Happy Halloween!

This is Feast of Goblyns, the first module for the Ravenloft Campaign setting. It’s a beast, running over 90 pages and including two cardboard inserts, a poster map and a poster of the cover (which, I never loved that Kenny Loggins-looking vampire, honestly). It kicks off the Grand Conjunction series of six modules (which, weirdly, would completely change the status quo of the just released campaign setting once complete).

The balance of fantasy/horror here skews hard toward the fantasy side of things and it is pretty clear that the designers hadn’t quite gotten a handle on the vibe of Ravenloft (one could argue that they never would). The module’s gothic element is largely limited to a web of complicated but less than thrilling NPC plots. Several of the set pieces overshoot spooky and hit ridiculous (see the giant skeleton staircase). The biggest problem is the amount of work a DM has to put in for lackluster returns. This is a long, complicated scenario that will probably run over 30 hours with a ton of NPCs to manage, but not a lot to thrill the players with.

But, in all honesty, I don’t buy Ravenloft adventures to run them, I buy them for the Stephen Fabian illustrations and boy does he deliver here. Lots of moody, strange, full-pagers in here. He even makes the giant skeleton staircase look cool. Forget about the goblyns, feast your EYES.