Advent-ure Dice: Day 15

  Day 15

Another 2 for 1! Purple d% and d4.

Almost half-way through!

October Horror Movie Challenge: Starve Acre (2023)

 Something a little different tonight. I saw this one had Matt Smith (Doctor Who) and Morfydd Clark (Rings of Power) and it was British Folk Horror, so I thought it would be a good choice. Was it? Well, lets find out.

Starve Acre (2023)

This British folk horror film based on the novel by Andrew Michael Hurley. The story follows Richard (Smith) and Juliette (Clark), a troubled couple who move to Richard's childhood home on the Yorkshire moors. Their idyllic rural life quickly takes a sinister turn when their young son, Owen, begins to act strange. Well, stranger than usual. 

As Owen's condition worsens, Richard becomes convinced that a malevolent force is at work, tied to the land and its dark history.

While this is going on, Owen dies from an asthma attack, sending the couple into a deep mourning. 

Richard delves into local folklore, uncovering tales of a malevolent entity that haunts the area. The line between reality and the supernatural blurs as Richard and Juliette grapple with the terrifying truth about their son and the ancient evil that threatens to consume them. 

Staying with them is Juliette's sister Harriet, played by Gotham's Erin Richards. They are also visited by locals Gordon and his wife. Gordon had told Richard tales of the sprites that lived on the land and told them to Owen as well.

We learn that Richard's father believed in the ancient pagan spirits of the land and tried to sacrifice Richard to them, but failed. When Owen dies, they take him as the sacrifice.

It is a slow-burn folk horror piece, as most are really, and the true horrors don't come in until the end. It has some good tension and couple of good scares, but no monsters to speak of.

So I liked it. I like folk-horror, but not a great fit for this month's theme.

Featured Monster: Sprite??

While no monster is ever seen, the effects or at least the shadow of "Jack Grey" are felt. Was he/it doing all the whistling? Was he/it the rabbit? One thing is certain Richard and Juliette believe in him in the end. 

It DOES, however, work in the sense that British folkloric fae creatures used to be a lot darker and lot scarier than they are today or as depicted in the Monster Manual. If a sprite, or a group of them, could cause madness in people then they would seem more of a threat.

Sprites are often used in place of hobgoblins or other faeries*. The Monster Manual might draw very strict lines around these creatures, but folklore did not. 

*(Robin Goodfellow of "Midsummer's Night Dream" was called a Spite and a Hobgoblin.)

Maybe we need to make these creatures a bit darker in their outlooks and intent.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 21
First Time Views: 11

Monstrous Mondays: The Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums

 I have been covering the AD&D 2nd Ed version of Ravenloft all this month. I have also been covering the the Forgotten Realms and currently in the AD&D 2nd Edition era. One thing they both have in common is that a few of the books feature new monsters in AD&D 2nd Monstrous Compendium format.

I reviewed the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendiums sometime back. Since I have been reviewing the various books I have been printing out the Monstrous Compendium pages and adding them to my three-ring binder for Ravenloft.

As I run across a monster page for these reviews OR from Dragon magazine in my This Old Dragon feature, I print them out (or cut them out as the case may merit) and add them to my binder.

It has taken 30+ years but I feel that the Monstrous Compendium concept is finally living up to its potential for me.

I have been doing the same thing with my Forgotten Realms monsters as I talked about a while back.

Again, I might start mining my other MCs to see what would fit here. I already have one filled with demons and devils, so I wont add those, but I am considering taking the Death Knight from Krynn and putting in this one.

The truth is I am not likely to play AD&D 2nd ed Ravenloft again. BUT my son is running his 5e group through Castle Amber using AD&D 1st ed. So it is possible I could run an AD&D 2nd Ed game again one day. I have mentioned that I am running an AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms game with my oldest, though we have not played in a while. So I guess never say never.

Despite my concerns with Ravenloft under AD&D 2nd ed, it was my game for the 90s. 

In any case I feel like an archivist in some dusty library, collecting tomes for my own pleasures. 

This is another entry for my RPG Blog Carnival for October!

Review: Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales

Very few games or game products have had *lasting* profound effects on my gaming. Oh sure there have been a LOT of great games that I have played or used over the years, but only a handful that have been a sea change for me. 

They are: 

1. The AD&D 1st Ed Monster Manual
2. D&D Basic Moldvay Edition
3. 1st Edition Chill
4. CJ Carella's WitchCraft RPG
5. Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales

This last game combined everything I wanted into one game. Horror? Check. AD&D? Check? Gothic Victorian Earth? Double check.

For the longest time, it was the perfect game for me. I had to write an entire other game, Ghosts of Albion, just to get what I wanted, and then again with NIGHT SHIFT.

But before I go there, let's go back—not to the 1890s, but rather to the 1990s, when this game came out.

In the theaters, we saw Lost Boys, Near Dark, The Crow (okay, not a vampire movie, but still. And the 1994 version, not the 2024 one), and most of all, a big-screen adaptation of Dracula that was the most faithful to the book yet. In the game stores, Vampire: the Masquerade reigned supreme. AD&D had started the decade doing well but had begun to flounder by the middle. Soon, it would be all but dead; we didn't know it then.  Amidst all of this, we were given the gift of Gothic Earth. 

Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales 

by William W. Connors, D. J. Heinrich, Shane Lacy Hensley, Colin McComb.

Art by Ned Dameron, Stephen Fabian, Robh Ruppel, David C. Sutherland, III.

Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales is nominally released under the Ravenloft line and you will need one of the Ravenloft core books to be able to play this along with the AD&D 2nd Edition rules.  However if you know the AD&D rules well enough you might be able to get by.  The premise of the game it rather a simple one. What if the Dark Powers from Ravenloft found their way to Earth?  Well...I should state out and out that they never actually say that, but imply it rather heavily.  The is a dark, malignant force controlling things on Earth, known here as The Red Death, and this Earth of the 1890s certainly has a lot more in common with Ravenloft.

Pretty much from the time it was published to the onset of the new 3rd Edition rules, Masque of the Red Death was my campaign world of choice.  I still played AD&D2 in Ravenloft, or rather, I ran AD&D2 in Ravenloft, but the lines between Ravenloft proper and "Gothic Earth" became very, very blurry.

For this review, I am considering my original boxed set from the 1990s and the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.

This package from DriveThruRPG includes five PDFs, which correspond to the four books and the DM's screen found in the Boxed Set.

Book I is the main Masque of the Red Death book.  It is 130 pages of a high quality, OCR scan.  Some the images are fuzzy, but I feel that is more due to the source images rather than the scan itself.  The scan comes in at just over 35 meg.

We begin with an overview of what this campaign guide is about.  I might be mistaken, but this is the first official AD&D product to take place on Earth.   This followed up with a history of Gothic Earth.  Things began to go downhill for everything around 2700 BC when Imhoptep (yes, same as the Mummy movies) began experimenting with darker magics.  The next dozen or so pages bring us to the present day (1890s).  The history is a fast read and I would not ignore it. It sets the tone for the entire game.

Chapter II details character creation.  There are different methods used than the PHB to reflect that characters are not your sword wielding barbarians of a bygone age.  So characters are more average.
There are rough parallels to all the classic AD&D classes, Soldiers, Adepts, Mystics, and Tradesmen.  The AD&D Proficiency system is used here as well.  Interestingly the system seems make more sense here (since skills are really what sets characters apart) but also shows its wear and tear.

Chapter IV also details money and Equipment. Interestingly, this is one of the few Victorian-era games in which the default currency is American Dollars rather than Pounds Sterling.
It should be of note that this is also the book that adds guns to AD&D2.  Quite a number of guns are detailed here as well.

Chapter V covers magic, and you need the Player's Handbook for this section.

Chapter VI covers the changes to combat.
Getting back to what really makes this special is Chapter VII, An Atlas of Gothic Earth. I should point out at this point that the large poster-sized map that came with the boxed set is not included here. It gives a brief overview of the world. This section is done much better in the full-fledged product that shares its name.

The first Appendix covers various character kits.  If you remember 2e at all, you remember kits. Quite a few interesting ideas are detailed, but you could also do these with the base four classes and good roleplaying.

 
Appendix II covers some villains of Gothic Earth. There are plenty of old favorites here and some new takes on old characters.  Though I will admit the one thing that still gets on my nerves is Moriarty re-done as a Rakshasa.  In my games, he was human. And yes, Dracula is there as well.

Finally, Appendix III covers the adventuring of Gothic Earth.

Book II is an adventure in three parts by future Pinnacle Entertainment head honcho Shane Hensley and features the rock star of Gothic fiction, Dracula. What is the advantage of this PDF over my boxed set copy? I can print it out and make changes to it. Yeah, it is a good adventure, but it is a pastiche of Hammer and Stoker's original work.

Book III is a Jack the Ripper adventure, Red Jack. Unlike Moriarty's change into a supernatural creature, this adventure makes "Jack" into something more mundane.  Normally, I would be fine with this, but the name of the adventure itself and some of the elements BEGS it to be tied to the old Star Trek episode The Wolf in The Fold and Redjac.

Book IV is The Red Death, an adventure based on elements of the Edgar Allen Poe story.  Some details have been changed and added, but the spirit is the same.  Again, I am tempted to make the main antagonist, Prospero, the Prospero.

Book V is the DM's screen.

Part of me wants to get the Print on Demand version, just to see how it is, but I know it will not live up to my boxed set. 

In any case, boxed set, PDF, Print on Demand, this is still one of my all-time favorite Ravenloft products and changed how I wanted to play my games. I spent a lot of time talking to the late Johnathan Thompson and we both agreed had it not been for MotRD there would not have been his Gaslight nor my Ghosts of Albion games. 

Advent-ure Dice: Day 14

  Day 14

Orange spider d%, but no spiders on it.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Dracula Night

 Decided that a Dracula night was in order. I wanted to watch "Last Voyage of the Demeter" and "Renfield" and thought I'd throw "Bram Sotker's Dracula" in as well. 

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

This movie takes the log of the ill-fated Demeter and turns it into a full-length movie. Not a bad concept really, and certainly enough here for a movie. There are some good bits here. Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones) is the captain of the Demeter with David Dastmalchian as the first mate. New characters include Anna (Aisling Franciosi) as Dracula's "road trip snack," and Corey Hawkins as Cambridge-schooled doctor Clemens. 

We know the story here. Dracula charters The Demeter to London with 50 boxes of earth. He kills everyone on board, and the boat runs ashore.

In this one, Anna and Clemens survive, only for Anna to die when sunlight hits her. Clemens vows to hunt Dracula down, but we know he is not successful. 

Dracula is played by Spanish actor Javier Botet under a lot of make-up. 

A couple of points. The movie takes place in 1897, the same year Dracula was published, but you know my issue with that. 

Also, the main character is named Clemens, and the dog on the boat is named Huck, short for Huckleberry.  This is a neat little nod given what I have said about Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain's relationship with Bram Stoker. 

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Honestly, I have lost track how many times I have seen this movie. A couple of notes on this viewing.

One. It also takes place in 1897. I guess that can't be helped. Two. Honestly, we gave Keanu Reeves too much grief when this came out. He is nowhere near as bad as I thought he was or remembered. The same is true for Winona Ryder. Time has been better for them both. I mean who doesn't love Keanu Reeves and where would "Stranger Things" be without Joyce Byers?

Three. I am still not a fan of the "Immortal Beloved" subplot. Why can't Dracula just be the evil asshole he is in the book? It worked so well for other Draculas. 

Four. Some of the script dialog is a bit cringey. 

Still, this is one of the best Dracula movies. It could also be better.

The scene with Dracula as a bat-creature (after he feeds on Mina) is very much like the bat-creature in "Last Voyage of the Demeter."

I kinda wonder what Mina would have been like had she joined Dracula. I think more interesting that what we saw in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

Renfield (2023)

Ok. This one. First off, Nicolas Cage as Dracula? Oh HELL YES. This movie is crafted as sequel to the 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi.  Nicholas Hoult, who is pretty much brilliant in everything he does (see "The Great" where he played Peter III of Russia), and Awkwafina playing...well Awkwafina (but that is fine it works here). 

This movie has Renfield still serving Dracula into the 2000s. It is silly and maybe one of the bloodiest movies I have ever seen, but it is just so much fun.

Dishonorable Mention: Dracula's Guest (2008)

Thought I'd make a night of it and watch this one as well. But wow, is it really bad. I mean terrible. It is late and frankly I just can't sit through this one. So not finishing it, but not counting it either. 

Featured Monster: Vampire

None of these movies contributed to the 1977 Monster Manual, obviously. But Dracula, the novel, and earlier movies did. The truth is that while there are plenty of pulp-era vampires, you can go wrong with Dracula as your model.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 20
First Time Views: 10

Advent-ure Dice: Day 13

  Day 13

A green d4. I don't have a complete set yet of all one color, but I am getting there.