I ran this for a special New Years Eve event at my local game store and both the party and I had an absolute blast.

This is a funnel adventure and can be run several different ways. I ran a modified selection of encounters to fit a four-hour time limit.

The adventure is set up as a guided tour through a carnival moving the players from one encounter to the next while a tragic and heartbreaking backstory is revealed. The Judge is free to modify the order of encounters to their liking or they can make the carnival more of a sandbox. As a rule, I tend to dislike adventures that lead players from one encounter to the next but in this case, it seemed logical and didn't leave the party feeling as if they were being railroaded.

Overall, the encounters are a perfect mix of goofy, deadly and challenging and you can borrow many of them to fit other adventures.

I would not hesitate to recomment this adventure. It makes for a perfect session of fun for everyone.

I have one caveat for a potential Judge. This is an adventure that will require you to have read and studied the encounters before you run it. You can't run this by the seat of your pants.

My players enjoyed this adventure vey much and it was a joy to run. I especially liked the flexibility and the players loved the detailed story they were able to uncover, as well as the varied encounters, both beneficial and malevolent, that fit consistently within the theme. One player, whose character was turned into a chicken, flat out refused when I talked to her between sessions about giving her a chance to turn her character back into a human. She wants to keep playing her as a chicken. So it's given us the opportunity to integrate the Ragnacock character class from the Goodman Games Gazette vol 2 issue 6. Overall everyone had a fantastic time playing this funnel and it's made a great start to what is going to be an interesting campaign.

Carnival of the Damned is a must own adventure.

It is as simple as that. As a funnel it is exceedingly adaptable in that it can be trimmed down and plays quickly or fully played and give many hours of gameplay. By many hours I mean easily 9+ hours.

What most impressed me about this funnel was the fact that there is actually a story sown within it that the players can discover. The main enemy starts out as a big bad but as the adventure runs the players slowly become sympathetic to the enemy. To be honest, it is a little like Game of Thrones in this regard.

That being said, it has a good number of magic items that aren't unbalanced in power but give the players plenty of opportunity to discover (and lose) neat magic items. The claw machine alone entertained my players for a good 30-45 minutes.

The PDF even includes some neat miniatures for those who use them.

Overall this is currently in my top five picks for funnels and I love running it. Very recommended.

I'll provide my SPOILER-FREE review in brief, bulleted format. Keep in mind that I haven't run this adventure, but I read it with running it in mind. I did play in a very abbreviated version as part of this year's Roll20Con.

Carnival of the Damned is a tremendous value for the money. It contains 130+ pages of content including dozens of very clever magic items and a well-developed patron.

While it would be great fun for a tournament, it would really shine as the start to a campaign. Don't rush through this adventure. The author is absolutely correct that this adventure is best enjoyed as a zero level funnel with no time constraints.

The adventure would require multiple sessions to progress through all of the content and achieve the end goal. To do it justice, do not attempt it as a four-hour one-shot.

It is probably necessary to level up at least once to be successful as the encounters are very challenging, and many are quite deadly.

As judge, put some effort into ensuring that the players get bits and pieces of the background so that they can understand the underlying story.

The author makes good use of the die chain, something i haven't seen employed as frequently elsewhere.

If I had to criticize (and I don't feel that I do), I would suggest that you develop your own, longer paraphrased descriptions for each encounter. Out of necessity, the descriptions are a bit briefer and less descriptive than they could be. Likewise, you may wish to develop maps and/or illustrations for some of the encounters without them.

I’ve been looking forward to the release of David Baity’s ‘Carnival Of The Damned’ adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG since it was first announced by Purple Sorcerer games last year.

This is a quick 'first impressions' write up rather than an in depth review because I don’t want to give away any spoilers for this brand new module. That said I am planning on running the adventure a couple of times in the coming months so you can expect to learn more about the foul denizens of this particular carnival in the not too distant future!

The module is designed to be run either as a level 0 funnel or a tournament style adventure. It contains over 30 different encounters set in a travelling carnival which, it turns out, is not quite what it seems once the sun goes down! The premise may be simple, but the backstory is elegant and well thought out. It’s a lot more involved than just a case of ‘rescue the kids and kill the bad guy’

The adventure includes twisted versions of carnival rides and games, and the player characters will come across a unique group of adversaries. Clowns feature quite heavily, but let’s face it, who isn’t scared of them? (I blame Stephen King’s Pennywise)

The encounters can be arranged in any order, although the author includes some useful notes and a suggested ‘running order’ for both tournament style and more 'story driven’ funnel play. It’s also worth noting that David has included a couple of useful devices (a magic lantern and a mechanical fortune teller) which the judge can use to help guide the players and reveal the story. Used carefully these should really add to the adventure and prevent it from feeling too linear. The individual encounters could also easily be dropped into other games. It wouldn’t be a great deal of work to scale up the encounters to make them a more appropriate challenge for higher level characters either. Remember though, DCC RPG is not about ’balance’ and if there isn’t at least some danger of character death you’re missing out on the fun!

In typical DCC fashion nothing is quite what it seems in ‘The Carnival Of The Damned’ From the kid’s ball pit to the penny arcade via a disturbing encounter with a bearded lady there is something to terrify every player and delight every judge!