Review of Curse of the Chupacabra

"As darkness descends upon Santego, merriment fills the air, but a sinister presence haunts the quaint town. Bizarre occurrences loom putting the tropical paradise in peril. Will you dare to unravel the ancient secrets of Isla Zardia and avert impending catastrophe?"

Players get to answer this question by playing Curse of the Chupacabra, a new adventure from Sagaverse duo-stated for 5e and OSE. At 288 pages it's a meaty tome. But is it any good. The short answer is a resounding yes. Often, attempts to bring horror into a D&D adventure result in an experience deader than a Freddy Krueger victim. Not this time!

Curse of the Chupacabra avoids the by-now deadened familiarity of many high fantasy adventures by avoiding the pseudo-European medieval setting and instead opting for a Caribbean-inspired island that the title suggests. Indeed, principal designer Joe Ingenito cites a desire to explore Central American and Caribbean folklore as the driving motivation for writing the adventure. The team could have eked by simply through the freshness of the setting, but instead they opted for something far more ambitious.

Curse of the Chupacabra is epic in scale. Is it an adventure? A setting? In fact, it's both as an engaging story with surprising depth and innovation largely plays out on a sizeable island sandbox. The adventure is designed to take characters from 1st to 6th level, but there are so many side quests and opportunities to expand up plot hooks that it may well extend beyond that.

The adventure begins in the town of Santego, where freshly minted adventurers can create relationships and cut their teeth taking on various side quests and exploring catacombs. It then proceeds into the jungle wilds in and attempt to uncover the nature of the horrors plaguing the island (spoiler alert: chupacabra) and venture into a variety of increasingly frightening locations, including the haunted wreck of a cursed ship, dark mines, and crumbling ruins holding ancient secrets. Finally learning the whereabouts of the chupacabra's lair, the PCs delve into the heart of the island and a three-level dungeon.

It being D&D there are plenty of high fantasy elements to ground players in the familiar, but the real innovation comes when horror and science elements (most notably in the thrilling climax, which I won't spoil but I will say it takes the adventure in a dramatic new direction.

The writing is engaging and evocative. There is occasional playfulness as well, such as with Admiral Prawn (an obvious play on Star Wars' Grand Admiral Thrawn). The adventure looks as great as it reads; the full-colour artwork by Bolivian artists Miky Arango and former Marvel artist Terrell Bobbett is excellent, bringing the characters, setting, and monsters to dramatic life.

In Curse of the Chupacabra there are no tired and dull goblinoid meatheads to wade through. Instead, monsters are true to the setting, including 20 new monsters. These new monsters are largely inspired by Latin American myth - such as la Llorona, "The Weeping Woman", who drowned her own children in a jealous rage and thereby cursed herself to roam forever as a specter searching for other kids to kill, or the Camazotz, bat-fiends inspired by the Mayan god of the same name.

Curse of the Chupacabra is an evocative, open-ended, take-no-prisoners adventure. It's a resounding success. Best of all, the experience doesn't need to end as a sequel is in the works.