Review of The Cursed Chateau

Blurb from the publisher: 'The dead are all mad in this place.

This heavily revised and greatly expanded deluxe edition of The Cursed Chateau is an adventure for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games.'

What you get: Your EUR 27,50 or equivalent will buy you both the print as well as the pdf version of The Cursed Chateau, an 82-page, full colour hardcover in A5 format with an integrated yellow cloth bookmark for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game line. The product is the expanded, deluxe reissue of the homonymous adventure which was initially published in 2009 by Rogue Games. Compared to that edition, the present adventure holds 50% more (or different) content.

The pdf can be purchased alone for EUR 9,05.

Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventure, parts of the scenario might be revealed while discussing its strong and less strong points. If you intend to enjoy it as a player, stop reading now. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have never encountered the adventure's predecessor. I cannot thus meaningfully compare the two.

Contents: The Cursed Chateau cites the 1970's Tegel Manor and Castle Amber as two adventures that it pays a homage towards. It is solidly entrenched in the haunted house / fun house sub-genre; the adventure aims to be horrific, it does not however go out of its way to make sense or reveal its secrets. Once in the castle, the characters can only leave if they defeat the castle's curse. This curse however remains hidden from them, and there is no obvious way for it to become apparent, unless they do some out-of-the-box investigating of their own.

In addition to Lord Jaume a cast of 15 additional NPCs is presented, along with more than 60 areas and locations throughout the castle grounds. Depending on each importance, each location gets a shorter or a longer write-up, with everything that the characters may encounter. In what is probably a novelty, a random encounter table refers not to creatures that the characters might face, but to events which take place when the characters enter any given room. Some of these are repeatable, while others will occur once only.

Taking its length into account and depending on your play style and how long characters can last, the manor would need an average of two sessions to be meaningfully explored.

The strong points: The Cursed Chateau takes a commonly used idea and executes it as respectfully and successfully as possible. The premise is simple: once you are in you can't get out, and you can't even learn how to get out. The GM knows that pesky detail, of course: you simply have to suffer for the amusement of the chateau's cursed overlord. Once enough suffering has been had, both you, and him, will be free. Creative GMs will run wild with this premise, and make the location as malevolent as humanely possible. Depending on how observant and curious your players are, they might eventually figure out what they need to do in order to escape the chateau. The question then will be whether they are sturdy enough to withstand all the punishment.

Having a random thing happen out of a list of 100 every time a character enters a room is an excellent idea. These are not necessarily aggressive encounters; they are just wild or creepy enough to keep the players agitated. It is they that give the castle its more whimsical nature and make it feel alive. Depending on how you want to run this, they might even partially help the players realize what is going on sooner than later.

The Cursed Chateau has done an excellent work on tying things together. It is purposefully random at times, its theme and background however are shining bright. There is a backstory to be discovered, a system to which everything conforms. If the characters fail in investigating it while staying alive, they will perish. Needless to say, that works wonders with immersion. It's one thing turning nameless undead away from you, and another to destroy Julian the undead gardener, whom you had also encountered hours ago in a less aggressive situation... ...and whom you will most probably also encounter a few hours later, no matter the fact that you destroyed mere seconds ago. If anything, this stuff is memorable.

I enjoyed the writing even though it needs adjustments for it to be used to its full extent by the discerning GM. It borders towards prose, and at the hands of a good narrator it will provide just enough of a breathing space for the players to collect their thoughts before the next big thing hits them. It is serious, dark, and partially flamboyant at times, bringing it more in tune with traditional haunted house escapades than whimsical fun houses where campy jokes are also part of the experience.

There are too many cool ideas when it comes to tricks and gimmicks for me to meaningfully comment on. There are dozens of items that don't do anything more than their nature suggests (an apple is sometimes just an apple), in such a stressful environment however the players are very likely to be creeped out by everything. There are fountains whose water causes random effects, slices of meat that are very obviously human, deadly traps of the most innocuous nature and many, many more. Setting aside the inhuman, sadistic nature of the chateau's overlord, most types of horrifying acts are well-represented. There's insinuation of cannibalism, unholy rites, wild beasts, gore, supernatural monsters, spooky encounters beyond understanding, and more.

The book's production values are excellent. I really like how a digest-sized adventure like this one opted for an integrated cloth bookmark. The black/white/gold interior artwork suits the adventure well. It gives the right impression of opulence and decadence with a hint of scary and weird. This being LotFP, there is the semi-mandatory image of ritual copulation, other than that really the artwork's subject matter is time. The cover's art might just be the weakest piece of the book (!), even though it perfectly encapsulates why all this evil happens. Today we call it boredom; back in the day they called it sloth.

The pdf is of a very high quality. Bookmarks go three levels deep. The table of contents has live links, while all the images are extractable. Excellent work. I am amazed by how some of the publisher's pdfs like the present one are published with the highest possible care, while a few are dumped in the market without any pdf-related editorial work (bookmarks, image extractability etc). One day I will get to the bottom of this.

The weak points: At the end of the day a haunted house is a haunted house. The Cursed Chateau has many good ideas and goes by the book when it comes to its implementation. Don't however expect something utterly brand new, or the next big thing in horror adventuring. You know what you are getting into, and you will get a fine treatment of just that.

This is not just a killer adventure; it is a killer adventure that incorporates many of OSR's tropes of semi-randomly eliminating the characters through things and events that don't initially look deadly or dangerous at all. The fact that it does not recommend a particular character level is a major let-down. Seeing how an (overall entertaining) TPK is the most likely outcome, I wouldn't recommend tackling it with characters you have bonded with. Or maybe you can do so the second time you run through it?

As an old-school experience, some of the adventure's aspects might not prove enjoyable for younger players which are more accustomed towards a different type of game design. Its premise is one of them. The characters are trapped in the chateau without a way out, and without an obvious way of figuring the way out. There are no goals, no objectives, no structure. The location and the secret metaplot that the characters can only partially explore is the adventure. If they are not used into tackling that, e.g. through investigating everything and trying to piece together all the information they obtain, their characters will fail miserably. As players, they are likely to come out frustrated by the experience. After all, there are literally no breaks. Either you understand what's going on an solve it, or you don't survive. There's no running away from this chateau.

Conclusion: The Cursed Chateau is one of these 3,5 / 3,5 adventures that carefully aims, plans everything, and then pulls the trigger in full confidence of the result. It has a colourful backstory, an engaging atmosphere, and a good mix of profound and cheap scares. Combine that with the whimsical, player-oriented tropes of LotFP and OSR overall, and prepare yourselves for a couple of horrifying sessions.

For more info on The Cursed Chateau and Lamentations of the Flame Princess, visit its website at http://www.lotfp.com.

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