This modules presents difficulties for me, on several fronts. After a great deal of consideration I have finally come to peace with it, or at least I believe I have. Essentially, it’s a manor home murder mystery followed by a dungeoncrawl. I’ve seen a lot of published dungeoncrawls and that portion is neither a whole lot better or a whole lot worse than the vast majority. What you don’t see a lot of is murder mysteries … and with good cause.
I love me some Poirot, but there’s probably two reasons for the lack of murder mysteries, especially at higher levels. First, the party will almost certainly have access to spells and abilities which making the hiding the truth difficult. Know alignment, detect lie, esp, speak with dead, etc. It’s very hard to keep secrets in an environment like this. This is dealt with by a simple statement: don’t let the party have those spells/powers in this adventure. No mystery-breaking spells means the adventure doesn’t break and the games afoot! Beyond this, the villain has gone through EXTRAORDINARY steps to prepare his workspace, the manor, and get everything in order. Memory drain potions, two or three other specialized magic items in the same vein, secret doors and passages, magic to FURTHER obfuscate those secret doors & passages. Minions who specialize in secrets & sneaking, etc. This guys done a lot of leg work; he probably deserves to get his way based on the amount of prep work he’s done.
Which leads to the second major issue: player agency. The players presumably worked hard for those skills/powers that were just taken away, and the DM just took them away during the one time when they are to be most useful. Uncool of the DM. The PC’s have to be able to use what they have and forcing them down a certain path and making them rely on their deductive abilities is a major no-no. I’m sure everyone can relate a story where their carefully dropped and most obvious clue was completely ignored by the party, leading to many frustrating hours of play for everyone. That. Is. Not. Fun.
We have a Manor home full of residents & servants. There’s a LOT of NPC’s in this adventure; 39 named ones who are supposed to be in the house. There’s a large marriage celebration that the party attends. A BIG snowstorm develops, forcing some guests to stay the night, including the party. Some people get murdered by a vampire. The party is under suspicion, and there is an investigation in to the deaths. There are a lot of pre-programmed events that happens, based on a timeline. Again, player agency is undermined.
Finally the party is supposed to figure out who’s behind things, which a major push in the right direction if they are having trouble. This leads to part two, the dungeoncrawl. The dungeon ties in to the manor home very well; hidden floors and Ah Ha! moments lead to entrances … assuming the party is not disgusted by the their earlier lack of success in searching. The ‘dungeon’ is full of undead and the villains minions, none of which I had a major problem with. The traps are not that unusual and I didn’t really see anything I would call an OSR Trick.
As written, I’m not sure I’m happy with this product. If the DM played the murder/investigation party briskly, and didn’t allow the party to waste time and become frustrated, then it may serve as a decent introduction to the small dungeon. IE: a good locale and hook to get the party to go adventuring. It’s going to require a very good DM to get the party moving correctly, not railroad, complete the set up. Allowing the party to investigate at their leisure, and not providing some good player knowledge, will surly lead to ruin, IMHO.
Quantum Ogres:
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-ressurecting-quantum-ogre-and-having.html
This is available on DriveThru.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264076/V1-The-Vampires-Curse?affiliate_id=1892600