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Ravenloft: The Grim Harvest Series #3
Requiem: Grim Harvest
For 3-6 Characters, Levels 6-10:
"At midnight everyone will die..."
Azalin the lich lord is launching another diabolic plan.
He has allied himself with the entity known as Death, and together they plan to raze the domain of Darkon.
From the ashes of this once-mighty land will rise a new domain - Necropolis, the land of the dead!
For the citizens of Darkon, death has been an everyday companion, and sometimes a yearned-for end to suffering.
However, now the cold comfort of the grave is forever denied these good men and women as they find themselves walking the land after their breath has left them.
Heroes have always considered the undead to be mere monsters, legions of mindless evil to be slain with no second though.
Now the heroes will learn the agony of actually being one of the living dead. They become the monsters, and the entire world becomes their enemy.
This boxed set contains everything necessary to take your characters beyond death's veil and into the shadowy world of unlife, including:
Requiem: 96 pages of rules for the generation and play of undead player characters as well as tips for Dungeon Masters.
This book details 12 different types of creatures that characters can become after death, as well as dozens of powers and weaknesses they may possess.
Necropolis: 32 pages covering the new domain of Necropolis.
Although little has changed physically in the former domain of Darkon, the people, animals, plants, and even the land itself have been infused with the power of the new demilord, Death.
Death Triumphant: A 64-page adventure that puts the heroes in the middle of Lord Azalin's ultimate scheme to escape from Ravenloft.
Death Triumphant can be played as a stand-alone adventure or as the final chapter in the Grim Harvest series.
Poster Map: One two-sided, full-color map detailing the headquarters of Azalin's secret police and the new domain of Necropolis.
"At midnight everyone will die..."
Azalin the lich lord is launching another diabolic plan.
He has allied himself with the entity known as Death, and together they plan to raze the domain of Darkon.
From the ashes of this once-mighty land will rise a new domain - Necropolis, the land of the dead!
For the citizens of Darkon, death has been an everyday companion, and sometimes a yearned-for end to suffering.
However, now the cold comfort of the grave is forever denied these good men and women as they find themselves walking the land after their breath has left them.
Heroes have always considered the undead to be mere monsters, legions of mindless evil to be slain with no second though.
Now the heroes will learn the agony of actually being one of the living dead. They become the monsters, and the entire world becomes their enemy.
This boxed set contains everything necessary to take your characters beyond death's veil and into the shadowy world of unlife, including:
Requiem: 96 pages of rules for the generation and play of undead player characters as well as tips for Dungeon Masters.
This book details 12 different types of creatures that characters can become after death, as well as dozens of powers and weaknesses they may possess.
Necropolis: 32 pages covering the new domain of Necropolis.
Although little has changed physically in the former domain of Darkon, the people, animals, plants, and even the land itself have been infused with the power of the new demilord, Death.
Death Triumphant: A 64-page adventure that puts the heroes in the middle of Lord Azalin's ultimate scheme to escape from Ravenloft.
Death Triumphant can be played as a stand-alone adventure or as the final chapter in the Grim Harvest series.
Poster Map: One two-sided, full-color map detailing the headquarters of Azalin's secret police and the new domain of Necropolis.
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First published October 1, 1996
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September 21, 2022Today I’m covering a three-part campaign about death, which also changes the campaign setting (much like the Grand Conjunction adventures).
DEATH UNCHAINED
The PCs are in Falkovnia, which is a land with an oppressive military, so the PCs will likely tangle with the militia just because they’re carrying weapons; but the real fight here is against a cult that is harvesting life energy and that takes place in a tower/dungeon, so… Maybe I’m unfairly influenced by the art, but this doesn’t feel very Ravenloft-y, it's just a crawl against a pretty generic death cult.
DEATH ASCENDANT
The PCs try to avenge a murder, cross paths with a wolfwere who thinks its a boy and loves its adoptive parents — which is a nice interlude but not really connected to the adventure’s themes — and find another version of the death cult harvesting more life energy from people.
Some fun elements — a weretiger secret police agent who didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant and so gives birth to a bunch of tigers in a temple — but again, there’s so much fighting here and so little story, I don’t think it feels very Ravenloft-y. Also it ends with the creation of an undead creature called Death whose one weakness is — anything associated with birth. Which feels a little corny to me. (That might be the most Ravenloft-y thing, which isn't a great thing about Ravenloft.)
GRIM HARVEST
A boxed set with three books that continue the adventure:
DEATH TRIUMPHANT (64p)
The third part of the adventure, where the PCs attempt to invade a fortress of the Kargat — the secret police of Darkon, Azalin’s realm — and disrupt a magic doomsday device. But! They fail — they have to fail — because the whole point of this adventure is to turn everyone in the city, including the PCs, into undead. So we get 6 pages of this adventure book dedicated to new rules for undead PCs. And now that they’re undead, the PCs have to escape the city that is under the control of Death (from the last adventure).
Now… I’m not crazy about the idea that the PCs have to fail, and the idea of a city of undead feels more pedestrian than awe- or horror-inspiring. I’m also confused why there’s 6 pages about turning the PCs into undead when there’s a whole other book about that topic, which is
REQUIEUM (96p)
This book starts with a note from the author about how everyone at TSR wanted to turn the PCs into undead in Ravenloft, and the line editor would ask “What’s scary about being a vampire?” And no one had a good answer for that — until this product. Now, he never quite says in the author’s note what the answer is to that question.
Only after ~84 pages of rules for undead PCs — how dwarves, elves, etc., are in undeath; how the different types of undead are like traditional character classes; how special undead powers are proficiencies you can get — only after all that do we return to that topic of what’s scary about being a vampire, and the answer is…uh, well, now the PCs look evil because they’re undead, so they’ll be isolated if they go among good folks who used to be their friends.
There’s something there to that sense of betrayal and loss, but that’s maybe good for a game or two. Hardly good for a full D&D campaign unless you go full Vampire: The Masquerade. Honestly, even with that idea, there’s not much notion in this game of the PCs losing their humanity and becoming vile predators (like vampires) or mindless automatons (like skeletons). Maybe that sense of losing yourself would be a good source of horror, but that’s not on the page. (The author even notes, without naming it, how Vampire differs from D&D, with its presumption of heroic fantasy vs. “punk-horror.”)
NECROPOLIS (32p)
What is on the page, in the third book, is in-depth info on the realm after the event of the adventure: Azalin’s plans to escape Ravenloft maybe worked, so now Death is in charge, and the capital city of Il Aluk is now just undead, but the other regions are similarly weird and scary. I really am not sure about this metaplot, but I actually like this book best of this boxed set, particularly the examination of several interesting, adventure-spawning NPCs.
So all in all, not my favorite adventures; and not my favorite rules expansion; but if you skip the adventure, the realm that’s left afterwards seems potentially fruitful for adventures.
(Note also: the idea of undead PCs didn’t die—yuk yuk—with this product. Third edition had a little campaign setting called Ghostwalk about a city where ghosts could manifest; and while that might have some similarities here, the core idea was very different: not “what’s scary about being a vampire?” but “how can a character go on after death since death is a bummer?”)
DEATH UNCHAINED
The PCs are in Falkovnia, which is a land with an oppressive military, so the PCs will likely tangle with the militia just because they’re carrying weapons; but the real fight here is against a cult that is harvesting life energy and that takes place in a tower/dungeon, so… Maybe I’m unfairly influenced by the art, but this doesn’t feel very Ravenloft-y, it's just a crawl against a pretty generic death cult.
DEATH ASCENDANT
The PCs try to avenge a murder, cross paths with a wolfwere who thinks its a boy and loves its adoptive parents — which is a nice interlude but not really connected to the adventure’s themes — and find another version of the death cult harvesting more life energy from people.
Some fun elements — a weretiger secret police agent who didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant and so gives birth to a bunch of tigers in a temple — but again, there’s so much fighting here and so little story, I don’t think it feels very Ravenloft-y. Also it ends with the creation of an undead creature called Death whose one weakness is — anything associated with birth. Which feels a little corny to me. (That might be the most Ravenloft-y thing, which isn't a great thing about Ravenloft.)
GRIM HARVEST
A boxed set with three books that continue the adventure:
DEATH TRIUMPHANT (64p)
The third part of the adventure, where the PCs attempt to invade a fortress of the Kargat — the secret police of Darkon, Azalin’s realm — and disrupt a magic doomsday device. But! They fail — they have to fail — because the whole point of this adventure is to turn everyone in the city, including the PCs, into undead. So we get 6 pages of this adventure book dedicated to new rules for undead PCs. And now that they’re undead, the PCs have to escape the city that is under the control of Death (from the last adventure).
Now… I’m not crazy about the idea that the PCs have to fail, and the idea of a city of undead feels more pedestrian than awe- or horror-inspiring. I’m also confused why there’s 6 pages about turning the PCs into undead when there’s a whole other book about that topic, which is
REQUIEUM (96p)
This book starts with a note from the author about how everyone at TSR wanted to turn the PCs into undead in Ravenloft, and the line editor would ask “What’s scary about being a vampire?” And no one had a good answer for that — until this product. Now, he never quite says in the author’s note what the answer is to that question.
Only after ~84 pages of rules for undead PCs — how dwarves, elves, etc., are in undeath; how the different types of undead are like traditional character classes; how special undead powers are proficiencies you can get — only after all that do we return to that topic of what’s scary about being a vampire, and the answer is…uh, well, now the PCs look evil because they’re undead, so they’ll be isolated if they go among good folks who used to be their friends.
There’s something there to that sense of betrayal and loss, but that’s maybe good for a game or two. Hardly good for a full D&D campaign unless you go full Vampire: The Masquerade. Honestly, even with that idea, there’s not much notion in this game of the PCs losing their humanity and becoming vile predators (like vampires) or mindless automatons (like skeletons). Maybe that sense of losing yourself would be a good source of horror, but that’s not on the page. (The author even notes, without naming it, how Vampire differs from D&D, with its presumption of heroic fantasy vs. “punk-horror.”)
NECROPOLIS (32p)
What is on the page, in the third book, is in-depth info on the realm after the event of the adventure: Azalin’s plans to escape Ravenloft maybe worked, so now Death is in charge, and the capital city of Il Aluk is now just undead, but the other regions are similarly weird and scary. I really am not sure about this metaplot, but I actually like this book best of this boxed set, particularly the examination of several interesting, adventure-spawning NPCs.
So all in all, not my favorite adventures; and not my favorite rules expansion; but if you skip the adventure, the realm that’s left afterwards seems potentially fruitful for adventures.
(Note also: the idea of undead PCs didn’t die—yuk yuk—with this product. Third edition had a little campaign setting called Ghostwalk about a city where ghosts could manifest; and while that might have some similarities here, the core idea was very different: not “what’s scary about being a vampire?” but “how can a character go on after death since death is a bummer?”)
May 18, 2019
Getting to play as undead was new at the time. I wanted to run something with it but never got the chance. I think the rules here could have held up.
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