Neither Man Nor Beast: Ravenloft Adventure:

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition

by Jeff Grubb

For 4-6 Players, Levels 1-4:

Shipwrecked on a desert island!

Marooned among savage creatures who seem half human, half animal. Who can you trust?

Kindly old Doctor Fran and his beautiful companion?

The strange monks said to guard an evil artifact in their mountain fastness?

Or the beast-man chief who gathers his people and prepares for war?

This is short, for you must escape the domain of Diosamblet, the Master of Pain, before the island works its curse on you and your companions in turn, leaving you . . .

Neither Man Nor Beast.

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

He is an author and game designer.

See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Grubb

Reviews

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not your usual 'Here's a map of the dungeon' module.

It starts simply enough, but the goal of the PC's shifts several times as they explore more of the module. And the writers did a impressive job of trying to predict every possible scenario the PC's might attempt.

It would take a skilled DM to run it correctly, and a skilled party to survive. Any group which thinks it can fight it's way through any encounter will not last very long.

To get full impact the players should never see the module cover, or even know they will be playing a Ravenloft module.

[Benjamin]

Two more random adventures to review. Does Ravenloft have the most adventures-to-accessories ratio of all the TSR campaigns? Let's do some quick math!

From 1990-1999, Ravenloft had:

Adventures 33
Accessories 28

There’s a bunch of gray area products, things that are both adventures and accessories, like the Children of the Night series; but in general, we can see that it’s about at parity — so it probably feels like I’m just drowning in adventures because I reviewed a bunch of accessories first.

But wait, let’s check out the other campaign settings for comparison:

Dark Sun: Adventures 10 -- Accessories 22

Planescape: Adventures 12 -- Accessories 18

Birthright: Adventures 5 -- Accessories 26

So other mid-90s campaign settings had a lot more accessories than adventures, even those campaigns like Dark Sun that had a big metaplot that was in the adventures.

The EVIL EYE

As long as we’re doing math, how many Ravenloft adventures involve the evil lord of the domain fighting against some usurper evil? By my count, this is the 6th adventure with that plot and there’s about 11 others published up till now (more or less) — so, about 1/3 of the published adventures (so far) have that as a motivator of the plot.

And that’s what’s here: evil Gabrielle is an exile from the Vistani people (maybe because her father is unknown?) and hates them but is cursed so that she can’t hurt them; then she gets pregnant with a mysterious devil stranger, and while she plans to use this kid to strike back at the Vistani, the kid has his own plans.

I feel like this adventure is written very episodically, almost like a mystery, where, for instance, the PCs have to crash a dog-fighting ring to get some clue (or get tossed in with the dogs), or they have to… do something. Honestly, there’s so much background here for Gabrielle and her realm, that I didn't even absorb the whole adventure, but: while parts of the adventure seemed interesting, I was pretty uninterested in the frame.

NEITHER MAN NOR BEAST

Do you like The Island of Dr. Moreau? Then here it is, more or less: the PCs get shipwrecked on an island, find a kindly doctor who claims to be helping the animal-folks here but is really creating them, then there’s a revolution against him.

Oh, I guess there’s a non-Moreau interlude where the PCs are tricked/asked into invading a monastery of monk-mummies to steal a magical artifact.

I don't exactly mind the "this adventure is a rip from this other text," but... well, Dr. Moreau isn't really Gothic horror; and while the adventure notes that this is all about mystery and misdirection, I can't imagine any player get shipwrecked on an island with a kindly doctor and horrible human-monster hybrids, and not know pretty quickly what's up.

(Also this adventure skips the most interesting parts of Moreau, where the narrator tumbles to the fact that the doctor is doing things, and thinks he's making humans into beasts, but then the doctor sets him right: these were beasts, he's making them into people. And then the narrator sticks around! This is just "mad doctor and his products strike back!")

(Also, the intro notes that this adventure involves a lot of changing goals, and I have to tell you, as a player, you have to be careful with that. It can be real annoying if you, as a player, think through a whole “survival on a deserted island” scenario and then suddenly have to deal with a kindly stranger with a secret.)

[Reflex 1973 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent adventure, very atmospheric, great fun to DM and players enjoyed the ride

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't played this yet, but just read it so that I can use it to start off my "Curse of Strahd" campaign. I obviously need to do some conversions, but I don't think it will be bad going from 2nd to 5th edition since I played 2nd edition for a long time back in the 80's and 90's.

I think this module is excellent. It is basically The Island of Doctor Moreau with some extra trimmings. I love how it leaves things pretty much open to let the PC's do whatever they want and the author tries to anticipate and give suggestions about how the most common situations should be handled.

I plan on updating this review after playing it. That will be the true test.