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Hour of the Knife: Ravenloft Adventure:
For 4-6 Players, Levels 4-6:
A madman stalks the fog-shrouded streets of Paridon, killing with gruesome precision - and always at midnight.
A party of brave adventurers witnesses the most recent of these brutal murders.
Now that they've seen the killer's face, they're sure to be his next targets.
Who can be trusted in this city where the residents are not what they appear to be?
Those who dare to track the killer will find strange allies -and even stranger enemies.
The adventurers must investigate the ancient mystery behind the murders that take place when the clock strikes the "Hour of the Knife."
The adventure is based on the popular RPGA Network tournament by Bruce Nesmith.
A madman stalks the fog-shrouded streets of Paridon, killing with gruesome precision - and always at midnight.
A party of brave adventurers witnesses the most recent of these brutal murders.
Now that they've seen the killer's face, they're sure to be his next targets.
Who can be trusted in this city where the residents are not what they appear to be?
Those who dare to track the killer will find strange allies -and even stranger enemies.
The adventurers must investigate the ancient mystery behind the murders that take place when the clock strikes the "Hour of the Knife."
The adventure is based on the popular RPGA Network tournament by Bruce Nesmith.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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September 12, 2022Covering three adventures here, since that's about all I can take at one time: The Awakening, The Hour of the Knife, and Howls in the Night. (Which, come on, how can you publish two adventures with names like that so close to each other?)
THE AWAKENING
Basically, an evil priestess of Bast gets killed and cursed by Set followers, and then her tomb is transported to Ravenloft, to the non-Egyptian land of Nova Vaasa. So now, the people there are mining this outcropping of rock, disturbing the magic seals that keep the mummy entombed, so all the cats are going crazy, and the mummy keeps coming back eight times, each time more powerful than the last. (Get it, cat god, so she has nine lives total?)
So the PCs get hired to retrieve tax stuff stolen by some bandits, including the magic staff that was part of the mummy's seal, and when one of them does, that PC becomes chosen/cursed by Set. So now the party (theoretically) has a personal reason for stopping this mummy from... well, wait, what does the mummy want to do that's so bad?
Fine structure in that it's an investigation (where did the bandits get this tribute from, where did the lord get this tribute from) that then leads to a dungeon crawl -- hey, wasn't that the same structure as the other mummy adventure, Touch of Death? It just doesn't quite feel motivating enough, though I like the idea of an Egyptian mummy rolling up in a land that isn't Egyptian.
(Also, as is usual, we get more info on the domain and the lord here and I’m getting real tired of jealous husbands/lovers as a trope in Ravenloft.)
HOUR OF THE KNIFE
The intro to this adventure says that the city of Parison is basically Victorian London, and I've never loved a TSR-published adventure intro more. There's a little more information about what that means, but they really do expect their readers to be nerds, particularly Sherlock Holmes (and Jack the Ripper murders) nerds, which is a safe assumption.
The adventure is basically: someone is killing people on the fog-shrouded streets, try to investigate until you are all killed (its doppelgangers), then get resurrected by the evil lord who's lieutenant is rebelling to take over the domain. So, sigh about the "evil lord vs someone else evil" plot and sigh about "a PC gets killed off-screen and no one knows." And another big sigh for "the PC gets killed and then brought back." Like, what a waste of an opportunity for paranoia.
Anyway, the murders are sort of a classic ritual, and this adventure is let down by D&D 2nd edition not really being about investigations and, frankly, writers at this time not really having a lot of the tools and thoughts about investigations AND the published mystery-adventure problem of not wanting the PCs to solve the problem too soon, so there's a bunch of “they spend a fruitless night chasing shadows in the fog” parts.
So I like the setup of murders in old London town, but making this a fight between doppelgangers feels uninteresting. Maybe it could be regular people fighting for relatable and terrible human reasons?
—
HOWLS IN THE NIGHT
Many years ago, on the eve of a marriage, something terrible happened, which resulted in the bride dying mysteriously on the moors, and ever since then, the groom's family has been haunted by the Hound of the Baskervilles. No, wait, just ghost dogs on the moor. As to what happened that night, there's four possibilities (the groom is evil, the bride is evil, both are evil, neither is evil) but because the adventure requires ghost dogs, there's a large overlap in what happened -- which feels like one of those issues with published adventures, where they can't really write four different plots.
So I like that there are four possibilities, and they do lead to slightly different climaxes (like instead of killing the evil people, if they are both good, maybe you can just get them to talk and share their POVs), but most of the adventure is just fighting off ghost dogs while you try to talk to people or dredge the moor's swampy areas.
Is this saveable? I guess -- I'd probably want to foreground the POV issues (and so make both people good if not innocent).
THE AWAKENING
Basically, an evil priestess of Bast gets killed and cursed by Set followers, and then her tomb is transported to Ravenloft, to the non-Egyptian land of Nova Vaasa. So now, the people there are mining this outcropping of rock, disturbing the magic seals that keep the mummy entombed, so all the cats are going crazy, and the mummy keeps coming back eight times, each time more powerful than the last. (Get it, cat god, so she has nine lives total?)
So the PCs get hired to retrieve tax stuff stolen by some bandits, including the magic staff that was part of the mummy's seal, and when one of them does, that PC becomes chosen/cursed by Set. So now the party (theoretically) has a personal reason for stopping this mummy from... well, wait, what does the mummy want to do that's so bad?
Fine structure in that it's an investigation (where did the bandits get this tribute from, where did the lord get this tribute from) that then leads to a dungeon crawl -- hey, wasn't that the same structure as the other mummy adventure, Touch of Death? It just doesn't quite feel motivating enough, though I like the idea of an Egyptian mummy rolling up in a land that isn't Egyptian.
(Also, as is usual, we get more info on the domain and the lord here and I’m getting real tired of jealous husbands/lovers as a trope in Ravenloft.)
HOUR OF THE KNIFE
The intro to this adventure says that the city of Parison is basically Victorian London, and I've never loved a TSR-published adventure intro more. There's a little more information about what that means, but they really do expect their readers to be nerds, particularly Sherlock Holmes (and Jack the Ripper murders) nerds, which is a safe assumption.
The adventure is basically: someone is killing people on the fog-shrouded streets, try to investigate until you are all killed (its doppelgangers), then get resurrected by the evil lord who's lieutenant is rebelling to take over the domain. So, sigh about the "evil lord vs someone else evil" plot and sigh about "a PC gets killed off-screen and no one knows." And another big sigh for "the PC gets killed and then brought back." Like, what a waste of an opportunity for paranoia.
Anyway, the murders are sort of a classic ritual, and this adventure is let down by D&D 2nd edition not really being about investigations and, frankly, writers at this time not really having a lot of the tools and thoughts about investigations AND the published mystery-adventure problem of not wanting the PCs to solve the problem too soon, so there's a bunch of “they spend a fruitless night chasing shadows in the fog” parts.
So I like the setup of murders in old London town, but making this a fight between doppelgangers feels uninteresting. Maybe it could be regular people fighting for relatable and terrible human reasons?
—
HOWLS IN THE NIGHT
Many years ago, on the eve of a marriage, something terrible happened, which resulted in the bride dying mysteriously on the moors, and ever since then, the groom's family has been haunted by the Hound of the Baskervilles. No, wait, just ghost dogs on the moor. As to what happened that night, there's four possibilities (the groom is evil, the bride is evil, both are evil, neither is evil) but because the adventure requires ghost dogs, there's a large overlap in what happened -- which feels like one of those issues with published adventures, where they can't really write four different plots.
So I like that there are four possibilities, and they do lead to slightly different climaxes (like instead of killing the evil people, if they are both good, maybe you can just get them to talk and share their POVs), but most of the adventure is just fighting off ghost dogs while you try to talk to people or dredge the moor's swampy areas.
Is this saveable? I guess -- I'd probably want to foreground the POV issues (and so make both people good if not innocent).
February 21, 2022
A not-bad adventure, which sadly relies far too much on a lack of player agency -- the players can be narratively killed simply by being in the same room alone with a doppelganger, and they wouldn't know until the DM tells them later that their character is actually a doppelganger and they must attack their companions. They don't get a choice and the DM is expected to hide information that they would actually know. I don't find this to be fun for a player, to be told how their character must behave in a specific moment. In addition the overuse of doppelgangers is less horrific and more just...overwhelming. How are there any humans left, with this many doppelgangers present? (over 30 at my count.) An ok adventure for the time, but it would need a lot of work to adapt to 5th edition.
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