This is Hour of the Knife (1994). Weird cover! That’s a John and Laura Lakey jam. I gotta say, Ravenloft has, pretty much from House on Gryphon Hill, flirted with the faux-Victorian aesthetics of Universal and Hammer horror films. It is refreshing to have this cover just embrace it. More bowler hats in fantasy, pls. Arnie Swekel on the interiors. He’s not Stephen Fabian, but I’m not gonna complain. Just gonna point out he isn’t Fabian (I love Arnie’s work, I’m just funnin’).

So, I love this adventure. It’s an open-ended investigation (honestly don’t understand why there isn’t more of this in the Ravenloft line, but there isn’t really). As you can guess from the name and the cover art, there’s a murderer loose and the players need to find the clues to bring him and his evil knife to justice. There is a very large (though strangely bland) city map to aid in the detective work. There are annoying things (death fake outs are the worst) but overall, this is a bit of much needed freshness. It doesn’t last, but eh, whatever, nothing does.