DMs Guild The Beast of Graenseskov: An Introductory Ravenloft Adventure [DMs Guild]

The Beast of Graenseskov is a 79-page Ravenloft adventure for characters of 1st-4th levels focused on mystery and exploration. It can be used in conjunction with Curse of Strahd, either as an introduction to Barovia or adapted as a side quest, or it can be used as a stand-alone horror adventure-setting independently of Curse of Strahd.

In the mists at the edge of Count Strahd von Zarovich’s realm lies the Graenseskov, a land of deep woods and bleak hills overrun with wolves. A Beast haunts these misty lands, leaving bloody corpses and terror in its wake, the product of a hag’s curse placed upon the boyar’s manor. But the Beast is no arbitrary killer. The PCs find themselves drawn into the mystery of uncovering the Beast’s identity and breaking the hag’s curse before the Beast’s final victim gurgles their last breath and the Beast is beyond any hope of redemption.

Features:

• The DM (or the Tarokka) determines the guilty suspect and their motives, offering a different experience for each group’s play-through.
• A vivid cast of characters with a NPC index.
• Escalating random encounters, special events, and techniques for DMing a mystery.
• New monsters: black annis hag & loup du noir.
• All units given in SI & metric.
• Handouts and maps for DMs and players.

I'll be doing a complete review of this product after I run it. My full review will cover the mechanics and balance of the challenges in the adventure after I've had a chance to run it. My blog's campaign reports should also cover my group's experience with the story week-by-week which will provide some feedback. Until then, I'll post my initial reactions after purchasing it the day it was released.

I'll be running this for my CoS group immediately after they finish Death House. The adventure itself gives simple advice for altering the challenge for weaker/stronger parties, and I like the idea of sending swarms of wolves at my group, as I plan on playing up the wolves vs. ravens themes found in Curse of Strahd, and that ties in nicely with this adventure.

Assuming even a minimal amount of narrative play during a gaming session, this adventure looks like it will provide at least 5 or 6 four-hour, standard "gaming sessions" worth of material as written. With groups that like to act out every interaction with an NPC, I could see that increasing to 11 or 12 sessions. The amount of material makes is a solid value for its price tag. If you're running it before, or within a Curse of Strahd campaign, it fills the gap in content appropriate for 3rd-4th level characters, and offers several interesting tie-ins with that adventure to send your parties to Volchykrov manor and into this story line. Many of the hooks can also be used as the start of a campaign independent to Curse of Strahd, but set in the canon Demiplane of Dread from earlier editions.

The area map appears to fit quite nicely just east of the Barovia regional map used in Curse of Strahd. As such, it opens up more ground to explore a larger campaign set in the region. Like the CoS map, it's sparely-enough populated to drop in a few more home brewed or published adventure sites/points of interests as part of a larger Ravenloft campaign. It's inspiring me to think about downplaying the Defeat Strahd aspect of CoS and running a game where the characters aren't led to feel like their best chance of "getting home" again is a castle crawl ending with "staking teh vampyr".

The adventure also reinforces an investigative style of game-play which should put your characters in the right frame of mind for a Ravenloft game. The enemies are supposed to be more powerful than the party, coming back again and again, just when you think they're defeated, unless you find their secret weakness and exploit it. From reading the introduction, the Beast (or Beaste as it's referred to by a few NPCs in the text) is that sort of villain. Whether it lives up to it, or gets played as a simple bag of hit points to be overcome, falls squarely on the shoulders of the DM who runs this. That means that to get the most out of it, you should expect to put some work into prepping it. There's a lot of clues and evidence to be found and multiple ways to find it (good use of the 3 to 1 rule), mechanics for randomizing the adventure with Tarokka cards (excellent!), and a lot of freedom given to how the party can accomplish these things. Most importantly though, is knowing how it all goes together so that you can swing with your players going off-script, trying something not anticipated for in the story.

The only fault I could find with it, so far, if you can can call it a fault is the amount of prep work. It's not going to appeal to everyone, because it's not a "buy and run that night" adventure. But for those DMs and players that want to tell a good story with their game, but aren't necessarily the "make it up on the spot" types, and are willing to put a little work into getting there, this adventure facilitates telling a damn good tale that pays tribute to some of the classic fiction that directly inspires Gothic horror fiction and gaming. Successful parties come out of it the heroes of a Grimms' fairy tale, which may be exactly the inspiration they will need in order to be heroes in larger tales set in Ravenloft.



A couple questions/comments about the text:
The grid is missing on the lower floor of the map on page 55.
What's the 6th riddle? Is it supposed to be impossible? Or do I just not get an allusion in it which leads to the answer?
Any chance of a "DM cheat booklet" added to the download which summarizes the decision points, clue lists, and Tarokka results in a single place?

Thanks for your incisive review, Koren! I'll look forward to following your group's play-through on your blog

Koren said:

A couple questions/comments about the text:

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These comments are helpful, and I'll be incorporating them into my edit.

The grid is missing on the lower floor of the map on page 55.

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Good catch! Maciej Zagorski's original didn't have the grid on the lower floor, but I agree that adding it in would be helpful.

What's the 6th riddle? Is it supposed to be impossible? Or do I just not get an allusion in it which leads to the answer?

Click to expand...

That riddle is meant to be incredibly difficult (and probably impossible for some groups) since it will be used when PCs have been riddling for a while and likely have failed some riddles. The riddles roughly get more difficult.

I consider it an unfair riddle, personally. Because the answer is so non-intuitive, when I ran it I was a bit forgiving in the answer the players gave, as long as it was in the right ballpark. It helped that they'd discovered cracked bones of the hag's victims in my game, something I didn't explicitly include in my writeup of the Gingerbread House.

[SBLOCK=The 6th Riddle]
1 Twenty-four soldiers with curved swords,
2 Stand facing half and half in symmetry,
3 One by one, broken are their lords,
4 And beasts feasted on their chivalry.
5 Hound ate the hindquarters,
6 Mouse got the toes,
7 Ravens ate the entrails,
8 And worms the nose.

Optional: Now answer on the straight-and-narrow!

Answer: Cracked the ribcage, sucked the marrow[/SBLOCK]

[SBLOCK=Explanation]

• Lines 1 & 2 refer to the 24 ribs in the human body, arrayed 12 and 12 to a side.
• Lines 3 & 4 are an obtuse reference to the medieval practice of preserving the bones of saints and ancestors for their "spiritual power and goodness." Using "chivalry" is a bit of a red herring but in keeping with the pseudo-medieval setting as "knightly piety." From a wicked and un-spiritual black annis hag's perspective, what is the power in the "broken" bone? I went for a cruel literal interpretation — not "mystical power" but the marrow that the black annis feasts on.
• Lines 5-8 are simply keying the players into the fact that the answer is a part of the body. Also potentially meant to distract players.

[/SBLOCK]

Any chance of a "DM cheat booklet" added to the download which summarizes the decision points, clue lists, and Tarokka results in a single place?

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That's something that I'd been thinking about as well. I was struggling with determining what to put on the "cheat sheet" that would be maximally useful and fit on an elegant 1-or-2-page design. Your feedback seals the deal for me about how I should design it, so I'll add that into my update. Thanks!

Man, after reading more of the text, there are some some really nice ways I can tie this to my campaign beside the excellent hooks given. By coincidence, I have a PC whose campaign intro began with their throat torn out by some beast out in a misty forest in her home world, then waking up covered in dried blood, but uninjured, outside the church in the village of Barovia. The player doesn't know whether her character was spared by some god or powerful being, or is just insane and hallucinated the entire encounter. I think I'm going to drop hints during this adventure that the Beast and that beast may be one in the same, then roll with it based on the player's reaction (she's a home-brewed, non-casting, beastmaster ranger with a wolf pet).

[sblock]If the party thinks this is a paint-by-numbers werewolf hunt story, she'll likely think she's going to turn into a werewolf on the next full moon. That may be more interesting than coming up with a real connection with the Beast (and explaining how she survived), but it still personalizes the story for a player who likes story and narrative. Win either way.[/sblock]

[MENTION=6802236]Koren[/MENTION] Awesome coincidence.

[SBLOCK]Actually, the timeline of the adventure has 1 month being roughly when the boyar gets killed by the Beast (if the PCs haven't stopped the Beast yet). That 1 month lunar cycle could overlap nicely with your "am I a werewolf?" ranger PC.

Also be aware that random encounter #9 (Dogs Gone Mad) could have repercussions for that PC, so definitely something to consider in advance how you want to run it. My default suggestion is leaving it up to the player, but offering Inspiration if they agree for their canine animal companion to run amok temporarily.[/SBLOCK]

[MENTION=6802236]Koren[/MENTION] Here's my first attempt at a "DM's cheat sheet" PDF for the adventure. Let me know if it works for what you had in mind? If so, I will upload it along with my edits this weekend.

I just updated The Beast of Graenseskov with the DM's cheat sheet containing quick prep notes, a clue checklist, Tarokka tables, tips on running the Beast, and a decision point flowchart. Basically, a bunch of tools to make the DM's job easier when it comes to handling the event-driven mystery adventure.

Excellent, and just what I was looking for. Just having all of this info in one place probably saves a few hours of prep work, and makes pacing the flow of information easier if the players go off-script. I run my game with the pdf and any applicable maps on my laptop screen, but this will be great to have printed out in front of me. Appreciate your help. Can't wait until my players finish Death House and can get into this story.

Koren said:

Excellent, and just what I was looking for. Just having all of this info in one place probably saves a few hours of prep work, and makes pacing the flow of information easier if the players go off-script. I run my game with the pdf and any applicable maps on my laptop screen, but this will be great to have printed out in front of me. Appreciate your help. Can't wait until my players finish Death House and can get into this story.

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Great, glad it's what you had in mind.

Quinn over at the High Level Games blog is having me write a guest blog about writing Ravenloft adventures for DM's Guild and what I learned from writing The Beast of Graenseskov. Should be some more design notes about the adventure over there. I know that ENWorlders tend to be very savvy DMs so I figure this sort "behind the scenes" stuff may be of interest.