Castle Amber - your experiences?

Twenty-sixth thread of a series on the old classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. It is interesting to see how everyone's experiences compared and differed.

Castle Amber


Did you Play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

Quasqueton

I've run Castle Amber twice and would do it again in a heartbeat. It is great fun. Highlights include:

*The ghostly banquet.
*The indoor forest, especially the squirrels with their golden acorns.
*The whole Averoigne sequence.

My only criticism is that Castle Amber, like many of the site based adventures of that era is too big. It's hard to sustain the momentum. DMs would be well served to keep the d'Ambervilles and the more offbeat encounters and cut out most of the random monsters. In particular the East(?) wing of the castle, with all the color-themed guest rooms is just one fight after another. The adventure flows much better if you can get the party into the castle, meet a couple d'Ambervilles, hit the banquet hall, forest and chapel, and head straight to Averoigne. Keep it moving quickly or the sense of wonder wears off.

Morrow

This was probably the second adventure I ever played in D&D, right after B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. Man, this takes me back. Fun times...

I don't recall that we 'finished it' the first time we played it. As I recall, the adventure has quite a lot of add-on material, so 'finishing it' is a relative thing. I do think we completed the published part of the adventure, excepting perhaps for the additional/optional stuff at the end, such as traveling to Avignon (or whatever it was called).

My impressions of the adventure, after having read thru it and run it as a DM later, were that it was very well written and conceived, and that the adventure had a lot more depth than I was used to seeing in contemporary adventures such as the B series. X1: The Isle of Dread also had the same sense of depth for me. I especially liked the boxing scene and the giant scenes, and the addition of the brain collector creature. I also recall that there was a lot of stuff in French.

I read somewhere that Castle Amber is actually based on a published fantasy setting, but I don't recall right now which one.

Somewhat Tangentially:

I've just e-bayed a copy of this, and was thinking of running soon 3.5 style - what level is it suitable for given a modern "average of 4 characters at the same level" approach?

Thanks;

M

Oh man, what a great adventure. I played through it about 14 years ago. During the scene where you get the bags of magic black powder which have to be tossed into the mouth of the 100 HD(!) Colossus ravaging the city on the cover I had my character climb to the top of one of the parapets, tie several of the bags around individual arrowheads, then aimed one at the Colossus' mouth.

First arrow, natural 20 (or very very close), brought the sucker down with the very first shot. So many great moments in that adventure.

This was one of my favorite of the older adventures. I like the fact that it had so many odd and eccentric personalities. The only problem is that this adventure took awhile for the PCs to figure out what is supposed to be happening and what role they play. Eventually they figure it out but not after the potential of having them lose interest and be distracted by all the lunatics which live in Castle Amber.

good times, my brother loves running this adventure.

memory 1: fighting that huge zombie-thingy using ICE's Arms Law and Claw Law ... lotsa fun.

memory 2: 3e update ... fighter specialized with falchoin gets possessed, Half-Elf Sorc (me) becomes target and takes 35 points of damage ... when I only had about 13 left. The fighter said "I'm possessed?, cool can I still play him though?" ... sure says the DM. Now, this same fighter who couldn't roll to hit to save his life suddenly rolls to hit and ends the sorcerors (20! crit! ... roll to confirm ... 20! ... and of course he rolled extremely high on his dmg too!). The Gold Dragon did reincarnate me though ... to a female human (mean DM) ... chaotic good Sorc went to CN and I became a Mad Fireball Queen.

had great fun everytime I went through this, not sure of how hard it is to DM though.

[edit: more] ... the ghostly dinner was fun and interesting ... although my brother modified any deadly affects to be less lethal, but still not fun to get.

The boxing match was always a good scenario too.

refereed this one a long, long time ago.

was very strange...

but the players all had fun. so i guess it was alright.

A story of Castle Amber played in D&D3.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=116562

This is pretty much how I thought the adventure would go and be taken when I read it.

Quasqueton

Quasqueton said:

A story of Castle Amber played in D&D3.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=116562

This is pretty much how I thought the adventure would go and be taken when I read it.

Quasqueton

Click to expand...

I was going to post that link myself... It seems to me that Castle Amber suffers from the same malady as lots of 1E modules, namely a lack of context. If you know what to do to it to adapt it to a game, it can be just fine, but if you try to use it right out of the box, it can lead to situations like the above thread (which is hilarious).

Castle Amber would work very well if it were placed in a kind of Fey Realms setting, where the wierd magic could be better understood and explained...