Review and Thoughts on Project_Lamordia, the Short 5.5e Ravenloft Adventures on DnDbeyond

Today we’re looking at a recent series of short adventures for D&D on DnDbeyond: Project_Lamordia. Project_Lamordia is a series of three short connected 5.5e adventures that take place in a domain of Ravenloft. The adventures are available right now only through DnDbeyond, for $14.99. I ran the first of these adventures as a one-shot for my weekly D&D group as a one session break from our weekly campaign, so I’ll review the adventure and our thoughts on it.

Background

Ravenloft has been a campaign setting for D&D since 2nd edition. It’s a horror-esque setting made up of different domains with different themes, the most famous being the setting of Barovia introduced in the 1st edition adventure I6 Ravenloft. For 2nd edition TSR expanded the Ravenloft setting detailing more domains, including Mordenheim, which draws on themes from the novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

Project_Lamordia is a new domain, based on the same themes as Mordenheim, but it takes place in a futuristic cyber-ish setting. There are new backgrounds, new equipment, one new species, but no new classes or subclasses. The series consists of three short one shots; one for 1st level, one for 3rd level and one for 5th level characters. They’re each connected by the same setting, and they could each be played separately or sequentially as a three shot.

Review of Our Playthrough (Spoilers Ahead!)

With two of our five players unavailable we usually skip a session, but we decided to play the first of the three one-shots instead, with the other three players.

This section contains some spoilers. The adventure gives the DM bookmarked text detailing the adventure including advice for the DM, background, NPC stat blocks, three one-shot adventures and maps. The DM also gets access to four new backgrounds, one new species, four new feats (as dark gifts), and the “survivor” option (which allows for characters that are only invested in survival, as characters in horror movies are). Otherwise the players are expected to create 1st level characters with the usual rules from the Player’s Handbook. The adventure advises flavoring D&D equipment as higher tech, e.g. a torch could become a flashlight. There’s few specific examples here, so DMs and players need to decide on these specifics on their own.

Generally speaking, if you’re running the game session using Maps in DnDbeyond, the DM needs to do only minimal preparation. It’s best to read through the adventure, but the players’ Maps have DM click targets in each area that show the details of that area to the right of the Maps screen. NPCs are located in each Map as “hidden”, and they link to their stat block. I found several places where the details displayed in Maps didn’t match the text of the adventure 100%, so I’d advise having a second browser tab open with the main text in it. In some places a sentence was missing in the Read Aloud text, or a piece of information was missing.

The adventures take place in the domain of Project_Lamordia; the ruined headquarters of Mordenheim Kinetics, a futuristic research facility bent on extending human lives. The head of Mordenheim Kinetics is Dr. Viktra Mordenheim, an eccentric scientist. The first adventure sets the scenario as you learn about the Doctor and the subjects of her experiments.

The adventure contains a large amount of backstory about the setting, such as how Mordenheim Kinetics began and a lot more additional history. As in other Ravenloft domains the Mordenheim Kinetics building is surrounded by inescapable mists. The adventure suggests a few hooks to bring the characters to the setting such as being teleported here while exporing deep tunnels elsewhere or arriving here in a dream. Once inside the facility the characters can begin exploring to figure out what’s going on in the facility. My players found that there was more than enough background about the setting, but the adventure begins suddenly as the characters arrive in an elevator lobby, with the players left wondering what they were supposed to do.

There are no creatures or conflicts in the elevator lobby, the only thing for the characters to learn is how to get to the next room. Once they get to the main lobby beyond, they learn about Dr. Mordenheim, and what she wants them to do. In this area they encounter their first conflict, and might discover a few hidden secrets. I tend to agree with my players that the elevator lobby was pointless, the adventure would have been more fun by beginning in the main lobby where they hear from Dr. Mordenheim.

The goal of this first adventure is to set up a moral choice for the players to make: help Dr. Mordenheim, or help Adam, her most noted experiment. The problem with this is that as soon as the characters get to the second room they are spoon fed what they would need to help the Doctor, but what they’d need to help Adam is in two pieces, each hidden in areas they don’t have strong reasons to investigate. I ended up moving the piece they’d need to help Adam so that when the characters are presented with this moral dilemna they have the keys they need to make the choice.

Conclusion

My players were excited by the idea about playing in a futuristic Ravenloft domain, and we all had fun. We might play the other two adventures in this collection, but they aren’t overly driven to play it, more of a “sure, maybe someday” sort of thing. The idea of the adventure is better than the design of the adventure. There are very few images of the NPCs in this adventure, which might be expected for a shorter adventure, but for $14.99 it would have been nice to have images to show the players aside from the maps.

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