Secrets of the Blind Palace

By Tal Aviezer
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-4

The wealthy Von Crofts hire a party of adventurers to find the body of their dead son in a haunted pleasure palace – and to bring him back to life. To aid in their quest, the resurrectionists are provided with a guide: the only survivor of the previous expedition, a bard who has been unable to speak a word or sing a note since she escaped from the Blind Palace.

This 42 page adventure details about twenty rooms in an abandoned mansion home. It’s got that specificity that makes things great, although it runs its mouth so much that it flogs any joy out of it.

The product pages for this designer have a bunch of quotes from people that basically makes it seem like these adventures are the second coming. I’m down for some hubris. Having seen this one now I can understand what the comments are referring to. In a world of generic and homogenized 5e adventures, this one veers off in to the sort of specificity that breathes life in to an adventure. Which, I think, is what the comments are referring to when they reference “story.”

We can start by noting that the party is called “resurrectionists.” They are sent in to get the sons body so it can raised. And, thusly, resurrectionists. This alone breaks the mold. No more generic adventurers and what that implies about a game world. No, perhaps a little more gritty. A world, perhaps, of that of The Frankenstein Chronicles. No candy coated shine, is what I think is implied by tat word choice. And, then, even, the party is given a scroll of raise dead. In a scroll tube, an ebony case with a wax seal depicting a black tower on a red field. When’s the last time you saw an interesting scroll case in an adventure, let alone a wax seal from the people giving you the scroll? Specificity hints that the game world is larger than what is directly in front of the parties eyes. 

There are other parts of the adventure that are fantastic. The undead porter has a wall of keys behind him … something for the party to steal from an undead who is not particularly hostile. He can be manipulated with an invitation to the home, or fooled, and tipped. He is mortified is someone points out a key is missing from pegboard, and “. He then extends his hand for a tip. If he is given less than a silver piece he sighs disdainfully” And THAT gentle readers, is how an undead porter SHOULD act. When we talk about capturing the essence of an NPC THAT is it. 

Other details of the home are great as well. In the grand entryway, hanging from the ceiling are fetishes. A thieflings ear, with earrings, a blood soaked leather pouch with two eyeballs in it, and others. These are the remains of the previous group, the part the son was a part of. And, these are there because of … guess the monster. Which monster does this? A hag. Nicely done. Hanging tokens/feetishes by a hag? SIgn me up!

There are parts of this are very relatable. The vibes here smack of real life. The motivations seem real … even down to one (former) party member betraying the son in order to get out. These are real things. And this relatable stuff comes through and does wonders to enhance the adventure. 

I hesitate to put this next part in, but feel obligated. Even the opening read-aloud is decent. “Your boots crunch on hard, cold ground as you make your way up the hill to the old stone windmill. You can see the breath of your companions in little puffs of steam. Light snow is falling. You hear a crow call from the top of the old mill. Well-bred horses with expensive saddles are tied to a post near the front door. You find Valentin and Helena Von Croft waiting inside. He is standing and looking at you; she is sitting at a wooden table, looking at nothing. They are both wearing heavy fur cloaks. Their bodyguards …” I complain all the time about purple prose. I complain all the time about first person narratives. There is a somberness here that is seldom communicated in an adventure. She is staring at nothing. As one does in mourning. 

There are, however, more than a few problems with it. There is a degree of text bloat here that rivals the best. Our porter encounter is just over a page of text. That’s WAYYYY too long. We get roleplaying notes for NPC”s that are too long and delve in to backstory. There is backstory and explanations WHY something is built in to a great many of the rooms, in multiple ways. “The ground inside the courtyard was once covered in colorful gravel and decorative slate tiles. Now most of the tiles are cracked and broken, and the gravel is overgrown with scrubby grass” Well, ok, overgrown with scrubby grass is decent, but the rest is irrelevant. “The rim of this ancient well is decorated with crumbling stone seahorses. There is no windlass or bucket. Perhaps they rotted away.” Anything else not there? A bear, maybe? “The four skeletons (MM 272) are the remains of Brightblossom’s guards. Decadesago, GreyMaggie manipulated them into murdering each other over gambling debts”  Just more backstory. And a paragraph to tell us that steam coming from under a door is harmless. The steam under the door is good.  All this shit does is clog up the text. It make sit harder to find the parts that the DM needs by including this nonsense of why and how things are. We’re playing the game NOW. It doesn’t matter that “old hinges squeak” or that he allegiance of a certain NPC could go either way depending on how the party trets her. (Thank god! No auto-betrayl for once!) You are going to have trouble finding any of that because of the ridiculous amount of non-play-at-the-table text you have to wade through. 

The interactivity also, is a bit, off. There is certainly roleplaying and puzzles that are not outright riddles and things to discover and so on. But, also, they are VERY skill check forward. You will be making a skill check for FAR too many things, in order to solve problems that is. Make a check to convince Bob., Make a check to dance. Make a check to … with the associated text bloat that comes with these. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the interactivity surrounding these checks, but it comes off as a little … I don’t know, more of the usual? The creativity and free flowing nature of the encounters is then ruined by the expected manner outlined to overcome then. Now, I know we’re not forced in to those outcomes alone, but it’s clear that this the way that the designer meant for it to go and that they turned down the support for other solutions. That magnificence of the porter encounter, and its various outcomes and resolutions and nuance, is lost in most of the other places. 

So, way too much text bloat (as twenty rooms in 43 pages would imply) because of backstory, irrelevance, and a focus on outlining outcomes generally through skill checks. A decent degree of interactivity and a great usage of specificity and language which should be double downed on. 

Maybe another release, one day? Certainly good enough to not dismiss outright.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. More than enough to get a good idea of what is going on. 

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/267835/Secrets-of-the-Blind-Palace?1892600