it wouldn’t feel so heavy-handed.
Book of Crypts – The Cedar Chest
In this tale, the PCs are hired (at a paltry rate, btw!) to help a constable hunt down a murderer. The murderer leaves a calling card, and a grisly murder scene behind. The murderer is a former necromancer who uses a magic jar spell to move from person to person and enjoys randomly murdering people. Which honestly, I think you could find something better to do with your time, but who am I to judge? The murders happened a while back, and then stopped, but have started up again. Though, I’m not sure the module really says why that’s the case. Anyway, the PCs find out one of them is the murderer, though none of them realize it. The module suggests using a PC for whom a player can’t make the session. I’m not sure that’s necessary. I also don’t think it’s necessary to even tell the player that you’ve chosen that it’s their character until the jig is up.
For this module to work, one needs a deep understanding of how the magic jar spell works. In the module, if the affected PC asks a question during the speak with dead sessions, the dead person doesn’t respond to them. That alone is going to rouse a ton of suspicion, though I’m not sure it’s necessary to do that. I’d have to better understand the nuances of magic jar, and if you’re not running this using 2nd edition rules, you’d want to make sure it all still works with whatever edition you are using.
It’s an interesting backstory, and the way the quest is introduced to the party is all pretty interesting. The flow of the adventure seems reasonable (although the order of events seems arbitrarily forced). If the PCs are told that one of them is the killer, then it seems reasonable that once they go to bed, they’re all going to manacle themselves to the bed, and the keys will all be kept with the innkeeper. In other words, clever PCs are going to go out of their way to ensure that none of them awaken in the middle of the night to commit a heinous murder – sleep spell or not, if you don’t have the key to your manacle when you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re not going anywhere. That pretty much derails this. And why Alisia doesn’t mention the cedar chest upon their first visit makes absolutely no sense at all. Only in death is she like “Oh yea, I should have mentioned that!” What?
With some work, this could become an interesting little quest, but would require a fair amount of repairing to circumvent some of the obvious holes in the story here.
Book of Crypts – The Rite of Terror
In an unnamed domain, the PCs enter the town of Aferdale, a town described as having a population of just over 1,000 people. The map to Aferdale, which looks like it was numbered by an insane asylum patient, has about 30 buildings. Presumably, this must mean that each building houses about 34 people. Got it. The PCs learn that lots of people go missing in this town, and no one seems to know why. Well, everyone has theories as to why, but nobody has acted on any information to date. Which is super crazy. But let’s just pretend that’s normal. When the PCs investigate, they can meet a ghost in a field, who was a victim of the cultists that are doing all the killing. Apparently, no one has bothered walking in this field until the PCs came along to get this valuable information.
The cultists in question are Malar worshippers, and they’ve killed 12 people this month alone. At this rate, Aferdale will be a ghost town in maybe 5-6 years. And even though they only kill “wild” animals, apparently polymorphing children into wild animals is a loophole that Malar is cool with? What’s incredible here is that the parents of these missing children aren’t literally ripping apart every farmstead they even remotely suspect of being a ne’er-do-well to stop all the death. Every aspect of this module is just completely unbelievable and illogical to the point of absurdity.
Dungeon Magazine Issue # 64 - Last Dance
Like most Dungeon magazine modules, Last Dance is fairly verbose, and includes a lot of backstory. But, despite some foibles here and there with a few things, this one seems pretty solid. There is, however, a bit of a disconnect between the stated level range of the module (2-4) and the level of the final form of the Madame Tuvache (12th). The premise of this module is simple enough – crazy woman invites you into her crazy house, where said crazy house is designed to kill the PCs.
To start, she invites you to her estate to help eradicate something in the basement for her. That seems reasonable enough. Curiously, the module goes through hoops to make her seem creepy AF, which seems heavy-handed, because you want the players to believe this woman’s story – not immediately assume she’s some sort of vampire! At any rate, she lures them into the basement, where the PCs can discover a literal ticking time bomb. Once diffused, they can explore the remainder of the basement (which isn’t large), and possibly find the water wheel, which would deactivate everything in the entire house. Although initially they wouldn’t have any reason to think to disable it. In fact, it might take a few rooms for them to realize that the stuff here is powered by it.
The module is mostly a dungeon crawl through the house and all its macabre puppets and clockwork traps. There are two illogical things about the place. First is that the PCs are taken to the basement where a bomb attempts to kill them. The fact that the remainder of the house is mostly also designed to kill them is a little strange. It’s as if she expects the basement trap not to work. Secondly is the ending – in the module, killing Madame Tuvache results in her becoming a basically unkillable villain, from which the low-level party must flee from. This was likely done to not have to give the PCs a free home for which to use as a base of operations, but it does leave the adventure feeling a little incomplete. Most players are going to tend to overlook the first one, but the second one could use a bit of rework to feel satisfying.
Howls in the Night
This adventure takes place in Mordentshire, in a coastal town. Here, the PCs check into an inn, and learn a little bit about hounds prowling the countryside. At this point, the innkeeper passes a bowl around to collect a bounty to entice the PCs into killing the hounds, which qualifies for the flimsiest hook into an adventure, ever. Failing that, the sheriff will literally force the PCs to help the town or throw them into jail. Wow, ok. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the group follows the sheriff to investigate a murder of a local shepherd. Shortly thereafter, they fight a group of bog hounds. After that, they meet a gardener wandering around outside, who leads them to a nearby manor house. He then tells them that his master hasn’t aged in 50 years, and that the hounds seem to be getting closer. How convenient!
Because it wouldn’t be a 2nd edition module without some detailed map of some sort of structure, we get a room-by-room detail for the entire house, even though the PCs really have no business rummaging through the house in this manner.
I honestly gave up on this module by this point. The entire thing is completely implausible. The start is ok, but in 50 years, no one thought to check out this dude who never aged? And Westcote himself knows the history of the bog hounds because it’s his story. That never slipped to anyone in this town in 50 years? Also, no other adventurers have entered this town in 50 years to deal with this problem? There’s nothing in this entire adventure that would compel the PCs to care about it at all. And despite how original bog hounds are as a monster, they aren’t interesting to fight. The “story” basically just consists of ham-fisted attempts to lurch the party from one combat to another, and then for the GM to stitch it all together with an overly convoluted backstory that, again, the PCs are going to care nothing about.
Hour of the Knife
Hour of the Knife is a Jack the Ripper murder-mystery type module set in Zherisia. This domain only warrants a small paragraph in the 5e Ravenloft book. But it could be placed in just about any decent sized city fairly easily. It is patterned after London. The PCs are thrust into the city blindly and then are immediately witness to a vicious murder. At this point, despite no one even asking them, it is expected that they will begin solving this crime.
One of the first things the module instructs the GM to do is to outright murder any PC that is left alone with a doppleganger (there are many of them). No dice, no warning, just death to the PC, now you’re playing a doppleganger. Furthermore, that PC is then instructed to murder any other PC if they are given the opportunity to do so. I guess it doesn’t matter if the PC in question has 100 hit points, or not. They are just insta-killed and replaced. This is a sure-fire way to both end a campaign, and to also make your players hate your guts. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense. A Doppleganger generally tries to keep a low profile. They wouldn’t draw undue attention to themselves by leaving a trail of bodies everywhere. Also, what do they gain by randomly killing people? Fortunately, the module provides a way for these PCs to eventually be resurrected, but the taint of the heavy-handed and forced death this creates can’t be erased so easily.
Hour of the Knife was originally a tournament module, and it shows. There, the players won’t be as invested in their character, and the GM could get away with a lot more stuff than you can in your home campaign. As it stands, this module would require a fair amount of rework to make it usable. For starters, I would probably vastly decrease the number of doppelgangers and offer a very compelling reward for the capture or killing of the murderer. That would at least provide some level of incentive to the party for embarking on it in the first place.
Feast of Goblyns
Feast of Goblyns is interesting, but it's like a train wreck piled upon a train wreck. I stopped reading it after around 30 pages, because it was just a mess. In my mind, I'm like, "well, I can ignore this", and "I can skip all this", and I was left with like 1 out of 30 pages of usable content. That's not even an exaggeration.
The jail scene at the beginning defies logic. Like, ok, a prisoner escapes, and the PCs are enlisted (rather, drafted) to aid the warden, and then after he locks them in the prison just... forgets about them??? WTF? The next section works whether the party is in jail or not, so the whole jail thing is completely unnecessary. You can skip it and it has no effect on the game whatsoever. It makes more sense to run "The Alley" section by having the PCs hear a commotion outside their room at an inn.
Which brings us the next glaring problem. Firstly, this scene could very easily trigger any female players in my game that have been abused or assaulted. So, I could very easily see someone raising an X-card on this entire scene, which would immediately derail this railroad. Assuming that doesn't happen, this entire thing doesn't make any sense. She's putting on an act on the sole presumption that someone - anyone just happens to be nearby who can hear her sobbing? In the middle of the night? In Ravenloft? Smart PCs will just peace-out at this point and go back to sleep.
Assuming that doesn't happen, she tells them that to be free from her forced marriage that... wait for it... she needs a magical crown that was lost by her ancestors, and she knows this because the Vistani told her. OMG. Any normal player at this point is going to be like "wut?". An actual reasonable response to this situation might be "Please escort me to Gundarak, so that I can be with my true love!", or something reasonable like that. Not, "Oh yea, I need this mystical, artifact-level crown." Hoo boy.
A more sensible plot would be summarized as follows: "Akriel finds the PCs at the tavern, recognizes them as outsiders, and mercenaries, and offers them a ridiculous sum of money to go find this thing for her." Do that, and you have a realistic plot, and you can skip like a bunch of nonsensical stuff.
Next is basically a random encounter with a farmhouse on the way from Harmonia to Skald. This, too, can be completely ignored as it adds nothing to this plot.
Next up is Skald, where we get a lot of detail on the layout of an inn that's apparently infested with wolfweres that the PCs have no reason to explore room-by-room. Also, as a side note, I just don't understand the math of Ravenloft sometimes. So, this is a town of like 2,000 people, and a huge percentage of them (apparently) are wolfweres, who like to kill people for fun. So, let's say the murder rate is 1-2 people per day, which by the description of this tavern, seems to be accurate, you're at 500 deaths per year? That means that in 4-5 years’ time, this town will be completely devoid of people. Unless they only attack visitors? In which case every merchant that enters the town is slain, and how long before every surrounding domain just says, "F that place, no one go there", and now suddenly Kartakass is completely isolated from every other domain, and trade grinds to a halt, and when that happens, this place will make the Dark Ages look like a paradise. So yea, the Inn description is completely ridiculous and over-the-top and makes no logical sense, whatsoever. And it can be completely ignored. And even in the module it indicates that Akriel suggests that the PCs head BACK to Harmonia to start their journey in finding this crown. Right, so Skald is an absolute waste of time. I'm starting to think this entire module is just a dumping ground for stuff that was maybe culled from other modules and found a home here. Ok, so now I've basically ignored more than 1/3rd of this book...
I basically stopped reading at this point. Skimming the next section, it looks equally stupid. Seriously, if you're thinking about running this module, look elsewhere. This one is atrocious. The only useful parts of this are the details you get about Harmonia and Skald, in case your party is interested in exploring those areas. That's about it.
Chilling Tales – Through Darkened Eyes
This module starts off bad – the group is riding in a carriage with Dr. Van Richten. (all the modules in this book involve Van Richten in some way) There’s a man sobbing near a burning farm. Van Richten is supposed to go and talk to him, assuming the PCs are all heartless SOBs that wouldn’t also do that. But let’s continue, pretending like I haven’t shoehorned this Mary Sue NPC into my campaign.
The villain here is a darkling who goes by the name Brissell. He sets up an elaborate scheme to rescue his son, Kinar from a nearby tribe of Vistani. Clever GMS could work with this and maybe, just maybe convince the PCs to go along with this ruse, but that’s a decent-sized “maybe”. But here’s the rub – the Vistani tribe is large, with 35 members, including several children, dancing bears, and high level spellcasters. Brissell spots his son, and in a combat that is absolutely, positively not going to go sideways somehow, takes his son from the tribe. Incidentally, this module doesn’t mention Kinar again. Apparently, he was an illusion this entire time, and is just completely removed from the story. Also, “Brissell” is wearing some seriously powerful magic items. So, if the PCs get the upper hand on him and kill him, they’re rewarded with some ridiculously over-powered things. Also, at least one of the PCs is supposed to be captured by the Vistani, because if there’s anything I love more than a railroad, it’s removing player agency.
Next, the PCs catch up to “Brissell” in the graveyard after they fight through some spiders, where he performs a dark ritual to summon a grave elemental... for reasons that are mostly unclear. And yes, more combat ensues. At one point, Brissell jumps into an open sarcophagus to escape, and to follow him the PCs must work together to lift the lid on the … open(?) sarcophagus to follow him. What? Here’s the best part – Brissell could do all of this without even rescuing his son (who apparently disappears after he’s taken anyway). The entire adventure could be thus shortened into “Lomar, the darkling wakes up one day and decides to summon a grave elemental for no reason whatsoever.” That’s it. Oh, and the Vistani knows where he hides, because they have the divination magic available to them in order to find him. Blech! This mess isn’t salvageable.
Chilling Tales – Undying Justice
The adventure starts at a dinner party, because why not. The module indicates that Van Richten can tell a story and gives options from “Van Richten’s Guide to Ghosts”, but if you don’t own that book, shame on you – Van Richten tells no stories! Seriously? At the party, a nobleman asks Van Richten for help in ridding his home of a “malicious spirit”. Fortunately, Van Richten agrees not to meddle, which leaves the PCs to take on this quest. Or, you know, just remove Van Richten, and have the nobleman reach out to the PCs directly, which makes more sense anyway.
The home is haunted by the spirit of a servant of the nobleman’s, who was murdered in a fire because the nobleman believed the servant (Tommas), was making moves on his wife, and possibly his daughter. In a rage, the nobleman burns down his house with the servant chained to a bedpost. The servant came back as a ghost and is seeking revenge against the nobleman and his family but will settle for an apology. Over the course of the investigation, PCs could follow up on a whole host of possible leads, but they are mostly dead ends (and could take a fair amount of game time, actually).
The NPCs are fairly one-dimensional, but certainly can be made a little more interesting with a little work on the GM’s part. I think it could be fun to place a few more red herrings in here, personally. In the end though, this kind of works. The ending seems a bit underwhelming, however. Personally, I’d let killing the nobleman be enough to satisfy the ghost. The module indicates that only an apology will suffice. Although, in my opinion, murdering the nobleman would be on-brand with Ravenloft. You could justify that if you made the nobleman’s business something unsavory, too. As it is, it says he made his fortune in the cooking oil business, which frankly sounds a bit implausible.
This module also wins points for having a great map to a nobleman’s estate and making logical sense. Additionally, there’s no combat here (unless the PCs pick a fight with something), so it could be scaled up and down however you want it to be. This module calls for level 3-5, but it could work easily for about anything between 1-6. Although higher level PCs are certainly going to cast speak with dead to short-circuit a lot of this. Lastly, most PCs are going to beeline it to the study, which the nobleman says is off-limits. Of course, that’s going to just ask for it to be investigated first. You could also play this up with a business finding out that his competitor has people in his house. Perhaps he’s willing to pay for trade secrets. Lots of ways you could mold this into interesting ways. Honestly, you could change it such that Tommas was actively having an affair with the wife. And maybe while investigating it, they uncover a plot from the wife to murder her husband. That alone makes this like twice as compelling!
Chilling Tales – Gazing into the Abyss
Just skimmed through this, it’s obvious there’s nothing redeeming about this “module”. It’s basically just a story about a vassalich (a weaker form of lich) having a grudge against Dr. Van Richten. The story unfolds as the vassalich tricks Van Richten into killing innocent people because illusions make them appear to be vampires. There’s not much for the PCs to do here except watch some character development unfold for Van Richten, and maybe introduce a very powerful recurring villain that, because its phylactery is in Azalain’s lair in Darkon, they can never really remove. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.
Chilling Tales – Family Feud
Clocking in at a massive 2 pages, this “adventure” is really a short side-quest involving some werewolves trying to kill a weretiger. Although, somehow, it’s not terrible? Mercifully, Van Richten could be removed easily. Basically, the party encounters a group of werewolves posing as Vistani. They tell a story about how they were attacked by some werewolves and would appreciate aid in eliminating them. The Vistani are the real werewolves, and their target is a weretiger mother with her young cubs. When the PCs visit the weretiger, they easily, and quickly learn that she’s not what the werewolves claimed she was, and then out of nowhere, the werewolves attack! It’s not really clear what purpose the PCs serve in this encounter, since the ruse is so wafer thin, only blind PCs would actually attack the weretiger. I would argue that what might make this somewhat more interesting is to make the werewolves actual teenagers, who have learned about the weretiger and try to convince the PCs to kill her, or perhaps they manage to kidnap one of her cubs, which causes her to hunt them relentlessly. That sounds like a far more compelling story.
Chilling Tales – The Surgeon’s Blade
I’d like to find something redeeming here, but unfortunately, I can’t. The premise is that a mad scientist kidnaps Van Richten because he wants to use his superior intellect for a super golem he’s creating in a secret lab in some ruins. A bunch of rogues with artificial limbs kidnap Van Richten, and why they continue to work for the mad scientist after he’s removed various limbs from them is quite the mystery, but that doesn’t stop the module from going into an excessive amount of detail describing them all. Oh, and the kidnapping can’t be prevented. It must happen. After that, the module makes no mention of these rogues again, and instead you fight a group of flesh golems. Also, the mad scientist has psionics, and it’s a requirement since it’s a plot device here. The scientist transfers his intellect accidentally into a bear golem type thing with carrion crawler tentacles for arms. Yes, it’s all as stupid as it sounds. Next!
Chilling Tales – The Scarlett Kiss
A young female vampire, posing a holy sister in a hospice, attempts to turn Van Richten into a vampire to stop him from finding out the truth about her. Incidentally, a hospice is where people go to die, not to be healed. But that’s a semantic problem. The PCs find Van Richten after a failed ambush against the vampire – a scene which largely makes little sense. The recovering Van Richten implores the party to find the vampire amongst the sisters at the hospice and destroy her. The PCs must navigate the politics of the hospice and find enough clues to root out their suspect.
Despite a bit of a bumpy start, and of course the forced inclusion of Van Richten, this module is solid. I really like the idea that a hospice (ok, I’m going to call it a hospital, since that’s what it is), was built on top of a site which once housed some catacombs and that is where the vampire secret lives. Coming up into the hospital, she has learned some actual healing, and learned how to resist a lot of the obvious tells that a vampire might have – garlic, crosses, all the usual things. Now she’s just trying to keep a low profile and go about her existence as low-key as she can. That’s a solid premise.
The inclusion of Van Richten is slightly annoying, though the added time-pressure does add a sense of urgency to the adventure. With a bit of work, this could be an excellent module. Change Van Richten into a visiting priest – perhaps from a different town. The priest visits to see what he might do to build such an establishment in his city. The young vampire falls for this young, handsome priest, and despite her attempts to maintain a low profile, can’t resist her desire to have him for herself. After all, she’s shuttered in a building with a bunch of women, and sick patients. She attempts to convert the priest, and he, in turn, has a crisis of faith and falls for the beautiful young woman, even though he doesn’t realize she’s a vampire. This could set up an interesting role-play situation where the PCs must figure out if it’s even necessary to kill the vampire, or if they think she can be redeemed in some way.
Chilling Tales – Ancient Dead
I’ve always legitimately wondered if anyone has ever ran any of these Egyption-themed Ravenloft modules. These really have two major issues – the flavor is super strange for Ravenloft. I know there was a huge fascination with all things Egyption during the Victorian era – it’s inclusion here as a setting just seems out of place. And secondly, there just don’t seem to be enough of these modules to build a campaign around that domain specifically. So, at best, you’re including them as minor one-shots, or just short excursions. But I digress.
This module isn’t terrible, but it is sort of one-dimensional. It hinges on the party following Van Richten to Har’Akir to receive a treasure for help he’d given them in the past. There, he hears about slaves coming up missing, and the noble there offers the PCs a fortune in carpets to bring him back his slaves. Most PCs aren’t going to be keen to do this, but Van Richten suggests that they can maybe find the slaves and help them continue their path to freedom, and perhaps the others as well. What unfolds from here is a straight line to a dungeon crawl, with a fight against a mummy lord. There isn’t a real conclusion to this quest, and very little regarding the slaves is even mentioned.
Chilling Tales – The Taskmaster’s Leash
This entire scenario reads like some sort of wicked DM power trip. The PCs arrive in a town to find their dear friend, Van Richten. There, they learn that the entire town is under the oppressive thumb of the “black watch” – a thug police force that lashes citizens for even the lowliest of infractions. The leaders of the town are fiends in disguise and are ruling the town with an iron fist. The PCs are tasked with releasing their friend from the jail (and possibly themselves) and freeing the town of its oppressive masters.
While there’s technically nothing terribly askew with this module it also isn’t overly interesting. It’s doesn’t really have a Gothic horror feel to it at all and honestly could be ran in just about any setting. It might make for a decent one-shot, though with all the potential combat, it would take way more than 4 hours to complete.
Book of Crypts – Bride of Mordenheim
The first module in this book takes place in Lamordia. There, the PCs meet Katrina on a sandy beach. After telling them that’s she’s searching for her aunt, the PCs can agree, and all seems OK so far. By mid-afternoon the following day, the PCs, with Katrina, find the house. Inside, the PCs hear a noise, and head upstairs. There, they find a door with a chair against the doorknob (which is super weird since it’s on the PCs’ side of the door). Inside the door, they find Victor Mordenheim, and he seems pleasant enough. Although, most reasonable PCs will probably just kill him since the creep factor here is off the scale. That’s probably the smart play, to be honest. Victor offers the PCs a room for the night (did I mention it’s mid-afternoon?), and then through deus ex machina, kidnaps Katrina in the middle of the night. Nothing the PCs do will stop this. The plot must move forward! Anyway, they find Victor with Katrina in an operating room where he plans to transfer the soul of his wife into Katrina’s body. A fight ensues, and all ends happily! Unless the PCs can’t cast neutralize poison to save Katrina. I guess she dies, otherwise. Or something. Also, I like how the cover says “levels 3 and up” and this module is literally 2-4. Oops.
Book of Crypts – Blood in Moondale
This module is a railroaded, ham-fisted mess. Long story short, the PCs are members of a militia, complete with a captain and two other NPC guards who get caught in a snowstorm and are forced to wait it out by finding an inn for the night. Thereafter, several vicious murders happen all at the obvious hands of a werewolf. And the captain is suspiciously absent. Of course, it would take an absolute moron not to realize that the captain is behind these murders. But assuming for even one second that’s not the case, why are the PCs in a militia group with a captain? It’s almost like the writer doesn’t know how this game works. Also, the innkeeper is a vampire.
Book of Crypts – The Dark Minstrel
The PCs are randomly summoned by a minstrel to a feast at his mansion where he traps you in his place for 100 years. Spoiler alert: any creepy dude that invites you back to his place to “listen to music” is always up to no good. If the PCs refuse this invitation, they are forced to comply through heavy-handed phobias. Because of no particular reason. After the mansion is whisked away to the void, the PCs can explore and destroy everything impunity. It doesn’t seem like it would take long to zero in on the harpsichord to end this quest. Also, for a supposedly morally good bard, forcing random strangers to spend 100 years with you just because you grow lonely is pretty evil. Even his statblock says “NE (but believes himself to be LG)”, like how?? This module might be workable if you don’t just thrust them into the scenario completely randomly as the module does. If the entire setup felt more natural, like maybe the minstrel meets the PCs somewhere, and they express a liking in his music, then he could invite them to his place for more music. At least then it wouldn’t feel so heavy-handed.
Book of Crypts – The Cedar Chest
In this tale, the PCs are hired (at a paltry rate, btw!) to help a constable hunt down a murderer. The murderer leaves a calling card, and a grisly murder scene behind. The murderer is a former necromancer who uses a magic jar spell to move from person to person and enjoys randomly murdering people. Which honestly, I think you could find something better to do with your time, but who am I to judge? The murders happened a while back, and then stopped, but have started up again. Though, I’m not sure the module really says why that’s the case. Anyway, the PCs find out one of them is the murderer, though none of them realize it. The module suggests using a PC for whom a player can’t make the session. I’m not sure that’s necessary. I also don’t think it’s necessary to even tell the player that you’ve chosen that it’s their character until the jig is up.
For this module to work, one needs a deep understanding of how the magic jar spell works. In the module, if the affected PC asks a question during the speak with dead sessions, the dead person doesn’t respond to them. That alone is going to rouse a ton of suspicion, though I’m not sure it’s necessary to do that. I’d have to better understand the nuances of magic jar, and if you’re not running this using 2nd edition rules, you’d want to make sure it all still works with whatever edition you are using.
It’s an interesting backstory, and the way the quest is introduced to the party is all pretty interesting. The flow of the adventure seems reasonable (although the order of events seems arbitrarily forced). If the PCs are told that one of them is the killer, then it seems reasonable that once they go to bed, they’re all going to manacle themselves to the bed, and the keys will all be kept with the innkeeper. In other words, clever PCs are going to go out of their way to ensure that none of them awaken in the middle of the night to commit a heinous murder – sleep spell or not, if you don’t have the key to your manacle when you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re not going anywhere. That pretty much derails this. And why Alisia doesn’t mention the cedar chest upon their first visit makes absolutely no sense at all. Only in death is she like “Oh yea, I should have mentioned that!” What?
With some work, this could become an interesting little quest, but would require a fair amount of repairing to circumvent some of the obvious holes in the story here.
Book of Crypts – The Rite of Terror
In an unnamed domain, the PCs enter the town of Aferdale, a town described as having a population of just over 1,000 people. The map to Aferdale, which looks like it was numbered by an insane asylum patient, has about 30 buildings. Presumably, this must mean that each building houses about 34 people. Got it. The PCs learn that lots of people go missing in this town, and no one seems to know why. Well, everyone has theories as to why, but nobody has acted on any information to date. Which is super crazy. But let’s just pretend that’s normal. When the PCs investigate, they can meet a ghost in a field, who was a victim of the cultists that are doing all the killing. Apparently, no one has bothered walking in this field until the PCs came along to get this valuable information.
The cultists in question are Malar worshippers, and they’ve killed 12 people this month alone. At this rate, Aferdale will be a ghost town in maybe 5-6 years. And even though they only kill “wild” animals, apparently polymorphing children into wild animals is a loophole that Malar is cool with? What’s incredible here is that the parents of these missing children aren’t literally ripping apart every farmstead they even remotely suspect of being a ne’er-do-well to stop all the death. Every aspect of this module is just completely unbelievable and illogical to the point of absurdity.
Dungeon Magazine Issue # 64 - Last Dance
Like most Dungeon magazine modules, Last Dance is fairly verbose, and includes a lot of backstory. But, despite some foibles here and there with a few things, this one seems pretty solid. There is, however, a bit of a disconnect between the stated level range of the module (2-4) and the level of the final form of the Madame Tuvache (12th). The premise of this module is simple enough – crazy woman invites you into her crazy house, where said crazy house is designed to kill the PCs.
To start, she invites you to her estate to help eradicate something in the basement for her. That seems reasonable enough. Curiously, the module goes through hoops to make her seem creepy AF, which seems heavy-handed, because you want the players to believe this woman’s story – not immediately assume she’s some sort of vampire! At any rate, she lures them into the basement, where the PCs can discover a literal ticking time bomb. Once diffused, they can explore the remainder of the basement (which isn’t large), and possibly find the water wheel, which would deactivate everything in the entire house. Although initially they wouldn’t have any reason to think to disable it. In fact, it might take a few rooms for them to realize that the stuff here is powered by it.
The module is mostly a dungeon crawl through the house and all its macabre puppets and clockwork traps. There are two illogical things about the place. First is that the PCs are taken to the basement where a bomb attempts to kill them. The fact that the remainder of the house is mostly also designed to kill them is a little strange. It’s as if she expects the basement trap not to work. Secondly is the ending – in the module, killing Madame Tuvache results in her becoming a basically unkillable villain, from which the low-level party must flee from. This was likely done to not have to give the PCs a free home for which to use as a base of operations, but it does leave the adventure feeling a little incomplete. Most players are going to tend to overlook the first one, but the second one could use a bit of rework to feel satisfying.
Howls in the Night
This adventure takes place in Mordentshire, in a coastal town. Here, the PCs check into an inn, and learn a little bit about hounds prowling the countryside. At this point, the innkeeper passes a bowl around to collect a bounty to entice the PCs into killing the hounds, which qualifies for the flimsiest hook into an adventure, ever. Failing that, the sheriff will literally force the PCs to help the town or throw them into jail. Wow, ok. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the group follows the sheriff to investigate a murder of a local shepherd. Shortly thereafter, they fight a group of bog hounds. After that, they meet a gardener wandering around outside, who leads them to a nearby manor house. He then tells them that his master hasn’t aged in 50 years, and that the hounds seem to be getting closer. How convenient!
Because it wouldn’t be a 2nd edition module without some detailed map of some sort of structure, we get a room-by-room detail for the entire house, even though the PCs really have no business rummaging through the house in this manner.
I honestly gave up on this module by this point. The entire thing is completely implausible. The start is ok, but in 50 years, no one thought to check out this dude who never aged? And Westcote himself knows the history of the bog hounds because it’s his story. That never slipped to anyone in this town in 50 years? Also, no other adventurers have entered this town in 50 years to deal with this problem? There’s nothing in this entire adventure that would compel the PCs to care about it at all. And despite how original bog hounds are as a monster, they aren’t interesting to fight. The “story” basically just consists of ham-fisted attempts to lurch the party from one combat to another, and then for the GM to stitch it all together with an overly convoluted backstory that, again, the PCs are going to care nothing about.
Hour of the Knife
Hour of the Knife is a Jack the Ripper murder-mystery type module set in Zherisia. This domain only warrants a small paragraph in the 5e Ravenloft book. But it could be placed in just about any decent sized city fairly easily. It is patterned after London. The PCs are thrust into the city blindly and then are immediately witness to a vicious murder. At this point, despite no one even asking them, it is expected that they will begin solving this crime.
One of the first things the module instructs the GM to do is to outright murder any PC that is left alone with a doppleganger (there are many of them). No dice, no warning, just death to the PC, now you’re playing a doppleganger. Furthermore, that PC is then instructed to murder any other PC if they are given the opportunity to do so. I guess it doesn’t matter if the PC in question has 100 hit points, or not. They are just insta-killed and replaced. This is a sure-fire way to both end a campaign, and to also make your players hate your guts. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense. A Doppleganger generally tries to keep a low profile. They wouldn’t draw undue attention to themselves by leaving a trail of bodies everywhere. Also, what do they gain by randomly killing people? Fortunately, the module provides a way for these PCs to eventually be resurrected, but the taint of the heavy-handed and forced death this creates can’t be erased so easily.
Hour of the Knife was originally a tournament module, and it shows. There, the players won’t be as invested in their character, and the GM could get away with a lot more stuff than you can in your home campaign. As it stands, this module would require a fair amount of rework to make it usable. For starters, I would probably vastly decrease the number of doppelgangers and offer a very compelling reward for the capture or killing of the murderer. That would at least provide some level of incentive to the party for embarking on it in the first place.
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