A Not So Fond Look Back at Ship of Horrors

[woodsdarkman]

The next Ravenloft module after FoG was a big disappointment. I remember buying the module when it came out and was very let down by it, and not just because I had such high hopes after the great FoG.

SoH is not all bad. It does have a good ghost ship adventure which Ravenloft could have used at the time. Just tweak a few things and it is a fine adventure.

That said their are two things about SoH that peeved me off.

First is the villian. Meredoth just plain out stunk. No history, no curse, no real personality. As a DM I had to do alot of work on him to make him even a little useable. I think everyone would agree because in Domains of Dread he was given some personality. Personally I like his write up in the Nocturnal Sea Gaz. In that he is very much the great villian, too bad it only took nearly 20 years to fix him.

Second and the one that really peeved me off was why come up with a new domain and villian when so many in the black box were hardly touched upon. That is what the modules are for. flesh out the domains that had maybe a sentence written about them in the black box. I could have took it better if the domain and darklord were good but at that time they were boring.

Looking back SoH is not a bad module, but it is forgetable. Up until recently Meredoth was forgetable. It would later be added in as one of the hexad adventures and that was a stretch. The best thing about SoH was it gave us the Nocturnal Sea.

[HuManBing]

I agree, SoH was the weakest of the GC adventures.

I still worked it into my GC series, as the last adventure before the Azalin-Strahd showdown. Before that, Azalin had been using the PCs as disposable pawns collecting various GC-sensitive items. This adventure marked his decision to terminate them and progress on his own.

The PCs evaded Kargat capture in the west and fled to the east. With the Kargat hot on their trail, they boarded a ship to take them ostensibly south to Nova Vaasa, where they wouldn't have to contend with the borders, guards, and awkward questions of a land crossing.

The adventure plays out with a mutiny onboard and the adventure detouring to a barren island where the crew wants to start up a "free province" governed by the crew as citizens. This ends poorly, as Meredoth already lives on the island.

By the time the PCs return, having neutralized Meredoth, Azalin has realized that it would be much more profitable to co-opt them to his cause. He sends them off on an unsuccessful mission to collect the last items (the Holy Symbol and Icon in Castle Ravenloft) in House of Strahd, and then finally retreats to Avernus to set the rest of the GC in motion, leading to From the Shadows and finally Roots of Evil.


Still the weakest adventure in the series, but it can be tweaked to fit the overall theme of a given campaign arc if you need it to.

[woodsdarkman]

Yes it is the weakest of the Grand Conjunction adventures. But the first time I ran it was long before the Grand Conjunction was even an idea. I used the same people I ran through FoG and they were disappointed by the adventure. Later when I ran it as part of the GC series I played with different players. They were not as harsh with it as were the other players but they still felt it was lacking.

[alhoon]

Hey!
The ship thing, with the name changing and all, was awesome! Now, I think I changed the later part of the adventure, cause it was kinda... I don't know, weird. Dropping a 20th lvl wizard on a party of 5th lvl chars for example.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I hated the fact that the Graben Island section of the module was clearly rushed. The PCs pretty much have to get inside the Graben's house to find out about Meredoth but you're not given any maps of the place. It even says, "the DM should prepare a simple floor plan of the buildings on the estate as described previously." Excuse me, but I just paid $10 (1992 money) for this and you can't draw a damn map for a crucial part of the module?

[woodsdarkman]

On the other hand FoG had all kinds of maps with it. The aurthor of SoH spent all the focus on the ship and you can tell because everything was weak.

[Georg Kristianokov]

I liked how it wasn't very polished. Plenty of room to build on!

[Bluebomber4evr]

I liked how it wasn't very polished. Plenty of room to build on!

Then why even buy the module in the first place?

[HuManBing]

In that case, it might have been easier to have the skeleton (ha! ha! pun! izfunnay) of the adventure already done by another person, and then add your own tweaks, than to come up with something completely original.

The adventure wasn't too expensive, and it's got a fair bit of work done already. If the player thinks it's worth their time to rejig it for personal use, then it's not a bad investment.



Much more logical than the reason I bought it for... which was just to complete out my Ravenloft collection.

[alhoon]

I liked how it wasn't very polished. Plenty of room to build on!

Then why even buy the module in the first place?

I got it from WotC site. You mean the original DIDN'T have the manor plans?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I hated the fact that the Graben Island section of the module was clearly rushed. The PCs pretty much have to get inside the Graben's house to find out about Meredoth but you're not given any maps of the place. It even says, "the DM should prepare a simple floor plan of the buildings on the estate as described previously." Excuse me, but I just paid $10 (1992 money) for this and you can't draw a damn map for a crucial part of the module?

No maps? Heck, they didn't even say how many lebendtod there actually are! And no stats for any specific individuals, even though they were one of the few 2E monsters that could have class levels. Granted, the vagueness gave me plenty of leeway to develop the Grabens myself for the NS Gaz, but you'd think that basic stuff like that would be a must-have for any module.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I hated the fact that the Graben Island section of the module was clearly rushed. The PCs pretty much have to get inside the Graben's house to find out about Meredoth but you're not given any maps of the place. It even says, "the DM should prepare a simple floor plan of the buildings on the estate as described previously." Excuse me, but I just paid $10 (1992 money) for this and you can't draw a damn map for a crucial part of the module?

No maps? Heck, they didn't even say how many lebendtod there actually are! And no stats for any specific individuals, even though they were one of the few 2E monsters that could have class levels. Granted, the vagueness gave me plenty of leeway to develop the Grabens myself for the NS Gaz, but you'd think that basic stuff like that would be a must-have for any module.

Yeah, now that you mention it, that bothered me as well, for the same reason: it was a necessary step in the module's plot and the author completely glossed over it.

I know a lot of people here probably just downloaded this for free so the concept of coming up with your own additions is no big deal to them, but I bought the actual physical module with actual money back in 1992, when I was just a high school student with no job. I would buy modules with the understanding that it was a complete adventure; I wouldn't need to spend a lot of time drawing maps and creating NPC stats etc., so when I bought this module and saw that they glossed over the above-mentioned section, I felt ripped-off.

[alhoon]

Truth be told Bluebomber, I buy modules these days... for the maps.

[HuManBing]

I bought my copy on ebay, quite some time after the module first came out.

I found the module workable, if incomplete. It was in a similar vein to Chilling Tales or Book of Crypts, each of which have vignettes of adventures for you to build on.

[woodsdarkman]

I just wanted to clear up something. I know some people are downloading the module and it has extra stuff in it. I'm just expressing how I felt about the module when it first came out. (I have every Ravenloft product and I got them all when they first came out). I wanted to see if people felt like I did when they first purchased the product. And on SoH it seems most people did feel like I did way back when. I'm also giving my thoughts on how the module has stood the test of time and the legacy it gave us.