I wrote a review of Castle Amber last week, then followed it up by running the adventure as part of my regular AD&D game on the weekend. Is that the wrong order to do it in?

I haven’t written much about my AD&D campaign for the past few months. Basically, the campaign ran as (mostly) weekly for the first six months of 2012, and has now changed to a fortnightly game to allow me some breathing space and some other games (Fantasy Hero and Rifts) to have their places.

The overarching plot of the campaign is this: Odin has been captured, and the group are trying to find the seven keys to the Bifrost Portal to rescue him. I’ve got a major dungeon that has an Oracle in it that they return to from time to time to find the location of the next key, and their side-trips can take them to places like the Isle of Dread if I feel like it. Which I did. And they had fun, mostly.

Upon returning from the Isle of Dread they defended Baron Melchior’s realm from an invasion of Frost Giants led by the great giant Fenrir. They also discovered how the Snow Barbarian overlords don’t really support the Frost Barbarian barons, as Melchior’s entreaties for aid were ignored and the players had to deal with the problems themselves. They eventually slew Fenrir, and have now returned to the Dungeon of the Oracle to find the location of further keys; one apparently is on the eleventh level of the dungeon. Oh, boy.

My intention this session was to take them down deeper into the dungeon, but although I have a really cool map drawn, I hadn’t stocked it sufficiently to properly entertain them. Instead, I decided to replace the ruined keep that the dungeon is beneath with Castle Amber; it actually makes some sort of sense given the plot of Castle Amber.

So, who did we have going into Castle Amber?

Dave, a long-time role-player, playing a Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User of about 3rd/4th level.

Josh, who occasionally plays in my AD&D game, playing a Cleric 6.

Rich, who has been in more sessions than anyone else, playing a Thief 8.

Tait, youngest of the group, playing a Half-Orc Fighter 6

Jesse, one of the stalwarts of the group, playing a Magic-User 7.

They also have a Cleric 4 and a Fighter 4 as henchmen.

One might note that Castle Amber is written for 3rd-6th level characters and that this group has a slightly higher average. Well, yes, it does, but given how deadly the adventure reads, I don’t think it will matter that much. If they start cake-walking over everything, I’ll adjust some monster difficulties.

In any case, the group found themselves surrounded by a strange, deadly-looking grey fog as they reached the ruined keep, only to see itself rebuild itself into a great castle in front of them. They entered to discover it nicely furnished and inhabited. Their first encounter was with the boxing master, Jean Louis. Dave was very suspicious of the automatons he offered as boxing opponents, considering it very likely they were Flesh Golems (and thus, way too strong for the party to fight). Tait was eager for the challenge, and a large sum of gold was bet on his success; in the event, he was successful (particularly after Dave cast a Strength spell on him); the creatures weren’t golems but another type of magical construct.

The group then found some rakasta (cat-people), who they conversed with rather than slew (hooray!). This was actually a fairly hard encounter to run, mainly because the adventure doesn’t give any clues as to the personality or goals of the rakasta. I used them to inform them as to the party’s whereabouts (Castle Amber), the madness of the Amber family, and that they weren’t precisely in Greyhawk any more – as far as the Rakasta were concerned, it was 1782. Probably.

Following this, the party made their way into the great hall, and from there discovered an ogre magically tricked into believing it was Janette D’Amberville; they conversed with it a bit until it became utterly frustrated with its lack of command with the Common tongue and attacked them all. After it was defeated, they discovered Janette’s body, and wondered at why the Ogre was pretending to be her.

Two secret doors were found in that room: one led to a room with two wraiths (which the group correctly fled from); the other to a lion-headed man, who was quite chaotic in nature and offered to cut their heads off. Declining the offer, the group left to explore elsewhere.

Elsewhere yielded intelligent, magic-using spiders that were fairly easily slain and their treasure taken, and a room with green slime flooring and a black-pudding roof that also held a treasure chest. Dave was very, very suspicious of the entire room, and made sure than no-one entered. Just as well!

The kitchen and the ghostly dining room were the next places visited. Observing places for the group to sit at the dining hall (in addition to place-cards naming the group), most of the group chose not to eat, with only Jesse and Tait partaking of the meal. As it turned out, it was a deadly experience for Tait’s half-orc; upon eating the final dish he became a ghost like the other diners and condemned to an eternal fate in the castle; he disappeared upon the end of the meal. Jesse was able to resist that problem, although he was poisoned – his henchman cast [i]slow poison[/i] on him, but it would only delay his fate for four hours! On the positive side, he gained a point of intelligence – to 17 – and now was a more effective magic-user.

Tait didn’t quite understand that his character was gone. Luckily, he had his henchman, Gunther the Fighter, to play.

The group then entered the Indoor Forest, where they were attacked by killer trees, which they managed to overcome by the use of a [i]potion of plant control[/i] they’d gained some adventures before and I’d quite forgotten about! That was a very nice moment, because otherwise they were in a fair deal of trouble. They next met a maiden and a unicorn, who gave them more information about the castle, but – most importantly – the unicorn was able to neutralise the poison in Jesse’s system!

A giant amoeba attacked the group (well, Rich) and dealt a fair amount of damage when he attempted to retrieve a locked box from a fountain with gargoyles; they’d webbed the gargoyles, but it was the bottom of the pool that held the danger! Avoiding further trouble in the forest allowed them to reach the Amber’s family chapel.

Jesse summoned a group of goblins and sent them in to investigate. They found that some of the statues on the wall could animate – some giving good rewards, but most giving curses and petrification. Two of the statues were slain, the others avoided – and the group needed a break. They returned to a safe place to rest, and discovered an amber forcefield appeared around them, allowing them to rest without being disturbed.

At this point we ended the session, after about three hours of play. I’m finding Castle Amber a mixture of fun and frustration to run, mostly as I expected. The basic logic behind the adventure (the Amber family is insane and cursed) explains a lot of the oddities of the adventure, and the party has picked up on some of that, although I don’t think that all of them (especially Tait) is fully aware of how arbitrarily deadly and unfair this module can be.

My guess is that it’ll take another two sessions to finish the adventure; we’ll see how accurate that is!