Of Places Most Foul

[Messageboard Golem]

A collection of horrific, one to two session adventures that will strike terror into the hearts of your 3E characters. Each adventure is self- contained and is run entirely separate from one another. These range from mid to high level as well.

In addition to the adventures, you will also find a collection of "foul locales" that will fit into any city or countryside within your d20 campaign. Each of these details the terrible location and its inhabitants with some adventure suggestions. These are meant to be plug-in places for your campaign that will add on a dark, horrific twist.

 

[Morrus]

Of Places Most Foul is similar in concept to Atlas Games' En Route. It's a collection of short adventures, each of which is designed to drop into your game. The tone of this piece is very different, though - Mystic Eye's default campaign world is a dark, gothic one, and these adventures are all horror-oriented.

The book itself bears the now-trademark Mystic Eye cover - a beautiful, glossy piece of artwork. The book, as usual, feels sturdy and 'meaty', and you really get the sense that you have purchased something solid for your money. These exterior production values can only be rivalled by one third party publisher (Privateer Press, who won ENnie awards for that very category last year). The interior layout and artwork is fair, but it doesn't match Privateer's. I really don't like Mystic Eye's tendency to neither indent new paragraphs or insert a blank line between them - it looks untidy.

But that's not what's important. It may well look nice, but what's inside?

For your $15 you get seven short adventures plus four 'locales', all of which are steeped in horror. I'm not going to list them all in detail, but there is a mix of site and event based adventures, which range in level from 4th to 10th. Many feature evil critters such as vampires, evil clown dolls, strangers created from a child's dreams, various standard undead (zombies, ghosts, spectres etc.), even some demons and devils.

As I mentioned earlier, you also get 4 locales - The Electrocutioner's Spire, Great Smiles (a barber/dentist who you'd be best off avoiding), a Museum of Rarities and Oddities (including a wax museum with some very lifelike figures...) and the Rock of Lost Souls (a haunted lighthouse).

WotC would never put out a book like this. In fact, they would never support a world like this. Even Ravenloft was never as heavily mired in horror as Mystic Eye's Gothos. It's good to see third party publishers doing what WotC can't or won't do, free from the Pokemon-atmosphere of much of Hasbro.

The imagination and creativity that goes into these products is superb - even if you don't want to run a horror-campaign, you can still use these adventures as a change of pace in your regular game. Admittedly, it can be difficult to create the right atmosphere when playing something like this, but for those that can pull it off, the material is right here. I prefer this to Ravenloft by a long shot.

The only thing that lets Mystic Eye down are the lack of an index and that annoying formatting style of theirs. Without those two problems, I would score this one a 4.5 (and round it up to 5). As it is, I score it a 4.

 

[Lady Danyon]

I enjoyed this product by Mystic Eye Games Alot! I though the hooks and plots were very good. This is a product I would recommend. Great stuff to work with...!!!

Great quality by Mystic Eye Games!!

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Price: $14.95
Pages: 96
Price Per Page: About 15 cents per page, very good value compared to other products of this type.
Designed for Character Level: 4-10

External Artwork: A very atmospheric gothic piece of art depicting a glowing-eyed undead being approaching a woman either 'sleeping' or dead. The perspective of the environment is slightly off and the woman's hair is actually rising up off the pillow to give a very unnatural feel to it. Shpooky.

Additional Page Use: The back page gives an (over-the-top) introduction and overview of the module with a good pencil drawing in the background. The two inside covers are both blank. The first page contains credits and contents, the last page has the OGL.

Internal Artwork: The black and white penned art ranges from poor to good, with most being average.

Maps: Maps are computer-generated and of fairly poor quality, some very small and dark, making detail difficult to pick out. The indoor maps are all scaled to 5 feet per square.

Layout: Margins are average, text density is good (font is small but readable, no spaces between paragraphs) but there are regular chunks of white space, some quite large.

Style: Despite several different authors the style is surprisingly similar - a definite gothic horror-style of writing with a good sense of atmosphere and succinct rules explanations. The grammar isn't always up to scratch, and drifts into verbosity occasionally but it doesn't greatly interfere with its readability. Editing is patchy.

Whats Inside:

The book offers seven short adventures and four stand-alone locations. The adventures and locations are all designed to be used in Mystic Eye's world of Gothos, which appears to be a gothic horror fantasy setting which is affected by dreamers in a modern-day world. The book begins with a clever piece of flavour text introducing us to the module and gives a summary of the contents and a note about OGC.

Suffer The Children (8 pages) is an adventure designed for 5th-level PCs involving a village haunted by the dreams of a girl in the modern world, comatosed by a traumatic experience at the hands of a paedophile. The PCs must enter the shifting dreamscape the girl's dreaming mind has created in a hellish house in the world of Gothos in order to defeat the dream manifestation of the paedophile and associated childhood nightmare figures.

Perchance To Sleep (9 pages) is an adventure deisgned for 10th-level PCs who must set right a ritual gone wrong, that has drawn a composite monster made of the negative energy of dreamers' nightmares to a forlorn tower. The PCs are clued in by the only cultist to escape the effects of the ritual in the tower. Trapped within the tower is an ancient vampire, the original focus of the cultists' ritual plus some other undead.

Undying Love (10 pages) is an adventure designed for characters of 4th-6th level who must discover the story behind a dark mansion cursed by a lovelorn wizard. If the PCs can solve the puzzle, they may return the undead denizens in the mansions to mortal life, breaking the curse on the household. They must also find the pieces of the puzzle before a vampire gets his hands on them, attempting to cure his undead state.

Condemned To Live (11 pages) is an adventure designed for 5th-level characters. The PCs arrive at an inn at the edge of a swamp. A mummy and his incinerated zombies is intent on revenge against those that caused his 'death', which include the PCs. The PCs must fight against physical and mental dangers as well as a conflagration that literally threatens to bring the house down.

The Guilty (10 pages) is an adventure designed for 4th-5th level PCs. The PCs find themselves in a jail run by vigilante guards. One inmate has raised the dead in order to try and escape and the PCs find themselves in the middle of a horrific jailbreak.

The Bloated Toad (14 pages) is an adventure designed for 8th-10th level PCs that surrounds a series of thirteen bars run by fiends. Each bar disguises its real function as a sacrificial altar. The PCs must solve the mystery of the diabolic bars and stop the slaughter of innocents on the sacrificial altars, whilst facing all kinds of devils and a possible trip to the astral plane.

Crossroads (12 pages) is an adventure designed for 7th-8th level PCs and involves the PCs saving a bard from a contract with a devil, with some strong overtones of the film 'Crossroads' running through it. The PCs must face various undead and fiends before attempting to terminate the contract (and the devil behind it).

The module ends with four foul locales, each with a brief description, some NPCs and some adventure hooks:
The Electrocutioners Spire is a five story tower, home to a vigilante magistrate who uses gargoyles and a pet ogre to round up criminals.
Great Smiles describes the shop of Alister McCormick, a barber and dentist with multiple personality disorder. His alter ego, Doctor Morte, is killing his patients/customers, and keeps gruesome mementoes in the form of the customers' smiles.
Museum of Rarities and Oddities is a freak show including wax models of people into which the curator has bound the souls of the newly deceased, after killing them that is.
Rock of Lost Souls is a lighthouse on an island. A pirate lord is using the lighthouse as his residence and commands some undead who have lost their lives against the jagged rocks in years gone by.

The High Points: The module has lots of creative ideas, and those ideas can, with a little work, be used outside the world of Gothos for which they are designed (and there is advice on how to do this). The use of primarily horror-themed adventures is a welcome change of pace from standard fantasy and could be used as a one-off adventure in a larger campaign. It is particularly appropriate for those GMs who enjoy freaking out their players with undead and fiends.

The Low Points: Several of the adventures had a tendency to be a bit railroading - the story/plot seemed sometimes more important than allowing the characters freedom of choice within the scenario (though most adventures did not suffer from this). There were missing ELs and CRs in some of the creature stats and the grammar was poor at times, making for confusing reading at times.

Conclusion: Despite some cracks in the paintwork and a couple of railroaded endings, the selection of horror-themed adventures within this module were creative and exciting, with plenty of inspiration and grotesquerie. Not that its going to make any difference, I'm sure, but several of these adventures had a very adult theme to them - not for the faint-hearted or conservative out there.

 

[trancejeremy]

This is a 96 page adventure collection. There are 7 small adventures, each more or less like those mini-adventures from AEG or FFG - adventures that can be run in a session or two. They're actually a little bit more fleshed out. There are also 4 locales, which are a bit smaller (say, half the size), but are again, pretty much like some of the AEG mini-modules - a brief description of the place, then some adventure hooks. It's $15, though I got it used on ebay along with Pit of Loch-Duran for $9 (including shipping).

The adventures are a mixed bag.

The first one is great, if somewhat disturbing, especially now given the medias current focus on child abductions. It's somewhat dependant on being set on Gothos, the world for Mystic Eye Games, because it's tied into our Earth. (People on Earth can touch and affect Gothos in their dreams). Basically, a young girl is abducted, but escapes. She's left comatose, and her awful nightmares are affecting Gothos. The PCs must enter her dreams and kill her abductor.

It's not that difficult to use in a horror game set on Earth, particularly Call of Cthulhu (which has a Dreamlands not unlike Gothos). This one gets a A+

The 2nd one is a fairly standard vampire tale. Not that portable to other worlds, and seems a bit of a Dracula ripoff. C-

The 3rd one is almost a tribute to the old D&D module, Castle Amber. Not as good, but not bad at all, and probably makes more sense. The trouble is, it's almost impossible to finish in a manner that has a happy ending. By the time the PCs figure out how to save the people in the Castle, they'll almost certainly have killed most of them. And those they haven't are probably crazy. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it's not a good thing, either. Depends on your campaign style. Also a big confusing at times. B+

The 4th isn't very good. And you need an Egyptian style mythos in your setting, because the main villain is a mummy. Or rather, a "necrophiliac dude". It doesn't exactly refer to him as that, it just gives an example of a player referring to him like that. The author must have a Dell computer. C- (because it's funny to read, if not play)

The 5th is awful. It's one of those that needs the DM to set up the players and have them imprisoned. I hate that. F-

The 6th is very interesting, but very implausible and a bit on the overkill side. Basically, there's a series of bars that traps people so that fiends can eat them. All these bars are linked together. So, the PCs have to go through every one and try to figure out how to escape. Interesting idea, bad execution. C+

The 7th also can work as a Call of Cthulhu or other horror style game. It's based somewhat on the old story of Robert Johnson, the famed blues guitarist. Supposedly, he met the devil at a crossroads, and made a deal with him to be the greatest guitar player ever. He was so good that many people believe it, or at least, don't disbelieve it. This story has also made it into some famous songs by people such as Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin.

An RPG scenario has been based on this before, at least once in the Chill game, but it's pretty cool to see another one. In this, another guitarist has made a deal. Only in his dreams. But since his dreams are connected to Gothos, this ends up causing a problem on Gothos. And the PCs must solve it. I'd give it a A-.

The 4 locations are also of varying quality, but all fairly good. The first one is a tower of a vigilante. I'm not sure what to do with it. The 2nd is a Todd Sweeney style mad barber. The 3rd is a Vincent Price style wax museum. Not just wax figures, other weird stuff. Fairly disturbing, too. The last is an lighthouse inhabited by a small pirate crew.

All in all, this is a pretty good product. You'll likely use some of the adventures, and evne at cover price, is a good deal. The maps tend to be a bit murky, but are fairly readable. Still obvious they are computer generated, and suffers from the lack of contrast normally found when reducing a color map to B&W, but the pixelation is less than in previous products from MEG. The art is okay as well. Nothing striking, either way, just pretty solid. Probably deserves a 4.25 or so.

 

[Mystic Eye]

Wow, another older product rewviewed! Whoo hooo you thought my one personal entry "Crossroads" was an A-. Thanks!!!
I actually liked the bar one better than you. When we ran it in play testing the players were absolutely freaking out but I can see your points.

I don't comment much on reviews these days but I thought it was cool to see some of this older stuff crop up again. Brings back memories...ahhhhh.

Doug