Friday Fantasy: The Count, the Castle, & the Curse

The Player Characters awake, their minds fuzzy, but their bodies cold and damp, and in pain. They each hang by one arm fettered over stagnant water. The water sloshes and the air is rank with the smell of decay, but there is the sound of snoring too. Light flickers and bobs up and down from below, a candle all but burnt down to the nub floats on the water. In the cells around them, the Player Characters can see each other. They are dressed, but have neither arms or armour, or indeed any of the equipment they brought with them earlier that day. For it was only today that they reached the castle, its tall spire jutting from the landscape, having travelled at the behest of its count, a noble who pleaded for their help in lifting a curse. He promised a great reward in return, yet he did not welcome the visitors kindly. First proclaiming them to be the answer to curse that he could no longer bare to suffer alone, and then pouncing upon the Player Characters.

This is the set-up to The Count, the Castle, & the Curse. Published by Deficient Games, it is a scenario for ShadowDark, the retroclone inspired by both the Old School Renaissance and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from The Arcane Library. It is designed for a party of Player Characters of First to Third Level, and is intended to be played through in roughly four or five hours. Thus, it is possible to play through the scenario in a single session, but definitely no more than two.

The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is not only a Gothic horror scenario, but very clearly a retelling of the myths around vampires and Dracula. Further, it is possible to see The Count, the Castle, & the Curse as the retelling of the story of Count Strahd von Zarovich and events in Castle Ravenloft as originally appeared in 1983 in I6 Ravenloft for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition, but reimagined for Old School Renaissance. It has a Count, who is unnamed, away at war who returns to his lonely wife to discover that she has been unfaithful with his brother and in his jealousy cuts a bloody swathe through the castle.

As the scenario opens, the Player Characters have already arrived at the castle and find themselves trapped within its confines. In a situation in roleplaying that goes all the way back to Escape from Astigar’s Lair from Judges Guild (and beyond), they begin play imprisoned, chained up, and stripped of their equipment. Freeing themselves and recovering their equipment is the first of their goals, for their true aim—set by the Count—is to escape the castle. To that end, he is going to give them every opportunity to do so, all whilst taunting them, stalking them, yet not attacking them. He will only do that when the clock strikes Midnight, and he comes for them. This does not apply to his minions within the castle who will haunt and haunt the halls of the castle in search of their prey, that is, the Player Characters. Until Midnight though, the Player Characters have free reign to explore the limits of the castle and in the process discover its secrets and its past, including how the Count came to be cursed with vampirism and how his wife and brother died, and the ways out. There are multiple ways out of the castle, none of them easy, of course. The simplest are probably the most physically challenging, whilst others require crisscrossing the castle and up and down its tower to obtain the right items to activate an exit. Effectively, The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is a puzzle dungeon, but pleasingly, one with multiple solutions.

The Count, the Castle, & the Curse includes a number of stylistic and mechanical changes to both handle and enforce its Gothic genre. The most obvious is not to map the castle. Or rather not map the castle in its entirety, floor by floor, corridor by corridor, room by room, in two dimensions. Instead, it focuses on the important rooms and showing the links between them, presenting the relationship between them in a side or cut away view of the castle. Combined with detailed descriptions presented as a series of bullet points and the scenario focuses on the individual locations rather than on the time spent between them, that space shrouded by shadow into between the bursts of candlelight found elsewhere. Narratively and mechanically, this makes the navigation of the castle relatively easy, and it is further eased for the Game Master by the clear presentation of the rooms at the top of the page above their descriptions.

Mechanically, the scenario does away with Armour Class and some cases, the traditional Saving Throws. Instead, it replaces both with a floating value called Stress Level. This ranges in value between eight and twenty-two, but begins at ten and can go up and down according to the actions of the Player Characters and environmental factors. Witnessing a horrifying event, becoming frightening or paralysed, a player rolling a natural one or a monster a natural twenty, and being in darkness or split apart—do not split the party—will all increase the Stress Level. Sharing a strong drink, a player rolling a natural twenty or a monster a natural one, finding a trinket from home and narrating it into the story, and more will reduce the Stress Level. Stress Level will rise hour by hour of real. The players are kept fully aware of the current Stress Level, so can work to manipulate it, but also react in despair as it rises.

Each Player Character also begins play under the same curse as the Count—or at least partially under the curse. Throughout the exploration of the castle, he will be tempted again and again by the curse. This is ‘Progressive Vampirism’. The temptation is to consume blood and doing so grants vampiric traits and weaknesses as well as increasing the Player Character’s Hit Points. On the plus side, this also decreases the current Stress Level, but the Player Character is also tempted to feed repeatedly, and if he feeds too much, he not only gains more vampiric traits and weaknesses, but imperils his soul. If the Player Characters have not escaped by then, at the climax of the scenario at Midnight, when the Count appears for the final time, any Player Character who has given into his desire for blood and fed once too often may end up joining the Count in fully embracing the curse and becoming one of his minions.

Physically, The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is clearly and simply presented with an excellent layout. Bar the cover, there are no illustrations in the scenario. That said, given the genre, it is easy for the Game Master to base her descriptions on any number of vampire stories and films. The scenario does need an edit in places.

The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is written for use with ShadowDark and the dark and gloomy halls of its Gothic castle setting chime perfectly with the torch and light mechanics of ShadowDark, with the Stress Level mechanics only adding to the fear and horror of the setting and its genre. (Of course, the scenario can be run with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.) Given its story and its genre, there is much that is familiar in The Count, the Castle, & the Curse, but that makes it easier for the players and their character and the Game Master to engage with it, whilst the Stress Level and vampirism mechanics enforce and encourage the engagement. The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is a well-done retelling of an old story that makes for a classic Gothic horror one-shot.