You’ve speculated. You’ve wondered. You’ve waited. Now you get an answer.
Coming this September, Goodman Games will release Original Adventures Reincarnated #5: Castle Amber.
Intended for levels 3 through 7, Castle Amber was the adventure that launched the Mystara campaign setting and was the second adventure for the D&D Expert Set.
Here’s some text from the back cover:
They fled from the far-flung land of Averoigne: the Amber family, a bloodline of wizards and warriors persecuted for their dark sorcery and occult crimes. In their new world, they built a lavish manor for themselves, the fabulous Castle Amber. For a time, the Ambers flourished, their magical and military might having little equal. Then, however, jealousy and murder struck the heart of the family and the Curse of Stephen Amber descended upon the castle like a fell and heavy hand. Now, the Ambers dwell beyond space and time, imprisoned with their monstrously transformed servants and suffering under the family’s dead patriarch’s death-sent doom.
It is into this mad manor that the party awakens, plucked from their homeworld and imprisoned in the heart of Castle Amber. To escape, the heroes must negotiate a path through the insane Amber family home, overcoming the clan’s machinations, dangerous servants, cunning traps, and bizarre phenomena. Only by finding a way to break the Curse of Stephen Amber will the party be able to return home. Failure means a lifetime of imprisonment in Castle Amber, a place where lifetimes can be very short indeed…
Within its pages, you will find high-quality scans of the original first edition adventure module, plus commentary by renowned contemporary game designers and writers. A full fifth edition conversion of the original adventure is included, as well as brand new additional adventure encounters and an expanded Castle Amber.
The 5E translation is an homage to the original module X2: Castle Amber, as converted by Michael Curtis and Tim Wadzinski. The original module was written by beloved game designer Tom Molday in 1981 and partially inspired by the writings of acclaimed weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith. Both the original module and OAR #5 feature cover artwork by Erol Otus.
This is the perfect old-school “funhouse dungeon” given new life for the fifth edition era. Won’t you please come in? The doors to OAR #5: Castle Amber open up in September.
I would not say it launched the Mystara setting. X1 had the known world map. When X2 came out it was still called the Known World.
ReplyDeleteI loved this module when I was a kid, although I probably never ran it properly or played it to the end. There was so much in this adventure to spin off ideas from I was always pawing through it.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping for Dwellers of the Forbidden City, but this is a great choice. I assume the 5E translation will include expanded material on the Averoigne portion, which was only loosely sketched out in the original if I recall correctly.
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