Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill

Intermediate #I10

by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman

An Adventure for 4-6 Characters, Levels 8-10:

"I am the ancient...I am the land..."

Your screams still echo in your room. Cold sweat soaks the bedsheets & trickles down your back.

It seemed so real! The great towers of a darksome place called Ravenloft... its misty vales & the terrible tragedy of a man who had sold his soul to unlife.

Now the sunlight streams through the window with the promise of a new day. The dread nightmare at last is over.

In the cold sunlight of a dying autumn, you step from your room at the inn & stroll along the friendly streets of Mordentshire.

But, from the back of your mind the dream creeps forward to haunt you. Why do the faces of those who have befriended you now seem those of strangers?

Why do those who called you here in terror, now seem to dismiss your task as a folly?

More... why are you advised so strongly, to forget about the House on Gryphon Hill... the domain of the fair haired Count Von Zarovich, a name that cries out from your dark nightmare?

You halt, as the swirl of events grow more confusing with every passing minute. Which is the dream... & which the reality?

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

48 pages, 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

[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.