Carnival of Tears is like a slasher movie, a Clive Barker novel, a Stephan King novel, and a Conan the Barbarian novel all rolled into one. It is thick ghastly images, screwed-up monsters, and blood-curdling supernatural horror, all spiced with a hint of heroic fantasy.

It is however, a little shallow. The players fight horrifying fey while navigating a bleak carnival, and that's about it. There is no intrigue to speak of, and the writers turn more and more to shock value to keep the players engaged.

Overall, I would recommend it to fans of horror media and dark fairy tales, but not to players looking for a "traditional" fantasy romp.

Yes, it's gory. Yes, it's horrific. Yes, it's shocking. That's rather the point. If you've not played something by Nick Logue before, tread carefully. Same goes for Richard Pett. These two together? Recipe for horror beyond imagination. I loved it.

To summarize... the fey of Darkmoon Vale are pissed, so they take control of the carnival, to massacre the townspeople of the village. The adventure starts as a "hey, let's go to the carnival" as the player's solve some ongoing issues over there. Finally, things get sick as the fey start their revenge on the lumbers and their families. Basically, every attraction turns into a horror show slaughterhouse and the PCs have to survive them and slay the cruel fey master. Seriously, if you are into this kind of stories, it doesn't get any better than this. I think it represents everything Paizo means to me... The best d20 rules edition mixed with that great old-school feel.

Well, despite my protests, my group ran this module anyway, since my DM had already bought it and we'd done the other Falcon's Hollow adventures.

This wasn't "mature". This was pathetic. This module needlessly heaps on the gore, thinking that blood and guts and skins and eyeballs pave the path to being mature, serious gameplay. Human-face ticket booth with severed tongue tickets and eyeball lollipops isn't shocking, it's not even cartoonish, it's just... sad. It's like this module is one long, desperate cry for Daddy to pay attention to it.

I guess you're supposed to feel like the evil people of Falcon's Hollow deserve their torture and death, and if viewed in that light, it plays out like a fantasy cooked up by a emotionally disturbed 6th-grader who was tired of Falcon's Hollow bullying him in gym class. This module should have resulted in a trip to the school counselor.

The encounters aren't done very well, either. They're loaded with save-or-suck effects, and some of them don't even make any sense. What's the point of having a nymph in the peep show if the illusion means nobody actually sees her?

Our GM gave us a happy ending, but told us what the original ending as detailed in the module was -- a pointless downer that basically comes out and says "ha ha, you suck and can't do anything about it, ha ha".

Blood and guts and "you suck" endings do not make something mature. This was, in fact, one of the most immature things I've seen in gaming, and it would be right at home with the worst offerings of mid-90s White Wolf Publishing.

It is hard to shock experienced D&D players. So many NPCs and monsters got slaughterd around them so often, that death and violnace became part of their PCs routine.

However, not a single PC or player would walk out of this module without a mental scratch. The sick, twisted nature of the Fea is presnted here like never before, in a goery bath of murder, torture and bloody vangence.

The setting is awesome, the layout comfortable. the challanges are shocking, varied, and fun. your PCs will find themseleves racing time to fight off the insanity of a host of creepy Faeries, as well as witnessing disgusting sights that will stay with them forever. truly, there is not a bad word to say about this module.

This module is remarkable. The party starts out going through a carnival, complete with grannies with pies, candy apples, beer garden, ice maze, Test-Your-Strength... and then goes through it all again when the carnival goes real horror show. The fae-altered ice carving, "Lumber Yard of Tomorrow!", candy apples and pie eating contest had my player screaming! This is one of the few adventures that get the vengeful alien humor of the fae myths. Your players will respect them after this one.

The one change I'd make, however, is that the scary clown on the cover does not appear in the module. I changed the thinly-veiled DMPC carnival owner into the cover clown and made him an antagonist. My player is still trying to find a way to sell Clown Shoes of the Elvenkind!

My longer review vanished - so here goes with a shorter version....

Dungeon - very good

Bad point - I had to change the location to a village/town full of nice innocent people as my party thought that the worthless inhabitants of Falcon's Hollow deserved everything they got and found it hard to justify saving them. (and I had to agree with them - save the trees)

Now this is how to do horror for 3.5. The encounters are dangerous and there's a good chance your characters will bite the bullet if they don't get played very carefully... but with some common sense this will be a wild ride.

Oh, and I love the heartlessly evil and alien fey villains. This adventure hearks back to the horriffic fey of folklore, and in grand fashion!

Easily worth five stars!

Like I said, I agree with Nick on the Gore-O-Meter factor: Completely maxxed, and this adventure should have a specific warning in that regard. However, this module could have very easily been titled "Fey Gone Bad: The Sourceback For Running Adventures Involving Extremely Angry Faeries". And that is why I gave it five stars. There is absolutely no way that this particular title can be considered "E (for everyone)", and I have always felt that "PG" means exactly what it says, however for years now we have all wondered about what the fey would do in exactly this situation. My personal favorite is the fate-tweaker, great use of fore-shadowing. I do not reccommend this book to new groups. It is not at all what the hobby is normally about, but like I said: "Bad faeries. Very, very BAD faeries". Thanks Paizo, nightmare inducing, toe-curdling, but for me and my experience, this is a great addition to my stockpile of things to ruin a rangers' day. Don't love it, but for me-n-mine the value is superb.

Excellently written, awesome art and maps, rules and crunchy-bits were well laid out. However, the disgusting nature of the traps and the extreme horror level made me wish I had never ordered it. If I had seen it in a store and thumbed through it I would have know it was not for me. I am not even going to run it for my table because I know they would be offended by the horrific box text descriptions. I hope I don’t order another module that is marketed as a Fantasy Adventure and receive a “Slasher Film” Horror RPG. Next time I’ll only buy books I can thumb through first.