A Scream in the Night is the first of the Chaos in Melvaunt trilogy of adventures designed for convention play by the team at Baldman Games; M. Sean Molloy is the designer for this one. It features the adventurers solving puzzles left by a murderer loose in the city. It is designed for characters of levels 1-4.

This is a very enjoyable adventure, playable in a single evening; it’s designed for a four-hour slot, and took a little over two hours to play on our tables. This is an adventure that could play significantly longer depending on how much your players role-play with the NPCs, and how good they are solving puzzles.

The combats in this scenario pay a lot of attention to position; more than I typically do. Those, like me, who play using “Theatre of the Mind” rather than miniatures may benefit from drawing out a sketch map to better focus the position of the combatants in everyone’s minds.

What I like most about this adventure is the level of invention: it isn’t content to keep things the same. There are new puzzles and challenges for the players to deal with at every turn. The final chase scene – through a landscape of chaotic planar intrusions – is a stand-out, and played very well for our group.

The adventure does require quite a bit from the DM. It is well-written, but the situations are sometimes intricate and challenging to properly convey to the players. You also need to be very attentive to how your players are approaching the puzzles. I think they’re fantastic – very inventive and ones that make you feel good about solving them, even if (like my group), it only takes a couple of minutes. However, groups who aren’t inclined that way may get very frustrated; in such cases it behoves the DM to deemphasize the puzzles and concentrate on the other elements of the adventure.

You only get a cursory glance at Melvaunt here; more will come in the later parts of the trilogy.

All-in-all, this is an impressive start to the Baldman Games adventures.