I believe that there are two types of plans people make. The most common are the meticulous, highly detailed ones. The kind of plans that live on spreadsheets, have timetables, dates, and clockwork-like interconnected parts.
The other kind of plan is more like a map of options around a centralized intent. It shows different routes to get to the destination, but it assumes that conditions will change. It expects you to make the decision along the way using your understanding of the intent.
I hate the former and live my life by the latter. People aren't clockwork, so detailed planning is a level of insanity I can't fathom...
It's why I struggle with adventures that fall into that tightly wound structure.The Ravenloft line has a lot of those types of adventures. Something about wanting to recreate a specific story tends to lead people down that design path.
The Evil Eye, however, somehow combined the worst aspects of both tightly wound planning and a map of options to create a muddled mess. It is honestly wild how messy the 64 pages of this adventure are...
Cutting the Deck
As far back as I can remember, adventures that had some sort of narrative to them, gave you a summary of what was going to happen in the first few pages. The party gets a letter from a vampire, then sneak into his castle, and beat him with a rubber hose...
Or something like that.
Somehow they left that out of this meandering nonsense. Instead we get a whole lot of backstory about the Vistani darklord, her half demon kid, her night of passion with his demon dad, her werewolf lover... sorry, wolfwere...
Seriously, I will never forgive whomever at TSR came up with that naming nonsense...
We get all that bullshit about their relationships, the kid's destiny to kill all the Vistani, and some rules around the use of the Evil Eye ability, but literally no hooks. Sure, we get told to go buy the Van Richten's Guide to Vistani and...
No... Sorry... This is a bit much... I can't no talk about this...
The one adventure you would think that the Tarroka deck would be a central part of. The one time you would think it would be a big deal. Considering all the cultural appropriation that they have done to craft the Vistani, you would think this would be the moment that they would leverage the deck as a central part of an adventure that is ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE...
But no. You are told it is window dressing and use it if you want to. I can't with this...
Ok. I got up and got a coffee. I am better now. I can go on to the next section.
Widower Once Again
Ah yes, the overly contrived hook. A storied part of Ravenloft adventures if ever there was a thing. For a monster-of-the-week construct, where the mists grab people and pull them in, the adventures always had to have some sort of vignette at the beginning. The Evil Eye is no exception.
In this case, we get a grieving Vistani smith haunted by his dead wife, sort of. The intro vignette literally requires additional hooks to get you to hook into the hook for the wider adventure. It is a whole bunch of nonsense.
To make matters worse, this hook is a curse. The party ends up cursed and in Invidia or perhaps needs to go to Invidia to learn how to remove the curse...
It isn't clear, which is a third of the problem. The other two thirds are this is a mini-adventure, not a hook for the wider adventure, and it requires clockwork in order to function correctly as a hook.
It also has a surprise gotcha that we will come back to later...
River Cruise
Oh look. Another hook...
I shit you not, there are two chapters of hooks in this adventure that are not hooks. Sure, the text makes it possible that this could be the next stop with Raul, the grieving widow from the previous bit, as a means to get into Invidia, but come on.
This time, the hook gives you a meet and greet, an exposition, and a fight. It is all set up, and honestly works fine. It really should just be the beginning of the adventure, and could be done cleaner without some of the awkwardness.
The meet and greet is with a player to be named later, Matton. This guy is the wolfwere, who is kind of a dick, which is the point. The party is supposed to meet him and not be helped by him. The whole encounter is meant to be role played out with no consequences, assuming that the party wouldn't try some shit.
I remember trying to run this adventure and the party actually capturing this guy and learning he was a wolfwere in the process...
You know, cause people aren't clockwork.
The exposition happens with the captain of the riverboat who comes along and offers up a ride to the party after Matton takes off. It is a huge block of text for the DM to read, which I am sure is why afterwards everyone is so tired they have to pull to shore and make camp.
This gives us the fight with the captain and his wolves cause, surprise, he is a secret werewolf... Not to be confused with a wolfwere...
Again, another clockwork situation that assumes the party won't destroy this weak pack of wolves and that the wolves will have time to flee and the captain can hide and pretend he wasn't a werewolf so they can continue on their journey. I never got to this when I ran it because in my game they had Matton tied up in the boat and demanded the captain take them to town. He wasn't going to mess with a bunch that had bound a wolfwere to his mast...
Karina
The adventure now turns to some amalgamation of Venice and New Orleans during Carnival. Like a lot of things in this domain, it is all hand wavy appropriation. It doesn't evoke any particular horror story. It is just a lot of square pegs smashed into round holes.
That said, the town is a lot of good ideas poorly executed. Each neighborhood gets a write up, some rumors, and some even get an event to hook into. The events are meant to further the details regarding the Dukkar, Matton, and the Domain Lord, but they all still suffer from the fact that, there is still no clear reason why this adventure is happening.
The Vistani
Finally. Finally we get a very clear motivation for the adventurers with this section. After a loosey, goosey "use this section some time after they fuck around in town" the magic ethnic people show up to give our heroes something to do.
Of course this is filled with more meandering bullshit. The ghost returns from the first encounter... You know, the one that you were told was optional and could have different endings?
That lady is back even if you destroyed her to lure the Chosen one away...
The entire episode is just one big convoluted excuse to have the magical ethnic culture drop some exposition and beg the heroes to destroy the antichrist... Or antivistani in this case.
Oh, and you get a Galadriel gives you some stuff scene at the end. Isn't that nice?
Dog Fights
Who doesn't want a heist movie just dropped into the middle of their...Let me check my notes...Right. Ahem. Game of gothic horror story telling?
It is a Guy Richie movie three years before Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels came out, I shit you not. In theory, it is about discovering the location of the domain lord and her evil son, the Dukkar. It is also a time filler so that that the super Vistani can create some sort of device for the party capture the Dukkar.
I suppose it is also a chance to make nice with the spurned domain lord's lover, Matton. You know, the wolfwere from earlier...
Vishnadd
And here we are. The dénouement. The final encounter at the Cliff House where mama and her baby boy are hiding out... Sort of.
Turns out mom is mad as a hatter. The boy is evil. The serial killer hunting mom is there too. Did I forget to mention him? Yeah, he makes as much sense as everything else here...
Like every D&D adventure this must all end with violence and bloodshed.
The party can either save crazy pants and kill her kid and the slasher, or let her get killed by the slasher. If they deal with the kid, the magical ethnic people are safe. If mom dies, the kid becomes the domain lord and things go south for the people.
Also, the wolfwere and the slasher fight to the death tumbling off the cliff if the slasher kills her. Can't forget to have that happen...
Why?
It is rare that I run into an adventure that has so many interesting bits so poorly pulled together. I remember trying to run this thing a few years after getting it and struggling to make heads or tails of the structure because it didn't have any. The whole thing feels rushed and shoe horned together to try and make something grand out of something limited and problematic.
I mean, not for nothing, magical ethnic people is not a good look. Never has been.
That said, some things I would do to fix this adventure to make it useful for Torchbearer or BECMI D&D.
- Set up the tension as a sort of love triangle between mom, her lover the werewolf (I refuse to call him a wolfwere now), and the antichrist. It gives you three competing factions which the adventurers get to upend the apple cart on by showing up.
- Get rid of the magical ethnic people angle. Just make the kid an antichrist figure. You can simply make the whole Vistani section an encounter at the circus with a prophet or seer during carnival.
- I would make Carnival the hook. That is why they are traveling to town. It is a big deal and opportunity for excitement. Who doesn't want to go to Rio, or Venice, or New Orleans for the big party?
- Make the heist about rescuing the people, not about finding where the mom and kid are hiding. Someone who is going to get fed to the dogs knows something useful, but you don't know who. Something like that. Make the heist have real stakes.
- Also, the dogs become wolves, and the wolves are really werewolves in disguise. I mean come the fuck on. This is Ravenloft.
If only I had a time machine to go back and make no money as the Ravenloft line editor in the 90's for TSR...
Did you know I wrote some books? They are some weird prose poems, with every page fully illustrated. You can order them from your local book store, get them direct from me, or order them from any book retailer online.
