Crothian
First Post
A good horror adventure can be hard to do in D&D. They are usually written for low levels as it is tough to really make a high level character scared. There are just too many options and too many classes built to handle the truly scary things. But a module that wants to do horror needs to stick with it and not lose track of itself half way through. I fear that is what this module did. It started out great and I think a simple focus change would really improve how the module is played out.
Legend of the Ripper is number twenty four in the Dungeon Crawl classics series. The module is written by Andrew Hind and it is about forty pages long. The adventure is for low level characters of first through third level. The maps are nicely done and the player handouts are useful.
The module is horror themed and it does this by having will and fort saves at certain times to give a bit of fear or shaken modifiers to the player characters. That is done pretty nicely. The story of the module is the return of a person or creature that killed prostitutes in the same city over a century before. The story is very Jack the Ripper. There is even a ghost of Mari Kell the Ripper’s last victim so many years ago.
The Adventure starts out with the player characters knowing where they are going. The module does say that a DM can expand upon the investigation of the current murders that leads the player character to Ten Bells. It would have been a lot more useful if that investigation where part of the module. The biggest problems I had were with the beginning that is not there and also with the end. The last part of module really seems like a non sequitur.
The Adventure starts with the group going to the Ten Bells. There are some shops and NPCs the group can interact with as well as a ghoul ambush but this part is not that detailed out. Once inside the Ten Bells there is a bit of a mystery to solve. Mari is haunting the place as a ghost and she is also killing people though she is not the Ripper. There is a little side bar on how to get Mari to laid to rest but I think the module would be a lot stronger if this were the final goal once the monsters are all dealt with. Instead it becomes a little side thing the PCs might be able to do though most of that would have to be created by the DM.
The module also takes an odd turn in the basement. It just happens the place where the Ripper is hiding out also houses and ancient evil the PCs have to deal with. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In this case the evil woman is imprisoned and the PCs have to get by all the traps keeping her in to kill her. It actually seems like a time to just leave well enough alone. If the module had a beginning that dealt with investigations it would have been easy to have the PCs uncover some clues that lead to this. In the house there are clues of Mari’s lover trying to raise her from the dead and clues of a small safe house the local thieves use attached to the basement. Both of these encounters are nicely foreshadowed and really fit in with the tone of the module. The ancient evil part is a nice story and would have been better if given its own module. There are nice water themes running through that small level of a the place and in the end it really seems a bit out of place.
Legend of the Ripper is a nice module that just does not live up to its potential. It is one of the rare city based adventures that could have gone outside the normal dungeon crawl modules nicely but still have been one. Instead the module thrusts PCs into the action with no real sense of how they got there and ends with the all clichéd evil the PCs accidentally freed and now have to stop. If one ignores the fifth level of this place and involves a nice investigation to the beginning that sets a horror tone early on the module will flow and run a lot better.
Legend of the Ripper is number twenty four in the Dungeon Crawl classics series. The module is written by Andrew Hind and it is about forty pages long. The adventure is for low level characters of first through third level. The maps are nicely done and the player handouts are useful.
The module is horror themed and it does this by having will and fort saves at certain times to give a bit of fear or shaken modifiers to the player characters. That is done pretty nicely. The story of the module is the return of a person or creature that killed prostitutes in the same city over a century before. The story is very Jack the Ripper. There is even a ghost of Mari Kell the Ripper’s last victim so many years ago.
The Adventure starts out with the player characters knowing where they are going. The module does say that a DM can expand upon the investigation of the current murders that leads the player character to Ten Bells. It would have been a lot more useful if that investigation where part of the module. The biggest problems I had were with the beginning that is not there and also with the end. The last part of module really seems like a non sequitur.
The Adventure starts with the group going to the Ten Bells. There are some shops and NPCs the group can interact with as well as a ghoul ambush but this part is not that detailed out. Once inside the Ten Bells there is a bit of a mystery to solve. Mari is haunting the place as a ghost and she is also killing people though she is not the Ripper. There is a little side bar on how to get Mari to laid to rest but I think the module would be a lot stronger if this were the final goal once the monsters are all dealt with. Instead it becomes a little side thing the PCs might be able to do though most of that would have to be created by the DM.
The module also takes an odd turn in the basement. It just happens the place where the Ripper is hiding out also houses and ancient evil the PCs have to deal with. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In this case the evil woman is imprisoned and the PCs have to get by all the traps keeping her in to kill her. It actually seems like a time to just leave well enough alone. If the module had a beginning that dealt with investigations it would have been easy to have the PCs uncover some clues that lead to this. In the house there are clues of Mari’s lover trying to raise her from the dead and clues of a small safe house the local thieves use attached to the basement. Both of these encounters are nicely foreshadowed and really fit in with the tone of the module. The ancient evil part is a nice story and would have been better if given its own module. There are nice water themes running through that small level of a the place and in the end it really seems a bit out of place.
Legend of the Ripper is a nice module that just does not live up to its potential. It is one of the rare city based adventures that could have gone outside the normal dungeon crawl modules nicely but still have been one. Instead the module thrusts PCs into the action with no real sense of how they got there and ends with the all clichéd evil the PCs accidentally freed and now have to stop. If one ignores the fifth level of this place and involves a nice investigation to the beginning that sets a horror tone early on the module will flow and run a lot better.
