Review: Forbidden Lore (2e)

By 1992, Ravenloft was going full speed, though we would later learn that all of the settings were contributing to the eventual demise of TSR. I am not even sure if Ravenloft was ever profitable. I made my best efforts to make it profitable, even on a Graduate student budget. I bought a lot Ravenloft material. The Forbidden Lore boxed set was one I purchased back then. I loved the idea of my own Tarokka Cards and Dikesha dice sets. The material included was a mixed bag of course.

I sold off my boxed set many years ago, likely in my big move in 1997 or maybe in 2001-2002. Do I regret it? Hard to say. The material is not not needed to play in Ravenloft, and while having those cards would be nice, I have since acquired other Tarokka decks and even other tarot decks that work great.

Forbidden Lore (2e)

1992. Design by Bruce Nesmith and William W. Connors. Box cover art by Clyde Caldwell, Booklet cover art by Stephen Fabian, interior art by Stephen Fabian and Bob Klanish.

The boxed set originally came with five booklets, each covering a different aspect of the game. Reading these you can see that it is a collection of errata, material that didn't quite make it to the Ravenloft boxed set, and updates to cover the evolution of the AD&D 2nd Ed game and other game worlds; for example psionics. 

While the books could be used in any order. I am going with the order used in my Print on Demand copy. 

Dark Recesses. Psionics.

Much like magic, this section deals with how psionics are changed. The psionics used here are the same as featured in the The Complete Psionics Handbook. If you are not using that book, or don't have it, then you can ignore this book. Well...sort of. Even if you are not using "AD&D Psionics" this is a good resource on any sort of psychic powers or visions when used in Ravenloft. Psychic ability has been a horror staple forever, even if the psychic ability is "magic" there is still great advice here.

This includes an appendix for Dark Sun characters coming to Ravenloft.

Nova Aracanum. Magic.

This covers new magic spells and items. The conceit here is that some of this new knowledge comes from Strahd himself. I liked the idea that Strahd, the former warrior, was turning to necromancy and wizardry to find ways out of his prison. It certainly helped separate him from his origins as a "Dracula-clone."  Had there been rules for it I would have given him Alchemy instead, but hey, it works. 

This book covers more altered spells and gifts from the Realms, Wild Magic, Elemental Magic and Meta Magic. 

There are 14 new wizard spells, 7 new priest spells, and 5 new magic items.

Oaths of Evil. Curses.

This book is based on feedback from Ravenloft players it seems. This covers curses and dark powers checks. Giving clarifications and some edits on material presented in the Ravenloft core boxed set. 

Of note, the Apparatus of the Alchemist from module I10 makes an appearance here, though only in art, not in text.

We also get three very cursed and very evil objects that have found their way to the Demiplane of Dread.  

Cryptic Allegiances. Secret Societies.

What is horror without some secret societies? Here, Ravenloft takes a page from the Forgotten Realms. We get guidance on how to create and use secret societies in Ravenloft. We are given the examples of six secret societies. Of these, the Kargatane would spin off into a real-world group I was active in to develop new Ravenloft material. 

The Waking Dream. Fortune Telling.

This final book covers fortune telling and Vistani. This gives us the description of the Tarokka deck and how to use it. There are 54 cards in a Tarokka deck, so a standard deck with two jokers works in a pinch. 

The next section covers the Dikesha dice. A bit on how to use and read the portents of the dice. They are standard d6s, so they can also be replicated. You need five d6s, one each of red, yellow, orange, green and black. The PDF of the dice can be used and numbers added. OR if you feel particularly crafty you can get get some d6s of the correct colors and print out the PDF and glue these faces on the dice. 

Of the two, I, and I assume most people now, used the Tarokka decks over the dice. The fact that you can still find and buy Tarokka decks from various editions of Ravenloft lends some weight to my claim. 

There was also a large poster map included in the Boxed set. It was not printed with the Print on Demand version, but it is available as a PDF along with a PDF of the Tarokka deck and the Dikesha dice.

The Print on Demand version of this set is nice. It is clear to read and is a better scan than most. 

Do I miss my boxed set? Well, I have to say no. The boxed set was great yes, but this makes for a good substitute. It is also only $5 more than the list price, so not bad after 32 years of inflation.

Advent-ure Dice: Day 10

 Day 10

Another orange spider one. This time a d12.

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Sentinel (1977)

 This movie very likely did not influence anything in the AD&D Monster Manual, but it certainly has the right vibe of the movies I would have been watching at the time and altering the printed monsters to fit my needs. Plus, this one has a solid cast. More to the point, I can't believe I have never seen this one despite my desire to watch it back then. 

The Sentinel (1977)

Alison Parker (Cristina Raines, who was a model in real life) is a model in love with her lawyer boyfriend, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon). He wants to get married, but she wants to live on her own for a bit. She finds a new apartment and moves in. She meets her neighbors, Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith), Gerde (Sylvia Miles) and Sandra (Beverly D'Angelo who barely speaks in this), and encounters the blind priest Father Francis Matthew Halliran (John Carradine).  Alison has serious migraines and a history of suicide attempts, once after she caught her father in bed with two other women. 

The movie is slow to start, building up by showing us the collection of odd inhabitants living in the building. Alison has all sorts of weird visions and nightmares. We also learn from the landlady that aside from the Priest and Alison, no one else actually lives in the building. When the landlady takes her to each apartment, she learns that none of them has been lived in for years.  We later learn that all of the people in the apartment are, or were, all murderers who were killed years ago. 

We learn that Michael's previous wife killed herself. We also learn that Michael hired private detective Brenner to kill his first wife and now scare Alison, only he ends up dead in the exact same way Alison hallucinates that she killed her dead father. The film has a real "Gaslighting" feel to it, both the movie and the term, with actual supernatural overtones. 

Michael breaks into the priest's office and learns about all these priests and nuns who, in life, attempted suicide and then were given a new name. There is a list going back hundreds of years and Alison's name is next on the list, to become Sister Theresa. These names are all Sentinels, the guardians of Gates of Hell tasked by the Archangel Uriel. The only time a Sentinel can be stopped is if they kill themselves before taking over their post. So Micheal (now dead), Charles and the other lost soulstry to drive Alison to suicide. 

Father Halliran shows up at the end to help Alison and gives us a great demonstration of cleric turning.

The building is demolished and new one is put up. In Apartment 5a we see a now blind and older Alison, now Sister Theresa, standing her vigil. 

Additionally, this movie features Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Orbach, with Tom Berenger, and a young Nana Visitor as the couple at the end.

David Caradine is barely in this, but he still shows us why he was one of the big names in horror. 

The 1970s were a great time for demonic and satanic themed horror and this one is still good example. Not the best example, but a very good one all the same. 

Featured Monster: Devil

While there are no overt devils per se in this film, I would argue that Burgess Meredith's Charles Chazen was not so much a damned soul as a devil. Not an Archduke, but certainly a higher-ranking one. I ran his name through an anagram program and created Charnazel Sech or Sharcazel Chen as possible diabolic names. 

Game Content: Sentinel

A Sentinel is a Theosophist (in NIGHT SHIFT) that has somehow lost their way. Their holy task is to keep demons and devils from escaping hell. They no longer advance as a Theosophist and now advance as either a Survivor or as a Veteran. Their task, much like the Paladins of old, is to guard one of the many gates of hell.  They position themselves near the gate to fight the demons, devils, and other lost and evil souls who might escape. 

A Sentinel works best as an NPC or PC, if they don't mind not traveling too far from the Gate of Hell they are supposed to guard.

Does this sound like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yeah, it does, but this movie predates that movie by 15 years, and the book even more than that (1974).  It is also similar to the idea of the Wynonna Earp. 

This shows that there are not any new ideas. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 12
First Time Views: 5

Daddy rolled a 1: Witches

 Over on his YouTube Channel, Daddy Rolled a 1, Martin R. Thomas has put up a pretty comprehensive overview of all the various Witch classes.

So, of course, you know it has my attention.

It is great overview.

Nothing new to anyone who reads this blog regularly, and I think I have covered more, but still a great overview.

It's Halloween after all and more witch discussion is always welcome!

Review: Darklords and Book of Crypts

 The great thing about the AD&D 2nd Edition version of Ravenloft's demi-plane was that the borders were completely malleable.  Lands came in and out, even darklords would come and go. So the first two accessories for the Ravenloft setting capitalized on this. The first was RR1 Darklords and the next was RR2 Book of Crypts and both gave us more expansions to the Demiplane of Dread.

RR1 Darklords (2e)

1991. By Andria Hayday (with some additional design by William W. Connors, Bruce Nesmith, and James Lowder). 96-pages, color covers (Tim Hildebrandt), black & white interior art (Stephen Fabian).

This soft-cover tome gave 16 new darklords and their domains for use with Ravenloft. There is a mixed bag here, but I tried I to use all of them at one point or another. These new lords felt less "gothic" in their presentation and more "AD&D" in their origins. For  example, Tristessa, the Banshee Darklord, is a Drow mourning over the loss of her son, who turned into a Drider. The Hags of Tempest certainly have a William Shakespeare veneer over them, but they are pure AD&D hags. 

There are some very interesting ones here too. Merilee, the Child Vampire, brings "Interview with a Vampire's" Claudia to mind. Von Kharkou is twice cursed. He was panther transformed into a man killing machine, then cursed again to vampirism. Zolnik is a different sort of ice-age Werewolf. Anhktepot and Tyet give us two very different takes on the Mummy.

Among all of these, The House of Lament (a haunted house as a darklord) would go on to see new life in future editions of the game, and the intelligent sword, Ebonbane, would get a full adventure in the pages of Dungeon magazine. 

RR2 Book of Crypts (2e)

1991. by Dale "Slade" Henson with J. Robert King.  96-pages, color covers (David Dorman), black & white interior art (Laura and Kelly Freas, Stephen Fabian).

This book has nine short and loosely connected mini-adventures taking place in the core realms of Ravenloft. Of these, the "Bride of Mordenheim" was my favorite. 

This was (is) actually a fun book. Horror lends itself well to the short story format and by extension horror RPG also does these smaller adventures well. They help remind us that not every adventure is going to part of some Grand Conjunction or even dealing directly with a Darklord.

Re-reading them now there are many that I would like re-run for newer versions of the game.

And to round off the pages nicely we get three new monsters in AD&D Monstrous Compendium format. 

The PDF is a scanned document and it is a little washed out compared to my original from the 1990s. But still perfectly readable.  At present, there is no Print on Demand option for either titles.

Advent-ure Dice: Day 9

  Day 9

A purple sparkly d20.

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Blob (1958, 1988)

The Blob is one of those classic horror movies that pretty much everyone knows about. It has been done, in concept, a lot of different ways, but there are two main movies, and one sequel.  Tonight I am watching the two movies titled The Blob.

The movies largely have the same plot and story with minor differences.

The Blob (1958)

How many horror movies have their own catchy pop song? Well the Blob does. 

This one also features future action star Steve McQueen as a squeaky clean teen. 

The blob comes from space, a big deal in the 1958, and proceeds eat the towns-folk and get larger all the time. Effective as a scare and I can recall watching this one with my dad back in the 1970s. Actually I recall watching it on an old Black & White TV in my parents basement. My dad had set up a movie-watching area down there. It seems like a perfect place to watch old horror movies.

The cure? The discover that it can be frozen and this stops it. 

The sequel Beware! The Blob (1972) features the Blob getting defrosted and going on a rampage again.

The Blob (1988)

This a remake to fit what will become part of the Paranoid 90s, thanks X-Files. In this, the Blob was created by the military and shot into space.

This one has Kevin Dillon, Matt's brother, as our teen hero. Of course, now he is a little punk just south of the law, but that is not a big shock, really. These were the roles he was type-casted in. To be fair, he did give a good performance as drummer John Densmore in the Doors.  Shawnee Smith, who plays our "good girl" heroine, is still quite active in movies today. 

The special effects are better here and still surprisingly effective when you consider they are all still practical effects (for the most part). The plot, though, is the same as the first movie.

The twist of the Government to create the Blob is a nice but utterly expected twist. 

Del Close, who portrays Reverend Meeker, also had a small part in the 1972 Beware! The Blob movie, so that is the sort of thing I enjoy.

Featured Monsters: Black Pudding, Gray Ooze, Green Slime, and Ochre Jelly

The Blob must have left a serious mark on the creators of D&D. We have four monsters that can fit the bill. And this doesn't even cover the Gelantinous Cube‎. Of these four, the Black Pudding and Gray ooze might be the closest in how the movie Blob acts. The Green Slime doesn't really move (and the blob is fast) and the Ochre Jelly is slow(er) moving. 

A "Blood Ooze" would be good, one that starts out gray or even pale and getts redder and redder as it eats people.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 11
First Time Views: 4