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Title: Carnival (AD&D Ravenloft) by John W. Mangrum, Steve Miller ISBN: 0-7869-1382-7 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.86 (7 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: A genuinely creepy supplement for D&D
Comment: In 1990 TSR, the company that had built DUNGEONS & DRAGONS from an obscure offshoot of a tabletop miniatures game into something of a household name, faced a new generation of roleplayers with new attitudes toward the hobby. Companies like White Wolf were poised to explode into popularity with dark, brooding games such as VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE. Atmosphere and character interaction had become increasingly important parts of the roleplaying experience. TSR's response: the RAVENLOFT setting.

A spin-off from a classic adventure of the same name, RAVENLOFT was intended to take a horrific approach to the all-too-familiar tropes of D&D. What had been an isolated story about a great castle and its vampiric lord became an entire campaign world dominated by evil figures, one where shadows and mysticism were more prominent than pageantry and sword swinging. Heroic fantasy and visceral horror proved to be imperfect counterparts, but CARNIVAL, originally published in 1999 as a printed product for ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (2nd Edition), represents everything RAVENLOFT was intended to be, but so often was not.

The eponymous Carnival is an enigma that unfolds by stages and half-truths from behind a veil of illusion. A traveling 'freak show' with a decidedly fantastic twist, Carnival moves from town to town at will, never staying for more than a day or two, preceded by flyers whose designs can hypnotize and enchant those who stare too long at their designs. Led by the mysterious Isolde, whose true identity is unknown even to those privy to the secrets of Carnival, the caravan of bizarre wanderers make a display of their freakishness. These oddities come in realistic (Living Skeleton, Giant) and fantastic (a woman with wings, a living man made of wax) varieties, and the Cthulhoid monstrosities in the Hall of Horrors are straight out of nightmare. All around Carnival are the gypsy-like Skurra, who handle the wagons in silence from behind masks of implacable face-paints.

Rather than laying out the details of Carnival in straightforward fashion, CARNIVAL instead takes the form of a tour. The reader assumes the role of 'the Outsider,' invited into Carnival for the first time. Everything relayed in this fashion is subjective, influenced by the perspective and/or agenda of the speaker. Boxed text scattered here and there gives game stats and a drier interpretation of what's discussed elsewhere, but even then the authors encourage potential DMs to alter the 'truth' as he or she sees fit. Whatever makes the proceedings scarier.

The wealth of detail about the characters found in Carnival provides enormous opportunity for stories and in-depth roleplay. A group of players could become involved with Carnival and easily enjoy related adventures for a year or more without exhausting everything authors John Mangrum and Steve Miller have prepared. There's even a suggested story arc included that's intended for integration into an existing campaign.

If CARNIVAL has any flaws, they are those that were endemic to TSR products during the last decade of that company's existence. CARNIVAL's boxed text frequently refers the reader to various other RAVENLOFT products to encourage synergistic sales. Thankfully CARNIVAL can be used without any RAVENLOFT-specific material whatsoever without losing a bit of its effectiveness, so the gratuitous shilling for VAN RICHTEN'S GUIDE TO FIENDS (for example) can be easily ignored. In fact, deleting the overly complicated RAVENLOFT background can improve the gaming experience by freeing Carnival to be what it ought to be: a free-floating night-terror about deformity, madness, death and redemption.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Contribution
Comment: This book details one of the strangest domains in the Land of Mists, that of Carnival. led by the elusive and mysterious Ladt Isolde. The book is divided in to several sections, the first the of which give descriptions of various parts of Carnival from a members point of viex with the fourth and final section giving plot outlines for 5 adventures, all of which form into a loose campaign of their own and relate to the Carnival domain and its inhabitants.

In his first professional outing in writing on the Ravenloft line, John Mangrum (who is co-writing the new core rule book for Ravenloft) have done an excellent job with his draft before it was finalised. Also, Steve Miller has added his usual grace and presence in the finalisation of the texts and rules within. If you but this book, I can almost recomment you enjoying it, even if you are not normally a Ravenloft dungeon master or reader. Also, the ability to use this book with other settings (like many other books that came late in the Ravenloft line) only improves it further.

Rating: 4
Summary: Beautiful, and worth spending your money on !
Comment: Being only a little familiar with the Carnival accessory, but loving the demiplane that is Ravenloft (and AD&D in general), I knew I had to get my hands on this item as soon as I could.

Looking at the cover before purchase and admiring it's beauty, I certainly expected the interior drawings to be less fantastic than the front. But really they aren't less beautiful than the cover. Looking quickly through a book is the first thing I do when acquiring one, it dawned on me that the Carnival accessory was as beautiful as you would want all TSR products to be. They're spooky, eerie and made just the right way for Ravenloft (or indeed any other world you would want Carnival to appear in). Every member of Carnival is depicted in a way that simply makes you want to use them, and also inspire adventures just be merely looking at the pictures. And I'm not kidding, the pictures inside really are that beautiful.

The idea of the Carnival, with all it's twists and scary background, is definitely something worth spending your money on, unless you're gifted with a marvelous imagination. Knowing how much work a DM sometimes has to do, it's nice to have this thrown into your lap for easy use without to much extra work, other than reading. Carnival reminds me of old times when I used to play Call of Cthulhu (oh, I love that game) with 4 others, and we visited a circus. Maybe that's why Ravenloft is so intruiging and wonderful to me.

So if you're a DM and is tired of doing all the work right now, get this and spice up your Ravenloft campaign, or a campaign in almost any other world, as it's use definitely is not restricted to Ravenloft. If you pride yourself on doing all of your work yourself as a DM, you'll miss out on a bunch of marvelously spooky NPC that can be used in any number of great adventures, if you bend the rules a little.

Contrary to adventures, that can only be used once, this accessory can be used any way you choose, and leaves it up to the DM to create adventures incorporating Carnival characters. There are 5 small adventures in the back of the accessory, but these aren't really something that couldn't be thought up by any DM in 2 minutes.

BUY and ENJOY again and again and.........