World's End Masque & Ball

Hi Arthur, sorry for the very late response. If you ever got the chance to run the adventure, I'd love to hear how it went! In answer to your questions:

(1) The Masked Reveller has fairly poor weapons and armour and no special abilities. I think they're fine for their CR. If you prefer, you could take off a few HP and give them better weapons instead. Note that all of the fights in this adventure are intended to be a a bit too much for the PCs; this is a horror one-shot, so deaths and/or avoiding fights are expected.

(2) There isn't really an expected order of exploration in this adventure. Players uncovering secrets through investigating is both allowed and expected. As for the secret door, it serves as a hidden method of passing from the castle interior to the cistern, and vice versa.

Hello,

It went really well ! The personal objectives of each character really worked well. BEWARE random reader, spoilers ahead :

The players stuck together up until the very end. Most of them were fighting the cult down in the cistern, and both camp were in pretty bad shape. But the doctor, gravely wounded, was still on ground floor. He snatched the whole box of alchemist fire, and dropped it in the well, charring everyone and everything down there, friends and foes alike, including the egg. It was glorious.

There were so many more NPCs they could have meet during the socializing first part of the game, to uncover more intel, but it had already took a lot of time, and they were eager for action to begin, and basically initiated the hostilities through a missed Stealth roll.

I made a few changes to the adventure, as you'd expect. Mostly :

- I changed the map, and used one of a manor that I found online, which I modified as well. I had to think about...See more who and what to place in each room, but in the end, it worked perfectly.
- I reduced the life total of masked revellers, because I found it more dramatic that they would die in 1 or 2 hits, and I basically had an endless supply of them anyway.

I was a bit disappointed that my players basically did not use the special rules concerning Inspiration, but I cannot blame them because there was already so much to do. They also did not try to better equip themselves with the available weapons and armor the could find, but I guess it's because they are not that used to the clear OSR elements of this particular adventure.

I invested a lot in the ambiance surrounding the game : we played in a vaulted cellar, by candlelight, with appropriate dark and sophisticated music. I bought fancy carnival masks for each player and myself, each corresponding to its character.

All in all, it was a great success. Thank you for writing this adventure, we had a blast.