D&D 5E Anybody Seen/Played Frog God's Tegel Manor?

[Retreater]

I picked up Tegel and have been reading over the PDF all weekend. What I can say is that the map (even though it's artistically well designed) isn't very functional (at least on my screen). Squares aren't clearly defined. I think there are numerous missing doors that leave entire sections of the Manor unreachable. The overworld map isn't labeled at all.
This is all stuff I can fix on my own, but it does demonstrate a little carelessness.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I have to say, the item listing on FGG is pretty minimal, given the price.

But I like the 70s feel, and I do not fear TPKs. I seldom use the included backgrounds to any adventure, so I'm OK with it not having any.

 

[Carmen Sbordone]

I'm looking at dropping this in as a dungeon in one of my ongoing games for 5e, but I'm curious about the level range, page count, and general quality of the product. I have been unable to find these details on their official page or in general Google searches. And I'd like to know more before dropping $55 on the product.
Thanks in advance.

Picked it up recently. Havent read it yet.

 

[Windjammer]

Wow, very pleased to see this got published at long last. As for helping you decide on whether to get it for yourself, the following may help :

Tegel Manor – Fomalhaut

That's Gabor Lux's website, he's one of the co-authors, and that site explains and illustrates his design stance when he took on the task of expanding the module.

I can't speak to how much, exactly, survives the 2019 version. What I do remember, from the author's manuscript back in the day, is that it was an utterly idiosyncratic module, off the charts creative, but also often extremely whimsical. Gabor took a house full of a completely eccentric family and he made them... even weirder. Think of Heath Ledger's Joker, or Depp's Jack Sparrow in the third movie's "My Peanut" sequence. Now multiply these characters by the dozen and have them haunt Castle Ravenloft. Boom. That's Tegel Manor.

If the original '77 module was already very weird, Gabor Lux made it both more consistent and even more intriguing. My favorite bit was a random effects table for magical columns. What is pretty pedestrian in most author's hands (or my own, to be honest), became this miniature gem for creating hilarity and tension at the gaming table.

I wish there'd be a cheaper available version, if only so folks would feel more relaxed to try something outside established genre boundaries of D&D modules. I know I'm more inclined to sink fifty bucks into a bucket load of Paizo/WotC modules that, let's face it, re-hash the dozens of modules I already have on my shelves. That's just how we work. "Men hate two things--the desert, and novelty." Borges. So, if nothing else, Tegel Manor is a safe purchase if you wanna get something you, for sure, haven't seen or played before.

[EDIT] If you wanna see a case in point just how idiosyncratic an education Gabor Lux brings to the table, consider the illustration on page 7 (attached below). Gabor is a huge fan of early European silent film movies, and expressed that the ultimate woman in the Wilderlands setting may have found a perfect portrayal in Fritz Lang's 1924 Saga of the Nibelungs. Check the 1 hour time mark here for the inspiration:

 

[mach1.9pants]

An adventure like Tegel Manor greatly benefits from using an interlinked format. I'll probably put it in RealmWorks, which makes something like this easier to run than flipping through bookmarked pages. However, they are currently working on getting it available in Fantasy Grounds. I'm not sure how good FG is about displaying content but it would be great to have the map of Tegel Manor all prepped for VTT play.

Actually, this is something I didn't mention before. MANY of FGG's big books can be a pain to run in pen and paper format. They are huge and trying to understand how things connect can be a challenge and remembering everything is going to nigh impossible for most people with busy lives.. Have the PDF open and optimized for searching can help. I've put WAY to much time copying material from the PDF to RealmWorks so everything is cross-linked.

Tegel Manor is much easier to run than Rappan Athuk though. It is mostly a room by room dungeon crawl. I would just read through it with a highlighter to make sure you don't miss important bits when running it. It could be helpful to print and cut out NPC and portrait descriptions, but search the pdf is almost as convenient and doesn't require the prep work.

Hopefully they will put this up in World Anvil after they release Lost Lands setting guide on World Anvil. I much prefer running these huge adventure areas in a cross-linked format than from paper or PDF.

Sorry to thread jack but cannot you point me in the direction of a good guide to importing a PDF adventure into Realm Works

 

[MNblockhead]

Sorry to thread jack but cannot you point me in the direction of a good guide to importing a PDF adventure into Realm Works

Unfortunately, it is pretty labor intensive. The good news is that FGG is working on putting its material into World Anvil. I'm not sure where Tegel Manor fits on the timeline, but I would get it on WA in a heart beat rather than having to data enter such a large adventure into Realmworks.

Also, I believe that Tegel Manor will be available in Fantasy Ground soon. I don't have enough experience with FG to know how well it works for navigating and using adventure content beyond the maps. However, having the Tegel Manor maps all prepped for VTT use might be enough to justify the cost of buying FG and the Tegel Manor content on it.

 

[Retreater]

Since posting, I've purchased the book and run two sessions. I've set it up as a "run in and recover a specific item," but the group has fallen victim to a teleportation trap and gotten themselves lost in the halls. Now they are fighting for survival and trying to escape. One of the players said the last session was one of the best games he's had playing D&D. I'm GMing for mostly new players, and they are surprised by the challenge of the place - but they're having a blast coming up with creative solutions.
My main gripe about the book itself is the map. It's very artistic and beautifully designed; however, there might be too much detail. The numbers and text are hard to read with my aging eyes, doors are hard to see, and the patterned tile floors make it difficult to see grids and get accurate measurements.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

My main gripe about the book itself is the map. It's very artistic and beautifully designed; however, there might be too much detail. The numbers and text are hard to read with my aging eyes, doors are hard to see, and the patterned tile floors make it difficult to see grids and get accurate measurements.

Well that will probably kill any chance of me buying it. I realized recently that I'm actually not getting younger, but getting older by the second!

 

[Volund]

If you want it, get Tegel Manor 5e while you can. FGG announced tonight on FB they are severing ties with JG and won't be reprinting the book due to anti-Semitic social media comments by the owner of JG.

 

[amethal]

Gabor Lux has also published his own take on the haunted house, Castle Xyntillan. It's for Swords & Wizardry, rather than 5th edition, however.