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Murder at Moonveil Manor

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You walk across the cobblestone streets in the bustling city of Everhast, following the hastily scrawled map in your hands. Wandering past shouting vendors within the vibrant marketplace, you exit the wonderous trading city through one of its many archways; the street giving way to dirt roads overlooking rolling hills and lush forest. You didn't expect an invite from such a high ranking noble, let alone for such a dinner to be held on such short notice. After all, it's not like your adventuring exploits had gained that much fame, right?


This is a short, 6 -8 hour action packed murder mystery adventure for a party of 4 - 6 5th level characters. After being invited to an evening dinner by the eccentric Lord Berkestaff, can the players figure out the mystery before the killer figures them out first?

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Reviews (13)
Discussions (15)
Customer avatar
Sharon L December 31, 2021 10:42 am UTC
PURCHASER
I am going to be inserting this into my campaign very shortly, we play online and I am wondering if anyone has made a map of this. I am going to sit down and read it fully and then try to put the visual aids into foundry with all my notes etc. Any help would be appreciated. It will be my first murder mystery and was based on a total random roll for a present given to a PC. They got an invite to a murder party so this sounds perfect to slot in.
Customer avatar
Jeff M October 20, 2020 4:05 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hello! I'm not sure if this has been asked before so I thought I should ask, would the players choose one of the premade characters (such as Lady Silverhall or Constable Custard) to play as, or would they add in their own character?
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Customer avatar
Anonymous K October 21, 2020 1:22 am UTC
PURCHASER
They add in their own character! I suppose you could do it the other way, though. That could be interesting, specifically if someone chooses Lord Berkestaff XD You'd just have to make sure they're 100% down to roleplay that character and not share any information they're not supposed to with anyone else.
Customer avatar
Brooke A May 25, 2020 1:34 am UTC
Hi Vall!

Thanks for your help! Great! Thank you for that information.

Another question that I had when reading this adventure. I might have missed it but I don't see where the detectives get introduced. I see their character descriptions and then when they are mentioned in chapter three but don't know how they arrive.

~Brooke
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Customer avatar
Vall S May 26, 2020 9:23 pm UTC
CREATOR
Hi Brooke,
That's no problem at all :)
As for your question - the detectives can arrive to the party either before the PCs get there, or after. They're intended to be there for the dinner in Chapter 1, but you can insert their arrival or introduction in whatever way feels most natural to your running of the story.
Customer avatar
Brooke A May 20, 2020 9:43 pm UTC
Hi Vall and Mogman,

I love this spooky murder mystery dungeon!

I'm about to run this in about a week and was wondering if you have any suggestions to make this slightly harder? I will be working with 4 10th level characters who are VERY experienced with DnD and I would like to make this slightly more complex for them. Any suggestions?

Best,
Brooke
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Customer avatar
Vall S May 21, 2020 9:00 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi Brooke,

A group of experienced players sounds like a job for my free homebrew creature blog!
I'd suggest having the murdered guest decapitated or missing their head to prevent a player from using higher level spells to revive them (thus requiring them to piece together everything without being able to question the dead), and add the following:

Armory - double the bear traps, increase each bear's hit points by 30, and give them one additional claw attack each. Cover the room in an anti magic field for extra confusion.

Mimic bedroom - Increase the mimic's hit points by 50, and give it a 1/day ability to teleport between rooms in the house. (Nothing like being paranoid for the rest of the session that a mimic is stalking you!)

The Berkstaff showdown - If you're happy to draw from other shows for inspiration, and want a truly deadly boss encounter, I suggest you also add in my darkasher homebrew to either stalk the players throughout the house (regenerating...See more
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Customer avatar
Brooke A May 22, 2020 3:19 am UTC
Great! Thank you for that information.

Another question that I had when reading this adventure. I might have missed it but I don't see where the detectives get introduced. I see their character descriptions and then when they are mentioned in chapter three but don't know how they arrive.

~Brooke
Customer avatar
Gabriel D May 17, 2020 12:54 am UTC
PURCHASER
Halfway through running this with my party (we split it into 2 sessions) and we love it so far!!

I wanted to make the mystery a little more complex so I told one of the PCs privately they were also on a mission to murder Lord Berkestaff. The PC (talking to me through private chat) snuck into the Lord's room during the first night and stabbed him to death in his sleep (although I'm going to have him return as undead for the final battle).

So now there are TWO dead bodies and nobody has any idea what is going on and everyone is suspicious and on edge. Great job with the setting and all of the detailed NPCs, my players love all of the flavour!! Can't wait to see how they wrap it up.
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Customer avatar
Vall S May 20, 2020 10:56 am UTC
CREATOR
That sounds beautifully chaotic! Thanks for the kind words and the support!
Customer avatar
Lindsey George C April 13, 2020 2:22 am UTC
PURCHASER
I was very interested in running this; but unfortunately the manner with which the PDF was created makes it difficult.

I normally hack up adventure pdf's into a linked document/map so that I can quickly find what I want during running the adventure... however, this pdf does not let you copy/paste the text sections into Notepad++.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would re-export/update the pdf file so that the text is selectable (& adding a linked ToC & linked characters would be a great additions as well)

Thanks,

George 2.0
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Customer avatar
Lindsey George C April 30, 2020 12:23 am UTC
PURCHASER
@Vall -- In another reply (Vall S Aug 25, 2019 7:01 am EST), you mentioned revamping this... any update on that?... and/or could you just re-export the PDF so we can copy & also very importantly "search" the pdf. Thanks & stay safe...
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Customer avatar
Vall S April 30, 2020 7:06 pm UTC
CREATOR
Hi George, thanks for the feedback!
C19 is currently knocking all of my 'revamp' products down the pipeline while I try and catch up with my current project work, so I'm not 100% sure when I can get around to fully revamping this, as there's a lot I want to do with it. Unfortunately the way past me decided to export it means I can't simply re export a new file (because everything was saved as a flat, uneditable jpg image before I moved over to InDesign), but I'll try and get a new PDF sorted to be searchable as soon as possible.
If you've not heard anything in a week drop me a message on here, or over on twitter (@valldoesdnd) and I'll keep you up to date. :)
Customer avatar
Emily H August 25, 2019 1:56 am UTC
PURCHASER
I've had a flick through it and it looks amazing! This will be my first Murder mystery as a DM so I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for making sure the players don't guess what's up quickly and actually enjoy investigating.
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Customer avatar
Vall S August 25, 2019 11:06 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi Emily, thanks for the kind words!
When we ran it as a double DM one-shot, the most risky scenario was when the characters started snooping around near the cellar. I'd advise allowing them down there to find out nothing is wrong, as any locked doors in the house (even though it's not their house) always appears suspicious.
Also, playing up the tension between the guests always helps to throw players off the scent of what might be happening in the house. Take notes of any particular guests the players attach themselves too, and use them as much as you can as a focus point to keep players interested and involved. Above all though - as long as the players are having fun and interacting with the guests, they shouldn't suspect a thing ^_^ I hope you enjoy it!
Customer avatar
Matthew C April 19, 2019 3:53 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I like this idea quite a bit, is there a map of the manor for reference, though?
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Customer avatar
Vall S August 25, 2019 11:01 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi Matthew, there isn't no. When I wrote this I was very early on in my DMsGuild career and didn't have access to such things. I am considering giving this a nice little revamp soon though, so hopefully I can provide a map then!
Customer avatar
Amanda M January 06, 2019 7:47 pm UTC
PURCHASER
So I want to play this with my friends through did some calculating and the manor hearth is really a cr7 and would be a deadly encounter. The special attack confused me to be honest and it feels more like a legendary action. But I did have a question as to what this is suppose to look like. I felt like it was suppose to be a hearth or something.
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Customer avatar
Vall S January 06, 2019 10:02 pm UTC
CREATOR
Thanks for the interest!
The CR of the creature was calculated between 4 and 5, and was lowered due to the fact it's a fixed creature and only has a reach of 20 feet, so essentially can't do anything to a character further away than that. When we ran it in playtests, we found it to be an interesting addition to the combat with Berkestaff while also only proving to be a major risk if the party got close to it - though naturally it's always advised to tweak elements of an encounter if you feel it's too much of a challenge for your party composition or level.

As described in Chapter Six, the heart is a monstrous, pulsing wall of flesh, complete with a mass of black, domed eyes atop a gaping maw. Essentially, it's literally the back wall of the cellar, but made flesh. If you wanted it to appear as something else, however, then feel free to tweak it's appearance as you like. :)

The special attack does function like legendary actions, to a degree, and is intended to be used like so:...See more
Customer avatar
Victoria G October 30, 2018 7:18 pm UTC
This looks perfect, except just a little too long for what I need. Do you think there is a way to shorten it to 4-5 hours of play?
Reply
Customer avatar
Vall S October 31, 2018 3:37 am UTC
CREATOR
I'd suggest dropping one of the encounters, probably chapter 3. You could also drop a few of the NPCs and initial intrigue elements, or speed the initial introduction and dinner up by having it as a simple description instead of a heavy roleplay element. For the most part, when I ran it with my group, we spent 2 hours on the introduction simply because of everyone chatting over dinner.

I hope this helps!
Customer avatar
Simon H October 06, 2018 11:27 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Just finished playing this adventure.
The group loved it and, as DM, I really enjoyed running something a little less combat orientated (until the grand set piece at the end) and more "role-playee"


It's nicely presented as a series of chapters and we completed it in 10 hours, with a dinner break.
The party even saved most of the NPC's and one character is likely to have a romance with the lovely Amy after he carried her through pools of acid and rabid attack-books! They now have an ally in the erstwhile Detective (even if his constable got horribly eaten).

Notes:

1. it would be good to have a map of the manor. I modified an existing manor map to suit, but that took a couple of hours of prep to get right. I may create one using Dungeon Fog...

2. I didn't actually like the names of the detective and constable (too frivolous in such a dark adventure), so changed them to Detective Rhuwyn Barb and Constable Costello Tard. It was great...See more
Customer avatar
Sadie S February 22, 2018 8:49 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hi, I just skimmed the module and it looks amazing! Very creative with a great element of mystery. I love the NPCs and the Manor Heart is a cool villain. Great adventure!
Reply
Customer avatar
Vall S February 26, 2018 1:46 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi Sadie! I'm glad you like it! It was good fun to run with our party - hopefully yours enjoy it just as much. :)
Customer avatar
Nicolae-Gheorghe C January 17, 2018 7:56 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Can someone enlighten me about something ?
Trying not to spoil the content but I will sumarize it : "Special Multiattack : creature does 3 attacks with its limbs, One attack at the end of another creature's turn..." - how does this work ?

I have a party of 6 let's say, so basically during a full round, 3 random characters will each get 1 limb attack, BEFORE the creature gets its turn ? And then on its turn it can use the other attacks, but not the Multi ? So this would behave like a...reaction attack of sorts reserved for the end of the 3 unfortunate characters ?...

Reply
Customer avatar
Vall S January 22, 2018 1:20 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi, thanks for the question!

Essentially said creature takes that special multiattack action on it's turn, but doesn't make any initial attacks. Then at the end of another character's turn, it makes one limb attack at them, similar to a legendary action, but not as strong.

You're sort of correct with the reaction attack. It essentially sets up a set of characters to be hit by attacks out of turn. Then, on the creature's following turn, it could use it's other actions on any of those unfortunate enough to be struck by a limb previously. If that makes sense.

When I ran it with our party of 7, it made things very interesting with said creature's unconventional and "erratic" attacks.
Customer avatar
Joe B October 18, 2017 7:42 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Planning to run this next week, really looking forward to it. Are there any maps of the manor?
Reply
Customer avatar
Vall S October 22, 2017 5:03 pm UTC
CREATOR
Hi Joe, unfortunately there are no maps of the manor. However this does mean you can lay out the rooms however you like. When I ran it as co DM we modified the amount of guest rooms for the number of players present, which worked very well.
Customer avatar
Paul S September 25, 2017 1:24 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I got this one shot a few months back and have really been excited to run it. well i got to last night finally and wow was it a lot of fun! a lot like Clue meets House on haunted hill. For sure an Adventure i want to run again!
Reply
Customer avatar
Vall S September 27, 2017 12:27 pm UTC
CREATOR
Thanks for the kind words Paul, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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File Last Updated:
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This title was added to our catalog on April 29, 2017.