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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition
The Forgotten Terror: Ravenloft / Forgotten Realms Adventure:
For 4-6 Players, Levels 10-12:
A knife flashes in the darkness.
You never see the face of your attacker.
The adventure begins.
Their spirits trapped by a cursed magical weapon, the heroes find themselves imprisoned on the surreal domain of Aggarath.
Here, they must explore the mind of Chardath Spulzeer, the isane lord of the realm.
Somewhere in his shattered dreams and tormented memories lie secrets that may enable the adventurers to escape.
The Forgotten Terror is a new adventure for the RAVENLOFT campaign setting.
It can be played as a stand-alone scenario or as a sequel to events depicted in the FORGOTTEN REALMS adventure Castle Spulzeer.
The unique nature of this domain and scenario makes The Forgotten Terror easy for the Dungeon Master to run without forcing players through a linear plot.
Alternate endings allow the DM to link this adventure to Ravenloft, the Realms, or any other campaign world.
A knife flashes in the darkness.
You never see the face of your attacker.
The adventure begins.
Their spirits trapped by a cursed magical weapon, the heroes find themselves imprisoned on the surreal domain of Aggarath.
Here, they must explore the mind of Chardath Spulzeer, the isane lord of the realm.
Somewhere in his shattered dreams and tormented memories lie secrets that may enable the adventurers to escape.
The Forgotten Terror is a new adventure for the RAVENLOFT campaign setting.
It can be played as a stand-alone scenario or as a sequel to events depicted in the FORGOTTEN REALMS adventure Castle Spulzeer.
The unique nature of this domain and scenario makes The Forgotten Terror easy for the Dungeon Master to run without forcing players through a linear plot.
Alternate endings allow the DM to link this adventure to Ravenloft, the Realms, or any other campaign world.
64 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 1997
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September 29, 2022Today, reviewing two linked adventures: Castle Spulzeer is a Forgotten Realms adventure that can be a lead in to The Forgotten Terror, which takes place in Ravenloft, so on we go.
CASTLE SPULZEER
First, Castle Spulzeer relies a bit on an idiot plot, that is someone being too stupid in order to make the plot go: an evil wizard hires the PCs to get a magic dagger, even though the PCs are nowhere near that magic dagger, and there’s a countdown. Why not hire someone closer?
Second, since this adventure involves a family of magicians that hate each other (one a lich, one crazy, one a ghost), there’s a lot of setup and history — 9 pages of family history, which is way too much.
Third, since so much of this adventure is “things that delay the PCs from getting to the Castle on time,” there’s no real rhyme or reason as to what those things are. Like, I don’t necessarily want everyone I meet on the road to be tied into the quest on a plot level, but maybe on a thematic level. Or else what's the point of having this meeting with hill giants vs. this other encounter with raiders or cults?
Fourth, I’m not crazy about the art here, though I do like that the artist draws the same adventuring party throughout, so you can see a little story develop there.
Fifth, the castle itself is very gothic already, with ghosts reenacting how they were killed in many of the rooms. Which is nice and flavorful. But the ultimate fight seems a little odd to me, since it’s basically a free-for-all with the three members of the wizard family — and because it ends the same no matter what: with the castle collapsing and people being trapped in Ravenloft (if you want to run the next adventure).
THE FORGOTTEN TERROR
Whereas the first adventure was a big travel, here the PCs are trapped in the gemstone in the hilt of a magical dagger, with one of the mad wizards from the first adventure. Does it matter which one? Not really, and I don’t want to burden you with their names.
Each facet of the gem/prison has a different setting — so one is a hellish casino, another is an arena, another is a gosh darn dungeon with a storybook dragon inside — but the PCs just have to find some magic gems to get out.
I kind of like the trope of entering someone’s head and finding an unreal reality (The Cell, Inception). That said, I think some of the facets here are a little weaker because, frankly, they don’t have a very interesting character to explore AND because they’re trying to be balanced: so, in one facet, warriors are in more danger, so that means we have to have a facet where clerics are in danger for some reason, etc. (A better version of this is in When Black Roses Bloom, where the characters had to enter Soth's memories to mess them up.)
That also means that this is essentially a sort of dungeon crawl where each facet of the gem is a room and the goal is to collect treasure — even if that treasure is to let them escape. It all feels… well, like a cross between a Forgotten Realms adventure and a Ravenloft adventure.
Add on to that the reused art from Castle Spulzeer and the waste of space when they reprint some info twice (so each facet gets a few pages for the adventure and then the whole domain — including each facet — gets a little writeup; or the lord’s personality gets described both in the part of the adventure where he is met and in the appendix where his whole character sheet is given, etc.) -- add all that together and this isn't really worth it to me.
CASTLE SPULZEER
First, Castle Spulzeer relies a bit on an idiot plot, that is someone being too stupid in order to make the plot go: an evil wizard hires the PCs to get a magic dagger, even though the PCs are nowhere near that magic dagger, and there’s a countdown. Why not hire someone closer?
Second, since this adventure involves a family of magicians that hate each other (one a lich, one crazy, one a ghost), there’s a lot of setup and history — 9 pages of family history, which is way too much.
Third, since so much of this adventure is “things that delay the PCs from getting to the Castle on time,” there’s no real rhyme or reason as to what those things are. Like, I don’t necessarily want everyone I meet on the road to be tied into the quest on a plot level, but maybe on a thematic level. Or else what's the point of having this meeting with hill giants vs. this other encounter with raiders or cults?
Fourth, I’m not crazy about the art here, though I do like that the artist draws the same adventuring party throughout, so you can see a little story develop there.
Fifth, the castle itself is very gothic already, with ghosts reenacting how they were killed in many of the rooms. Which is nice and flavorful. But the ultimate fight seems a little odd to me, since it’s basically a free-for-all with the three members of the wizard family — and because it ends the same no matter what: with the castle collapsing and people being trapped in Ravenloft (if you want to run the next adventure).
THE FORGOTTEN TERROR
Whereas the first adventure was a big travel, here the PCs are trapped in the gemstone in the hilt of a magical dagger, with one of the mad wizards from the first adventure. Does it matter which one? Not really, and I don’t want to burden you with their names.
Each facet of the gem/prison has a different setting — so one is a hellish casino, another is an arena, another is a gosh darn dungeon with a storybook dragon inside — but the PCs just have to find some magic gems to get out.
I kind of like the trope of entering someone’s head and finding an unreal reality (The Cell, Inception). That said, I think some of the facets here are a little weaker because, frankly, they don’t have a very interesting character to explore AND because they’re trying to be balanced: so, in one facet, warriors are in more danger, so that means we have to have a facet where clerics are in danger for some reason, etc. (A better version of this is in When Black Roses Bloom, where the characters had to enter Soth's memories to mess them up.)
That also means that this is essentially a sort of dungeon crawl where each facet of the gem is a room and the goal is to collect treasure — even if that treasure is to let them escape. It all feels… well, like a cross between a Forgotten Realms adventure and a Ravenloft adventure.
Add on to that the reused art from Castle Spulzeer and the waste of space when they reprint some info twice (so each facet gets a few pages for the adventure and then the whole domain — including each facet — gets a little writeup; or the lord’s personality gets described both in the part of the adventure where he is met and in the appendix where his whole character sheet is given, etc.) -- add all that together and this isn't really worth it to me.
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