Be Warned of Spoilers Mentioned Throughout
Ran this adventure for my four 6th level party members and had a blast! The first adventure this group ran was Tasha's Kiss, and it was meant to be a one shot. The players enjoyed the adventure and the characters that we made a campaign out of it and a lot had happened since they had destroyed Tasha's Kiss. During that adventure I had played very specific creepy carnival music which was pretty memorable. SPOILERS AHEAD So, when the players found out a travelling clown had stolen some of the villagers children they made their way towards Happy Jack's Funhouse and I played the same music. One of my players paused and said, "No! This is the same creepy music you played with Tasha's Kiss, you can't use it again." To which I replied, "It is the very same music you heard all those months ago."
The building upon the first adventure to Happy Jack's Funhouse made it even more worth it.
So, as a review of the product itself, this adventure is excellent. The dungeon is broken down into sections, and the text layout for those sections is organized very well, making it easy as a DM to prep and run. There are a few random tables you can use, which you could run on the fly, but I opted to roll the random tables during prep and that worked EXTREMELY well for me. I rolled for the Junk and the Employees they would encounter in different areas of the dungeon, and it ended up telling a very interesting, but strong story (I love randomness).
The NPC's the authors include are fun to roleplay and should create some great, but perhaps, haunting memories for your players. There are great tips and narrative included to help you flesh out the NPCs if you want. This led to some awesome interactions with my players.
There is a character backstory page at the back of the adventure which it recommends you have your players fill out. I absolutley recommend you do, as it will ground the PC's in the adventure as parts of their backstory, pehaps secrets they didn't want anyone to know, can be pulled out during play by the Witch Reaver, or even by Jack in the final battle. I used this to great effect to make some awesome dramatic moments.
Some sufficiently creepy and fun stuff in here, and it makes for great horror, especially for those who are afraid of circuses or clowns. If you're looking for an awesome horror adventure to add to your campaign, or as a One-Shot, I can't recommend this enough.
So, Jeff C. Stevens, Remley Farr, thank you for the awesome adventures so far. I'm looking forward to running Annalyse' Revenge to traumatize my players, and their characters further. Also, loved the Mirror Mazes. Tasha's had trauamatized the players so much that they took the time to start smashing every mirror in Jack's Funhouse. It was epic.
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