Wine and Spirits
Wine and Spirits is billed as a 4 hour adventure for the 5th edition of the Dungeons and Dragons rules set. Published by Rat King Games, and retailing for $7.99, it’s a horror themed adventure focused on a haunting in a small town that plays out over a single night. I’ll talk a bit about what i like about the adventure, the things that get in the way, and the ease of you running/playing it in your home game.
The Pros
It’s a fun adventure with a lot of interesting encounters that weave together into a cohesive story. The opening premise, which you don’t see in a lot of adventures, is that the actual mystery elements of this adventure key off of random draws from a short deck of cards. Two cards are flipped from a set of twelve potentials. That means that this adventure, with a little bit of reskinning, allows you to run it more than once with the same group of players. That’s a novel change of stylistic pacing that can be explored in future adventure design.
The fun aspect i mentioned above is illustrated with the attention to detail and setup for the actual encounters that comprise this adventure. It’s stuffed with a ton of activities and things that characters can interact with in the adventure itself. It’s listed for characters between levels 2-5, though it is entirely possible that it doesn’t scale well at higher levels. You may have to make some on the fly adjustments to balance out the combat at higher end, though that is conjecture as i have not run this adventure with higher level participants.
It’s a rich adventure that leans on the idea of a haunting in a small town and the entire range of problems that can cause. It’s atmospheric and moody and feels like it wants to heavily run through that idea. As such, it’s a wonderful addition to the wide range of horror adventures to run as part of a Halloween celebration or to add a touch of horror to another campaign.
The Cons
There are a few issues with the adventure. First off, there are some editing omissions that make things unclear (Coinage isn’t identified at one point as an example) but those are minor issues compared to the other two primary concerns with the adventure. First and foremost, this adventure has a lot of resources required for it to be run, including Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. This is the big issue with the adventure, as its primary antagonist is drawn from that material and no substitutions are suggested for a DM without that resource. An experienced DM can probably find a workaround monster, but for a new DM, this is a bit of a stumbling block.
The second issue i have with this adventure is a combination of pacing and sequence. Unless the DM has read the adventure MANY, MANY times and feels comfortable flying off the cuff with it, it is highly advisable to do the drawing of the plot elements beforehand and then walk the players through the ritual that starts the adventure off. It’s a fun element, but it does require some setup to pull off correctly. The sequencing can lead to characters in a myriad of directions, and the adventure does prepare for many of those options, players will be players and you can find yourself in the weeds without a lot of study and preparation.
The pacing is another issue. This adventure really feels like it wants to take more than four hours. The number of places the characters can end up exploring and chasing down leads means that it is very likely that the four hour time block is a suggestion rather than a rule. The adventure sort of covers this point, but if you’re planning to run this, i would make sure you block out more than one session because the atmosphere is one that will encourage the players to try and figure out what precisely is going on. I suspect they will overshoot the four hour window in the pursuit of fun (Which isn’t a bad thing, just something to be ready for).
The Verdict
I like this adventure, and like many of the horror adventures i have read in the past, it feels like a scary movie. There’s a lot going on in this one, and it’s not a slow burn haunting, it’s a “the town is on fire and we need to figure out where the fire started” sort of event. Preparation is going to be the key to successfully running this adventure (and it’s certainly doable). The adventure doesn’t have a lot of things that tie it to any specific campaign setting, which should help you drop it in and put it in the middle of your home game. The issues are manageable, and i think that the novelty of the potential replayability make this a must include in your adventure bag if you like scary stories to tell in dark places.
4 Stars
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