D&D 5E Goodman Games is Reincarnating Castle Amber

The new installment in the Original Adventures Reincarnated line has been announced and it is X2 - Castle Amber.

They fled from the far-flung land of Averoigne: the Amber family, a bloodline of wizards and warriors persecuted for their dark sorcery and occult crimes. In their new world, they built a lavish manor for themselves, the fabulous Castle Amber. For a time, the Ambers flourished, their magical and military might having little equal. Then, however, jealousy and murder struck the heart of the family and the Curse of Stephen Amber descended upon the castle like a fell and heavy hand. Now, the Ambers dwell beyond space and time, imprisoned with their monstrously transformed servants and suffering under the family’s dead patriarch’s death-sent doom.

It is into this mad manor that the party awakens, plucked from their homeworld and imprisoned in the heart of Castle Amber. To escape, the heroes must negotiate a path through the insane Amber family home, overcoming the clan’s machinations, dangerous servants, cunning traps, and bizarre phenomena. Only by finding a way to break the Curse of Stephen Amber will the party be able to return home. Failure means a lifetime of imprisonment in Castle Amber, a place where lifetimes can be very short indeed…

 

[mach1.9pants]

The original versions of all these OAR adventures (and the adventures in Yawning Portal, for that matter) are available at DMs Guild. If, like me, you wouldn't want to run the Tomb of Horrors or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks without the images, they're available in PDF form as a separate purchase.

At a guess, I'd say that WotC doesn't want the current versions to be pirated by making them easily available in PDF. (They are available, of course, but rarely in high quality and lots of people don't want to go to sketchy subreddits to find them.)

And they are on sale ATM

 

[SMHWorlds]

Just happy to see one of my "predictions" come true from the article. lol. Well it was more of a wish list, but glad to see this anyway.

 

[dethsor]

Awesome. Castle Amber was in my top three, alongside Dwellers of the Forbidden City and Palace of the Silver Princess.

I still have all three of those, and yet never managed to talk my group into playing them. Great adventures all of them.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Great, zany adventure! Good to get a new generation to experience it.

 

[dave2008]

Yes, but what I am saying is the NEW images provided with the Barrier Peaks OAR are not available in any way (afaik) in electronic format.

Well, you can get them - just not legally.

 

[Weiley31]

This and Barrier Peaks are probably the two things I'm getting from Goodman Games. Most of the others are Frog Gods and Necromancer Games.

 

[Dire Bare]

Did a Google search on lark and found a reply from Goodman games that I missed under their FAQ.

Into the Borderlands FAQ|Goodman Games

goodman-games.com

Q: Will the book be available in PDF format?

Yes! It will be released in both print and PDF. (NOTE! Since this article was originally posted we have learned that Goodman Games does NOT have the rights to produce a PDF version of Into the Borderlands. We do apologize for any confusion this might have caused.)


Really dislike that about DnD 5e.

I don't know the details, of course, but there's no (good) reason that WotC and Goodman couldn't have negotiated a license to include digital copies. Their failure to do so makes me ultimately uninterested in the line, I would have been otherwise.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't know the details, of course, but there's no (good) reason that WotC and Goodman couldn't have negotiated a license to include digital copies. Their failure to do so makes me ultimately uninterested in the line, I would have been otherwise.

The reason could be that WotC has a corporate strategy at the moment that online versions of their books and licenses are only to be distributed by vendors like D&D Beyond who have all paid a pretty penny to do so.

Being mad that Goodman Games doesn't have the legal manpower to browbeat Hasbro into a different deal is pretty unrealistic.

 

[Dire Bare]

The reason could be that WotC has a corporate strategy at the moment that online versions of their books and licenses are only to be distributed by vendors like D&D Beyond who have all paid a pretty penny to do so.

Being mad that Goodman Games doesn't have the legal manpower to browbeat Hasbro into a different deal is pretty unrealistic.

It's not about being mad, it's about being uninterested in a $50 physical copy.

And it's far from unrealistic to say that between the three partners (WotC, Goodman, and D&D Beyond), they couldn't have come to a reasonable deal for each partner and for fans. I'm sure they have their reasons, I just strongly doubt they are good ones (at least from my own perspective). From what little has been shared, it feels almost as if digital copies were an afterthought, as if Goodman went, "Oops, forgot to negotiate that into our licensing agreement. Oh well."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

From what little has been shared, it feels almost as if digital copies were an afterthought, as if Goodman went, "Oops, forgot to negotiate that into our licensing agreement. Oh well."

There's nothing in the text that suggests that.

As someone who works in a corporate environment, oftentimes, when the hard "no" comes down from way, way, way above your paygrade, "oh well" is really the only realistic way to respond.