This a great adventure, with many memorable and deadly challenges. The avalanche claimed one hero, the chase in the minecarts another. Combat in the end can drag a bit as mentioned below, as many of the adversaries are resistant to mundane weapons, but overall everyone had a great time. Don't see how this could possibly be run in anything less than 7-8 hours without seriously shortcutting the game play. I recommend!

I realy liked back in the old days wish it was out for fantasy grounds along with all the other items in this searies including first quest box set

I also wish the maps were removable or provided on the side, I don't wantwanto have totodestroy the book to put the map together. Also tried on the computer with the pdf scans but it looks like portions of the maps are missing.

I could not copy and paste the information I would like to have needed in prepping a campaign. I payed for the module but didn't have access to the toolbars to work through the campaign very well. I expected a better deal than just reading the material that I all ready had in the hardback Into the Borderlands B1 and B2.

It's an okay scan. Not great, but okay. Yes there are some markings on the map which is weird but no big deal. Two things, however, are very bad. First there is no OCR so you cannot do a fulltext search in the module. Second for some strange reason WotC decided to replace a good scan of this module with a worse one. Come on people, you're literally making your products worse over time! That's really disappointing. Lucky me, I have my old download safely backed up. What should be in this download is both versions of the module, mono and brown cover, both with full OCR. Sadly that's not the case as of today.

Every DM should at least have a PDF of this book. 6/5 stars. This is in my top 5 most useful D&D books.

It's an okay scan. Not great, but okay. Yes there are some pencilled-in notes and markings which is weird but no big deal. The map issue, well, is the map issue. Don't buy this is you expect to get one big map, you won't. Also some of the map pages are not "straight" as in the map image is angled slightly. What I find most annoying however is the lack of OCR. This is literally just a scan, you cannot search for keywords. True, they do give you a table of contents, that's nice. But no fulltext search. Sad.

Print quality was excellent, in fact, one of the better scanned image files I have seen. However, in terms of content, I don't think this adventure has aged particularly well.

The adventure has good bones but there are a lot of minor issues throughout. This adventure suffers, in my opinion, from assuming too much in terms of what the players will do and encourages the DM to have certain things happen regardless of whether the players take precautions, it projects feelings and actions on players, has several deus ex machinas that make no sense, and is a tightly-controlled railroad while giving the appearance of being a sandbox.

To be clear, I don't mind railroad adventures. Tracks serve their purpose and can make for a fun game. Everyone buys a ticket because they want to go to the same destination. However, what I don't like in adventures is when I buy a ticket to go on the trip and end being told what window I will get to looked out of, how I will feel when I see the scenery, which snacks I will eat on the trip, etc. This adventure sufferes from this sort of presentation and delivery.

Lastly, this adventure contains numerous save or die effects throughout the adventure. Some find this to be a feature. I don't mind save or die effects, but this adventure is loaded to the gills with them. That's either good for you or not. To me, it's not.

This adventure is a neat time capsule and has fun ideas within, but can't say I would ever run this adventure or be particularly thrilled to play it.

Excellent print quality and great content. Highly recommended!

UPDATED

What can I possibly say about Castle Amber? This adventure had always been something of a Holy Grail quest for me. I was a huge fan of Tom Moldvay, I had heard this adventure took place in Glantri and it was full of horror elements. As time went on and I still never found a copy I began to hear more; that it was a crazy dungeon full of crazier NPCs. That it is was more of a thinking module and not a hack and slash one and finally, it was heavily influenced by Clark Ashton Smith, whom I always felt was superior to Lovecraft in many respects.

I did finally get a copy from my FLGS, paid a lot for it, and I also got a copy from DriveThruRPG. The module lives up to the hype. It is not a particularly easy module to run and you better spend a lot of time with it. But for me at that time (the mid-90s when I finally got a copy) it became a great addition to my growing Ravenloft collection. It was not officially part of Ravenloft mind you, but so much of it feels the same that it would have been a crime not to bring them together.

Later I ran it for my family under D&D 5e rules and it quickly became one of their most favorite adventures ever. I started a trend in my family's games; they love anything done by Tom Moldvay.

Castle Amber is an adventure for characters level 3 to 6 for the D&D Expert Set. It was written by Tom Moldvay, who gave us D&D Basic set half of the B/X D&D line. This adventure shows that. While the Expert set was more focused on wilderness adventures, this is a romp through a "haunted house." For many gamers of a certain age this became the template for all sorts of Haunted House dungeons that are still being published today.

Physically the original adventure was a 28 page book with color covers by Erol Otus with the maps of the titular castle in old-school blue on the inside covers. The art inside is black and white and done primarily by Jim Holloway. The art has a duel effect here. Otus was the prime B/X cover artist, so the feel here is 100% his weird fantasy vibe of B/X. Jim Holloway was also at this time the primary artist for the Horror game Chill. Come for the weirdness, stay for the horror.

The adventure is overtly an homage to the tales of Clark Ashton Smith. The area where it all takes place, Averoigne, is used right out of the works of CAS. The Amber family would fit right-in in one of his tales and that is the Colossus of Ylourgne, or rather his D&D counterpart, on the cover. The adventure even includes a reading guide for those that want to read up on the tales of CAS, and I highly recommend doing so.

CAS, and his contemporary H.P. Lovecraft, were no strangers to the D&D world by 1981. Indeed Molday's pulp sensibilities shine throughout in this adventure as much as they did with X1 The Isle of Dread and B4 The Lost City. All three adventures have also been updated by Goodman Games for 5e in their hardcover Original Adventures Reincarnated series, making Moldvay their most reprinted designer. Even more than Gygax himself who as of this writing only has 1, soon to be 2.

There is a lot to love about this adventure too. There are monsters to kill yes, but this is not a kick in the doors and kill the monster sort of deal. There is a mood and atmosphere here. In fact this is the prototype for the horror adventures of later date, in particular Ravenloft (which I will discuss).

On one hand, we have a haunted house filled with the not-quite-dead members of the Amber family. This can be a pulpy nightmare or even a Gothic tale. The room with the Tarot cards and their abilities gives us a sneak peak of some the things we will see in Ravenloft. On the other we have creatures from beyond that are quite Lovecraftian. The Neh-Thalggu, or the Brain Collector, is a creepy ass aberration that can give the Mi-Go a run for their money.

There is travel to other worlds via some strange mists and 16 new monsters. Some of these monsters also appeared in The Isle of Dread, but here they feel a bit different. Plus what other B/X D&D book can you name that has "Demons" and "Pagans" in it.

The background of this is rich enough that you want more of it. More on Averoigne and its connection to Glantri, more on the Amber family, and more on the world that this adventure implies. It is no surprise really that much of this adventure and what it all implies found welcome homes in the BECMI version of Glantri.

For me though the best connection is the one to Ravenloft. I have to admit the last time I ran this adventure I made the tie-ins to Ravenloft more specific, but I did not have to do much. I have to admit I was rather gleeful inside at the scene where they have to run from the "Grey Mists" to get into the castle.

The book itself is excellent. DnD at it's finest. The hard copy pod is awful. Cheap ink that arrives smudged and fades at the slightest moisture, the poor binding that comes apart after minimal use. Awful, I strongly advise against purchasing a hard copy.

I have NOT played this Adventure.

Here's what I want to communicate about this adventure: If you're looking for something to insert into your high-verisimilitude (high-immersion) game, this adventure is going to take a lot of work to adapt.

I'm a 5e baby, and was ignorant to how different this version of the game was. A few big take-aways: you're always in "initiative state" (unless I misunderstood); there's a chance of wandering monsters EVERY OTHER turn; the included premade character cards are akin to a 5e Monster Manual entry (of a low CR monster).

My intention when purchasing this was to use its maps (instead of designing structures/layouts from scratch). Unfortunately, the map has very little dressing within the grid-space[asterisk] (plenty of art outside the grid-space), and while there are descriptions of what's in each room, they're pretty bare-bones. As a final thought, the spaces feel cramped to me (any given dimension of a room is rarely more than 5 squares) and the entire dungeon is much too crowded with monsters (and loot). But of course all these designs make sense for what essentially was a dungeon crawling board game.

*there are cut-outs of tables, chairs, barrels, etc.--along with a handful of unique dressings/obstacles/objects of interest--that are intended to be placed on the map.

I hope I have helped you make an informed decision about this product.

This is one of my favorite AL adventures ever - the pacing and how it change as the characters play it is awesome, with great surprises on the way! Ran it multiple times, always a blast. Great work here!

The encounters are fun for the players, but it is a bear to DM. Be prepared for a LOT of work. Read the module carefully or you will miss important details that will screw over your party. Also just like the part you have to go searching for where the treasure is located er listed for each encounter.

Scans came out better than I'd hoped hardcover copy. Looks great.