The Price of Revenge (Dungeon #42) 
This module, for 4th-6th level PCs, takes place in the cold valleys of Valachan. After 4 pages of dense backstory, the PCs arrive from the mists, presumably riding horses. That point is deemed as such both by the boxed text (which is copious) and the young vampire girl who demands one to feed upon shortly after their arrival. Given that this girl is walking around with 6 wolves and is barefoot in the snow, smart money is on just killing her, and at just 25 hit points, it wouldn’t be a tough fight anyway, Nosferatu vampire or not.
Next, the PCs venture into a ruined structure which houses a pungent “middens” in the basement, that is guarded by a geist. This encounter is weird, deadly, and above all, completely unnecessary, except perhaps to instill some sense of flavor around mushrooms and fungus – a recurring theme in the town.
Next, the PCs find themselves in Ungrad, a small town of 1,500 people. Several locations are defined here, including the obligatory room-by-room layout of an Inn, which seems entirely superfluous. The module informs the DM that “Sooner or later, the PCs will visit Awilda”. Awilda is a fortuneteller in town, and the mother of the creepy vampire girl at the beginning that party might or might not have killed. In that encounter the girl tells the PCs to tell her mother that she’s happy, but only if they give her a horse to feed upon. There is no indication of what to do if there are no horses. But the girl doesn’t say
who her mother is. We’re told we should schedule a second “creepy encounter” with her so she can direct the party to her mother. Of course, that’s not going to happen if the party has already killed the creepy girl.
There’s a forced encounter with a vampire named Antianetta, and she secretly charms one of the PCs so she can feed on them later. Of course, if the PC (secretly) makes this save, nothing happens, and no one is the wiser. Kudos for the writer not forcing this to happen, at least, like a lot of modules seem to do.
Assuming all has gone according to plan, the PCs end up at Awilda’s house (if they care to go), where they can witness her having a stroke. If the party can administer some healing to her, she can survive long enough to deliver a cryptic riddle involving someone taking her daughter, and that they need to get the roses from behind a gargoyle. After this, she dies. Apparently if the party has no cleric, and can’t heal her, or they fail a medicine/healing check, she dies. And then the quest is over. Thanks for playing. Also, they can loot her house and collect her entire life savings of just over 3 gp. Should have invested in that 401(k), Awilda.
The PCs then go hunting for these elusive gargoyles, and apparently only one guy in town knows anything about a creature resembling that description, and the PCs are expected to basically spend the entire day questioning townsfolk until they find this one guy who has this information. After this, another contrived encounter with another vampire – this time the husband of the other one, and the town’s mayor, Felix Hoyer. Felix uses his ESP ability to scan their minds for what they know, which at this point could be next to nothing, especially if they let Awilda die, for example. The encounter isn’t consequential.
That night, the creepy girl (who the party totally didn’t kill the first time they met her), raps on the windows at the inn where the party is staying and asks how her mom died. She tells them that her mom won’t be happy until Felix is destroyed.
Afterwards, the PCs encounter Antianetta again, who attempts to feed on the PCs during the night. This can lead to a combat encounter, but ultimately, she flees if it doesn’t go her way. In what must be the weirdest editorial decision ever, these encounters are all listed in the room description for Awilda’s house. Because after this, we continue to move into descriptions for more buildings in the town. Truly bizarre.
Incidentally, the meeting hall is described as having “quite a few” gargoyle statues on the ground level. Curious that only one guy in town remembers this. Two secret doors later, the PCs can find the necessary crypt, where they can find a special white rose growing inside. Upon leaving, they encounter a fight with a dozen wolves.
The Hoyer residence is detailed, but small. The PCs can soon find their way into the crypts, where they can defeat the two vampires and the magical white roses are powerful (though temporary) items that can help with this process.
There’s nothing terribly askew in this module, though it’s just not very good, and extremely one-dimensional and kind of predictable. There are quite a few places and ways where this module could completely go sideways, and the PCs could end up just aimlessly wandering around not knowing what to do. The girl at the beginning is interesting, but it’s not immediately made clear who her mother is, or why the PCs should even care. Using the girl as a plot device feels incredibly forced, and if the PCs kill the girl (and there’s really no reason why they shouldn’t), the quest is basically over at that point, since there would be little incentive to go visit the Vistani mother who could give them the clues about what to do. And the dying Vistani woman (who dies and then is forever dead) feels like such an overused trope at this point that it couldn’t possibly have any real impact here.
