Review: The Cursed Chateau

The Cursed Chateau is a fancy book. Released by Lamentations of the Flame Princess early last year, I finally picked it up at the tail end of 2016 as part of a huge LotFP order. Written by James Maliszewski—of Grognardia fame—this version of the adventure is a new deluxe printing with layout and art by Jez Gordon.

The central conceit of the adventure is that players are magically trapped in a large haunted chateau by its former master Lord Joudain, a perpetually bored and tormented spirit. Joudain’s soul is trapped within the chateau, so he in turn traps passer bys to torment them for his entertainment. If the characters manage to be entertaining enough his otherworldly boredom will pass and he’ll be freed from his self-inflicted curse, freeing the characters as well.

This is a reasonably large adventure. The adventure site is quite big: there is a hedge maze that leads to the chateau, the grounds, and the chateau itself. There is a cast of NPCs, the former staff of the chateau, who now all haunt the place. Each is described with their backstory, a small stat block, and an illustration. (I should note here that my wife and I ended up being transformed into evil spirits by Jez: I’m the photo reference for Hervisse, my wife for Mondette.) There is a d100 random events table that helps drive the action during the adventure. As you enter rooms you’ll roll to see what weird thing is happening within, if one of the NPCs happens to be doing something within, etc.

The book opens with a discussion by James on funhouse dungeons, which one could imagine being posted on Grognardia in days gone by.

In a fun house, there’s often no way to determine what lurks behind the next door or down a nearby corridor and that fact irritates some players who value naturalism and rationality even in their fantasy. Without it, they argue, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to plan ahead or think strategically and thereby minimize the likelihood of their characters suffering some terrible fate. I’m sympathetic to this perspective and, in general, my adventure locales are fairly reasonable, even orderly places that “make sense”—which is precisely why a place like the chateau makes for a good change of pace!

I think how you feel about this adventure is going to depend on how you feel about funhouse dungeons. This adventure offers some clues about the nature of why the characters are trapped in the mansion, but it’s not particularly obvious. The means of escape isn’t really fleshed out to the characters either. I suspect most players will stumble about till they accidentally rack up enough misfortune to appease Joudain. Now, the adventure site isn’t completely arbitrary. The NPCs all have pretty clear motivations, and characters will likely learn of their various allegiances and squabbles with the other NPCs. The house is still a house, and laid out like one would expect a manor to be. Still, it’s a haunted: expect things to be creepy and confusing at times.

The interior art and layout is by Jez Gordon. I know I gush about Jez’s graphic design chops, but this book is another example of just how next-level the work he puts out is. The front end-papers feature all the maps in the module. The back of the book lists all the rooms with creatures within and reprints a few useful tables. This is a fairly text heavy adventure and it’s been laid out expertly by Jez. Everything is presented with an eye to what the two page spread will look like. Long room descriptions never spill over to the other side of a page. Some room descriptions in this module are very long, several paragraphs at times, so this is really a very impressive feat. This might be one of the best layouts i’ve seen of a D&D module, considering just how dense the text is. (Maze of the Blue Medusa, which I haven’t written about yet, is another good example of strong design and layout.) Jez’s work gets better with each adventure he puts out.

The book has a new cover by Yannick Bouchard, who has been doing a lot of work for LotFP recently. A fellow¹ sits on a sofa, clearly bored, his arm draped around a skeletal ghost. A blood stained sword leans against a blood stained wall. It’s a great cover, very evocative.

I know most everyone involved in this books creation so calling this a review seems like false advertising. I generally only write about books I like, and I like this book. It’s one of the most beautiful RPG books I own. It’s been printed with gold as an accent colour: the pages shimmer! LotFP continues to put out solid books: they have one of the most interesting and diverse catalogs of modules of any OSR publisher.

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