So I ran this tonight, using AD&D.

If you don't know what this is just Google it. In short it's an attempt at making a Lovecraftian adventure without any of the stereotypical Lovecraft elements.

Overall I'd say he nails the tone very well. Reading the adventure is a treat and everything drips weird fantasy and lovecraft.

PLAYING it however is a different story.

I'd say the situations presented were far more frustrating than entertaining. Twice the party was presented with situations I'd love to read about in a story but utterly failed in play.

The third at least they could use violence to solve the problem (which they did) but it felt completely random.

Instead of feeling weird and otherworldly it felt unfair and arbitrary. Instead of fun it was simply frustrating.

We had to call the game a bit early and frankly I don't think anyone was too disappointed.

This pretty much confirms my stance that what makes for a good story oftentimes makes for a terrible game.

Next Halloween I'll run Ravenloft.

BTW: I'd love to hear from anyone else who has run this thing.

I haven't run it, but what you're saying here jives with my impression from reading it last night:

(1) Lots of really evocative ideas, but not enough time spent making those ideas gameable.

Easy example: I just randomly rolled to determine that the valley would be 1,800 miles across. I could have just as easily determined that it was 628 AUs across. Sounds delightfully mind-bending... but what does that really mean in gameable terms? How do I present that at the table in a way which is interesting and engaging for the players?

There are exceptions to this sort of thing. But way too much of the adventure is given over to stuff that reads great but which doesn't have an immediately obvious way of bringing it to the table.

(2) Further complicating this problem is that the entire thing is massively overwritten. And this is generally due to Raggi writing everything as if it were the narrative of a story. Information is organized to evoke an impression upon the reader instead of providing tools for the GM to use in evoking an impression upon their players.

It is interesting to see Raggi trying to move away from the heavily linear experiences he preferred in his early efforts.

With all of that being said: I just got done ripping out half a dozen of the most interesting encounters for use in my own campaign. Most of them need tweaking, but the raw material is really, really creative and really, really creepy.

I read through this module a couple weeks ago. I like the ideas behind it, but I don't think it would be a good adventure to spring on establish player characters unless you want to end your game real fast. Even if using pregen characters, I can easily see how some of the encounters would fall flat. Better conceptual idea than actual workable encounters.

Quote from: Piestrio;591833So I ran this tonight, using AD&D.

If you don't know what this is just Google it. In short it's an attempt at making a Lovecraftian adventure without any of the stereotypical Lovecraft elements.

Overall I'd say he nails the tone very well. Reading the adventure is a treat and everything drips weird fantasy and lovecraft.

PLAYING it however is a different story.

I'd say the situations presented were far more frustrating than entertaining. Twice the party was presented with situations I'd love to read about in a story but utterly failed in play.

The third at least they could use violence to solve the problem (which they did) but it felt completely random.

Instead of feeling weird and otherworldly it felt unfair and arbitrary. Instead of fun it was simply frustrating.

We had to call the game a bit early and frankly I don't think anyone was too disappointed.

I'd be interested to hear a little more about the specific frustrations your group had. Sounds like a bizarre adventure from what I've heard.

Quote from: Mark Plemmons;592124I'd be interested to hear a little more about the specific frustrations your group had. Sounds like a bizarre adventure from what I've heard.

Sure.

SPOILERS



...


...



The first was that the party went in in two separate groups, one scout followed by the party. This lead to two different random effect of the valley taking hold.

For the scout it was that he couldn't actually move in daylight (he could move but never make progress towards where he wanted to go). The rest of the party had time traveling backwards outside the valley.

So the party spent nearly an hour trying to get the scout moved around and then having him exist in two places at once and finally just kind of gave up.

The second was a cliff sided Plateau that would inflict full falling damage on anyone attempting to descend it slowly but no damage to anyone just walking off. There were hints that the slowly decending characters were "falling" but the players nearly all ended up taking damage (and nearly dying) testing various solutions. Again, nearly an hour of gameplay.

Finally a giant fish sprang out of a tiny stream. At least the characters could just kill that, but it didn't feel "weird" so much as dickish.

After that we had to call it, and like I said no one was too upset.

That sounds extremely weird.  Unfortunately, I'm not particularly impressed by LotFP's interpretation of what constitutes "weird fantasy", at least not as described by the LotFP boxed set.

RPGPundit

I'm sorry, but after having suffered through a bad adventure written by him, all I had to do was see James Raggi's name on the cover to want to avoid it.

Quote from: jeff37923;593268I'm sorry, but after having suffered through a bad adventure written by him, all I had to do was see James Raggi's name on the cover to want to avoid it.

Which one did you experience?

I dropped Monolith into my LotFP campaign. We enjoyed it but I did yoink the campaign wrecking aspect of the monolith itself.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;593275Which one did you experience?

Crap. I am an idiot.

James Raggi didn't write the adventure module I was thinking of.

My apologies for the wrongful smear.

So, what was the adventure?!
And who did write it?

RPGpundit