GameMastery Module E1: Carnival of Tears (OGL)

Two thumbs way up on this one!

This dark tale will definitely get my players blood going, seeing that already they have done a few WTF from Crown of the Kobold King (Thanx Nick).
Tim & Nick both have nicely set the bar for horror with this one, not for the faint of heart and those ol fans of Ravenloft (I know your still out there) will feel a bit of nostalgia when they get creeped out by the events at the carnival!

Again... nicely done ;)

Thanks Lord Thavian! Tim is a sick genius. I love working with him! Glad you enjoyed Carnival!

Lord Thavian wrote:

Two thumbs way up on this one!

This dark tale will definitely get my players blood going, seeing that already they have done a few WTF from Crown of the Kobold King (Thanx Nick).
Tim & Nick both have nicely set the bar for horror with this one, not for the faint of heart and those ol fans of Ravenloft (I know your still out there) will feel a bit of nostalgia when they get creeped out by the events at the carnival!

Again... nicely done ;)

Thanks Lord Thavian! Tim is a sick genius. I love working with him! Glad you enjoyed Carnival!

My thanks as well LT! Its great to hear how much people like Carnival being as working with Nick was probably the most fun I've ever had writing a module. While we were writing the Carnival Song, he forced me to sing it with him in a very crowded public place. It haunts me to this day.

To Nick and Tim:

I am running this adventure for my group now and it has been a total blast! My wife who is playing in this game has had to repeatedly reset her jaw to its normal upright position after having it hit the table and/or floor repeatedly. My other players seam to be having similar problems with their anatomy, primarily experiencing nausea as well as difficulty controlling their bladders and colons. My players also seem to be experiencing issues mentally as well, however having leeches fall from the sky can do that to some people.

It has been my extreme pleasure to run this module, and I would love to read more work from your collaborated minds.

Cheers to two men who put the "laughter" back in slaughter.

I have to agree with everyone who said this module is brutal, but it's hard to see how it could be anything else. To me, it feels appropriate, but then I'm a big fan of the pre-Shakespeare fey, what a friend calls "the very alien and always dangerous others". Really, this is a great horror story from beginning to end.

That said... I've got a hard time seeing how anyone can be expected to feel sympathy for Falcon's Hollow and its inhabitants. The place and its people read like Mordor on a budget! Half the population are blindly evil (the lumberjacks, tearing down the home of the fey), and the rest are knowingly evil (Thuldrin Kreed, Kabran Bloodeye, and far too many others). I do get the idea that the PCs are supposed to help change the town in the long run, but sometimes it seems like it'd be easier to make like Lot, clear out the half-dozen or so non-vile sorts, and let a horde of orcs get the rest.

That said... this will be an odd question, but has anyone else had a male (or female) character step up to be a defender of poor lovely Ralla Hebraddan or the other 'working girls' Bloodeye keeps around? (And BTW, thanks to the authors for staying away from the 'happy hooker' stereotype. It's got its place, but man oh man does Hollywood overdo it!)

I have been tossing around the idea of picking this module up for a few reasons. Mainly it's because I have the modules Hollows Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King, and Hungry are the Dead. Which all all basically revolve around Falcons Hollow, so squeezing this in the mix seems appropriate. However, I am not a big fan of slasher films, but I have never ran a module such as this and I constantly am looking for ways to rattle the cage of my gaming group, who are all primarily power gamers (ones even a lawyer!). I really want my players to see the animosity the fey have developed from having their homeland ravaged by the Lumber Consortium, and this seems my chance to do it. I want them to feel that the forest denizens are no joke, not a bunch of "silly fairies". On a side note I am even trying to have the Ice Queen Elvannia digging her icy claws into the feys hearts and minds, wresting control of the fey from Syntira herself, and this seems a great jump off point for this.

I really want a module that snaps them into the position of attention and feel truly vulnerable. Im a big fan of happy endings, and putting the heroes in the spotlight when they do so, but this module seems to turn that skin outside out. It seems this module really stands apart from other modules in a darker way. Its hard to know if i should pick this up without having the ability to thumb through it myself.

I know that if I am just not feeling the mojo of a module, I will probably run it poorly and would rather avoid this. Yet I want to really shake up my gaming group a bit with this one and grab their attention. I see alot of great reviews, but the one review said the citizens of Falcons Hollow ultimately either die or become corrupt, and this is my PC's base of operations! Worth picking up or no?

Do it! You will not regret the mad genius that is Carnival of Tears.

I have been tossing around the idea of picking this module up for a few reasons. Mainly it's because I have the modules Hollows Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King, and Hungry are the Dead. Which all all basically revolve around Falcons Hollow, so squeezing this in the mix seems appropriate. However, I am not a big fan of slasher films, but I have never ran a module such as this and I constantly am looking for ways to rattle the cage of my gaming group, who are all primarily power gamers (ones even a lawyer!). I really want my players to see the animosity the fey have developed from having their homeland ravaged by the Lumber Consortium, and this seems my chance to do it. I want them to feel that the forest denizens are no joke, not a bunch of "silly fairies". On a side note I am even trying to have the Ice Queen Elvannia digging her icy claws into the feys hearts and minds, wresting control of the fey from Syntira herself, and this seems a great jump off point for this.

I really want a module that snaps them into the position of attention and feel truly vulnerable. Im a big fan of happy endings, and putting the heroes in the spotlight when they do so, but this module seems to turn that skin outside out. It seems this module really stands apart from other modules in a darker way. Its hard to know if i should pick this up without having the ability to thumb through it myself.

I know that if I am just not feeling the mojo of a module, I will probably run it poorly and would rather avoid this. Yet I want to really shake up my gaming group a bit with this one and grab their attention. I see a lot of great reviews, but the one review said the citizens of Falcons Hollow ultimately either die or become corrupt, and this is my PC's base of operations! Worth picking up or no?

This is certainly not a typical module, and it has elements of horror that will unnerve all who play and read it.

I am not a slasher movie fan, and violence out of context, or violence for the sake of violence I cannot tolerate in film or literature. I purchased Carnival of Tears and have read it cover to cover.

It is gruesome in parts, but there is an underlying moral of good overcoming evil here that I think folks may have overlooked in their personal reviews; especially those folks who do get a kick out of unmitigated violence or feel unaffected by it.

Personally, I think it is one of the best and most original modules I have read in years, and well worth the price for a good read even if you decide not to use it in your campaign.

As if the rest of the sociopathic defenses weren't bad enough, as if the idea that requiring a tool-assisted speedrun to keep the death toll under 100 and all the major NPCs turning evil is "good overcoming evil" wasn't proof enough, this quote:

"Rather than innocent townsfolk, have Quinn first test the Carnival of Carnage on a group of undesireables;"

has convinced me to never purchase anything with Tim Hitchcock's name on it. That's DESPICABLE. What is wrong with you?

Tim Hitchcock wrote:

Unfortunately for us freelancers, she's not in the SRD.

That version isn't, no, but it does make me wonder if TH White's incarnation of her is in public domain. :)

As TH White died in 1964 his name for the "Queen of Air and Darkness", if he invented it wasn't in public domain for WOTC to use anyway, but if it is a derivation of Morgan le Fey then it is in the public domain.

The only thing Wizards can effectively copyright are its stats.

Chris Mortika wrote:

There's not a lot of focus in E1 on tragic loss. Oh, there's puh-lenty of loss, but it's not the party's fault. Tragedy has to do with decisions and ramifications. (Think Oedipus. Think Macbeth. Think Annikin Skywalker.) The massacre in E1 is bathos, not tragedy.

The tragedy in E1 is not the party's fault, that is true, but it is still tragedy.

For the townsfolk, their greed and carelessness has led to aggravating the native creatures that dwell within the paradise they have despoiled. Do they deserve the punishment that the fey are delivering? Perhaps not, but it was their arrogance that caused the situation in the first place, and the whole point about fey is that their values and morals are not the same as humans. To there minds, mortal lives are of little significants next to the eternal beauty of the forest. To them, wiping out Falcon's Hollow is less than the humans deserve for the damage they have caused, which will take centuries for the fey to heal, even without further interference.

Can you truly say that Oedipus deserved what happened to him? Although he may have acted in ignorance, like the people of Falcon's Hollow, it was his actions that nonetheless created the situation that led to his description, just like Falcon's Hollow (except for the timely intervention of the PCs).

Of course, the saddest part is that the common townsfolk had little say in organizing the destruction that they are being punished for, but that is often the way that war works. The (relatively) innocent are usually the first to suffer.

As for claiming that Syntaria does not suffer from what happens in the module, I have to disagree there as well. First, she watches her beautiful and happy children transform into evil twisted creatures of frozen darkness before her eyes, and she is powerless to halt the transformation. Then she has to make a terrible choice, allow the (admittedly unjust) punishment to go forward, or betray her own people to her hated enemies, and watch as the...

To me I think this is the best analysis of the pile. I guess it all depends on the tastes of the GM. I think the extreme reactions we are seeing here from people isn't so much that the module is at fault, but that it reminds us of the darkness in our own nature that we are frightened to explore. Mankind has always had the capacity to do great good and great evil. The module cleverly exploits the human psychology and challenges us with this non black/white situation. We are left wondering who the good and the bad guys are, and there are a lot of moral gray areas that we a forced to face.

This is the whole essence of great tragedy writing. This is why Macbeth is so compelling even today. Macbeth is not black or white but full of gray. He's a hero in the eyes of his king and been awarded great honors, but he is also an incredibly ruthless man. He is inured to dealing death and qualms do not shake him on this, providing he is doing it for a good cause.

Now enter Lady Macbeth who has heard the witches' prophecy through a letter and she is also neither the black nor white but gray in her morals. She is ruthlessly ambitious, but she is not inured to the realities of slaughter at first hand.

Both characters are conflicted and flawed in different ways, and apart from each other would probably have been just regular people. Together they catalyze a catastrophe that both are unable to endure.

After Duncan's death Lady Macbeth is driven mad by her own remorse at what she has in her own ambition coerced Macbeth to do. He regrets the killing but the killing itself isn't what he hates about himself so much so that his feeling that he has betrayed himself and his ideals and the rewards are not enough for him to deal with. Then there is Banquo who stands to gain from Macbeth's misfortune. This drives him to anger, and further killings. He becomes a tyrant rather than the just king he would have preferred to have been. He wanted love from his subjects but see only "daggers in men's smiles"

The Weird faerie sisters initialize the mischief, but they were not the cause of it. After all, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had they been different people may have let things take their course knowing that by no action of their own Macbeth would be King. But instead they hatch a vile plot instead to achieve it.

Macbeth and Oedipus and all the great tragedians of history force us to face the demons in ourselves, and all too often we would rather not face them.

It's easy to play a good hero fighting an evil villain, and if that is the kind of adventure a group wishes to play then great. But for some of us who are more willing to face complex moral dilemmas in our RPG storytelling, then Carnival of Tears gives us that. We are free to alter things we don't like when we play it and no-one is forcing anyone to buy it either.

We can either play RPG's like black/white fairy tales or we can play them to challenge the gray areas of the human moral psyche. We learn from the tales that endure and villains aint always totally evil and the good guys are not only paragons. You only need to read about the actions of the hero King David in the Bible to know that he was counted righteous through faith and considered a good guy, but he did do some bad things too.

There are plenty of modules out for black/white adventures and very few that explore deeper character motives. I might alter parts of Carnival of Tears for my group, and I would not play it with children or young people. It is a module for mature folks, and there are very few of these kind around. But it is cleverly written, and the criticism by certain people have been on occasion unduly harsh.

Hey, Marcus. I really appreicate your careful analysis, and Jeremy's too. After a good chunk of reflection. I think I understand my objection to the storyline better.

Years and years ago, I wrote an adventure for DL15, a "Mysts of Kyrnn". I entitled the adventure "Between a Dragon and his Wrath," and it dealt with minotaurs, family relations, vengeance, failed quests, and pirate ships. I worked hard to give it a "Dragonlance vibe." Looking back on it, I realize that I'd made a big mistake with it: the PCs were active in the adventure, but they weren't the protagonists. An NPC thirsted for vengeance against some other people, and everything in the adventure was tied into that conflict. The way I'd written it, the PCs were the guys who come in at the end of the drama, witness everything, and roll dice while mopping up.

I think "Carnival of Tears" makes the same mistake. As I said in my earlier comments, Syntaria is the tragic protagonist. It's she who summons the bad guys, she who realized and grieves for her mistake.

It's like we're playing through the "Macbeth" module, and the PCs are all playing Malcolm, Fleance, Lennox, and Ross. Or, more precisely, watching "Hamlet" unfold through the roles of Fortinbras and his army.

One of the advertisements that Wizards of the Coast used for their Star Wars RPG involved showing dramatic scenes from the movies, highlighting an obscure senator or storm trooper or funny-shaped alien in a crowd scene and asking "What's THIS guy's story?" Well, as he's merely watching Luke Skywalker do something really heroic, or watching Annikin betray the Jedi, who the hell cares?

We're watching a tragedy play out between Syntaria and the good people of Falcon's Hollow. The dopey PCs bumbling around? Hundred of people are going to die, no matter what they do. The major characters in the drama will all turn evil, no matter what they do. They're the army that comes in during Act V and mops up. What are THEIR stories? In "Carnival of Tears", who the hell cares?

Hey, Marcus. I really appreciate your careful analysis, and Jeremy's too. After a good chunk of reflection. I think I understand my objection to the storyline better.

You actually make some very valid points, and you weren't the one I was criticizing anyway. I think that Carnival of Tears could be improved and that the consequences for the actions of both sides (i.e. the loggers and the fey Syntira) should have been resolved a lot better.

Unlike stories such as Macbeth and Hamlet, where we are simply uninvolved observers looking at at tragedy as it unfolds with nothing to do but see the culmination of events that have been brewing throughout the narrative, a module must, instead, actively involve the PCs within the framework of the story. After all they should be the people who make or break it.

This clearly does not happen with Carnival, and that is the fundamental flaw with what should have been a brilliant adventure. This is why I would alter it when I actually get around to playing it.

I'm dubious about the virtue points being any use, because if Syntira is as kind a person as she is made out, she will see, herself, pretty early on that she has made a desperate mistake in calling in the Cold Rider in a pique of anger at the loggers.

Instead I would have her actively seek out the party as early as she can and explain to them about the terrible mistake she has made and is by now unable to prevent(not wait around for them to be seen as good enough to behold her wondrous presence first). She made a foolish bargain and though she hurts for the fey who were destroyed by the loggers, she neither has no wish to see innocent children slaughtered in revenge for it. If she is not that kind of character then you can't feel any sympathy for her or her position, which from a story bent sucks.

Now that being said, innocent people are going to die. That's integral to the plot. She tried to fight evil with evil and as we see in our world today, doing this doesn't work and mostly causes the innocent to suffer.

So as soon as possible (Screw the fireworks display), the party needs to get about and close down as much of the trouble before it gets out of hand, first on the list being the sled ride!

The carnival patrons may be oblivious, but the PCs aren't.

The party needs to be thinking evacuation plans and getting the help of any who are not yet fully under the control of the evil Fey. They need to know about the foul mouthed henchmen Prig and do as much as possible to prevent him returning to his master the Cold Rider.

Quinn to me is a red herring or basically a useless character as he currently stands for most of the plot due to his almost comatose infatuation with his trapped wife and his stupid bargain with the Cold Rider. If the PCs can capture the Prig bastard soon and destroy the shard then Quinn can become be a much needed ally, or if the PCs communicate to him that the Soul Gem is in the hands of the cold rider's evil pixie. Well Quinn's probably got as good a chance as any of catching and killing the little runt as anyone else if not more if he is as acrobatic as he is made out.

Suddenly Quinn can get back in the game.

I would cut the death tolls down per attraction, and get Syntira to help out as best she can too, if she really cares that much.

The Cold Rider can be isolated from his power position quite easily with a clever group of PC's.

But there should be consequences at the end. Syntira, Quinn nor the loggers are innocent of guilt and all should be made to resolve their differences in light of what happened, with the PCs being the one's calling the shots. Arbitration whatever? The town should not just turn evil or be wiped out so easily. But reparations on both sides could be negotiated and good XP rewards for the resourceful PCs who ended something that without them would have been a massacre.

Big problems for me
(1)Too many guilty onlookers not taking responsibility soon enough.
(2)Loggers not caring about the demise of the Fey's home in the name of profit.
(3) Too many innocents being killed and the party unable to act usefully and informedly until they accrue enough Virtue points.

These are the things I would change, but at its heart the adventure covers some very important and challenging issues that mirror much of
what is wrong in our world today.

I think that's keenly insightful, Marcus.

I think that's keenly insightful, Marcus.

Thanks Chris.

jwl wrote:

Fairly disappointed with this one.

** spoiler omitted **

Is there a way to exclude his modules from the Gamemastery subscription service? It's gotten to the point now where I know I won't like his modules.

Heh. A Non-Logue Subscription. Ouch.

This is just a weird streak of em. Edge of Anarchy is NOTHING like that.

Also, some stuff I have coming up for DI Dungeon isn't either. These three just turned out pretty grim. Sorry they didn't do it for you jwl.

Hangman's Noose is grim, but there's plenty of chance for redemption and a sunnier ending to a dark tale in that one.

I think jwl is being too hard. I like the way Mr. Logue handles the darkness of human nature and exploits it to generate true fear/terror/horror stories. Even Edge of Anarchy has the slaughterhouse part, where players realize some nasty stuff going on in there. Experienced DMs should know their groups and modify some of the contents presented in Mr. Logue's modules to avoid hurting people's feelings.

Chris Mortika wrote:

I think that's keenly insightful, Marcus.

Thanks Chris.

+1 Chris and Marcus.

SPOILERS follow

Yeah, town and npcs go evil should only be an ending if it all goes wrong, or your pc's are a bunch of jerks that want that sorta thing. I don't play these games to feel worse.

After the second encounter of not being able to damage the enemies thanks to not having cold iron weapons, our party gave up. Kind of cut the session short with that.

I just finished playing this with my group and we had our first TPK. I'm not sure if my 'conversion' into pathfinder was bad or if they just had really bad luck, but the boss owned them. I didn't nerf anything and I didn't give the group any extra breaks since there was a major time limit going on, but with their wand of CLWs, they were fine until Mr. Boss...

That being said, I loved GMing it and my group seemed to love it too. It is a different type of adventure and a welcome change for my players.

I don't usually buy modules, but I got this one specifically because it is dark and doesn't have a cheerful ending. I would probably buy more modules if they were more like that.

We noticed that the Cold Rider's hit dice may be incorrect in the book. We think it should be 6d10 not 10d6, since the Cold Rider should be a fighter or warrior type.

We noticed that the Cold Rider's hit dice may be incorrect in the book. We think it should be 6d10 not 10d6, since the Cold Rider should be a fighter or warrior type.

Since the cold rider is a monster rather than a classed character, it uses monster Hit Dice. All fey use d6s for Hit Dice, regardless of their martial bent.

However, if a cold rider took actual fighter levels, it would gain d10s for those levels, as all fighters do.

Does this make sense?

Yes it does. Thank you.

I loved the dark themes of this module and when i finally got to run this for my party they actually managed to handle the encounters fairly decently. I made a full grid map of the carnival so I could tell exactly how long it would take them to move between events and they managed to stop the fey in just under 20 min with a loss of 65 people.

This is one of my favorite PnP modules. Wish it wasnt so darn hard to locate online, old as it is, it at times feels like it's been buried!

This is one of my favorite PnP modules. Wish it wasnt so darn hard to locate online, old as it is, it at times feels like it's been buried!

Are you also aware that it's been reworked and included in this compliation?

Crown Of The Kobold King

kinderschlager wrote:

This is one of my favorite PnP modules. Wish it wasnt so darn hard to locate online, old as it is, it at times feels like it's been buried!

Are you also aware that it's been reworked and included in this compliation?

Crown Of The Kobold King

It's not. The compilation you linked includes Hollow’s Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, and Hungry are the Dead, but not other Falcon's Hollow-related modules.

Oh, that's too bad.

Thanks for the correction.

I really hope this gets an official 2E update at some point. I plan on running the updated Crown of the Kobold King soon, and while this isn't officially part of that adventure, it's the perfect side adventure/distraction should the party be looking for a break or someone new to do.