Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill : Module I10 (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) by Tracy Hickman

Intermediate #I10

by Tracy Hickman

Module has shelf wear and creasing that is clearly shown in photos of item. The inside of this module is clear of any markings, pen, pencil or highlighting. The booklet is complete and held tightly by the rust free staples. This module also has a large fold out map/cargo rooster. It is included and makes this entire module complete. The map has about 3" seam tear on one of the fold out parts of the map. I will pack this item in cardboard shipper and place the module in a Mylar sleeve to make sure it gets to you the same way I am describing it above. Great item to play or collect!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming, Fantasy, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1986

About the author

NYT Best-selling fantasy authors Tracy Hickman, with his wife Laura, began their journey across the 'Sea of Possibilities' as the creators of 'Dragonlance' and their voyage continues into new areas with the 'Drakis' trilogy, 'Wayne of Gotham', a Batman novel for DC Comics and his 'Dragon's Bard' collector's series . Tracy has over fifty books currently in print in most languages around the world. A record of both Tracy and Laura's DNA currently orbits on the international space station and he is the writer and editor of the first science-fiction movie actually filmed in space. Follow us on Facebook or, of course, right here!

Reviews

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Dungeon Master will need to be good at multi-tasking to run this module. The various story line that are possible will be a challenge in this gothic, psychological adventure.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, where to start. This is what I'd call 'a hot mess'. At its heart, this is an investigation adventure, and those are my favorites. Just as with N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, you've got a village where some of the townspeople are acting oddly, and the problem is growing. There's also apparently a haunted house just outside of town that could be the source of all the problems, and as an interesting twist what seems to be the obvious villain is introduced as a dashing young man to throw the players off. The actual plot is an homage to The Dark Crystal and a certain first season Star Trek episode. So far so good. But there's a lot of problems with this module. The first, is that running it would be very tricky. The DM has a lot of bookkeeping and event tracking to do, in addition to running the villain's schemes that go on concurrently with the party's investigation. It would probably help to have a co-DM. Second, the dream sequences would get old really fast. "Hey guys, you know that fight we just spent the last 2 hours running? Yeah, it didn't really happen." Um, that's not going to fly, certainly not more than once. But it repeats over and over again. Third, there's some pretty unfair encounters, like the party getting chased by a lich and hordes of undead just to put some scare into them. Fourth, though the majority of the adventure is open-ended, the ending is very scripted, and it does not end with the party defeating the villain. Oh no, the protagonist and antagonist have to fall off a cliff together. That's the mortal sin of a D&D adventure, so to run this, you'd have to let the party be the heroes and kill the badguy, or destroy the machine, or whatever the heck they decide to do, and then decide what this means to the protagonist. He should probably 'flame out' like what happens in the Dark Crystal. Fifth, I want to touch on the module's format. It comes with a huge fold-out containing many maps and charts. These would have been better served being actual pages in the module. You'll want to photocopy them for access during play. Finally, if you're really going to run this, in addition to the work you have to put in to take the scripted stuff out, you also just need to read the bloody thing 2 or 3 times because it is damn complicated. Still, it might be worth it.

[Mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this adventure to be twice as good as I6 Ravenloft, the first Strahd adventure. The atmosphere, the visions, delirium, weather and the bad omens set the mood right. The characters were also described well.

Towards the end, the author suggests a way to run both adventures simultaneously.

I won't give away the ending, but I thought it was excellent.