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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8780143" data-attributes="member: 85555">(Spoilers ahead)I ran the second adventure, Blood in Moondale, last night. This one was very interesting to go back to. I had fond memories of it, but recall taking liberties with it in the 90s. Running it again, this time strictly as written, I can see why I would have done so. Presently running it with 3 level 5 characters (a thief, priest and fighter).Overall I love the tone. If Bride of Mordenheim invoked the classic camp of Bride of Frankenstein, this one got into the camp of monster rallies. But it also was clearly drawing on movies like The Howling. It is a werewolf adventure but features a vampire who can come into conflict with the werewolf, the PCs or both. And it isn't just campy. It is properly scary at times. It does do a good job of putting the PCs in a situation where they are faced with a lethal foe, but discover another possible threat (and they know what they enemy is capable of because they've been investigating his murders). The premise is pretty simple: the players are part of a militia, and are with a brute squad dealing with a local werewolf outbreak led by Captain Rapacion (and two other NPCs: Eldon and Ravewood). They get snowed in in a small village called Moondale and are trapped there as the werewolf kills locals. They discover that the werewolf is their captain, who is a loup-garou. They also learn that the innkeeper is a Nosferatu vampire who is living strictly off animal blood because he detests his condition (it is set up so he can join in the final fight against Captain Rapacion). One thing that is very clear so far, these adventures all serve key functions. Bride of Mordenheim is an introduction and in particular an introduction to the Horror Check. This adventure is about using two of the new monsters provided in the Realm of Terror Boxed Set: The Loup-Garou and the Nosferatu Vampire. The structure is a bit too linear, even for this time I would say. It is very tightly woven so that there are a number of scenes that the module plans for in advance and there is just so much to remember that it makes the module a little difficult to run (I read it twice, once the day before running, and once the day of, then a quick skim right before as well). I didn't mess it up, but it was a little more stressful to remember all the floating details than Bride of Mordenheim. The scenes themselves are all well done. I think the problem with it is largely that the boxed text glosses through a lot of decision points to lead the players to the scenes it wants. I think you can see the module itself as just one possible way events could pan out, and run it more freeform, and that would work fine. But the boxed text makes that hard because it will describe things happening over a period of time where players would normally be able to chime in and say what they do (and I think it may even make many decisions for them). The adventure became a lot more enjoyable when the players forced it off the path and there was no going back to it. Then I just had to adapt, run the NPCs, and let the players decide what they wanted to do and how. They came up with a pretty clever method for determining the werewolf's identity (which killed two birds with one stone because it also revealed the presence of a vampire). That is what shifted the adventure off course, and that is when things got very enjoyable (at least that is how it appeared on my side of the screen: I haven't done a post session discussion with the players because we had to stop right before they were going to confront the vampire). While the structure might be a little confining for someone running the game now, it is a really good adventure because it has a number of useful elements to it. The characters are all solid for this type of horror. And so long as you know the NPCs, situation, etc, then you can run it pretty free form and it works. You can also draw on the scenes as things that crop up naturally (for example, if you know the werewolf is going to kill someone that night, you can use one of the scenes as a starting point for that event). You can also weave them in where it makes sense. I found it easiest to just focus on the PCs and NPCs towards the end. This is an example of a typical scene in the adventure: [ATTACH=full]262298[/ATTACH]It is also odd because it is set in a village called Moondale, but no map is provided of the village. There is also no regional map (it isn't clear what the region is, though I think in later products this was set on the island of Liffe). This actually works well and it is something I remember about my 2E days with Ravenloft where what was happening was often more important than the specific details of the place. I used maps, but not every town or location was mapped out in advance. And while running Blood in Mondale, I found not having a map of Mondale to be a plus, not a minus. I mostly have very fond memories of this module. I found myself a bit disappointed initially running it this time around, because it felt overly structured. However once things opened up, I really quite enjoyed it. I love werewolf adventures and I love flesh golem adventures. Blood in Moondale is good to have if you are a fan of werewolves (Feast of Goblyns is my goto werewolf module, but this one I drew on a lot as well). Blood in Moondale also is an adventure that I picked up a bad habit from in my early GMing days. It isn't the fault of the module, I just loved how Captain Rapacion was secretly the werewolf and remember having a number of vampire hunter allies who turned out to be vampire's themselves. Basically I liked the concept too much and overplayed it. Looking forward to how things end for the party on this one. Will post about the Dark Minstrel next (going to put these thoughts all together on my blog as well)</blockquote>

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