Feast of Ravenmoor Appreciation

[Joshua Goudreau]

I had the pleasure of finally getting to run Feast of Ravenmoor and it was a blast. I wanted to give a hearty 'huzzah' to Mr. Hodge for the evening of enjoyment that was had by all.

I ran it as a Halloween party and yes, I know it's nerdy that we sat around gaming as a Halloween party. I also know that it was two months ago but I use NaNoWriMo and a new job as the excuse for not coming on here sooner, but I assure you, the game was still lots of fun.

The remainder of the post contains mad spoilers.

I've had the module for a while and have wanted to run it for some time now. I was starting a World of Darkness game and jumped on the excuse to run this adventure. It got updated to a modern, non fantasy setting, but that didn't diminish any of the adventure. I placed the setting in a small Maine town during a Halloween/Harvest festival. The party attended and took place in a number of games and even enjoyed wrestling the greased pig.

The only encounters that were changed were the stirge fight at the beginning and the mutation of the pig. The lost pet became a dog but the party still helped the boy find Applesauce, who had slipped down an embankment and got stuck.

The feast became an old fashioned Maine style bean supper, or bean suppah as we say here in Maine. The party was shouting 'CULT!' after they were in town for only a few minutes and I considered them having a few beers with Keigler at his house and then go home, just to mess with them.

Ultimately the cultists attacked them at the farm and the party ran off through the old corn maze, which had the requisite maniac, and through to the ritual on the hill where they confronted Keigler, and dropped him with a rifle shot to the head only moments after he finished monologing. They were quite surprised when the giant, demonic mosquito burst out of him and attacked.

Ultimately, it was awesome and we all enjoyed playing it.

[Brandon Hodge]

Whoah! COOL! I don't think I've ever had a shout-out thread before! Thank you.

Sounds like your group had a lot of fun with it, and that you did a great job adapting it for your home game. Sounds killer. FoR was a lot of fun to write, and I'm glad that came through in play! =-)

[Fromper]

My group played Feast of Ravenmoor in Pathfinder Society play more than a year ago, and I still reference it as one of my favorite adventures I've played in PFS.

[Talos the Talon!]

I just ran this on Saturday. It was almost 8 hours of creepyness.

Major Spoilers ahead..

My party went off the rails to where I had to do some on the fly adjustment . The poked around the church, found the mayor (who was really nice), Insulted the weaver and just got a creey feeling from the populace and the deviant desna effigies. So, about 2 hours before the festival, they went into the cult headquarters / cornmaze.

They explored and cleared the house and barn, and then found the bodies in the cellar. By then it was such a creepy silence of the lambs moment that they took all the alchemists fire and set the building ablaze and ran into the corn maze!

I had to go with a 'to arms!' version the rest of the way, and cancel the festival. I took the big battles and modified them into ambushes, and later angry mobs (inspired by the mayor) chasing the pcs into the night. The game got back on track with pcs saving the farmboy from sacrifice.

All told, thanks for the adventure - it was a blast!

[Joshua Goudreau]

I think it is a major accomplishment when an adventure is so adaptable. Feats of Ravenmoor works beautifully as written but the fact that it can be lifted out of its intended fantasy medieval/renaissance setting and inserted seamlessly into a very different modern setting shows a strong story and solid writing. The adventure retains its tone and atmosphere even with some alteration such as the bold imitative of the players as mentioned above. Plus, you can't go wrong with a giant demon mosquito.

I say again, well done Mr. Hodge and thank you for the eight hours of funtimes my group had on Halloween.

[Spell Slingin' Steve]

I will be running this adventure for a 2 person Gestalt party on Sunday.
They are level 3, Elf Rogue/Sorcerer and Tiefling Inquisitor/Cleric (Pharasma), 25-pt buy so they are pretty beefy.

But I am still concerned about this final combat. They are heading out of Galduria right now where the cleric failed to save the head priest of the village from some undead let loose by the Academy. I am considering having the acolyte who was studying under the priest tag along with them.

He can help with some buffs and heals i figure, also he can be the one to be captured by the cultists since he is pretty young and naive still.

This is only going to be our 3rd session, and this is the first game for both of them, so i really want to avoid killing either of them, (especially since, as a cleric of Pharasma, the teifling will not try to get anyone resurrected)

Should i consider allowing them to level up to 4 before they get to town?

[Joshua Goudreau]

The fight can get pretty brutal but it all depends on what the party does at the farm house. The adventure is very combat light and its possible that the party enters the conflict with Keigler at full or nearly full strength.

Of course, that demon mosquito is a hell of a surprise. My players thought the fight was over when Keigler dropped. The shock of giant demon mosquito bursting out of his body and showering them with gore was quite awesome.

With only two characters, gestalt or not, the action economy may put them at a disadvantage. I guess it all depends on how optimized the characters are and how good the players are at using their abilities.

[DM Jeff]

I already planned to work this in during the Shattered Star AP I'm running in a few months. Now I can't wait to get the chance, if it plays as well as it reads and you folks say!

[raidou]

I had the pleasure of running Feast this past weekend in a 5-hour window during a friend's game day. Had to compress the plot a bit, and play fast-and-loose without battlemaps, but Feast runs really, really well in such a setting. I definitely agree with some above posters that this module's portability is a major strength. Complete and total party destruction, but some days the dice are just not on the PCs' side and the gods demand a bloodbath. Also, the splitting of the party just made it a foregone conclusion:

Spoiler:

The scarecrow ended up causing the most carnage. Its fear attacks effectively split the party and the characters sealed the deal by fleeing into other encounter areas. One died fighting the weaver as the farm house went up in flames around them. Another was seduced and dragged away by the festival queen, only to transform into a giant bug at the adventure's end. Two died in direct combat against the scarecrow, mostly due to abysmally bad rolling. And the last fled frightened into the corn, witnessed the ritual, fled back into the corn, wandered the wilderness for some weeks, and when finally reunited with civilization... was promptly deemed insane and locked away in a dungeon.

We laughed. We cried. Mostly at the same time. I've run a LOT of games, and this was one for the books. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.