http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=84401&affiliate_id=15975">The Inn of Lost Heroes is the second adventure by Small Niche Games, written by Peter Spahn for http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=64332&affiliate_id=15975">Labyrinth Lord.

No, I haven't suddenly started playing Labyrinth Lord since I reviewed http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.com/2010/10/tommys-take-on-blood-moon-rising.html">Blood Moon Rising. Like that review, I will be examining this adventure for utility with other RPGs, namely http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=51078&affiliate_id=15975">Savage Worlds and http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=82385&affiliate_id=15975">High Valor.

The Inn of Lost Heroes is a 38 pag PDF, bookmarked, and largely black and white. As it goes with adventures, please be prepared for spoilers, though I'll try to go light.

***BEGIN SPOILERS***









SERIOUSLY, GO AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANNA BE SPOILED








***LAST WARNING***



For those running a more traditional game, the adventure expects that you have a standard party spread with a fighter/dwarf, rogue/halfling, wizard/elf and cleric. The Inn of Heroes was a popular stopping off point for adventurers...and now it's cursed hellhole with a creepy, Silent Hill vibe after a silly fight between adventurers spilled out of control, killing most of the family that owned it and causing it to burn down.

Now it materializes on the anniversary of its destruction, hoping to entice adventurers to their doom.

The Inn has three "versions": The Living World Inn, the Ash World Inn and the Burning World Inn. Once it shifts into those other two, freakiness truly ensues and the adventurers cannot leave until they find a blessed medallion.

THE INN OF (LOST) HEROES

This is the description of the Inn as it appears in the Living World and Ash World. For instance, there is a sign above the mantle that says "The Inn of Heroes"...until the shift to the Ash World...where it becomes "The Inn of Lost Heroes", as "Lost" is burned into it.

There is some nice interplay between the worlds as the family dog Old Beast can be befriended in the Living World, and when he appears in the Ash World, he at least has the courtesy of killing anyone who befriended him last.

Throughout the Inn, in the Ash World, are passageways into the Chambers where the PCs get to gather the Medallion, each of which is helpfully heralded to the PCs by the talking corpses of adventurers.

We also get two maps of the Inn, one keyed for the GM and one for the PCs.

LIVING WORLD ENCOUNTERS

We get the classic adventuring set-up, complete with a mysterious, hooded stranger carrying an ominous warning for the PCs. There are several opportunities to recruit new NPCs to the party (especially if the PCs are lacking an area in the Fighter/Mage/Cleric/Thief dynamic)...there is also an unruly adventuring party, and this whole scenario is meant to repeat history from the night the Inn first burned down. The PCs can actually escape into the night (in which case you probably need something else to do for the evening) or they get trapped inside the burning inn...and things go crazy.

ASH WORLD ENCOUNTERS

Assuming they remain trapped, now the place is grey and ashy, ala Silent Hill. The other adventurers are here as well, and the PCs will certainly encounter them. The bulk of the adventure takes place in the Ash World as the PCs get clued in on the Medallion, which is hidden in four chambers, each requiring a Fighter or Thief or Mage or Cleric...but here is why there are so many NPCs, granting extra options to the players to recruit folks for the tasks, to fill in their gaps.

Everyone gets to fight The Burning Hag, a vicious recurring foe who focuses on NPCs in the first fight, taking out a few key NPCs just to rattle the rest.

Each of the four Chambers holding the shards is described...each with a challenged geared towards a character class, and each having a NASTY curse for the heroes when they succeed. In addition to the normal encounters, there are a series of random encounters specifically for the Ash World to help fill in this part, many of which can be used to bring the surviving NPCs back on board.

Once the heroes recover all four pieces of the Medallion, it sets up another go with the Burning Hag. Assuming the PCs succeed, they have a choice: Walk away or try to put this place to rest once and for all.

BURNING WORLD ENCOUNTERS

Assuming they stick around, they get to remain in the end as it burns fiercely...and they get to fight each other to the death.

Seriously.

Honestly, it's a pretty cool twist, essentially making the PCs their own boss fight, and not in the cheap "mirror foe" way.

The Last Man Standing has the opportunity to end it all and save everyone. In fact, that's the kicker: If the PCs go through with ALL of this, they can save everyone. If they cut and run, anyone that was lost is utterly doomed.

APPENDIX

The Appendix provides two magic items, one being the Medallion and the other beings crests that can protect adventurers from the worst of the effects in the adventurer.

Additionally, we get the Burning Hag, insane heroes trapped in the Ash World, heroes who have been burnt to death and are now a threat and creepy fungi.

THOUGHTS

It's a great, creepy adventure. I don't like it as much as I do Blood Moon Rising, if for no other reason than it's incredibly easy for the adventure to fall apart by the PCs just deciding to get out when the warning comes down in the taproom fight before the shift to the Ash World, rendering the whole thing moot, and Blood Moon Rising just had more overall utility, with the potential homebase for adventurers, long term adventure potential, etc...but The Inn of Lost Heroes still has a cool, creepy vibe ala http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=701&affiliate_id=15975">Ravenloft.

I think Savage Worlds could do it admirably well...most of the frameworks for the classes are present in the game AND it is probably the best system I've seen for when you need to have NPCs in the party.

Still a very good adventure, and Pete Spahn is absolutely dead set on not railroading PCs, no matter what, which is pretty refreshing in published adventures.

Tommy, thanks for the thorough review. The Inn of Lost Heroes is sort of my fantasy tribute to Silent Hill which I think is one of the best horror franchises to come along in awhile.  I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, but I must point out that I couldn't have done it without some great feedback from people like Benoist, Sigmund, and Bighara who helped me polish up my earlier drafts.

Thanks guys and thanks again Tommy!

Pete

and my review:

by Peter Spahn
for Small Niche Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-5

Everyone loves a good barroom brawl. But what happens when the fight gets out of hand and innocents are harmed? Witness the innkeeper's wife Evelyn Mortigan. When her entire family is killed in a fire caused by drunken adventurers, she utters a curse with her dying breath and returns to torment all those who would practice the adventuring trade. Can the characters escape her wrath, or will they be forever trapped in the Inn of Lost Heroes?

It's interesting that this module and The Grind Gear both came out in the same year. Both deal with the same theme: tavern/inns that hate the murder hobo customers that they serve. Where The Grinding Gear seemed like a typical adventure, and a bit forced, this adventure module presents the idea in a much more robust manner. It has some strong imagery, strong horror themes, and like most good horror modules (and there are very few of those) it could be swapped out pretty easy to almost any time period or genre. It's a pretty interesting adventure if your players can get it in to it.

The characters visit an inn. There's a boisterous crowd inside. A fight starts .. and then all hell breaks loose. The characters, and most of the other people in the inn, have actually entered a cursed inn. The Charred Hag was once the innkeepers wife, loosing her family in a fire to the very customers they served, and after hanging herself and cursing the place now traps and kills groups of adventurers. The inn shows up in various places looking like any normal inn inside and out, and then suddenly things change. The inn exists in three forms: normal, ash, and burning. The normal inn is the one the players first visit. It may reappear several times during the adventure. The ash inn shows the inn after the fire, covered in a soot and ash. The imagery the designer uses to describe it paints the perfect scene of quiet horror. Many of the rooms have different or additional descriptions for when the inn transitions to ash mode. Finally there's the burning inn. This depicts the inn during the fire that killed the tavern family. along with the chief opponent: The Burning Hag.

There are a series of encounters provided for the normal inn and for the ash inn. The normal inn encounters are essentially foreshadowing. Encounters with the 'living' versions of ghosts that may be encountered later, or with other adventuring parties the party may meet later. There are A LOT of these available for the DM, 14 or so, so there's a wide variety to pick from. This is also where the only railroad is introduced: for the adventure to take place a fight has to start. Several of the encounters encourage a fight to break out. If it doesn't then an event is provided to make sure one does break out. That essentially starts the adventure and is the only railroad present. Once the party goes in to the ash world there are a different set of encounters provided. These range from ghostly images of past events to encounters with other adventuring parties also trapped in the inn. There's also 18 or so random wandering encounters that the party can have in ash world. These are great! Packs of mad adventurers tearing living horses to pieces in the stables, or minor hauntings, or chance encounters with potential allies. The entire list of encounters is wonderful; very few feel like complete blow offs. In addition there is a full write up in the back of all of the NPC's and the factions that the party will or may encounter. I love that kind of content; I think it really helps a DM transform an adventure from Normal to Excellent. Having just a bit of inspiration for NPC interactions between themselves and between the party can do so much to really bring the adventure to life. The way the adventure plays off of stereotypes is nice also: fellow adventuring parties in the inn, the buxom wenches, the stranger in the corner, barroom brawls, etc. We get to really see what impact the murder hobos have on the rest of the world .... but it is in NO way shoved down our throats as a morality play. This reminds me a lot of my best campaigns, where the characters interactions with the world around them had a real and noticeable impact. In this case it was a DIFFERENT set of murder hobos, long ago, that triggered these events.

This is certainly a non-traditional adventure from an OSR standpoint. It is essentially event based, but manages to not railroad the party, for the most part.  It plays with common elements from D&D but doesn't shove a message at the players. It takes places in a dream-like world where the hag is in charge, but again it doesn't railroad the party because of it. It's as if the party is trapped in a pocket dimension and must find out how to escape ... while occasionally meeting their fellow inmates and jailers.

This is a great adventure. It's very atmospheric and does horror right. It's more like a haunted house adventure than a dungeon crawl, but it does haunted house right. It's not the type of adventure (dungeoncrawls) I generally go looking for but it is of the highest quality. I don't own/keep many printed modules but if this one was available in a print version I'd have it that way. I strongly suggest you check you check it out.