Café de Nuit

I'm looking for any adventures that explore Mordent and locales within it. I have a pet project to make an introductory 5E Ravenloft adventure that takes place in Mordent and would like to see other adventures to get some inspiration and to flesh out details. I know of Howls in the Night and, of course, the House on Gryphon Hill, but are there any other good adventures to look into?

Ender wrote:I'm looking for any adventures that explore Mordent and locales within it. I have a pet project to make an introductory 5E Ravenloft adventure that takes place in Mordent and would like to see other adventures to get some inspiration and to flesh out details. I know of Howls in the Night and, of course, the House on Gryphon Hill, but are there any other good adventures to look into?

I dunno.

Have you considered a hex crawl?

The first step would be making/finding a hex map of Mordent.
Then number the hexes, Judges Guild style.

Then place whatever canonical or homebrew features, like the town of Mordentshire, you plan to use.
Then randomly generate stuff for the other hexes. One or two line entries, I think.

I've thought about doing this for Barovia.


EDIT

If you don't mind tracking down and buying back issues of Dungeon, check out

The Ghost of Mistmoor

Not Mordent, but seems to fit.

I don't know about good b/c I haven't had a chance to run/play them, and like many of the CotN adventures, they are best when elaborated upon by the GM. there's two in Children of the Night: the Created
-the Automatic Man
-the Minikins

The Minkins one is more like a campaign subplot, as it plays out over a stretch of repeated visits to Idlethorp (the town it's located in.) Mostly investigation type adventures.

The Automatic Man is like your booby-trapped haunted house, save that the house is a golem. (think like a House of Tomorrow gone evil). As a house, the Automatic Man is obviously pretty static in that it can't move around very much and as such relies mostly upon attacks with built in implements in various rooms. Probably could use something put in that could have more of a mobile threat.

I humbly submit my adventure sketch, The Mordentshire Miser.
http://themistway.com/miser.html

Warning: very rough and quite old. But I know at least one person other than myself has used it.

Also, obviously the Mordent section of Gaz III, while not on par with some of the others, is full of inspiring ideas.

I could see using the Automatic Man as a twisted sort of comic break in a campaign, but then it might be because there were quite a few cartoons using a "House of Tomorrow" as a setup for comic mayhem.

ewancummins wrote:I dunno.

Have you considered a hex crawl?

The first step would be making/finding a hex map of Mordent.
Then number the hexes, Judges Guild style.

Then place whatever canonical or homebrew features, like the town of Mordentshire, you plan to use.
Then randomly generate stuff for the other hexes. One or two line entries, I think.

I've thought about doing this for Barovia.

I like hex crawls, but in this case, I'm looking for a more tightly-woven story. Incidentally, though, there is a hex map of Mordentshire out there already from I10.

Brandi wrote:I could see using the Automatic Man as a twisted sort of comic break in a campaign, but then it might be because there were quite a few cartoons using a "House of Tomorrow" as a setup for comic mayhem.

When I used it, it was more of an action/adventure piece. Kind of Indiana Jones, except in a house instead of an ancient tomb. Perhaps a little amusing, but not cartoonish. I also interwove it with one of my PC's backgrounds by having Lumley be his mentor's mentor, and the Heart Chamber of the Automatic Man became an important plot device later in the campaign.

Ender wrote:

ewancummins wrote:I dunno.

Have you considered a hex crawl?

The first step would be making/finding a hex map of Mordent.
Then number the hexes, Judges Guild style.

Then place whatever canonical or homebrew features, like the town of Mordentshire, you plan to use.
Then randomly generate stuff for the other hexes. One or two line entries, I think.

I've thought about doing this for Barovia.

I like hex crawls, but in this case, I'm looking for a more tightly-woven story. Incidentally, though, there is a hex map of Mordentshire out there already from I10.

You are correct!

I have both Ravenloft modules.

It would be fairly simple to expand and number the maps of Barovia and Mordentshire.

I think Curse of Strahd comes with a hex map, too.

But I see what you mean about wanting a more closely connected story.I probably took " explore" too literally.

Ha, no worries! My primary purpose is to make Mordent feel alive, so I'm looking for good plot hooks, unique NPCs, atmospheric locations, and similar things. There may be sections with an exploratory feel to them, but I don't want it to be too sandbox. I actually was flipping through CotN:Ghosts, even though none of them appear to take place in Mordent, and like a couple of the stories. The Ghost Cat mini-adventure was interesting and flavorful. Gaz III is my Mordent bible at the moment. I like what it's done with Godefroy and will probably try to set the adventure up with him in mind, though I don't want the entire things to be about ghosts. Introducing the Weathermay Twins and the legacy of Van Richten would probably also be goals, but without making him a focus. As such, I'm also using a lot of characterization from the later Van Richten's guides, especially VRGttM.

Ender wrote:Ha, no worries! My primary purpose is to make Mordent feel alive, so I'm looking for good plot hooks, unique NPCs, atmospheric locations, and similar things. There may be sections with an exploratory feel to them, but I don't want it to be too sandbox. I actually was flipping through CotN:Ghosts, even though none of them appear to take place in Mordent, and like a couple of the stories. The Ghost Cat mini-adventure was interesting and flavorful. Gaz III is my Mordent bible at the moment. I like what it's done with Godefroy and will probably try to set the adventure up with him in mind, though I don't want the entire things to be about ghosts. Introducing the Weathermay Twins and the legacy of Van Richten would probably also be goals, but without making him a focus. As such, I'm also using a lot of characterization from the later Van Richten's guides, especially VRGttM.

Isn't there something about Lord Godefroy writing postmortem letters?

If you're up for non-canon, I wrote a short adventure set in Mordent in Quoth the Raven 15 ("The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea").

Thought this might help, it contains all the canon locations I have been able to find in Mordentshire, the locations and products are as follows

Heather House and Gryphon Hill from I10 (their locations based on their relation to each other and Arden Bay from the map in I10, I'm pretty sure the distances are a bit off, but if I'd tried to work from the I10 map scale they'd have been REALLY squashed up)

The tributary of the Arden from the Red Box (this was done by eye as it's impossible to get the red and black boxes' maps to match up

Westcote Manor and the Great Moor from Howls in the Night module. (again by eye based on the adventure map)

Idlethorpe from CotN:Created, the text specifies a crossroads, by intentionally avoiding Blackburns Crossing with the southern road I created a cross roads for the town to be located (based on it's location on the Mordent Cartographic Society's version)

Preston Hill from th CotN:Ghosts , gaz3 mentions a village in the Lightless forest but doesn't name it, I assumed it was Preston Hill

The village of Ghent is mentioned in Champions of Darkness in the section regarding Dairon's Tower

The rest is from Gaz3, some clearly identifiable locations were marked first and the rest based on interpretation of the text

ewancummins wrote:
Isn't there something about Lord Godefroy writing postmortem letters?

I think the correspondence bit is from his story in Tales of Ravenloft. It certainly adds a lot more to the deviltry he's capable of.

^Well he has access to the "ghosts" of anyone that might of died and could bully them enough to know a bit about certain people's situations and be able to write letters to manipulate a lot of people right?

While there's no full adventure, take a look at the backstory for James Martigan (from the "Lights in the Fog" article in the Book of Secrets). Just need a map of the Phantom Lover's tower and put the PCs in the place of van Richten.