Wait, what?

That’s right. The Pcs all get turned into giant monsters and get to wreck the living crap out of a high-tech research lab. Now there are definitely players out there who hate having their character change without their say so and would rather die than be disfigured, sure, but they are going to miss a heck of a lot of fun. Besides, there’s a quick warning of letting your players know what to expect before running the adventure anyway. Also, if you’re driving through fog into a town called “Pinebox” in the middle of the night with a few good buddies and you’re not expecting pulpish horror, you’re sitting at the wrong table.

This adventure could easily be turned into a campy horror movie with the villains giving monologues and monsters that make anyone who’s ran Adventure! Grin at, and as a role-playing adventure it achieves the same affect. It can be run as pulp horror, or it can be run as straight “Sweet Jesus I’m turning into a freak of nature and I’m starting to think of my children as tasty treats” sort of affair.

However, there are a few things that get a raised eyebrow from me. There’s multiple ways that characters can get grievously injured in the first encounter, but no real rules on what to do with them if they are. If someone gets ran over by a getaway van, do they still end up in a prison cell being questioned by crooked cops or do they get put in a hospital before getting shipped over to the experimental wing and gaining crazy powers by being spliced with moose DNA? We’ll never know because the adventure doesn’t tell us.

There is also a rather run-of-the-mill car crash that sets the whole thing in motion that we have all done before, but the adventure adds that there are many different ways to start off and then goes out of its way to show us a few which I liked. A lack of reference pages for the handouts of NPC stats was somewhat odd. It turns the adventure into a bit of page flipping, but at seventy-odd pages, it’s not too hard to find anything. Additionally, the police force in pinebox is one of the worst you’ll ever see. Granted, one of them is more corrupt than Boss Hog from the Dukes of Hazard. Offering guns to civilians? Wandering into dark woods with no backup and multiple suspects hanging around? My players are no professional law enforcers, but their characters would look a little cock-eyed at these guys. Mind you, it’s easy enough to brush off if you’re going for pulpish horror.

There are helpful sidebars throughout the book that range from rather neat to totally obscure. One tells of the real affects of bioengineering, while another tells a totally unrelated story about someone appeasing his native ancestors that has nothing to do with what is going on.

There are little checklists at the end of every section that solidify what you as the GM needs to get done before continuing which I thought was a good idea for beginning GMs, but there are also bold quotes that appear in the middle of regular text which not only disrupts the flow but just seems like page filler as it’s information that isn’t important and that we know already. Instances of awkward writing might trip observant (or un-observant actually…) players up. The death in the beginning looks vaguely like an accident, but everyone in town knows about it being a murder first thing in the morning. Additionally, there is a point where the characters have to search out a girl, but she’s been recently married. Not knowing her married name, some people would give up, but others might know what it’s like to live in a small town. Everyone knows everyone else and directions to someone’s front door are as close as the nearest old coot sitting on a porch.

One thing that is the anti-thesis for the whole thing is that the place that gets the most detail complete with maps down to individual desk and chairs is the place that the now-crazed PCs are going to be rampaging through at breakneck pace before they are driven mad by their mutations. I can see why it is this way due to all the clues being in that location, but it just seems strange to have the biggest investigative opportunity done by hideous monsters on a ticking clock.

There are a few handouts which are a good touch for realism, but accomplish little other than the incredibly detailed maps. If you want a map of a laboratory with tons of depth, look here. 12 to midnight has also inserted a new rule variant called “Fear effects” that make the adventure (And others in their line of books) a little more psychologically intense. Characters go crazy and develop all sorts of mental illnesses from witnessing horrible events (mauled corpses, their own arms turning into over-muscled limbs, etc...) and there’s a random table in the back if you can’t think of an appropriate illness for the situation. Now, I’m not a fan of random crazy tables, but mental illnesses are damn hard to think up. However, a giant mutated beast with Body Dysmorphic disorder is just hilarious.

All in all, The Beast Within is a good cheesy romp filled with villains that have fairly straight foreword agendas that make for a good night of being monsters. Though it isn’t without its faults, the good far outweighs the complaints I have with it and would make a good one-shot or even a spring-board into something longer. This adventure doesn’t really try and do anything other than that and the work shines more for it. If you’re looking for something to shake up your usual savage world’s game and you think your characters wouldn’t mind being monsters for a day, (and C’mon. Who doesn’t?) then I would definitely recommend this a play through. I plan on throwing my friends through this for Halloween, and I suggest some of you out there do the same!

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