by James Hostetter
Arcy’s Arcanum
Shadowdark RPG, 1st level
Premise: A spooky mansion is held in the thrall of a vampire
What do we get here?
Over 21 pages this adventure has a mansion with 20 keyed locations split over 4 flaws. The adventure itself is only 7 pages the rest is maps, legal and other housekeeping.
Usability/formatting
Right off the bat I like that the adventure tells you how to scale the combat encounters depending on the number of players you have, this is something really helpful for newer DMs especially as this is a low level adventure for a new system so it is reasonable to expect this to be something run by a new DM.
The read aloud sections are short but a bit hit and miss. Some are good while too many others are more tell rather than show. Room 4 is a good example of where this goes wrong:
“This room once housed a great feasting hall. The remains of the furniture are visible in the center of the room. All finery has been removed long ago.”
Describe the broken furniture, let the players draw conclusions on what the room was. I also find it kind of frustrating to have the read aloud after the DM text for the room.
I have my usual bugbear that the maps only appear at the back of the adventure so it is a pain to orientate yourself. When you do get to them the maps are very clear and easy to use.
On the plus side the double column format and succinct writing are easy to scan so you can run this adventure easily. I also like that it spells out upfront what is going on with the adventure.
Portability
There is little in the way of specific setting or lore so you can easily drop this adventure down anywhere that fits with having a spooky mansion.
Recommendation
Sadly this is going to be a probably not from me. The adventure is perfectly serviceable and you can run it, the problem is it just lacks some flavour. I am also not sure the twist really works because thanks to the cursed weapon it appears the bad guy is functionally a vampire in the end?
To make this something I would be excited to run you would need to rework the read alouds, add some kind of approach to the mansion that builds the atmosphere and the mansion itself needs to do a better job of "telling the story" through what you discover rather than being rooms to clear on the way to the boss battle.
For a first effort, which is what this appears to be, there is plenty to applaud. The adventure is pay what you want on itch.io
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